So many cases like this appear at my office that I’ll construct him/her as a composite. That way perhaps I can spare myself the chore of receiving those “how dare you write about one of your clients” comments that I receive every week when I get specific in detailing my fictions and some of you decide I simply must be writing about your roommate.
So here goes.
He/she is very young – 22 or 23 or 24 or 25.
He/she moved across the country to go to a law school that I’ve heard of vaguely. It turns out to be number 79 or 83 or 66 out of the top 100, according to some hack newspaper that profits from disseminating this sort of nonsense.
He/she is the son/daughter of immigrants from Bangladesh, Peru, Kenya, Romania or Ireland.
His/her immigrant parents operate a doughnut bakery, dry cleaner, small hobbyist shop, motel or air-conditioner repair service.
His/her parents are adamant that he/she marry someone from Bangladesh, Peru, Kenya, Romania or Ireland in a traditional ceremony – soon – and produce male children.
Before then – quickly – he/she has to become a doctor.
He/she is no good at math or science or dating, so that’s not going to happen to him/her any time soon. Being a lawyer is the official second choice – not as good as a doctor, but acceptable.
He/she has just started law school at number 79 or 83 or 66 out of 100 and is presenting with anxiety around test-taking and deep feelings of insecurity about his/her abilities compared to those of his/her classmates.
We talk about CBT – cognitive behavioral therapy – to identify the thoughts that are triggering the anxiety – fears of being unable to live up to dad/mom’s demanding agenda, especially when, despite getting accepted into number 79 or 83 or 66 out of 100, he/she suspects he/she has never been all that great at school. College was a struggle, too. It is possible that he/she is simply doing his/her best, but isn’t cut out for academics and would be happier doing something else, such as operating a doughnut bakery, dry cleaner, small hobbyist shop, motel or air-conditioner repair service. But he/she runs from that idea – it doesn’t compute with the dreams and expectations of his/her immigrant parents from Bangladesh, Peru, Kenya, Romania or Ireland.
We learn his/her parents remind him/her that they sacrificed everything for their son/daughter, so he/she could have a future. His/her parents gave up their own happiness so he/she could succeed. This notion is recited to him/her in some form or other about five times each week, most recently in the form of phone calls from home.
We learn he/she has an older brother/sister, who is a doctor, is married to someone from Bangladesh, Peru, Kenya, Romania or Ireland, and has two male children.
We also talk about the ever-widening pharmacopeia available to him/her, should he/she decide to go that route. There are the anti-depressants, which take two weeks or so to work, and have side-effects he/she might not like. There are the anti-anxietals, the benzos, like Xanax and Klonopin, which might be habit-forming. There are the stimulants, like Adderall or Concerta or Ritalin, which will help you focus on studying, at least unless you abuse them, like many law students, and stay up night after night without sleep and start hearing voices – which happened to a client of mine (no – for you helpful comment-writers out there – not while under my care, and no, I’m not a medical doctor, so I didn’t prescribe the stuff.)
But there is another issue that I can’t help discussing with him/her: magical thinking.
Because even as he/she talks to me about his/her anxiety around being back in school, a few more facts are glossed over.
First, he/she is in the process of borrowing $170,000 which he/she cannot discharge through bankruptcy.
He/she has never seen that much money in his/her life and has no concept of how much money it is. Remember, he/she is only 22 or 23 or 24 or 25.
He/she has never worked in law. He/she only graduated from college 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 years ago, and spent most of that time working in his/her parents’ doughnut bakery, dry cleaner, small hobbyist shop, motel or air-conditioner repair service.
When I ask him/her why he/she is pursuing law, I get a canned speech of the law school essay variety.
He/she wants to become an environmental lawyer/ international human rights attorney/ entertainment lawyer/ executive director of a group to help the oppressed/ federal judge.
Pressed on the details, he/she admits that he/she might have to spend a few years at a top law firm first, earning $160,000 per year, minimum. But he/she isn’t doing this for the money.
Pressed to describe what precisely an environmental lawyer/ international human rights attorney/ entertainment lawyer/ executive director of a group to help the oppressed/ federal judge actually does, or how one attains these titles, things grow vague.
Pressed as to how he/she will pay back the $170,000 in loans that he/she will have accumulated at graduation, he/she looks at me like it’s obvious. If you make $160,000 per year, then you need one year to pay off $160,000 and maybe another month or two for another $10,000 and it’s paid off. Duh.
Oh yeah, and maybe taxes or interest or whatever – say a year and a half.
I stare at him/her. He/she stares back at me. There is a steely determination in his/her eyes. He/she isn’t going to back down. This has all been arranged. It is decided.
We are at a stand-off.
I nibble around the edges, mentioning that paying off $170,000 might take considerably more time than that. I also suggest that getting a job as an environmental lawyer/ international human rights attorney/ entertainment lawyer/ executive director of a group to help the oppressed/ federal judge might be tough, especially given the current economic situation, and the delicate fact that he/she will be graduating somewhere in a large class from number 79 or 83 or 66 out of 100 (not to suggest that number 79 or 83 or 66 out of 100 is not a superb, horrendously under-rated institution.)
He/she tells me her professors are terrific, and she really thinks law might be interesting, once she gets the hang of it.
In desperation, I ask if he/she has ever calculated – even a rough calculation – what it costs per hour to attend one of those lectures with one of those delightful, caring, crusty old law professors. I bet him/her it will probably crunch out to about $100 – $200 per hour. For two hours each lecture. For each of the 75 students in the lecture hall.
That seems to make an impression.
I ask him/her if he/she has talked to any of the recent graduates of number 79 or 83 or 66 out of 100. He/she says there was a guy at the orientation who talked about pro bono work. He/she met another guy who graduated, not sure when, but he runs a restaurant, so he’s not even a lawyer, which was weird. Oh, and a few of his/her roommate’s friends are doing “contract lawyering” but he/she’s not sure what that means. In any case, he/she doesn’t want to do that.
