RSS Feed
I wish I knew then what I know now! Don't get to the end of your law school career muttering these words to yourself! Take the first step toward building a productive, successful, and perhaps even pleasant law school experience...read this book! Written for students about to embark on this three year odyssey, by students who have successfully survived law school. Law School Confidential demystifies the life-altering thrill ride that defines an American legal education by providing a comprehensive, blow-by-blow, chronological account of what to expect. Law School Confidential arms students with a thorough overview of the contemporary law school experience. This isn't the advice of graying professors or battle-scarred practitioners decades removed from the law school. Fresh out of University of Pennsylvania Law School, Robert Miller has assembled a panel of recent law school graduates all of whom are perfectly positioned to shed light on what law school is like today.
Advertisement
NYT Article on Law Schools: No Longer Attractive?
This article in the New York Times should be a real eye-opener for any students thinking about attending Law School:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/busine…
Some excepts:
"A generation of J.D.’s face[s] the grimmest job market in decades. Since 2008, some 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs at large firms have vanished, according to a Northwestern Law study. Associates have been laid off, partners nudged out the door and recruitment programs have been scaled back or eliminated....more entry-level legal work is now outsourced to contract temporary employees, both in the United States and in countries like India. It’s common to hear lawyers fret about the sort of tectonic shift that crushed the domestic steel industry decades ago."
""Avoid this overpriced sewer pit as if your life depended on it,” writes the anonymous author of the blog Third Tier Reality — a reference to the second-to-bottom tier of the U.S. News rankings — in a typically scatological review. “Unless, of course, you think that you will be better off with $110k-$190k in NON-DISCHARGEABLE debt for a degree that qualifies you to wait tables at the Battery Park Bar and Lounge.”
“This idea of exceptionalism — I don’t know if it’s a thing with millennials, or what,” she says, referring to the generation now in its 20s. “Even if you tell them the bottom has fallen out of the legal market, they’re all convinced that none of the bad stuff will happen to them. It’s a serious, life-altering decision, going to law school, and you’re dealing with a lot of naïve students who have never had jobs, never paid real bills.”
"“Most of us either went to the wrong law school, which is the bottom two-thirds, or we were too old when we graduated,” he said. “I was 32 when I graduated, and at 32 you’re washed up in this field, in terms of a shot at the real deal. They perceived me as somebody they can’t indoctrinate into slave labor and work to death for seven years and then release if they don’t like you.”
So why is it so many students still want to go to law school?
Basically, the blog is saying that a lot of really ignorant and dumb people go to less than respectable law schools with little or no idea what they are doing and no real future plans and somehow magically think they're going to get a six figure salary right off the bat. I'm not really sure how that is a relevant indicator of the success of a bright successful student going to a top law school.
Best Graduate Schools 2012
Order at Amazon for $7.66
Is it time to discourage people from going to law sch. when there are more people saddled with debt than jobs?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=general&src=me
There are more people with law degrees than there are jobs available. Many of the people interviewed in this article said that they went into the field, fully knowing that their chances of ending up as an associate in a law firm were extremely slim yet they continued because of the "prestige factor." Graduates from 2nd tier law school (bottom half of the top 100) and those who didn't graduate at the top (1st tiers) have ended up as babysitters, legal readers and other temp jobs unrelated to law.
This article also reports that law schools are in the business of cooking up the numbers to either scale up or keep their U.S. World & News rankings. This is important because nearly a hundred thousand undergraduates rely on these rankings to make life-altering decisions, investments that could amount to 200 grand.
Send them to medical school... they'll have a wide open shot in about 5 years... when anyone competent in the profession... LEAVES....
Latest news
Law School , Law School Rankings , Scandal , U Of i College Of Law , Universities , Villanova-Law-School ... 130,051 in 2011.) That the school's
... its own probe that could result in sanctions against the law school. The updated U.S. News & World Report rankings, which could reflect the...
2010 and early 2011. The rankings are ... Super Lawyers U.S. Law School Rankings. National Jurist magazine ranks it eighth on its list of "Best ...
... in the 2011 Best Law Schools ranking by U.S. News and World Report. The University of Michigan Law School ... close to their competitive ...
University School of Law recently admitted it knowingly fudged numbers provided to the American Bar Association that are used for rankings.
