For those considering a legal career

[Jacob]

I don't think any highly-skilled profession wants to be in a position where there are a surplus of job openings.

Why not?

[Indy Coug]

Why not?

Because it results in less-qualified or unqualified candidates filling those openings. Where do you think all those Physician Assistants are coming from?

[Jacob]

Because it results in less-qualified or unqualified candidates filling those openings. Where do you think all those Physician Assistants are coming from?

Why is that a problem for the skilled people? Seems like it would increase the demand for them a drive up salaries.

[TripletDaddy]

“Sometimes the banks will threaten to sue,” he says, “but one of the first things you learn in law school, in civil procedure class, is that it doesn’t make sense to sue someone who doesn’t have anything.”

I don't recall learning anything like this in CivPro.

Perhaps this explains why the guy can't find a job.

[UtahDan]

I don't recall learning anything like this in CivPro.

Perhaps this explains why the guy can't find a job.

Yeah he couldn't be any more wrong. Judgments are good forever. If I'm his creditor, I get judgment and wait for him to be solvent. He won't be a pauper forever. So he should factor into his future earnings that I will be grabbing 25% of his paycheck (or whatever the max is where he lives) plus the costs of filing those garnishments.

[CardiacCoug]

$250,000 in debt??? That is astounding, considering how inexpensive it should be to run a law school -- no special facilities of any kind required (like laboratories with expensive equipment), just access to a legal library, which is becoming increasingly available in digital format. Law degrees COULD be much cheaper.

I don't think running a medical school is all that expensive either.

The first two years I was sitting in a class of 125 students. As I recall, there were almost no full-time teaching faculty involved. It's dozens of professors that are each asked to give a couple of talks and each submit a few test questions.

The last two years I was working with the interns and residents -- basically doing a lot of their work for them. Most days there is a little bit of formal teaching, but that's not reimbursed. I have U of U medical students who spend time with me but I'm sure as hell not getting paid anything for that.

Considering tuition at private medical schools is $50K x 500 students per year, that's $25 million per year. No way does it cost that much to run the school.

[Pheidippides]

For the past few years I've been discouraging people from going to law school unless:

1. They get into a top 5 law school.

2. They get into a top (i.e., in the top 15 or so) regional law school and have no problem staying in that region forever.

OR

3. Somebody else is footing most or all of the bill.

Otherwise I don't see how it makes sense. The worst part about being a lawyer IMHO is easily law school. I hated that more than the bar, more than five years of slave labor after graduating, more than anything.

I love my job now, though. It is nine different kinds of awesome.

[thesaint258]

3. Somebody else is footing most or all of the bill.

Most of you helped foot the bill for my legal education, so thank you.

[wally]

Much the same could be said for MBA programs.

Engineering is the way to go as far as debt/income ratios go for non-top tier programs. I knew several people in my undergrad that graduated sans debt (myself included) and my M.S. only resulted in about $4k in debt, and that only because we had a kid during that time. Most engineering students work and go to school, whereas that is discouraged in Law/B school.

I know of some of some engineering grads from my program who ended up working outside of engineering because they couldn't find a job but if you only have $3-8K in debt, it's easier to stomach.

I will always recommend engineering to people looking for career.

[NorthwestUteFan]

I will always recommend engineering to people looking for career.

I had several classmates who went to law school after engineering. They work in patent law and make (relative to most engineers) a very fat paycheck.

To a person they all said law school was an absolute breeze after engineering, it just requires a lot of reading. The comprehension, memorization, and logic skills are all identical.

[NorthwestUteFan]

My uncle is a partner in a large law firm in Vegas. He went to the byu and then went to a smaller school in the Northwest for law.

They take turns interviewing new candidates, and over the last several years he has found that he ONLY gets to interview kids from Fordham, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, NYU, Berkeley, etc. They have so many top applicants that they don't even need to move down the tier to 'lower' schools.

He says that he wouldn't even get an interview these days because the market is so saturated...

[NorthwestUteFan]

Because it results in less-qualified or unqualified candidates filling those openings. Where do you think all those Physician Assistants are coming from?

The American Dental Association capped the number of dental school grads a few decades ago. This increased the quality of the applicants and served to decrease the flood that was inundating the market.

Now there is more of a shortage of dentists. Last I heard they were working on raising the limits again.

[New Mexican Disaster]

I don't recall learning anything like this in CivPro.

Perhaps this explains why the guy can't find a job.

I went to Thomas Jefferson one year ahead of this guy. (Great publicity for the school by the way). Most everyone there was there on huge scholarships. Everyone with over 160 LSAT was given 100% tuition scholarship. Something like half of my class had 50% scholarships that were subsidized by students like Mr. Wallerstein.

And they did not teach us that in Civ. Pro. At least I don't remember it...I was too busy hanging out on Cougarboard and Cougarguard.

[Green Monstah]

My uncle is a partner in a large law firm in Vegas. He went to the byu and then went to a smaller school in the Northwest for law.

They take turns interviewing new candidates, and over the last several years he has found that he ONLY gets to interview kids from Fordham, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, NYU, Berkeley, etc. They have so many top applicants that they don't even need to move down the tier to 'lower' schools.

He says that he wouldn't even get an interview these days because the market is so saturated...

I went to a school that has been as high as 18 and as low as 32 in the USNWR rankings, but is usually right in between. Other lawyers who started with me are from other similarly-ranked schools and one lower-ranked local school (there were a dozen of us who started together). The highest ranked school of the people who started with me at my office is University of Texas (around 15 or so). Next year the summmer associates in our office will be from Penn, Harvard, Columbia, Vanderbilt and Duke. Our hiring partner (went to the same law school I did) told me "Over half our attorneys would not have been interviewed, let along offered a position, had they applied in this market." Pretty sobering.

[Clark Addison]

I'm glad that I got an MBA instead of a JD. I'd hate to have a degree with diluted worth and oversaturation, which is constantly oversold by schools just looking to increase revenues..