I ask him/her to do me a favor, and try to find, and talk to, a few recent grads. That’s it. Just talk to them.
Then I ask him/her to consider taking a year off to try paralegaling. For a year. Simply to see what the actual practice of law in an actual law office might entail.
He/she says he/she will think about it.
That’s enough. That’s something. It might be enough to defeat a little magical thinking.
Children often distort the world around them to make it bearable. If something isn’t the way it ought to be for them to feel secure, they pretend it is. That’s magical thinking.
If mom and dad are away all day and you’re left in the house alone, you pretend you have a big white bunny rabbit who is your friend.
If mom and dad fight all the time, you pretend you can stop their arguing by being really good.
You try not to step on the cracks on the sidewalk.
When you’re only 22 or 23 or 24 or 25, you’re still kind of a kid inside. You don’t have much experience. It’s easy, under stress, to fall back into the habit of magical thinking.
But when things don’t add up – maybe they just don’t add up.
Borrowing $170,000 to go to number 79 or 83 or 66 out of 100 so you can become an environmental lawyer/ international human rights attorney/ entertainment lawyer/ executive director of a group to help the oppressed/ federal judge doesn’t add up.
Living your life on autopilot for the sake of some misguided plan created by your immigrant parents from Bangladesh, Peru, Kenya, Romania or Ireland doesn’t make much sense either.
Please. I know you’re young. I know you only want to make everyone happy. But you’re going to have to stop pretending the magic is real. There’s a trap being laid for you. The legal education industry wants your money – it’s really that simple. It’s a scam. Please – wake up before it’s too late.
You are going to have to come up with your own dreams. And you’re going to have to chase them in the real world. You can’t buy them with an expensive degree.
Try it. Try living your own life, your own way, with your eyes open. You’ll see. It’s not that bad.
You might find it’s a major improvement over magical thinking.
========
This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.
If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning
I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy
(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.)
“They want your money – it’s really that simple.” Wait – who? The parents forcing their offspring into allegedly lucrative arrangements, or the high priced glamor schools?
Good point. Sorry – we made a last minute edit. I cleared it up.
THIS SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING FOR TAKING THE LSAT.
This is by far the most eloquent and logical piece on the myth of legal education that I have read, and I have read more than anyone should.
I have not been a fan of other writings of yours, but this piece is fantastic, and should receive recognition for a job well done. Please get this out to as wide an audience as possible, and I will do everything I can so that students at my law school have access to it.
Thanks Will.
I agree Mr. Dylan – required reading. Borrowing money to attend a law school not in the top 10 is a bad, bad decision for most people. Hell, even borrowing $100k to attend a top school is a bad decision for a nontrivial number of grads. I went to a top 5 school, then from there to a Vault 20 Firm, and am now at a Fortune 500 company, and if I had it to do over again, there’s no way in hell I’d go to law school.
Your attitude toward these clients is terribly condescending and judgmental, Mr. Meyerhofer. They have come to you for help with anxiety–an exceedly common problem for students of all kinds, not just students at lower-level law schools–and not for your opinions about their professional goals, their famlies’ expectations, or how immigrant parents and their children behave. Cognitive behavioral therapy and medications might help them. Your distaste for them does not. Hence the steely looks and the standoff. You created those.
I’m a government lawyer and an adjunct teacher at an unranked law school. Graduates of the school don’t get rich, don’t get hired by biglaw, and don’t become entertainment lawyers. Instead, they get the 2010 version of middle class life: a financial struggle, less leisure than people had in the heyday of the middle class, career-long student loan payments, but an okay life (a lot like mine). It’s not your job to tell them they should be making donuts instead.
Well said, Jeff. The whole underlying assumption of this article is that law students are children, incapable of making rationale decisions. They are not. If they chose law school, who are we to say they’ve made a poor decision? Let’s stop all this infantilizing of twenty-somethings and recognize that their decisions, good or bad, are theirs, not the result of an evil conspiracy of law schools.
That said (I just can’t help myself), I would probably pass this on to any young person I knew who was thinking about law school.
While I disagree with aspects of the article, it is not condescending and the underlying assumption is not that law students are children. When you’re young and family pressure is weighing against you, its hard to take a step back and look at the big picture. Its easy to romantize law school and the jobs/glamour/money that follow. Its easy to do that, because that provides the only rational reason to follow through with this plan that has been presented to you.
With that being said, I went to a crap law school, got even crappier grades, do not have parents/family in the legal profession and somehow landed a fantastic job in the legal profession. (Yes, that includes a nice plump salary). It works out, you just cant delude yourself into thinking a biglaw firm will hire you and you have to be willing to think out side the box.
Jeff, go spread your bullshit elsewhere. Only in America do you go into a profession with 200k in loans where a million others are already operating. You’re an idiot no matter how many degrees you will get.
Thank you, as always, for a thoughtful post addressing real issues. I have to agree with the required reading comments! Legal practice, whatever the flavor, is not for everyone. I know of too many people who went to law school because they didn’t know what else to do, their family / friends expected of them, they were told they’re good at arguing and therefore would make a good lawyer. Law school and legal practice is too much work to do if you’re not there because YOU want to be.
We’re in the midst of interviewing summer associates, and far too many of these aspiring lawyers graduated from undergrad in 2009 – meaning that most of them have done nothing but go to school up to this point. The only way to find what you want to do is to try things, to stumble and get up again — and spending $100,000 or more to “try it out” brings into question something very basic for lawyers … good judgment. Whenever I talk to undergrads interested in law school, I first say that I love being a lawyer and it was the best decision I made … 15 years after I graduated from undergrad. Then I tell them, go live life, travel, meet people who are interested in things beyond the law, and if at the end of that YOU want to go to law school, I have no doubt you will be successful.
Jeff,
I’m not exactly a fan of Mr. Meyerhofer’s (I’m one of the people who bitched about him not making it clear in the past that he was writing about a composite, semi-fictionalized client), but I think he is correct here. A lot of people go to law school with very unrealistic views of what their work will be like, don’t understand the magnitude of the debt, and are trying to make other people happy. They should be better-informed. And if they are, and still choose it, that is fine, but it will be a decision they are more at home with because it wasn’t one made on autopilot.
