Legal Jobs?

[bdbb]

Originally Posted by Meis

are you serious with this ****? Are you really trying to say that if you can't meet one of these 4 you shouldn't be a lawyer?

I see they still teach flogging straw men at the Thomas M. Cooley law school. Are you unable to grasp the distinction between whether or not someone should be a lawyer and whether or not law school is a good idea likely to lead to a positive life outcome?

Originally Posted by munchausen

Yeah thats way over the top. It probably only applies to people who can't imagine an income below a quarter million a year. Some of the most successful lawyers I know went to mediocre schools.

This is a common fallacy I often see repeated by non-lawyers. There are plenty of successful lawyers from garbage schools, but they aren't at all representative. Most of them are old lawyers who established their practice in legal market very different from what exists today. In 1970, it was possible to go to a mediocre school, hang a shingle, and have a good shot at success. That isn't the case anymore. Even in the 2005-2007 boom years, roughly half of all law grads could not get jobs as practicing attorneys. I can only assume that number is even higher now, and you better believe that it's concentrated at the lower ranked law schools. If someone attends a mediocre school right now, the likely outcome is that they will never get a job as an attorney. It's just a statistical fact. Anecdotally, the vast majority of toilet grads I see on law firm websites (and I am talking small/mid firms, not even biglaw), are generally summa or law review editors. Obviously the vast majority of toilet law students aren't summa/law review, so the reasonable conclusion from this is that most aren't practicing law.

This is why I suggest that someone who wants to be a lawyer but can't acquire academic prestige needs to leave law school with no debt, and needs to spend all their time in law school networking and learning how to build a practice. The crackhead who is going to persuade you to take his case without a retainer and then stiffs you so you have to repo his $1000 car and sell it to get your fee (at which point he files a groundless grievance against you), is not going to care about your grades or what law school you went to.

The boomers fucked this profession just like *********** up everything else. Don't shoot the messenger. At this point, even if someone from a mediocre school does beat the odds and get a job churning out car wreck petitions for some ambulance chaser, their starting salary is going to be less than what they would have made taking a generic entry-level office job and getting 3 years of raises.

Full disclosure: I went to a T14 on half scholarship, got top 25% grades, and consider myself very lucky to be at a laid-back small firm doing class actions and commercial lit as I could easily be unemployed right now and I know plenty of similarly prestigious or even more prestigious grads who don't have jobs.

 

[Lord-Barrington]

Originally Posted by Meis

1 - you aren't borrowing 200K unless you're paying full tuition at Harvard/Yale etc... I went to a private law school in a big city and paid full tuition and I owe about 125k

2 - 113k is definitely more than "decent cash" (except maybe in NYC)

45-47K in tuition+living expenses X 2 years?

Plenty of people are playing close to 200K, believe me.

 

[bdbb]

Originally Posted by Meis

2 - 113k is definitely more than "decent cash" (except maybe in NYC)

If most fresh grads were making $113k there wouldn't be a problem. Firms paying in that range to start are generally mid-sized NALP firms that aren't much less selective than biglaw, and they don't hire many people. Most small and mid-sized firms are paying 40k-65k to start. Go look on craigslist/symplicity/your state bar job board and tell me how many entry level six figure jobs there are for people who didn't land biglaw through OCI.

 

[Meis]

Originally Posted by Lord-Barrington

45-47K in tuition+living expenses X 2 years? Plenty of people are playing close to 200K, believe me.
2 years? I;m curious, where are you from? I believe the average debt is somewhere around 90-120k, and very few schools charge 45k+ tuition. Most private law schools are around 35k, add 20k a year for living expenses and you're still only at 165k, and that's if you accepted every last cent of loans... which a lot of people don't (not to mention income during school and/or savings). Most people I know owe between 75-150k. The vast majority of law students are not going to have 200k in loans.

Originally Posted by bdbb

If most fresh grads were making $113k there wouldn't be a problem. Firms paying in that range to start are generally mid-sized NALP firms that aren't much less selective than biglaw, and they don't hire many people. Most small and mid-sized firms are paying 40k-65k to start. Go look on craigslist/symplicity/your state bar job board and tell me how many entry level six figure jobs there are for people who didn't land biglaw through OCI.
C'mon, seriously man, you're going to make that comment to me (btw, I didn't go to Cooley asshole) and then fail at reading comprehension. I didn't say most grads were making 113k/yr. I was responding to the other guys post about ROI. What I said is that 113k is pretty good money. Yeah I'd agree most people are getting 40-65k to start (if they have a job that is...). I know 0 people that got a job straight out of law school making $100k+.

