For the record, a law degree is not “versatile.” Being a lawyer amounts to a strike against you if you ever decide to pursue another career.
So why do people keep insisting it’s an “extremely versatile degree”?
A bunch of reasons.
Law schools are in it for the money. Teaching law doesn’t cost much, but they charge a fortune – made possible by not-dischargable-in-bankruptcy loans. That makes each law school a massive cash cow for the rest of the university. Money flowing from the law school pays the heating bill for the not-so-profitable Department of Neo-Structuralist Linguistics.
Law students play along with the “extremely versatile degree” farce to justify the three years of their life and the ungodly pile of cash they’re blowing on a degree they’re not interested in and know nothing about. This myth is also intended to calm down parents. You need a story to explain why you don’t have a job, but that it’s somehow okay.
No one else cares. And that’s chiefly why this old canard still has some life left in it.
Time to put it out of its misery.
Why is a law degree not versatile?
Let me count the ways.
For one thing, it costs about $180k. Anything that leaves you two hundred grand in a hole is not increasing your “versatility” – it’s trapping you in hell.
For another thing, studying arcane legal doctrine for three years (a purely arbitrary number) leaves you with no translatable skills. The arcane legal doctrine you learn in law school isn’t even useful at a law firm, let alone anywhere else.
And let’s talk about the “skills” a lawyer “hones” in his “profession.”
A litigator is about the worst thing you can be if you want to do anything else. Why? Let’s examine the skills you “master” as a litigator.
Pumping up billables. Dragging out discovery. Dreaming up and laboriously penning pointless motions to create delay. Behaving in an oddly aggressive and hostile manner at meetings that end in a standstill. Organizing complicated information into folders, and folders of folders and labeling everything and organizing that into lists, and lists of lists, then billing for it by the hour. Researching recondite issues and writing memos you’re not even sure you understand. Wrapping your head around Byzantine procedural rules and forum and jurisdictional niceties and arbitrary court filing deadlines, all so you can trip up the other side with needless delay and expense.
Okay. Now translate those skills into the real world, where people make products and sell useful services.
See my point?
If you’re on the corporate side, at least you get to watch business people do their thing before you spend the night typing it up. That’s why corporate partners are considered more valuable at firms when it comes time to recruit. Corporate guys hang out with business people, so they bring a “book of business” (i.e., customers) with them. A litigator doesn’t even have clients, just cases, which might (God forbid) end some day. A litigation partner without a live case is dead wood awaiting pruning. Sorry.
Of course, the actual “stuff” of corporate law could drive you mad. Studying securities law is like learning the rules to the most boring, complicated board game ever invented. All you want to do is quit playing and go home.
But there’s a bigger, broader problem with switching careers when you have the letters JD after your name: people hate lawyers.
Why do they hate lawyers? A bunch of reasons.
If you are a real person in the outside world, the word “lawyer” means obstruction. The phrase “run it past Legal” means you might as well give up, ’cause it’s never gonna happen. Exciting business ventures ooze to a standstill like a sabre-toothed tiger in the La Brea Tar Pits. Some risk-adverse dweeb in a suit will spout dire warnings to you about unlikely contingencies until nothing seems like it’s any fun anymore.
Lawyer means pretentious – socially awkward losers with fancy degrees telling you what to do when they’ve never run a business in their lives.
Lawyer means threats. “You’ll hear from my lawyer” is the worst thing you can say to another person. And lawyers love to write threatening letters – it’s what they do best. That’s why lawyer is synonymous with wasted time and wasted money.
Lawyer means annoyance. Lawyer means hassles. Lawyer means a total void of common sense. Lawyer means expensive, with little to show for it.
Now mail someone in the real world a resume that says “lawyer” all over it and ask yourself why you never got called in for an interview.
When I was trying to escape from law I hid my law degree at the bottom of my resume, in small print. At the top, I made the most I could of a year spent managing a small, independent bookstore.
I was trying to get a job in the marketing department of a major online bookseller.
I got lucky. The guy who hired me was a former banker, who talked his way into his job by stressing experience in the credit card business. Ultimately, the two of us created the co-branded Barnes & Noble.com mastercard.