I really wanted to be a lawyer and worked in law before going to law school, and even I have had doubts. My friends who did it as the next logical step without that knowledge or desire are often either unhappy, or doing something else. The ones with money aren’t suffering, the ones without are.
So I think this is solid advice. Sometimes I think Will seems to be condescending, but I haven’t been in session with him. What he will say on his blog and what he will say to an individual patient could be very different. I hope they are.
Also, if you are fortunate enough to get a good job, not have family responsibilities, the debt can be paid off quickly. I would differ with Will on that. Making 40k, then 80k, then 3rd year biglaw, then fourth year biglaw, I paid off $60k in private loans + interest by the end of my first year in biglaw, and had enough to pay of my gov’t loans (about $60k + interest) now, a month before my second year ends. Now, I live cheaply, don’t have kids, and am not about to dump all my cash into loans, but I am hardly eating Ramen. So I think a lot of young lawyers who don’t end up paying it off quickly do so because they have expectations re: the lifestyle they’re going to lead, and pour money into that.
I think I paid off $120K in three to four years, making $80K in a 100 person firm in a small, inexpensive city. My wife was working at the time (before children) and she paid off some of my debt.
I dumped all my cash into loans. Then I dumped all my cash in to my mortgage.
Moral of the story? I have no student loan debt or mortgage debt.
Why? Because the interest I was saving on my debt was better than the rate I was getting on the money in the bank/money market.
The best form of saving is often dishoarding debt. Keep that in mind.
@Jeff, I strongly disagree. A legal career isn’t for everybody, and Will’s point is simply that a law degree comes at a high cost. It’s stressful and competitive, even if you’re not at Harvard; can entail high levels of non-dischargable debt; and there’s no guarantee you’ll enjoy (or find!) the work even if you do make it through all three years and pass the bar.
I agree that for some people – those with a passion for legal practice and a strong sense of direction – a law degree is a valid choice. But that’s not the person Will is describing. I think he’d be remiss if he didn’t warn people honestly about what they’re facing.
If someone has the drive and ability to succeed in law, they have a lot of other options open to them, with fewer costs attached. And figuring out which path to choose is exactly where a therapist can help.
You are hereby ordered to cease and desist guiding young people toward rational thought, consideration of consequences and avoiding the keyless handcuffs of oppressive indebtedness.
In so doing, you are interfering with not only the forces of nature, the dark side and the economic structure of lawbiz.edu, but tampering with the beneficial enjoyment of myself and other whiteshoe guys in our endless manipulation of magically clueless associates.
Your disruption of the supply of exploitable snot-nosed him/hers will likely result in our reduced consortium, so knock it off. Everything will be fine, walk into the light, you are getting sleepy…..
I’m with Jeff. Sure, what you’re saying about law school and the legal field is true (and not really news to anyone reading this). But I hope the tone of condescension and judgment that comes out in this piece is nowhere to be found in your interactions with clients. It’s just sad to think about someone in a vulnerable state looking for nonjudgmental guidance and help in finding their own place in the world and instead getting the harsh guy who sees them as fitting some generic — and pretty unflattering — profile.
I’m sure you’d like me to take the bleeding wounded who come to my office each week, patch them up with drugs and therapy and send them on their way. But like any worker in a MASH unit, there comes a point where I have to look at the endless line of people hurting – thanks to the on-going legal education scam and vicious exploitation by the law firms – and ask why? – and then look for some more lasting answers to this outrage. Jeff can go on teaching at a law school and ignoring the damage that’s being done. I can’t. This isn’t condescension – this is empathy and an attempt to help a lot of innocent kids who are being pumped up with a slick sales spiel, then ripped off and profoundly injured. This scam was perpetrated on me, too. I got talked up, flattered and lied to, I spent a small fortune on a law education with no idea why I was pursuing a profession I knew next to nothing about – and then I got chewed up and spit out by a law firm. This isn’t condescension – it’s rage at a system that’s damaging young people’s lives. Perhaps your cynicism has become so profound you can’t tell the difference. But I wish someone had told me the truth. I might have felt disillusioned – but I wouldn’t have felt condescended to. The lies told to me by my law school and the firm where I worked were plenty condescending, thanks. I make no apologies for my interactions with my clients.
Will, do you think you’d have the same opinion if you practiced in Memphis, Portland, or Phoenix? I think a lot (maybe all?) of what you say is true of New York BigLaw, but maybe not for other markets. I don’t know who in their right mind would want to be in New York BigLaw, but smaller markets just aren’t that bad.
Well, I see people via Skype all over the country…it’s pretty bleak in Las Vegas, Texas, Illinois, San Francisco and a few other places, at least from what I’ve been hearing.
“The damage that’s being done,” in my experience, is that most graduates of the school where I teach become lawyers. Some never pass the bar and some don’t find jobs as lawyers, but most do become lawyers, thus realizing their own self-formed ambitions. This is not within what’s usually understood by “scam.” My students understand the standing of the school; they know its bar pass rate; they are pretty well informed about the local legal job market; and they know their degree will have a reduced value in other markets where the school is unknown. A graduate of NYU Law School, it seems fair to say, has even less reason to view his education as a scam.
I am told there are diploma mills out that that take students’ money and don’t give them a marketable education. This is not implausible and I don’t know it to be false, but the accusations do not very often name names. I doubt that there are many schools in the top 100 (like those attended by the clients Mr. Meyerhofer describes) that fit the description. It obviously is not true of NYU.
I believe I understand Mr. Meyerhofer’s “rage,” but I also believe that it is not a typical reaction (as distinguished from, say, disappointment, disillusionment, or a change of priorities) to the receipt of an elite education, even when it is received at great financial cost. I also borrowed to receive such an eudation and I also found biglaw not to be the right career for me, but my reaction was to leave it after two years and find another practice setting. That means my loans will last as long as my mortgage, but these are the results of my own choices, choices with which I am satisfied. It would be terribly unfair to charge anyone I talked to before going to law school with tricking or manipulating me. A similar accusation against the law firm partners who hired me would be similarly unfair. I got a sales pitch, but I was an adult, and understood what a sales pitch was. Rage would be quite out of place, I feel.