 

[bdbb]

Originally Posted by Meis

C'mon, seriously man, you're going to make that comment to me (btw, I didn't go to Cooley asshole) and then fail at reading comprehension. I didn't say most grads were making 113k/yr. I was responding to the other guys post about ROI. What I said is that 113k is pretty good money. Yeah I'd agree most people are getting 40-65k to start (if they have a job that is...). I know 0 people that got a job straight out of law school making $100k+.
I don't care about which specific mediocre school you attended. Feel free to transpose the actual name of your school into my backhanded swipe. 113k isn't the ROI because it omits the vast majority of law grads and pretending like it is "decent cash" is very misleading because it isn't a representative outcome. You need to read up on expected value calculations while keeping in mind that the relevant population is law school graduates, including all of those currently working for Starbucks or Geek Squad, not people employed as lawyers. The expected value of law school is negative right now for everyone outside of the four groups I listed.

Originally Posted by Meis

2 years? I;m curious, where are you from?
Probably from the UK. They have a different system that is better than ours.

 

[Meis]

Originally Posted by bdbb

I don't care about which specific mediocre school you attended. Feel free to transpose the actual name of your school into my backhanded swipe. 113k isn't the ROI because it omits the vast majority of law grads and pretending like it is "decent cash" is very misleading because it isn't a representative outcome. You need to read up on expected value calculations while keeping in mind that the relevant population is law school graduates, including all of those currently working for Starbucks or Geek Squad, not people employed as lawyers. The expected value of law school is negative right now for everyone outside of the four groups I listed.
I like how you assume my school was mediocre... Anyway, you still aren't comprehending what I said.

Read what I wrote and what I was responding to before you type a response. All I was saying is that 113k is reasonably good money to be making, I said nothing about who in particular was earning it and I said nothing about it in relation to average income of law grads. I in no way said that it was a representative outcome. It was in response to someone else's post saying that it wasn't a good amount to be making while servicing law school debt and I was merely saying that if you are making 113k/yr you would be able to pay your loans and live a reasonably comfortable life.

 

[bdbb]

Originally Posted by Meis

I like how you assume my school was mediocre...

Anyway, you still aren't comprehending what I said.

Read what I wrote and what I was responding to before you type a response.

All I was saying is that 113k is reasonably good money to be making, I said nothing about who in particular was earning it and I said nothing about it in relation to average income of law grads. I in no way said that it was a representative outcome. It was in response to someone else's post saying that it wasn't a good amount to be making while servicing law school debt and I was merely saying that if you are making 113k/yr you would be able to pay your loans and live a reasonably comfortable life.

*facepalm*

So in other words you made a completely irrelevant comment because while 113k/yr can service law school debt, the average law school graduate makes half that much or less. Thank you for clarifying that you were expounding on fantasyland and not the actual real life. You were probably the kid in the front row who always derailed class with ridiculous hypotheticals on the few days I actually went.

 

[Big A]

Originally Posted by Acer

I do want to be a lawyer, but from what I've heard BigLaw isn't really for me. I think I would fit in much better in a corporate setting, but I understand that's not traditionally an "out of the gate" type of job opening. Although I have heard of a couple of F500s that hire new graduates, I understand that to be the exception. The main reason I'm shying away from biglaw is because of the amount of time I wouldn't be able to spend with my family--that's a major reason why I'm looking to get out of the military in the first place.
Honestly, if you want some semblance of free time, law might not be for you.

 

[Big A]

Originally Posted by bdbb

Not really. The typical law student's concept of what being a lawyer is differs greatly from the actual practice of law. Whether they find that fantasy attractive or not has little bearing on whether law school is a good choice. It's hard to say who should go to law school, but I can rather safely say that anyone who doesn't fall into one of these groups shouldn't go: 1. Full price at Yale/Harvard/Stanford 2. Half scholly at Columbia/Chicago/NYU 3. Roughly 3/4 ride at the 6-10 rank or so, shifting to a full ride as you dip in the rankings to Vandy, which is probably the worst school you should go to if your goal is to get a decent job through OCI 4. Full ride at any school no matter how crappy, AND you don't mind forgoing three years of earnings, AND you either have a guaranteed job through a family connection or are willing to devote all your free time during law school to networking and learning how to run a firm so you can successfully hang a shingle. Don't overestimate your talents if you go this route ... if you couldn't break 170 on the LSAT then you probably weren't that bright or hardworking to begin with and you need to carefully think about whether you can learn to run a business with minimal training.
This is the dumbest ******* thing I've read in a while. Where do I send your prize?

