Law School Applications Up: Hiding Out in Law School?

I agree, it is a pretty expensive and an emotionally grueling shelter, that’s FOR SURE, but at least you have some consistency in your life, and your not remaining UNSURE if tomorrow you will have a job or not. Im heading off to law school myself this Fall 09, I sure hope all is well by the time I get out…

Best of luck! I hope you’ll become a regular around here as you proceed through law school

I think so long as someone was seriously considering law school anyway, it’s a great move to go now; if it’s really only to avoid the economy, I’m just not so sure it’s the best financial decision (particularly if someone has to take out a lot in loans to do it).

Thanks, I plan on being a regular around here. Keep the law updates coming, and ill try as often as I can to give my two cents on the intriguing ones.

Great! Looking forward to your input as you work your way through law school

It’s a terrible decision. There are TONS of unemployed grads on the market now, and the schools just keep adding to the logjam every year. In the words of P.T. Barnum, all the law schools are concerned about is whether there is an ass for every seat, and for now there is. Why? The stats reported to U.S. News don’t tell graduates the truth. The schools do everything they can short of outright fraud to hide the true salaries and employment rate of their graduates. EX – If you’re working at McDonalds – you’re counted as employed in their stats. Other examples include using average starting salaries (which can be skewed far upward by a few top earners), or purposefully accepting the default assigned by U.S. News for a non-response to a salary/employment survey when the school knows it would be more favorable than a student’s actual response. And what if you don’t make it in law? You’re screwed. Contrary to what career services will tell you in their glossy brochures, other occupations don’t hire JDs without some companion degree. EX – an M.B.A. or a background in a science or medicine. If that news wasn’t bad enough, you can’t discharge your student loans in bankruptcy without showing “an undue hardship,” which is nearly impossible unless you’re completely disabled The point is this – if you don’t get into a top ten law school, run screaming from law. It will chew you up and spit you out, while the law school administrators laugh all the way to the bank.

There’s no doubt about it that the legal job market is tougher than ever; I certainly agree that one needs to really weigh all the factors involved when deciding to apply to law school–especially how much debt you’ll have to go in and the likelihood of making enough money to pay it off after you graduate.

Ack! Run away, far away! There is one caveat to this – if you are competitive, have a very thick skin, and mildly socially phobic or at least introverted, you will make it in transactional fields. If you have all of the former attributes minus the social issues and love conflict, then litigation should work. I worked in Big Law for (gulp) too freaking long. I went to a highly ranked public school in state, so was very fortunate to have no debt. I hated law from day 1 of law school to the day I finally quit my job. It almost destroyed my family, my health, everything. If you do this, don’t do it for the money and find the coolest small law firm or government job that you can find and be thankful you never know the pain of Big law.

Some great advice in here, J. Thanks so much for contributing!