It is possible for a therapist’s own powerful experiences and emotions to distort his perception of his clients’ needs. A client can come to a therapist with a specific problem, hoping for help with that problem, and come away instead with only a costly earful of the therapist’s reactions to the therapist’s own life experiences. I trust that did not happen to the class of clients Mr. Meyerhofer’s composite law student represents. I assume he is a competent and caring professional and that his column may be signficantly more biting, for good stylistic and rhetorical reasons, than his treatment. But that’s also a kind of “damage” to be concerned about.
Will,
I’m a pre-law advisor at a pretty well ranked, small college. I talk to a lot of students at the time in their life when they are considering this choice. It’s a hard conversation to have. My students aren’t always ready to hear this message — but we give them a panel of alumni who practice law and have a variety of views about it, with a variety of kinds of law degrees (top tier vs. third tier) and a variety of size & shape of debt burdens and a variety of feelings about the practice of law. Students LOVE the chance to hear this and to ask questions.
Here’s how your readers can help people at the decision point: Call their own colleges, or a college near where they currently live. Make themselves available to students in college who are considering law school — meet over a beer or a cup of coffee, once or twice a year. Talk honestly with those students about the lifestyle, financial, and intellectual tradeoffs that accompany this decision. Offer to introduce them to attorneys or other law grads with a different perspective.
The time to intervene is BEFORE the debt burden is incurred, not after. Call undergrad institutions, and offer to help individual students get the information that will help them support a decision to work for a few years rather than going immediately to law school.
Bravo, Sir. Bravo.
Eloquent, poignant, and most of all . . . dead-on, balls accurate. Even without the “immigrant parent” angle you’ve chosen, this still describes the HUGE number of college grads who are flocking to law school because getting an entry level job elsewhere doesn’t live up to the standards that they or others have set.
I encourage anyone reading this to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE forward to any college student considering law school, or any law student they know.
What a fantastic idea! I’m going to call some of the colleges in my area tomorrow and volunteer to do just that.
I find this to be a very interesting post.
I think magical thinking does not stop just at the salary people expect to be earning once they start working as lawyers. It goes deeper to our and others’ perception of the profession/ our role. Literature and films bombard us with images and descriptions of what being a lawyer supposedly is. I’m sure most people will agree that the actual job is far from any description of the job John Grisham gives. Now admittedly this is true from all professions, as soon as it is portrayed in the media/ films/ novels it switches to a “fantasy job”, however I find it even more acute in the legal profession. I am still amazed today to the amount of respect and awe I get from random people because I’m a lawyer (why because I can read a set of T&C without going into a coma? Hmm…)
Even I occasionally find myself mentally going back to my “fantasy notion” of being a lawyer i.e. a vaguely superior being who should be respected for some sort of essential job that we are supposedly doing because we know “the law”. Meh! Let’s take moment to swallow that humble pill, yeah? Being a lawyer is being able to do a desk job for very long hours.
Day to day the job is not hugely exciting. As a junior lawyer I often find my tasks to be little more than “enhanced form filling”. It has its ups and downs of course but a lot of the job is not what most people think it is. You think you’re going to be that big shot litigator and argue in court? In real life, you spend 70% of your time filling in forms and diarizing your work (or the partner’s) and that’s when you’re not endlessly bundling… You think you’re going to be a corporate lawyer, an important component in the negotiations for the re-financing of a large MNC? In real life you will be stuck for days on end in a windowless room doing due diligence (i.e. reading and taking notes from 149 boxes of documents that the other party has not looked at for the last 67 years and therefore are completely out of order and dusty). Thing is, there is nothing wrong with that as long as you know what you are getting into. To be very fair I like it. I like reading a 53 pages contract and finding the stuff that I can re-write and object to (I have actually caught myself turning to a colleague and going “Can you believe any one would draft like take, how dare they?!” ) but not everyone will and most of non-lawyers have no idea what the work is actually like.
I personally do not read this post at all as condescending. On the contrary, we cannot afford to ignore our family background and expectations when making life choices (especially one that will get us into debt for years to come). Of course all families will have expectations (immigrant or not), whether it comes to who you marry, what job you get, where you’re going to live all parents will have a view as to what their kids should be doing. Immigrant families usually have expectation (or at least hope) that their kids will do better than them because they have been given an opportunity to do something the parents could not do. It has to be taken into account when choosing a job especially one that will set you back $150K + before you’ve even started work. It doesn’t mean people should not do it, it just means they should recognize it and take it into account when choosing whether or not to access that profession. At the end of the day some people truly love the Big Law thing (or just the Law thing), they thrive on the competition and find they are happy with it. However if you start off with the “a magical idea” of what Big Law is and the underlying idea that it will only be for a few years just to pay debts then maybe it’s worth taking a pause and wondering whether that is the right thing for you.
I agree with Jeff’s point about the condescending tone. I also think that it ignores the very real needs of individuals for whom family expectations are a significant part of their own sense of identity. Correcting the misinformation that many first-generation college students’ parents have filled them with is one (necessary) thing; the implicit contempt for their parents’ ignorance is quite another (and unnecessary).
But I really agree with Scheherazade, probably because I too am a pre-law advisor. I am always looking for alumni attorneys to come speak to my students about what they actually do as lawyers, the paths they took to law school, what they’re happy with, what they regret. Offer yourselves up to your undergraduate institutions for speaking engagements, informational interviews, even internships. This is really the only way students can learn about legal practice before they make the final decision to apply to law school. If you don’t make yourselves available, then you’re just contributing to the widespread ignorance of what lawyers do.