He was willing, as an ex-banker, to understand how badly I wanted to be an ex-lawyer, and I sweetened the pot by taking a 45% pay cut and doing my own legal work (which saved him about half his departmental budget.)
I also begged, and came very close to breaking down in tears. It isn’t easy convincing someone in the real world to hire a lawyer.
A year later I tried to get a friend – another burnt-out lawyer – into a job in my department. I took his resume to the head of HR.
She looked at me, uncomprehending.
“This guy’s a lawyer,” she said, like it tasted bad.
I flashed a winning grin. “C’mon Brenda,” (HR people are always named Brenda and have big hair.) “A year ago I showed up here with the same exact resume and I got hired.”
She didn’t smile.
“I wouldn’t have hired you with this resume.”
Then I realized why it took my boss so long to finalize my hire. He fought for me, and ended up pulling rank to get past HR.
Versatile my ass.
Look – I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.
Psychotherapy is about owning your thoughts and feelings.
Own this:
A J.D. is not a versatile degree. Law is a specialized field which carries a heavy stigma beyond its own hermetic confines.
An “extremely versatile degree”?
That’s simply a crock. A versatile crock. But still a crock.
========
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.)
The People's Therapist 
Please reconsider those of us that have nothing to do with the legal profession. Let your wound heal and don’t keep festering it with so much of your writings dwelling on that hurt you cannot release.
You have clarity and insight I have found nowhere else and I sorely miss the benefit that I got from your earlier writings not focused on the legal arena.
Just don’t read the legal pieces. That way you get what you want without robbing the law firm slaves of their dose of good advice (and the author of his marketing to a key client base:-).
These writings make me happy for 10 minutes in my otherwise miserable life at a law firm.
I thought this was insightful and helpful. I’ve been in complete disagreement with my husband, but it does help to hear another professionals point of view on the matter. I’m not a lawyer, in fact most of you stuffy assholes look down your nose at me at mixers or dinner meetings. I worked my ass off to put my husband through law school, he is a litigator at a big firm and he hates it, until now I have not been sympathetic. I don’t know what he will do next, but we have to cut our losses.
Memo to prospective law students: a JD is as attractive to potential employers as a felony conviction. DON’T DO IT!
….unless, you know, you want to practice law and actually may enjoy doing it.
(Not all of us in ‘Biglaw’ hate our lives. Some of us actually enjoy the profession, believe it or not.)
What is this column supposed to accomplish besides kicking people when they’re down?
Life is not fair.
Sad but true. When I tried to get out, I was faced with people who were excited to do their work and happy to collaborate. I could never
shake my suspicion of them.
Look, I agree with all this (a JD is a professional degree – I’ve never understood why people uninterested in the profession get one), and most of your other posts, but what are we supposed to do? Kill all the lawyers? Government, business, and society in general needs lawyers. (Maybe that’s why everyone hates us – they need us and they know it.) If you want to be a lawyer, get a JD (preferably on a scholarship or from a state school), and if you don’t, don’t. Anyway, doing my best to see the glass half full.
I needed to do something after I destroyed my grades in undergrad.
It was more of a desperation move than anything else.
And it worked because I am an extremely intelligent test-taker.
I even got Duke to give me a scholarship and got a job solely because I went to Duke. That was nice. It worked exactly as advertised and I was happy with that part.
I’m more frustrated that I destroyed myself in college rather than the law school thing. If I had applied myself and actually figured out an area of academic interest, I could probably have done something meaningful with my life.
Normally I love your posts and I think you bring a wonderful perspective to those of us working for (or contemplating working for) biglaw firms.
But this post was one-sided and unfairly simplistic. I’m sorry that law didn’t work out for you, and you found the degree to be an albatross. I know that’s true for a lot of people, including many I know. But it isn’t true for everyone.
If your point is to ward off those thinking of going to law school, then fine, you’re right – people shouldn’t go if they’re planning on using the degree for something not law-related. But if your point is to squash the hopes of those who’ve already earned JDs, then it’s not cool. Things are bad out there, but they’re not *this* bad.
Anyone who alredy has a JD has already had his/her hopes squashed. That’s what law firms are for.
Rafi:
I beg to differ. They. Are. That. Bad.
