Guest Post: Brave Soul Avoids the Sunk-Cost Fallacy

A recent correspondent asked that we share their story with the scamblog community.  The author made an "easy" yet difficult choice - to drop out of law school.  While many often talk about the rational choices to be made as an economic actor, it is another thing entirely to pull the trigger and walk away, especially after significant time and emotional investment, and the fear of being called a "quitter".  Without further ado:

I’m a 1L who dropped out after the first semester.  I attended a top 50 institution in a major metropolitan area on a decent scholarship and I would like to share my experience to better inform prospective students or help some 1Ls who are on the fence about getting out.

Owning Up

First, I would like to take full responsibility for the mistakes and errors I made during my brief time in law school.  This post is not to cast blame on my institution or the professors for what were ultimately my failings.  Maybe I could have studied harder, asked for more help, or done things differently but alas, what’s done is done.  I can’t get back the thousands of dollars I spent on tuition but hopefully my mistakes and observations can help someone else avoid a similar fate.  

0Ls, read scamblogs

Scamblogs are not the voice of a disgruntled minority who didn’t work hard enough and were now screwed.  They are here to warn others from making the same mistake. 

If you are buying a car, you wouldn’t make your decision only on the manufacturer’s brochure and website would you?  Then why pick law schools by just glancing at the school’s site and LST?  You need more than just facts and figures, you need to see what things are really like when you enter the profession. 

Law School Is a Different Animal

As I was applying, I didn’t really understand when people said “law school is hard.” I had enough confidence in my abilities and had faced several difficult professors in the past so how would this be different? 

1.      You Teach Yourself

Halfway through the first semester, I honestly didn’t understand why I was paying so much money in tuition.  I had to buy the casebooks and the study guides that deciphered the casebooks, and then hope that by reading it for long enough it made sense.  In only two of my classes did the professor help clarify the material.  Of the other three, one was indecipherable, another was an egotistical jackass who just yelled the entire time, and the last one just talked about whatever the hell he wanted and then tested on something else entirely.  

2.      You Get Very Little Feedback

This was honestly one of the main reasons for why I quit.  My entire educational career, I could use the first exam to see how the professor tested material or I at least had quizzes to serve as benchmarks to see whether I was actually understanding the material.  But based on my experience, professors just said that if you could answer the Socratic Method questions yourself then you were getting the material. That’s it. It was up to you to buy Q&A books, scour the internet for practice exams, draft answers, and compare them with model responses to see if you were really getting it the way that they intended. 

And the worst part is that you only get one shot at proving your understanding of the material.  If you had a bad showing during the exam, that’s it.  

3.      The Socratic Method Is Fucking Stupid

For our entire educational careers we’re taught in one way but then it changes once you enter law school (fortunately, professors end this nonsense starting 2L).  The most annoying part about the SM is not being put up in front of your colleagues and feeling stupid (only you remember your mistakes, everyone else forgets, and if someone points out where you screwed up then they’re a jackass), but the fact that professors waste so much class time on minutiae when the exam is entirely application based.  How fucking stupid is that?

4.      You’re Not a Special Snowflake

 

For the longest time, I didn’t understand what this phrase meant but I do now.  If you look at a bell curve, you’ll notice that there are a few people on the top and a few people on the bottom and everyone else is in the middle.  That’s good! That means you are normal.  The problem is that a lot of prospective law students who may have been in the top quartile of their graduating class in undergrad, assume that they can recreate that performance in law school.  Do you remember what the students in the first two or three rows of your lecture hall class were like?  Smart, dedicated, and hard-working?  Everyone is like that in law school.  They don’t let idiots into Harvard.  When you are up against stiffer competition and there are only a limited number of As to go around, you are going the get pushed down by someone who is either smarter, more hard working, or maybe just more lucky than you.  The problem is that with the precarious state of legal employment, try as you might, if you’re not in that top third then you’re most likely screwed. 

5.      Everyone is studying and nobody is happy

I looked at current employment statistics and even read accounts from those searching for jobs or those in jobs that they hate then the only question that sprung to my mind was “Why are people doing this?” Honestly, where is the win? Because I didn’t see it.  And that’s the crazy part about law school.  Everyone was grinding away and some even joked about how dismal their job prospects were.  THEN WHY DO IT?!  If we’re all on the fucking Titanic, then jump! 

Why I Quit: Avoiding the Sunk Cost Fallacy

I didn’t have a very good experience my fall semester and with each passing day I grew more and more depressed.  I couldn’t go on like this for another five semesters and knew that I had to make a decision soon or otherwise risk digging myself into a deeper hole.   