Finally, I want to echo Jeff’s other point about the experiences of grads from regional law schools. When you promote the idea that grads of any-but-the-top-10 will never find satisfying and financially stable career paths, you are essentially saying that 95% of lawyers (those graduating from the other 190 ABA-approved schools) are unhappy and unsuccessful. That’s silly on its face. The overwhelming majority of students attending the rest-of-the-pack do not have BigLaw as one of their goals. They do not anticipate making anywhere near $160,000 in their first year out of school, nor do they tend to enter law school with any sense of entitlement to such a ridiculous salary. They are far more realistic in their ambitions. They also tend not to borrow as much as $170,000 for their education (the median is closer to $90,000 — still a crazy sum, but nothing like your caricature). Many take their high LSATs and ignore the alleged top ten in favor of a free ride at a less selective (but equal in educational quality) school.
The students I see still have unrealistic (or unformed) ideas about what legal practice might actually entail, and about the costs of their education. But promoting the caricature as the reality doesn’t help those students. All it makes them say is, Well, I’m not THAT dumb, at least. And then ignore the rest of your good advice about researching the career before they enter upon it.
There are very real challenges facing potential law school applicants in gathering the information necessary to make good choices for themselves, and in even knowing what information to gather. The exaggerations of the sort you engage in actually just make the problem worse.
I find your comment to have a very condescending tone. The $90k these kids are borrowing (on average) gets piled on top of the money they’ve already borrowed for undergrad, so that $90k figure is largely irrelevant, except to point out that the real figure is much higher. And please – get real. Many of the kids graduating from the lower half of their classes from the lower half of those 190 ABA-approved schools are getting out and finding there are no jobs. Or they are working as “contract attorneys” doing doc review for $40/hr (or less). Meanwhile, the schools are getting rich exploiting innocent kids who are doing their best to meet family expectations (which I do take seriously and do not condescend to – I merely recognize as unrealistic and potentially damaging.)
Who’s condescending here, guys? I work with these kids and try to help them. The legal education industry does its best to pump them full of unrealistic nonsense, exploits their innocence and good intentions and creates lasting harm.
I get the sense that people who work at law schools – who, let’s face it, are benefitting financially from this scam – are huffing and puffing self-righteously about my column. But I’m the guy who sees these kids years later, after they get dumped onto a non-existent legal job market, deeply in debt, dazed and horrified that their future has been damaged, and their dreams deferred. All because no one “condescended” to tell them the truth. If that’s condescending, I’m happy to condescend.
Plus, law schools are oversupplying lawers.
Why?
Becuase the money is being shoveled out by the government and private lenders onto the backs of clueless 22 year olds, who readily take on the risk of $170K in debt or whatever they end up having. It’s free money from the government being poured into the educational bubble, with the students left holding the bag.
It’s basically a con at this point, where the law students are the marks. And, because the debt is basically impossible to discharge, these ultimately underemployed students end up bleeding economically for an extended period of time.
And for the forseeable future, ignorant students will continue to pour into law schools, continue to pile on debt, and continue to be crushed by reality when they get out of school.
It is amazing to me that people can take this column and see it as condescending, when it is clearly aimed at helping young people to see the truth about being a lawyer. I’m a graduate of a top-10 law school and employed by “Big Law”. I went to law school for the following reasons: 80% to please my parents, 20% because I didn’t know what else to do with my life. Big Law is filled with “lucky” people that attended top law schools and achieved that coveted $160k starting salary, and is also filled with absolutely miserable people…. often because those people went to law school to please their parents and/or because they didn’t know what else to do with their lives.
The Fake Frog’s comment is truthful and very interesting, but I would like to add that, in my experience and the experience of my friends who are lawyers, the vast majority do not enjoy it, and are very unhappy with their chosen career (yet chained by invisible handcuffs to their jobs to repay the $100k or more they took out in student loans).
People who are not attorneys do tend to have a magical idea of what it means to be a lawyer, and from the outside it does seem like a good career choice. But there needs to be more truthful information and advice out there from lawyers who have left the field to do something else (and there are many, many non-practicing lawyers) about going to law school and what it actually means to practice the law. I applaude Will for sheding some light on this topic and for trying to help people to do a little more thinking about what they are getting themselves into (instead of listening to advice of parents or others who have no idea what it means to practice law).
By the way, Will is not the only former lawyer to be speaking out on this topic (see, for example, http://thecareerist.typepad.com/thecareerist/2010/09/puppy-mills-part-2.html).
To those who suggested coming to speak to prelaw programs, I think it is a very good idea. But please recognize that it is not always easy for someone to talk to a stranger (or a crowd of strangers) and admit that their chosen career path was a mistake… particularly if you are still working as a lawyer to pay off your loans and still have not figured out what you really want to do with your life. I think you should be reaching out to people who have left the law for other careers – those would be the best people to enlighten prospective law students.
JD2005, one of the most effective speakers I’ve hosted in recent years was somebody who was still very much in the thick of it — just as you describe. Her tales of ongoing misery and sense of feeling trapped proved to be way more compelling to my students than the distance that more removed folks bring. I have had very many people tell me that they were considering the BigLaw path until she came, and then changed their minds. I agree that it’s tough to open up about your own sense of having made a bad decision for yourself, but you’d be amazed at the good it can do for others. Just a thought.
I don’t work at a law school, but at a university where I see the kids before they make their decisions to apply. A significant portion of my job is trying to get them to be more informed about the financial realities of legal education and law practice, and about what law practice is actually like, day-to-day. I don’t want anybody spending $90,000 on anything they haven’t researched thoroughly, and I don’t want anybody going to law school unless they still really really want to after having done that research. So on basic premises, we very much agree.
My point is about how to reach these individuals. My experience is that exaggeration and caricature are counterproductive. It’s tough enough, as you acknowledge, to get 20 year olds to understand the long term implications of what is almost certainly their first major financial decision. But when they read exaggerated claims about the job market, and significantly exaggerated and somewhat distorted claims about the differences in employment potential for grads of more selective versus less selective schools, it leads them to distrust the underlying core messages: that the ROI on law school is significantly less than they assume it to be, and that a JD alone is no guarantee of permanent, satisfying employment.