The People’s Therapist does seem to have some angst about having pursued a law degree in the first place. However, his point is still valid – don’t go to law school unless you want to be a lawyer.
The only exception to this general rule is if you have connections in a non-legal field and your law degree will give you much-needed street cred. For example, if you want to go into politics, a law degree from a top school (or local school if you’re playing local politics) will put you on equal footing with those in charge. A “political science” undergraduate degree isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. A masters in public administration comes a close second if you don’t want to go to law school.
Journalism is another area where a law degree can be useful, but only if you’re reporting on legal issues (e.g., trials, new laws, etc…) However, you had better have an undergraduate degree in journalism and experience in the field if you want to break in.
Law school is not for people who don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. You’re better off spending a couple of years after graduating college figuring out what you don’t want to do (or perhaps, if you’re lucky, what you do want to do).
What about people who don’t work at huge law firms, but instead commit themselves to public service, because they care about their society? These lawyers aren’t in it for the money.
Do you have one of the three or four jobs that exist in public service law?? If so, congratulations. The reality is that a student with student loan debt, and real personal expenses can’t afford to borrow more money for start-up capital just so he/she can open a practice doing legal work for free. It just won’t work.
The overall point is 100% right (don’t go to law school unless you want to be a lawyer or otherwise work in the law) but your description of what a litigator does is just about 100% wrong, at least if you’re trying to describe what good experienced business litigators and corporate lawyers do. We help people solve problems. Yes, we are a transaction cost and there may be some truth to your observations about how we are perceived, but I have too many happy clients as a business and white-collar crime lawyer with nearly ten years of experience (and yes, we do have clients – I don’t know anyone who thinks of their work as only relating to a “case”) to sign off on anything you said about what lawyers actually do.
Your description sounds like the view of a person who briefly practiced and hated it and who is still viewing the profession through that lens. It’s not accurate or fair.
Your time in Biglaw must have really screwed you up because the only theme in your blogs is how much you hate all things related to law. I am not sure it is healthy.
LOL with this one. Sadly, these are the same things people trot out when they try to sell having a PhD as “versatile” — some of that is true, but for the same reasons you list, HR won’t like you no matter how sincerely you want to change careers. Ever forward, though!
So Will’s post is acerbic. Big deal. Frankly, I’d rather be pissed off about my career decision than depressed over it. At least it’s a step in the right emotional direction.
OK, I am sure that some people will say that this – “Pumping up billables. Dragging out discovery. Dreaming up and laboriously penning pointless motions to create delay. Behaving in an oddly aggressive and hostile manner at meetings that end in a standstill. Organizing complicated information into folders, and folders of folders and labeling everything and organizing that into lists, and lists of lists, then billing for it by the hour. Researching recondite issues and writing memos you’re not even sure you understand. Wrapping your head around Byzantine procedural rules and forum and jurisdictional niceties and arbitrary court filing deadlines, all so you can trip up the other side with needless delay and expense.” – is an exaggeration. Or cynical.
But I’ve worked in that area and, um . . . you nailed it. Rev up the billing machines!
Paging Captain Obvious, please report to 1982. Only the admissions salesmen at law schools would ever have the gall to use the term versatile for a JD in the real world job market.
You miss the biggest point of all. Any HR’s job is to eliminate contenders, and when they see that JD together with firm experience it says this:
“A disgruntled loser attempting a career change but who will INSTANTLY quit this job if offered a better spot back in the law biz.”
At which point the JD resume is tossed in the “no” pile.
Best advice? Don’t even list it on resume when changing careers, better to say you were consulting or IC somewhere in the field in which you’re applying.
If you were really ashamed of being a lawyer you wouldn’t include it in you CV (not even in small print). No one wants three years of study unacknowledged!! Besides as you yourself recognize that knowledge proved useful even while working in a completely different area.
https://thepeoplestherapist.com/2010/11/03/extremely-versatile-crockery/#more-2831
When looking for non-law work, keep in mind that such employers will view you with suspicion. “Why are you giving up a chance to make serious money as a lawyer, to work here?” “Maybe this loser couldn’t pass the bar exam, or has terrible people skills.”