Turned out my grades were shit.  I passed all my classes but that was meaningless.  I had closed a lot of doors before I even started.  Moreover, I didn’t want to spend a fortune the next 2.5 years grinding away only to have a slim chance at getting a job that probably wouldn’t even pay all that much. 

If you have a losing hand, then you walk away.  You don’t bet the house.  I was fortunate enough to have a clear sign that this wasn’t right for me.  For others, maybe they are somewhere in the middle of the curve and too scared to walk away even though their heart tells them they should. 

Life is short and you only get one crack at it.  There’s nothing shameful about starting over or admitting that you made a mistake, that you failed, or you went down the wrong path.  Rather, it’s foolish to soldier on when you know you shouldn’t. 

Student Loans Drag Down the Housing "Recovery"

The Law School Scam is but part of a larger transformation in higher education that has been going on for decades - namely, that the cost incurred to obtain the degree is increasingly inversely proportional to the value return it provides.  We of the scamblog community feel that law school has become one of the canaries in the coal mine concerning this phenomenon, in that it has spiraled out of control to the point of absurdity.  Despite all that has been said, across multiple platforms,  about the cost of the degree and the damage the indebtedness can cause, many still do not seem to grasp the impact.  As such, I offer the following:
 

Remember when housing was the primary aspirational asset for a still existent US middle class, to be purchased with some equity down by your average 30 year-old hoping to start a family in his or her brand new home, and, as the name implies, aspire to reach the American dream? Those days are long gone. Back in those days the interest rate on the 10 Year bond mattered as it determined the prevailing marginal affordability of leveraged real estate. That is no longer the case, at least not for about 90% of Americans, because as Goldman shows, while before the great crisis only 20% of home purchases were "all cash", since then the number has soared threefold, and currently the estimated percentage of cash transactions (by count and amount) has hit a record 60%. In other words, less than half of all home purchases are debt-funded, and thus less than half of all home purchases are actually representative of what middle-class America is doing.

 

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-21/stunning-history-all-cash-home-purchases-us
 

So who cares, I hear some ScamDeans and LawProfs say.  That is the fault of the larger economy, not the valuable well-roundedness a law degree provides.  One should be more than pleased to shell out $250k for the experience, as a law degree is instant preftige and entre into the upper class.  Yet:
 

NAR President Steve Brown, co-owner of Irongate, Inc., Realtors in Dayton, Ohio, said student debt appears to be a factor in the weak level of first-time buyers. "The biggest problems for first-time buyers are tight credit and limited inventory in the lower price ranges," he said. "However, 20 percent of buyers under the age of 33, the prime group of first-time buyers, delayed their purchase because of outstanding debt. In our recent consumer survey, 56 percent of younger buyers who took longer to save for a downpayment identified student debt as the biggest obstacle." Brown notes the survey results are for recent homebuyers. "It’s clear there are other people who would like to buy a home that are not in the market because of debt issues, so we can expect a lingering impact of delayed home buying," Brown added.
 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-20/stick-fork-housing-recovery-spoiler-alert-blame-record-student-debt

 

Of course, this is across all university-educated people in and around Dayton, Ohio, not just law grads.  However, many talk about how $30k+ in student loans slows people down; how much more bogged down are unconnected people with an additional $100k+ in debt, i.e. the average law grad?
 

The incredible cost of law school does not just delay home purchases, it delays life itself.  More than that, it puts life in shackles.  If the ROI on law school approached some measure of reasonableness, then that would be one thing.  But that is not the case currently.  Lemmings, go do something else with your life.  Please. 
 

One thing is for certain:  I doubt this crowd had difficulty buying nice homes in and around Dayton.  Remember that the next time you think about law school, as one cannot, of course, write law review articles "defending liberty" and "pursuing justice" on the cheap. 
 

That's where you come in. 

Law School Administrator Wants Tweak To US News Formula So California Law Schools Don't Look As Bad

What Is Wrong With California Law Schools?
Money Quote: “In essence, he wants the U.S. News formula tweaked so that schools whose students are looking for work in California won’t pay a price for the state’s relatively poor employment prospects.”

Shrinking Law Schools Face Financial Devastation
 Money Quote: “The pain for law schools could last longer. “The decline in applicants will devastate the financial position of many law schools, and it remains to be seen how they will manage,” Tamanaha wrote. “The number of entering students in 2014 will go down to a level not seen in three decades, when there were 50 fewer law schools.”

Appalachian School of Law to scale back class sizes, staff
Money Quote: “Next year’s incoming class may have about 40 students as opposed to about 70, she said. The current enrollment is 222.”