I don’t tell them that they have very little chance of getting a permanent job out of the local law school for one simple reason: it’s demonstrably false. Most do in fact obtain permanent gainful employment. I do, however, make sure that they understand what the actual starting salaries are locally, what their debt service will be like, what the repayment options are, and what it means to go to professional school, as opposed to a liberal arts college (i.e., networking and taking the initiative are easily as important as their coursework, etc.). They certainly need to know that nothing is handed to them as grads of less selective schools (in the ways in which so much is in fact handed to those of us who went to the more selective schools).
We share a goal of getting prospective law students to make informed, realistic choices about their future careers. I think we can both do that more effectively by giving them unbiased information and decision-making tools rather than exaggeration and caricature.
Hi Will,
I read your post and found that in many ways I could relate to the issues you were describing. Though I find some truth to what you say, I’m also offended. I fit most of the categories you described and also felt pressure and stress from my family to pursue a career in the legal field. I did not end up following this career path, but I do understand that this issue is much more complex than you portray. I feel you are not presenting a balanced picture and that the condescending tone is far too strong.
First, I want to tell you exactly how you are setting a condescending tone — implying that a 20 some year old is comparable to a child who is blind, not “living life,” and just trying to make everyone happy. And so is nonchalantly saying that this child’s parents remind him/her every week of the sacrifices they make. As an immigrant child, my parents’ sacrifices are not simply one liners I’m reminded of every week over the phone. They are deeply embedded in me and seriously impact how I live my life and how much I consider their opinion in the major decisions I make. Their sacrifices are also the source of sincere respect and love I have for them. In other words, I don’t think the 20 year old kids you speak of are simply trying to make “everyone happy.” Personally speaking, my family’s happiness is deeply interconnected to my own; I live life not trying to make everyone happy, but I am conscious of the well being of my family and how my decisions impact them. I think your clients may feel similarly.
The poverty my parents faced and the transitions they made in the process of moving to this country also affect how they view work and financial security. Unsurprisingly, financial security is of the utmost importance for my parents who had very little if any growing up. They view careers in medicine and law as the ultimate route to that security. This may seem absurd considering the calculations made about how much law school costs, but from their perspective the fruits will be gained in the long run and long term. This may be a great misunderstanding; as you say in your post, that financial security is lot harder to get after going to a lower ranked law school. If (or since) this is the case, it’s up to your clients, people like me, to inform our parents and help change the “misguided plan.” There is also a considerable amount of guilt that goes into veering away from such “misguided plans” and I think that’s also something you should consider.
But please, Will, do not talk about your clients like they ignorant children, dreaming up fantasies. I reread your post several times and it was difficult for me to sense your empathy. Perhaps, legal institutions are setting up a scam and your clients are falling into a horrible trap. But instead of getting on a rage about these law schools, why not try to have a deeper understanding of where your clients are coming from? Why not understand why they make the decisions they do in their particular situations? These are real issues of substance that will affect their decision making process.
And I have to say: your clients are living life, their way, with their eyes open but with the stress that come with being part of an immigrant family. They are not blind, and they are not children. I think it would be more helpful if you could be more open-minded to their situation and try to understand the underlying issues they face.
My life-partner is an immigrant from Hong Kong. Believe me, I know the immigrant parent routine. No one forced your parents to have children, or to bring them to another country. And it is wrong for them to confuse their life with yours and to impose their beliefs and their needs upon you. I understand how torn and guilt-ridden children of immigrants can feel – and yes, I’m a therapist and I empathize plenty. But if you let them control your life for their purposes, you will suffer, terribly, and be exploited. You have to live your own life. That doesn’t mean abandoning your parents. But it does mean doing your own thinking and following your own dreams. You are an adult, as well as their child.
Please make sure they understand some additional realities. Take them down to a windowless doc review room, so they can see the paid-by-the-hour contract attorneys putting in required 12-hour days without benefits. Let them listen to the abuse the partners dump on these wage slaves. And remind them that even doc review jobs are competitive in this market, and contract work can disappear overnight. Then calculate for them exactly how long it will take to pay back $100+k in loans at one of those jobs.
These are not exaggerated caricatures. These are realistic, informed, unbiased decision-making tools…as well as realities that actual people are trapped in by a scam that sold them a dream along with a toxic mountain of debt.
Will, you and others keep using the word “scam.” I’m in BigLaw, not academia, but I have to question the usefulness/accuracy of that word. Employment data, including salary figures, are available upon request from every law school that I contacted on the subject. The issue, as I see it, is this: Whose responsibility is it to do the due diligence? These “kids” want to be in board rooms, advising clients on million- and billion-dollar decisions, but they can’t pick up the phone and ask a few questions before taking on 100K in debt? I just don’t buy it. No one is stopping them from doing the research. If they don’t do it, that sucks, and we should all do a better job advising young people about this, but I don’t see how it’s a scam if they rush in without doing a bit of independant research. You say it’s a scam, but isn’t that just life?
Ummm…they’re 21 years old. And under incredible pressure from their parents. And remember – they haven’t learned to distrust their elders yet. It will be a few more years before they accept that lying, deceiving and stealing is widely accepted behavior. Before long, they’ll lose all faith in humankind like the rest of us – but by then they’re already $100k in the hole.
You remind me of those bankers who can’t see why poor elderly minorities living in depressed neighborhoods shouldn’t learn to read the fine print on their exploding mortgages. Get real, Skeptical.