Also, lawyers are seen as combative. Not too many employers see that as a good trait. Do you want to hire someone who will put up a fight with co-workers, clients, customers, management?! (What is funny about this perception is that most lawyers tend to go along with decisions made from above.) Plus, too many businesses are constantly worried about being sued. In sum, there are MANY negatives facing JDs and attorneys seeking non-law positions.
Thank you for highlighting this reality, Will.
I agree with a lot of what Will says in this post. Incidentally, for a similar discussion of the “MBA effect” on business school graduates and on society generally, “Managers Not MBAs,” by Henry Mintzberg is worth reading.
However, I don’t agree that a law degree necessarily makes someone less versatile. I think that *people* make themselves less versatile. Many people with law degrees have had great success in and outside of law (genuine success, not just obstructionist-litigator faux prestige or faux financial success). I know a highly successful journalist who reports for a national public broadcaster from around the world. She told me that her legal training has helped her in her field. But I think success outside of law requires ex-lawyers to redefine what it means to be successful, which in turn means setting aside your (obstructionist, passive-aggressive, uncaring, shallow, greedy, barren) “lawyer persona.” It means seeing the world in a more authentic and engaging way (more entrepreneurial, managerial, literary, journalistic, sensory, collaborative, earthy, constructive, or whatever), and then figuring out a way to go down that path.
Thanks so much for sharing a much more positive outlook on switching careers and becoming an ex-lawyer. This blog post was extremely discouraging!! Besides, I also I agree with you!!
Nobody has seen more ups and downs with their law degree than me, and I don’t regret for one second that I made the investment. And yes, I paid for my own education.
I really didn’t like this post.
You conflate law school with the experience of working at biglaw. I will grant you that the skills gained in biglaw are probably not transferrable. However, the skills learnt in law school, are pretty useful in the real world. Even if one’s position is not a legal position, knowing how to read cases, statutes, and understand the legal process is very useful working at non-profits, government, and (probably) even in some businesses.
I agree that people shouldn’t go to law school unless they want to be lawyers (or work within the legal system). I disagree that a law degree isn’t versatile. As long as you like the law, there are a ton of things you can do with a law degree (public interest, private firms, private corporations, banks, hospitals, government). The bottom line is that you have to want to do something somehow related to the legal field (where you can use the skills gained in law school). But as far as subject-matter, there is no limit to where a law degree can take you (music industry, computer industry, government, foreign relations, tax, medicine, mechanics, etc.).
So don’t misunderstand what “versatile” means. A law degree means that you can choose how to use it and it can be used in unlimited fields (because all fiels/industrys interact with the law).
My experience would strongly suggest that you’re delusional.
I earned my JD in 2003. I’m licensed to practice law in 3 states. I spent 4 years as a litigator and realized it was not for me . . . but figured that with all my experience in advocacy, research, writing, public speaking, analysis, government relations, I’d have no trouble transitioning out.
I spent one year as a contract attorney working in-house with a large corporation (who I won’t name but everyone has heard of) making about $25/hour, no benefits. Once my contract expired, I declined their offer to extend it for another year, and moved to a new job market.
I have been unemployed ever since. I have picked up odd jobs teaching, working in retail, warehousing, and most recently (my crowning acheivement) working part-time as an assistant for a municipality.
The list of jobs I have unsuccessfully applied for over the last 4 years runs the gamut of all the industries you mention: insurance, banking, real estate, etc. Out of desperation, I’ve even tried to go back into practicing, but firms will not hire me because I’ve been out of the practice for a few years now.
Only recently I decided to leave my J.D., bar licenses and legal experience off my resume. Last week I had my first real job interview in years.
I think Will’s article is dead-on accurate, and I applaud him for it.
Judging from lostgirl’s numerous typos and uninformed perspective, I will venture to guess that Lostgirl is truly lost.
Doubtful that she has never practiced law. I have. Keith has. Will has. We all got through law schools and passed bar exams.
I can’t speak for the others but I don’t need some naive twit to tell me what “versatile” means. Lawyers might be a lot of things, but they all have pretty good language skills.
Lostgirl:
I couldn’t disagree more. First semester of first of year law school teaches you legal fundamentals and enhances your ability to see issues from all angles. This is valuable. But the rest of law school is a complete waste. The never teach you the law (BARBRI does that, somewhat) and never teach you how to practice (only a job does that).