ABA Once Again Proves What It Really Cares About

We spoke a couple of weeks ago about the proposals to overhaul the tenure requirement at law schools.

As of March 17, any proposal to change the tenure requirement is officially off the table. This decision proves that, once again, law schools and professors only care about their bottom line. Any attempts to change a dying system will be vigorously opposed and squelched. But fear not, this decision to preserve tenure doesn't matter when there is so little money coming in that the law schools may have to shut their doors. Then the law professors' fight for tenure will become totally moot.

I leave you with a quote that I hope can be looked back upon as the height of cluelessness on the parts of law professors and their supporters:
 “Tenure is not a perk for law faculty. It’s a protection for people who think it’s important to innovate in law schools. You need to feel comfortable in order to be able to try new things.”- Judith Areen, executive director of the Association of American Law Schools

Canadian Woes

One of the constant criticisms of the scamblog movement is that we are disgruntled JD grads who couldn't hack it, therefore we make s*!t up and impugn the good name of U.S. legal education so as to make ourselves feel better.  If that were indeed the case, then one would expect a different country with a somewhat different system to perhaps have different results.  Well, it appears that Canada is also struggling with the current state of legal education as well:
 

Law students are walking, talking dollar signs for Ontario universities. They bring with them hefty provincial government subsidies and that priceless higher-ed asset: “pre[f]tige.” [Fixed it for you.  Ed.]  Law students don’t require expensive laboratories or the latest and greatest equipment — the major cost to the university, by and large, is for the professors hired to instruct them. That cost generally doesn’t increase if a few extra bums are squeezed into seats in the lecture hall, which is why universities seem to welcome as many law students as possible.
 

The recent news from the law school at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, therefore, should come as no surprise. According to a memo recently sent to students, the school is currently weighing the idea of increasing its enrolment by nearly one-third in order to meet greater revenue demands. That means the school’s target admission number, which was set at approximately 165 in 2013, may rise by another 35 or 50 students.
 

This is great news, right? If there’s anything Ontario needs more of (besides expert panels on transit infrastructure), it’s lawyers.
 

Or maybe not. Ontario is experiencing anything but a drought of law school grads. According to the Law Society of Upper Canada, of the 1,750 students graduated from Ontario law schools in 2013, one in seven was expected not to find an articling position. That’s up from 12% of unplaced grads two years ago, and 6% five years ago. Obviously, the problem of too few positions for too many grads is only getting worse. So why on earth would law schools consider pumping out even more articling candidates?
 

The answer lies in those walking, talking dollar signs. The issue is not unique to Queen’s. Indeed, Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, just opened a new law school this year, which will add an additional 60 candidates to the graduate pool each year. Other law schools in the province have also increased their admission numbers, including the University of Ottawa — with its first-year registrants jumping from 271 in 2007 to 381 in 2010 — and the University of Windsor, which has added about 60 spots since 1997...
 

Perhaps the plight of unplaced law school grads hasn’t reached the “crisis point” of their teacher counterparts, which is why Queen’s might get away with opening its admission doors. But to do so would be to ignore the weakening job prospects for its current students, as well as law students across the province. Queen’s could opt to raise its law tuition as a means of garnering additional revenue, but obviously, that would not bring in the same type of change as some 50 new government-subsidized students. So, the prevailing question remains: How many dollar signs can you squeeze into a lecture hall?
 

But wait, there's more:
 

As many in the University of Toronto law class of 2014 prepare to graduate with staggering debt loads, some students say the choice of convocation speaker is adding insult to injury.  The speaker will be Ron Daniels, the former dean to blame for massive tuition hikes.
 

“The man largely responsible for our high tuition is coming back to pick up a free degree. Oh, the irony,” wrote student Daanish Samadmoten in an opinion piece for the law school’s independent newspaper Ultra Vires.
 

“I find it insulting that the man who spearheaded an initiative that has significantly contributed to the unnecessary stress in my life and the lives of many of my classmates (now and for years to come) is being honoured and rewarded at my convocation. It’s an insensitive choice at best.”
 

Daniels, now president of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, was dean of the U of T law school from 1995 to 2005. In that time he launched an ambitious and controversial plan to put U of T in competition with big-name American law schools...
 

The skyrocketing fees, which increase by the maximum allowable amount every year, and resulting student debt loads that can reach $150,000 have been a particularly hot topic on campus for the past year, he says. Students say they feel pressured to pursue higher-paying Bay Street jobs over public interest jobs.  They are also concerned about the impact on student diversity and mental health, and argue that the current financial assistance doesn’t go far enough...
 