“they haven’t learned to distrust their elders yet. It will be a few more years before they accept that lying, deceiving and stealing is widely accepted behavior. Before long, they’ll lose all faith in humankind like the rest of us”
Aaah Will come on! This is overly pessimistic. Lying and stealing is not widely accepted, or acceptable, behaviour (at least not in my neck of the woods). Yes it happens, especially when it comes to institutional lying and stealing, but generally speaking it’s not that bad. There are really good people around. If you look at humankind as a whole I would agree that it looks bleak but if you look at each individual you’ll find that it’s actually pretty uplifting (I’ve even found some very good people among lawyers and bankers! 😉 )
I slightly disagree with you when you write about the pressure parents put on the kids to do law. Obviously there are some that will say openly in the same vein as “you will marry a Jewish man”, “you will become a lawyer”, but I don’t think the blame is entirely on parents. I think generally the pressure is more insidious and applied equally by parents, the individual himself/ herself and society as a whole. As long as achievement and security in society is seen as being a lawyer or a doctor and/ or earning a lot of cash then, who wouldn’t want to be a lawyer or a doctor and earn a lot of cash? It makes sense… So until we all go switch to a different value system from the one when the guy who’s got the bigger car wins, then the law schools can continue making money.
To determine whether it is a scam, you need to look at the economic reality of the situation.
Lawyers are being oversupplied by the law schools well out of proportion to the legal labor market.
Law schools know this. It is ultimately someone’s responsibility. Saying “isn’t that just life” isn’t the point. There are lots of problems in life. Part of life is identifying and solving problems that have been created by people.
Will has actually seen this problem close up.
You don’t have to worry about the problem, and probably haven’t thought about the problem because you (like me) are safe from this problem.
Thanks, Will. This is THE BEST porn. Ever…:)
Thank you for that. I’m deeply touched.
It’s freaky how you are able to describe about half of the prelaw students that I have met over the years. It’s like you were in the room. Spooky.
And I don’t think he is being condescending at all. Will is not the first person to discuss the idea of ‘Magical Thinking’, and applying it to prelaw could not be more apt.
Great post. No, amazing post.
I found this to be a very well-written, compelling article. There is only one place where I think the discussion is off the mark: many people assume that college graduates ought to take a few years off to work before attending law school, just to get a sense of the “real world.” But, believe it or not, there ARE some 21-year-olds who have good reasons to pursue law. For them, spending a year in a dead-end job in a field they aren’t interested in would not be a wise decision. If you know you want to be an attorney, there is no point in spending an extra year making peanuts when you could be launching your career (and making $160K in BigLaw). I chose to launch.
I can only speak from my experience, but I am VERY grateful that I did not take any time off before going to law school. I was a physics major at an Ivy. While I appreciated the challenge, it was clear that I would never be a great physicist; I didn’t have the passion or the ability. But I have always loved and excelled at English, history, philosophy, etc. After taking an undergraduate survey course in law taught by a law professor, I was hooked. I found the subjects and the analysis fascinating. Legal practice may be different from law school, but it is not completely different. Loving the study of law is a good sign that you might enjoy the practice, as well. The next summer, I got to experience the NYC small claims court as a plaintiff–not what most lawyers do, exactly, but another little taste. Winning my “case” was pretty exciting; I am currently 1/1! 😉
Ultimately, I concluded that law was the best fit for my interests, my natural abilities (problem-solving, language), and my personality (assertive and tenacious). Had I forced myself to work a year in a physics lab–doing something I knew I didn’t want as a career, and maybe making $40,000–I would have needlessly set myself back financially and careerwise. Instead, I attended a T5 school, graduated in 2009, and have been happily working in BigLaw now for about a year. I am watching my loan debt decrease and generally enjoy the work, if not the hours. If I had followed the conventional advice–wait a year to take time off/work/see the world/grow up–I might be jobless today.
Bottom line: I agree with Will that you shouldn’t blindly follow the path that others or society lay out for you. For some, that means disappointing your parents and skipping law school. For others, it means going straight through from college to law school to BigLaw, and not apologizing for it.
I should add that I CAREFULLY researched schools, financing, and employment prospects BEFORE beginning law school. Recall that, before the recession, all but the very worst students at the T14 schools could land six-figure jobs if they wanted to go that route. I decided ahead of time that I would not attend law school if I did not get accepted to a T14. Accordingly, I applied to all the schools in the T14 and two additional schools in the top twenty-five (which contacted me after receiving my LSAT scores and indicated that I was likely to receive substantial scholarships). There is some magic to the T14 (or T10 or maybe now just the T6).
As I begin to finish up my law school experience, I have to say that I can agree with this article, and would like to add to it. My class entered law school when graduates were still getting jobs and many of us figured that as long as we did well we would receive summer associate positions, jobs, etc. However, that has been far from true! Instead, we have experienced unpaid internships, lack of opportunities, and law schools that will not admit that there are too many of us graduating to fill the need. Even better, law schools have yet to adjust their admissions to fit the economy. Our school just took on a fifth section of 1Ls this year because they handed out too many admissions. Eighty more students are now in our school, but where are these eighty jobs!
We are all promised $160,000 jobs out of school, that our school is great, and as a bottom Tier 1, people need to realize this is not true! There are not a lot of jobs out there and if you are not at a Tier 1 this gets even harder. Where is the ABA? Where is some sort-of regulation? Medical schools catered their acceptance numbers to the needs of the medical profession, but why don’t law schools?
I was lucky enough to attend school on a scholarship, but what happens to those students who rack up $150,000 or more in debt? Do you take a babysitting gig to pay the bills? Work for $10 an hour for a law firm that wants your licensed skills, but won’t pay? Where were the people to tell us not to go to school?
But then again, here is where I agree with the author, would we listen? I have a friend who has a great job, poor LSAT scores, and feels that as long as he can get into law school, he will get a job and he doesn’t get it! He thinks these jobs are just handed out. They write books on how to get into law school, but maybe we need to start writing books that say why not to go, or when you shouldn’t go.
Maybe this is just coming from a 3L on the verge of graduation, and without a solid offer, but I think that my experience in school has given me some insight.
“We are all promised $160,000 jobs out of school.” Really? Who made that promise? A lot of what you say may be true, but I will bet this statement is not. You may have expected to make that much, but is it just possible your expectation was . . . magical thinking? Just saying, a little intellectual honesty wouldn’t hurt this debate.