Working at a firm actually teaches you how to practice law. The first few years of BigLaw are just document review which is next to worthless, but after about 5 years you start to actually do things like write, take depositions, argue motions, work out strategy, etc. At smaller firms, you rise to being a first chair quicker, but the cases are samller than in BigLaw.
Being at or near the top of a case is valuable and teaches you leadership skills beyond just legal skills.
one can summarize the veracity of the post thusly: whether you think your law degree is useful or useless, versatile or not, helpful or harmful- speaking only for yourself- you are right.
One or two persons’ generalizations about lawyers are as useful as racial stereotypes. You will always be able to find “examples” here and there, but to essentialize from there is a rather amateur logical fallacy.
I just don’t think the average American worker is that much better off WITHOUT the law degree. Yes the law degree may be a waste of time…but look around what is so great about the alternative opportunities. Sure, the 180,000 in debt is bad but I know a lot of people for whom legal education was an empowering endeavor.
I don’t understand why you would say that litigators don’t have clients. Cases don’t hire lawyers–people do! We are hired by people with problems. Sometimes those people work for companies, but that doesn’t make them less valid or their opinions less important. Every litigation is ultimately about the people who have a stake in the dispute.
I’d really like to comment on the fact that because an HR person rejected a JD without looking at any of the applicant’s other qualifications doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the JD. It means there’s something wrong with HR people.
While its true that law school in no way teaches you to be a lawyer, there are a lot of transferrable skills that you learn. Let’s take note of the fact that many law students focus on gaining experience dealing with clients (which I’m sure is never needed in any other type of profession), and the research and analysis skills to boot.
Corporate firm work is not for everyone, that’s true. But that’s also not the limit of what people with a law degree do, every day.
One person feeling bitter about their inability to make their education useful doesn’t translate to the rest of us failing on the same level.
And frankly, the fact that an HR person fail to recognize the value in a JD and doesn’t understand what the degree actually means is a failure on that person’s part.
I’m going to agree with the aptly named BJ – “One or two persons’ generalizations about lawyers are as useful as racial stereotypes. You will always be able to find “examples” here and there, but to essentialize from there is a rather amateur logical fallacy.”
frankly, i appreciated this one. donna said it right… i’d rather be pissed than depressed about my law school student loans, et al…..
I love it! This piece very well describes the overlords to whom I have leased my soul.
I too spent a decade or so wah-wahing on why I wasted my youth on legal education and training, then I woke up and smelled the coffee and noticed that some of the imminent spiritual leaders of our times are lawyers: Deborah King, Esq., Jeff Brown, Esq., Scott Kiloby, Esq.
See http://www.deborahkingcenter.com
www. soulshaping.com
http://www.kiloby.com
No doubt their status and training as lawyers (all 3 “successful” lawyers for what it’s worth) gave them tremendous credibility in their current brave pursuits, as well as excellent communication skills.
And who knows, if there is to be some kind of new world order fashioned out of the residues of the greed, bloodshed, floods and high winds we all find outselves dog-paddling in, who better to contribute to the discussion than Esquires, with their spiritual houses in order.
So, I propose we keep open minds as to Why we were called to this awful profession (in its current state),
think outside the box,
meditate on it from time to time, and
go watch Lion King again.
Yes, I have definitely noticed that I bought myself some cheap respect with my law degree. People instantly seem to take me more seriously if it comes up.
Of course my bubble was burst the other day when my eight year old said she wished I was an actress like the mother of another girl in her class. I huffily told her that some people think it’s cool to have a lawyer for a mother, but she wasn’t impressed. Such is life.
She will want to be like her mother when she’s 23 and a waitress at a diner in L.A. while trying to achieve her “dream” of becoming an actress. At least with a law degree she would have a credential that would allow her to pull in $100+ an hour as an overflow attorney for solos and small firms while she goes on auditions.
Seriously, why be so sensitive about what your 8-year old daughter has to say about your choice of profession? Your choice is helping put a roof over her head. She should be taught that mommy is doing something that she doesn’t necessarily like so that her daughter can grow up and pursue something that she likes (aka her passion). A teachable moment if there ever was one.
Let me get this straight: Is the teachable moment “Good shit will come from bad shit?” I hope not cuz that’s just BULL SHIT.