Associate Dean Ben Alarie says the administration is aware of the student concerns and is careful to ensure the law school is accessible and that career choices can remain flexible...The university offers need-based financial assistance and a post-graduation debt relief program for those who will earn less than $75,000, Alarie said. Both programs were introduced by Daniels.  “So far, students are selecting us over cheaper law schools because they see the value (in a U of T law degree), too,” Alarie adds. “It’s a success story.”
 

A success story for ScamDeans and LawProfs, no doubt.  Those salaries and sabbaticals have to come from somewhere.  Students and graduates, on the other hand...?  "Network."
 

It appears that people are getting the message, though, when looking at the declining Canadian figures.  Hmmm....looks a lot like what is happening in the good 'ol USA.
 

Prospective 0Ls, non-trads, and anyone else listening - please pay attention.  If you don't believe us, believe the data, the stories, and the outcomes.  Outside of a very few exceptions, law school is currently a sucker's bet.

Guest Post: We Get Mail - Struggling Solo Edition

A recent correspondent to OTLSS asked that we re-post something that the same correspondent had submitted (and had posted) to ITLSS several months ago.  While we have a tendency here to focus on the whole economic package of obtaining a law degree, a point that is often overlooked is the significant psychological and emotional cost that goes along with obtaining said degree, or even trying to hack it once the bar is passed and the need to make a living sets in.  Without further ado:

Dear Professor Campos:

First I want to commend you on your excellent blog.  I have begun to read through your articles.  The positive thing that I'm getting from the blog is that I don't feel so lonely anymore thinking that I got
scammed when I went to law school.  I started law school in 2002 and graduated in 2005.  Prior to going to law school I had heard rumblings about how being an attorney was not as profitable as the schools made it out to be.  I was also warned by other attorneys that it was very stressful.  Unfortunately that information did not sink in and I bought the hype that my 2ndT/3rdT regional school offered.  So I spent three good years of my life working on a degree that I believe should have only taken two. 

 

Then reality really hit when I entered the job market.  It was not good.  You could find jobs but for $40,000 to $50,000.  At first I thought that it was me, that I had not done the right things, ie kiss up to the right people, done unpaid internships, etc.  So I decided to hang up my own shingle.  I opened my own office, and tried to make a go of it.  It has been an incredibly difficult five (now 7) years.  For many of those years I would blame myself for not doing better; I began to believe that there was huge mistake that I was making or I had made that had alienated clients, or that I wasn't advertising properly, or any number of things that could be attributed to an office that produced income, but not that much.  I worked long hours by myself trying to satisfy clients that could not be satisfied.  I panicked at little mistakes, and thought the worst case scenarios for every misstep.  It was a miserable existence and it put me in a depressive state with bouts of anxiety that were difficult to control.

 

So I went to therapy to get my head back on straight and that helped a little.  I also found blogs (like yours) and additional information that has allowed me to put my career in perspective.  The conclusion that I came to was that, after I beat myself over the business not going as well as I would like; the reality is that the current situation was stacked against me.  It is very difficult to succeed in today's environment, and I don't feel like my school has addressed that at all. 

 

Which leads me to my point in to this rambling email.  Perhaps you have written about this, but I cannot stress this enough; there is a mental toll taken on attorneys.  Depression and anxiety have taken the wind out of my life.  I'm getting help, a lot of help.  I am aware of the dangers of allowing some things to go untreated.  People need to know how destructive this profession can be to some people; it has been for me.  I suspect it is for most attorneys because we all share the same stories.  Perhaps you might also research where JDs go after giving up on law.  Everyone tells me what a great degree it is to have, but the reality is that a JD does not really open doors.  So I'm left in limbo trying to set a new course because I won't allow this profession to destroy me.

 

 

Another correspondent said something similar:

 

Dear OTLSS team;

 

I stumbled across your Sept 2013 article on Andrew Post, and I felt that you all are the only ones with a realistic view on employment after law school.  Thanks for your honestly.

 

I hung a shingle several years ago and barely make minimum after my expenses and loans (but, because you can only claim so much $ toward debt, a good chunk of my net goes to taxes).  Needless to say, I'm struggling, especially when I hate practicing law, never wanted to practice, and have failed time after time to obtain something, anything, else for a job[...]

 

Thanks again for your website.

I am admittedly hijacking this comment from Third Tier Reality, as it fits in with what has been said already:

I graduated law school 15 years ago. At that time, law school was a scam--we just didn't figure it out until the last year of law school. Career services only catered to those in the top 10% of the class. If you were not in the top 10% of the class, career services treated you like a leper.