 

[bdbb]

Originally Posted by Big A

This is the dumbest ******* thing I've read in a while. Where do I send your prize?

Show me what you think the NPV calculation is for people outside those groups and I'll point out where you're wrong.

 

[JChance]

Sticker price dont really do anything anymore these days, see the article

Originally Posted by kxk

Given the above, and given your experiences, do you think that attending a non top 25 at full tuition is really worth the sticker price? Or would you suggest that students take a lower tier school with partial/full scholarship?

 

[sartorialism]

Originally Posted by bdbb

Full disclosure: I went to a T14 on half scholarship, got top 25% grades, and consider myself very lucky to be at a laid-back small firm doing class actions and commercial lit as I could easily be unemployed right now and I know plenty of similarly prestigious or even more prestigious grads who don't have jobs.

My case: About to graduate from a T14 school, which I attended on a 1/4 scholarship, with good grades and all. But I still have no offers.

 

[Zobo]

Originally Posted by Chouse

How does one go about becoming an investment banker with a law degree? I'm stuck in the biglaw grind as well... ******** up

Not difficult at all, 2 of the associates I have worked with (2nd & 3rd year level) here at Davis Polk have both left in the last year; one to Credit Suisse and the other to JP. I should include a caveat that we all work in the M&A/Private Equity team, and the skills (as well as the contacts) come in handy. We also have commerce degree backgrounds as well as our law degrees, although we have all gone straight into law out of uni. If you were doing something completely unrelated it would be, presumably, more difficult. The skills at junior level in the investment banks are learnt on the job, and it's actually quite simple (though mind numbingly boring and repetitive, for many hours on end). One benefit is that if you do go across laterally, whilst you do start e.g. as an analyst, your remuneration will be similar to that of a 3rd/4th year (a bit under associate director leve), which is a hell of a boost (~around double of what we are currently earning, subject to whatever the bonus happens to be). Leave your name with some recruiters confidentially, or better yet, if you build up a rapport with any senior bankers, have a discreet word during post deal drinks or something.

Originally Posted by sartorialism

My case: About to graduate from a T14 school, which I attended on a 1/4 scholarship, with good grades and all. But I still have no offers.
Best of luck, I'll sure you'll get something that you're happy with. The only useful thing which I can add is that having an excellent CV, cover letter (if applicable) etc. is very important. Have a few people look over these for you, preferably someone who has gone through the process (successfully) or e.g. is in HR at a comparable firm to those that you are applying for. Also, don't forget that different places value different things, some of those things are firmwide, others depend on the person(s) interviewing you, so just because you are unsuccessful at one place doesn't necessarily mean that you're not on the right track. Preparation is also key for any interviews, but these skills are easily gained. For disclosure, I was lucky enough to graduate from a T6 school, which I attended with a scholarship and finished in the top 2%, so I had a few offers on the desk before finishing up. That said, even in that position if you perform really poorly in an interview or hand in some rubbish as your CV (formatting is important), you're still not going to get much interest.

 

[deaddog]

Originally Posted by Meis

1 - you aren't borrowing 200K unless you're paying full tuition at Harvard/Yale etc... I went to a private law school in a big city and paid full tuition and I owe about 125k

2 - 113k is definitely more than "decent cash" (except maybe in NYC)

Note that the 113k cited is US Dept of Labor number for ALL lawyers, not starting salary. Other than biglaw, starting salaries are much, much lower. Google around for "bimodal distribution" and "law students" and check out the truly depressing news. And, I won't even go into placement numbers for grads of less expensive law schools outside of T-20

 

[Big A]

Originally Posted by bdbb

Show me what you think the NPV calculation is for people outside those groups and I'll point out where you're wrong.
NPV calculation? Dumb it down for me, I went to the University of Florida ....