This was hilarious in its awful truthfulness. Thanks for having the courage to say it out loud. You may have actually been a “good” lawyer.” I can imagine a place for them, but then they wouldn’t be lawyers anymore, more like mediators, conflict resolvers, helpers…
I escaped, and fortunately state school only cost me $2600 some 20 years ago. But I have to be self employed because anyone who will hire me wants a lawyer for $10/hr. It wasn’t worth it at $500, why would it be worth it at $10? For me, the education was excellent. the job? Well, I agree with a gentleman who did is psychology dissertation proving that being a lawyer is a personality disorder.
Law is versatile like this:
You get a job in biglaw or midlaw for a few years. You can then transfer to an in house assistant GC position at a corporation. From there, if you’re ambitions, you leave the legal department and work your way up to a management position. The most ambitious people don’t do this at a corporation but at financial firms like investment banks, venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds. Financiers is superior to lawyers as doctors are superior to nurses.
I can give you lists of people who followed this track to private equity or corporate managment. Of course you need drive, and not just be an obnoxious law nerd who reads statutes all day.
The other path is to learn small law and start your own law practice (alone or with a handful of partners). The cases are generally much smaller than biglaw; though there are notable exceptions. The wealthiest lawyers aren’t biglaw partners; they are boutique smalllaw contingency plaintiff’s litigators.
If you have your own succesful practice, no one tells you what to do and no one can take it away from you. In your spare time, you can focus on investments or other activities.
The path that you describe of working for a few years doing biglaw document review, hating it, not having the knowledge to start your own firm, and begging for entry level business jobs is, admittedly, not versatile or smart.
[…] Extremely Versatile Crockery November 2010 45 comments 5 […]
Count me among those who are unimpressed with this post. I tremendously enjoy this blog, but this particular post seemed like more of a rant, and not a terribly effective one.
The main argument seems to relate only to those who either enter law school with the intent of NOT practising law, or those in law school who are so miserable that they hope to graduate and bypass the legal field to immediately work in non-lawyer job. For those people, you are certainly right. Don’t think your degree will provide entry to multiple fields of work.
In any other situation, you are talking to people who will have actually practised law for at least a short period of time, and in so doing will have picked up some useful skills. While the degree itself may not be “versatile” I think you oversimplify the skills learned while practising law. I have been a litigator and a transactional attorney, and while there is virtually no substantive legal area that I have mastered that would come in handy outside of the law, there are a wealth of other skills that do.
For starters, if you have spent any time in a corporate environment you know how rare it is to find a person with strong analytical abilities. Lawyers generally to develop strong analytical skills just by doing their jobs. Strong writing skills also transfer quite nicely to a non-legal job. Perhaps more than anything else, the ability to craft strong and persuasive arguments is a vital tool in corporate environment, and something that you will use almost every day. I have found that internal clients (“business people”) place a tremendous value on having people around them who can crystalize an issue and quickly propose a solution. This skillset is highly transferable outside of a legal career.
So, while I wholeheartedly agree with the notion that obtaining a J.D. merely for resume window dressing is foolish, I think you need to reconsider the notion that the only skills you develop as a lawyer are meaningless outside of a law job.
I guess I’m of the opinion that most people acquire “strong analytical abilities” in college…without paying $180k for a law degree. It is a scandal that law schools market a law degree as though it weren’t simply a degree for practicing law, and I stand by my post.
I disagree. Law school taught me to hone my innate analytical skills. In college I had the “smarts,” but no focus. The sink-or-swim environment of law school (and the competitiveness of it) forced me to bring my “A” game to my academic studies.
That said, I would advise anyone seriously considering law school to think long and hard about attending a private law school. To quote Good Will Hunting:
“See the sad thing about a guy like you, is in about 50 years you’re gonna start doin’ some thinkin’ on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don’t do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda’ got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.”
A public law school won’t cost $1.50, but if you truly want to be a lawyer it shouldn’t matter that you went to a public law school. Likewise, if you truly want to be a lawyer, the smartest thing you can do is to get someone else to pay for it (e.g., military JAG, public interest/service, employer tuition reimbursement, etc…)
Some of the public, state law schools are outstanding and highly ranked. I’ll take a Michigan Law degree any time over one from a “small, prestigious, private” law school with higher tuition and less name recognition (and, worse yet, perhaps only recognition for a niche market – one religion, one political POV, etc.).