I was fortunate in that I spent 2 years working in the legal profession before embarking on the scam trip known as law school. During those 2 years, I cultivated solid relationships. In fact, I became good friends with a partner at a V20 firm who promised me employment after graduation. Unfortunately, that partner got sacked during my 2L year and I never heard from him again. I was able to land a trial level clerkship a month before I graduated law school. I was lucky. After the clerkship was over, my judge placed me with a mid size law firm (60 attorney firm) which worked me 80 hours a week for a miserable salary of $65K a year. This was around 2000. The partners at this firm were the worst human beings I ever encountered. For example, one day while I was driving to court, I was hit by a truck. I was taken to the hospital and my car was totaled. This happened on a Friday. On Saturday morning, a partner called my cell phone and asked me where the hell I was. I told him "Hey John, I am doing well thank you for your concern. I was released from the hospital at 8AM and have no car because it was totaled in yesterday's accident." He replied by telling me to rent a car and get to work. When I asked if the firm would reimburse me for the car rental, he told me to go fuck myself. I quit the following Monday.

Eventually I set up a practice with another attorney. It took a couple of years to get in the black but we made it. In 2012, my law partner died of a heart attack. He was 39 years old. He had developed a bad case of obesity and ate crap food all the time. The stress of the job was the bullet that killed him (he practiced matrimonial law).

After a nasty dispute with his widow (she sued me for 80% of the partnership's equity), I went on my own. The practice of law today has changed for the worse. Lawyers are always undercutting each other on fees and committing ethical violations by guaranteeing results to clients just to put food on the table. I blame the law school industry for the profession's current ills. If law schools hadn't gone to mass production mode in the mid 2000s all the way through the present, lawyers wouldn't be killing each other over business. Can you believe that today, I saw a young lawyer quote $50 to a client in traffic court to represent him in a moving violation? I remember when I used to charge $750 for these types of matters. Now I have to compete with the clueless noob who doesn't know what the fuck to charge because law school doesn't teach you shit.

I am currently exploring exit options. I want out of this miserable profession. I am fortunate that I graduated with no student loans (I had a full ride to undergrad and law school); however, I feel this profession has destroyed my soul and will wind up killing me. Anyone considering attending law school should have a heart to heart talk with a practicing lawyer. I am positive that if an 0L shadowed a lawyer for a week, he/she would quickly abandon the idea of entering this filthy profession which only seems to benefit law professors, deans and Biglaw partners.
 

While the anti-scam crowd often accuses the scamblogs for being too "gloom-and-doom" about the legal market, e-mails like those above help demonstrate that there is real peril in the legal marketplace today, both from an economic and psychological point of view.  Many are struggling and blaming themselves for their struggles, or are having to scramble to do things they never wanted or intended in order to make it on a day to day basis. 

 

What "shocks the conscience" here is that the Law School Cartel DOES NOTHING to moderate the situation or to disabuse people of their notions either before or after law school.  In fact, they actively encourage people to go get that "million dollar law degree" and then let shame do its dirty work for them afterwards.  Who cares about people being economically and psychologically damaged by law school, when there is plenty of fresh meat to load into the abattoir?  Let the lemmings keep dreaming about saving dolphins or being high-powered attorneys like those fictitious lawyers on "Suits," as those law review articles don't write themselves, you know.  Lower the LSAT standards and herd them all in; we've got tenured salaries and pensions to pay for. 

 

Yeah, we see what you did there with your "ethics" and "professionalism."  It's easy to be "liberal" with other people's money. 

 

Readers, please think twice about going to law school unless (1) money is no object, and (2) you have crystal-clear entre into the profession locked up before you step foot in the door.  In fact, think three or four times before committing.  Your economic and mental well being will likely depend on it.

U.S. News' Dessiccated Husk's Rankings Still Putting Law Schools In A Panic

Shrinking Law Schools Face Financial Devastation
Money Quote: “The pain for law schools could last longer. “The decline in applicants will devastate the financial position of many law schools, and it remains to be seen how they will manage,” Tamanaha wrote. “The number of entering students in 2014 will go down to a level not seen in three decades, when there were 50 fewer law schools.”

And the U.S. News law school ranking fallout begins...
Money Quote: “The rankings do dramatically impact behavior.”
Law school becomes less selective
Money Quote: “Forty-two percent of applicants secured admission to the GW Law School last year – eroding selectivity by 13 percentage points in a single year as the school tried to amass tuition dollars despite declining application numbers.”