I just graduated in August and just came back from Asia. I originally planned to go to law school but I have been doing a lot of research since Fall of last year (2009). I would look at job postings for lawyers– how many jobs there are, how much they offer. I also came across many, many, many BLAWGS. So, this is not the first of these I have encountered. Many of these blawgs are by very angry unemployed new lawyers, for whom I am grateful for sparing me. I also worked part-time at a law firm while in my last year of undergrad, volunteered as a court advocate and had experience sitting in a room full of lawyers in board meetings. Which, other than the free pizza really sucked. They are so hot about everything it seems even about phone lines and mundane discussions.
My interest was solely public interest. I pretty much wanted to be a social worker with a bar id number so I can save all the poor people from injustice. My goal was to get a full ride at ANY law school without concern about rank and be a poorly paid lawyer. Atleast, I thought, I’m willing to get paid 40k at a legal aid, less than a paralegal at a law firm.
Even being realistic as I was, based on my years worth of research about possibly attending a low ranked school for public interest… I sincerely believe that there are way too many lawyers, and more, and more pumped out of law school this year— who would compete for the low 40k estimate salary. That means, grads from high ranked schools would compete with me whether they really want to work for public interest or they can’t find other offers.
While I was in Asia, I realized there are many pressures. Pressures to get a good job, to be married, to have lots of babies. I realized my family, while the pressure is intense means well but my life is ultimately my own. To attempt to explain the current market for lawyers would be speaking German to my folks.
I have been doing some soul searching (a lot actually) and really go back to just wanting to help people. I realized, I want to help people but not at the expense of being jobless or at the mercy of free internships or pretty much the rigors of competing for these jobs. I mean, I just want to help but I may be poorer than who I plan to help. There is definitely a scarcity because simply, there are too many of lawyers. Period. I think they are a combination of people who really want to go and are well informed and Lost people trying to find direction at law school/ buying time/ don’t want to dissappoint/ admit they don’t know what the heck to do/ don’t want to take entry level jobs.
So pretty much I am just looking into MSW/ MA Teaching programs and trying to see which may fit better. My family just has to love me for who I am, you know. I don’t mean to disappoint them but it is my life and I want to do something fulfilling and meaningful. I mean, the economy is rough for EVERYONE. But ABA really must do something about producing way too many lawyers than we can accommodate.
PS. I may be contacting you for counseling on the direction I am headed now just for some guidance!
Counter transference? Is he receiving meaningful professional supervision? These are just a few questions that rolled through my mind when reading this blog post. I can’t help but wonder if his negative experiences which caused him to leave the law profession may also cause him to view a clients goal more cynically, atleast relating to entering the legal profession. While his logic seemed pretty rational, it also seemed to be driven by strong feelings (from his previous experience as an attorney, having left the profession). In a counseling office, this can be dangerous for a client. Parting thoughts to the Peoples Therapist…Is it time to re inventory your personal prejudices and reflect on how they impact your clients?
Yes, it was driven by strong feelings from my previous experiences as an attorney – you got me! It’s a counter-transference! An objective counter-transference! And your point is…?
Oh, and I assure you, my professional supervision is extremely “meaningful”…but somehow or other, that hasn’t stopped third tier law schools from wrecking the lives of innocent kids, who wind up at my office door, heavily in debt, hating the trap they’ve fallen into.
In regards to the counter transference, good stuff that you are at least aware of it and have other therapists who you can bounce stuff off of. From one well trained therapist to another, your magical posting blog just seemed like it was oozing a sort of energy that I don’t come across often (by therapists) in most counseling dynamics. Possibly, could it have just been the tone that you used when writing? Or possibly, was your counter transference creating a hidden momentum in this session? I can’t say for certain, but sometimes it is helpful when passer-by’s atleast comment on what the scenery look like. In either case, I have found it helpful to be aware of how I come across. With that, I have found that commenting on our work with clients, with specific detail, on public blogs sometimes creates the appearance of unhealthy practices (a red flag of sorts, that makes me look more at what is occuring) . I think I understand the point you were trying to make and I agree that your encounter w/ your counselee illustrated the point well, but I think it is important to be aware of how we come across.
I’m sick and tired of the official protocol that therapists have to speak in endless chains of euphemisms and can’t have an opinion about anything. If I come across as frustrated and horrified at the destruction being perpetrated by the law school/law firm machine, that’s because I am. The fact that I’ve stopped mincing words and say exactly what I think is why I’ve racked up nearly 300,000 views so far on this site and hundreds of comments and emails.
This post was a fictional composite based on dozens of sessions with kids who are driving themselves off a cliff – accumulating debts they’ll never manage to pay off, all in an unconscious effort to win their parents’ love and approval. At some point, whatever’s going on psychically, I have to do my best to prevent financial carnage that’s going to trigger suffering. I’m not just a therapist – I’m also a lawyer and I’ve been there and I know of what I speak. I can’t just sit and do reflective listening and focus on examining psychodynamics and cognition and formulating interventions. I also have to try to warn my clients away from a potential disaster.
If you really want to know how I work as a therapist, please read my new book, which has nothing to do with law, but goes into some detail around my approach to psychotherapy and the philosophy that underlies it. If you give it a read, and then want to talk shop, I’m all ears.
Hi,
It is unlikely I will have the time to read your book in the very near future, but I am glad to hear that your blog post didn’t stem from a real life client. That said, I am sending positive vibes your way. Be Well.
I’ll settle for your reading it in the near future. Let me know what you think!
> I’m sick and tired of the official protocol that therapists have to speak in endless chains of euphemisms and can’t have an opinion about anything. …The fact that I’ve stopped mincing words and say exactly what I think is why I’ve racked up nearly 300,000 views so far on this site and hundreds of comments and emails.
BRAVO. THIS is why I plan to dig deeper into this blog, and why I am ordering the book tonight. Hell, I don’t even need therapy, I’m happy as a clam, and my life’s easy, but NOW, I want to hear what else Will has to say. DO NOT BACK DOWN. Speak the truth. Not PC bullshit.