I did a deal years ago where I had our corporate client’s general counsel and VP on the phone a lot. The VP kept talking about how someone on the other side of the deal had to be brillliant “because he went to [general counsel’s] college” – one of those small, super expensive, little known schools. It came up so often (“he must be smart, because he went to Schylar’s college”) that I decided that the VP and GC were both major douches for being SO incredibly impressed by one person’s private college credentials. It got pathetic.
Agreed on law school rather than college or grad school honing my painful bluntness and analytical skills – very, very handy in life to be able to administer interrogation/probing/BS detection so naturally.
It seems like alot of lemmingious law lemmings are in denial and quite delusional about the profound lack of value of their JD’s. For most but the few members of the Preferred, Protected and or seriously Connected classes, a JD is an albatross in life both in and especially outside the legal community. A law degree really does not confirm upon lemmings any sort of useful superpowers that give such lemmings a leg up in anything in life. It is all a big scam and the OP is dead on about all of it to the consternation of the law lemmings in denial.
Get over yourselves fools. Most of you made serious life ruining mistakes when you opted to attend law scam…I mean law school.
That is all. Save yourselves. Leave law now.
God Bless…Yours truly, The John Bungsolaphagus, the great lawland Prophet.
Greefrog: “However, I don’t agree that a law degree necessarily makes someone less versatile. I think that *people* make themselves less versatile. Many people with law degrees have had great success in and outside of law (genuine success, not just obstructionist-litigator faux prestige or faux financial success). I know a highly successful journalist who reports for a national public broadcaster from around the world. She told me that her legal training has helped her in her field. ”
The fact that one *can* be successful in non-legal careers (and ‘many’ isn’t much, considering that 40-50,000 people graduate from law school each year in the USA) doesn’t mean much. You will pay from $100,000-$250,0000 for the ability to ‘can be’ sucessful. Not counting interest, or lost wages.
Is that worth it?
[…] https://thepeoplestherapist.com/2010/11/03/extremely-versatile-crockery/ […]
JD here and I agree with the OP. I regret going to law school for the same reasons many do. I went to the 2nd tier regionally respected law school, but I cannot find work. Turns out that in law, as well as business, there are few entry level jobs and an over saturation of graduates. As such, there is downward pressure on wages, working conditions and you have very little leverage when applying. A law degree is OK if you 1) know you love the law (which I did not), 2) can get the education for free (even then it is questionable) OR 3) can go to a top tier school or finish in the top 20% of your class at a mid-tier school.
The salary (and also demand) for lawyers is bi-modal. Half of the lawyers or more are situated around the 60K salary range (most people except those from top schools or those at the very top of their class). For this group, the work prospects are not good, there is a high risk of giving up on finding work in law and there is little to no leverage early in your career. For this (large) group, law isn’t the best investment (unless of course you love it so much you would do it for free). The other half (or less) has salaries hovering around $120k- these are the top law school grads or people at the top of their class who are offered jobs in big law. This group has better job prospects and slightly more leverage (if applying to smaller firms)- and higher salaries. For this group, law school may have made sense.
One of the biggest lies in law, is the income potential. Lawyers are paid much less per hour than the annual salary would imply due to the job often requiring longer than a 40 hours workweek. So comparing a Physician’s Assistant who works 40 hours a week and is in a high demand career and makes 90k on average to a lawyer working 60 hours per week to make the same amount, shows that the PA makes considerably more per hour. Sure, this isn’t all about the pay, but on pay alone, which motivates lots of people- law is not worth it. Many lawyers may be surprised that after tallying up the total number of hours worked and dividing into their annual pay, their hourly salary is on par or below with that of a dental hygienist (70K average, 32 hour/week); physician assistant (90k/40 hours), nurse, dentist , doctor, physical therapist, psychologist, accountant, engineer etc etc etc etc etc etc …………law is not a lucrative career except for a small portion of law graduates. When you consider that the price to be in many of those other careers is much lower than the cost of law school, it becomes obvious why law is an overrated career.