Is law school worth the $$/work?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hey all,

I’m a 19 year old student at the University at Buffalo, studying poly-sci, and business management.

I was wondering if anyone who’s taken the plunge into law school can tell me if it’s worth it.

My reason for the interest in law school is simple, I don’t know what to do, and I see the need for more school (4 years doesn’t seem like a big wow anymore).

I know you can apply a law-based education to tons of areas, so I think it would give me tons of flexibility (more than an MBA maybe?).

I searched the forums, and couldn’t find this question, so I thought I’d ask as my first post here.

P.S. I’m new, and loving it so far. :smiley:

2

Do yourself a big favor: don’t go to law school just because you don’t know what else to do after college.

I did that. A lot of my friends did that. We are all finding that, at the very least, we wish we’d waited a few years and worked in the real world before making the decision.

It’s not the hard work. I didn’t think law school was all that hard, and I went to Harvard. My main regret is that I racked up big student loan debt because I assumed that I would be working for a big firm and making big money.

Eighteen months after starting at the firm I was sure I’d love, I have realized that the practice of law–at least in a firm–is not for me. And I’m not sure what to do from here. If I wasn’t so deeply in debt, it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but I am, so I feel trapped.

Bottom line: take some time. Learn about what lawyers actually do. Find out what their lives are like. Maybe even work as a paralegal for a couple of years. Check out your other options. The happiest, best adjusted people I knew in law school were people who went to law school after having other jobs.

Also, keep your student debt as low as possible. The practice of law is high stress. Many people find themselves unhappy in a job they were sure they’d love. You want to have as many options as possible, job-wise, after you graduate.

Best of luck.

3

hey thanks,

Was I right though, to assume that you can do more than just work in a firm after law school? It seems like some sort of super mba or something. Just want to keep my options open, but I really appreciate the warning.

4

To be bluntly honest, I went to law school partly because I could and partly because I didn’t know what else to do. One major difference with what you’re contemplating is that I did it straight out of high school (which is possible here), so bear that in mind. I finished up law school with $30,000 or so in debt, missing several years of my adult life, and no intention of ever practicing law.

… but I had the time of my life and have never once regretted my decision. I met some extraordinary people, studied under some great teachers and learned a whole lot of stuff which is useful to me in my current occuption (I also did a business degree concurrently, so law is a good complement). Law school is a great lifestyle for a younger person–being grouped together for years with a bunch of mostly clever folk is very valuable experience–and all the more so if you’re the type that likes to study for the sake of learning.

Of course, the standard advice is that you shouldn’t enter law unless you intend on practicing it. While having a law background helps your job prospects in other fields, it could be argued that your four years would be better spent gaining actual experience in the industry you intend to enter instead of wiling away at law school. Further, while a lot of law school training is relevant to other fields, much of what you’ll learn–the intricacies of the law–is directly useful only to those in practice. And then there’s the student debt.

In my case, the debt wasn’t a problem (plus my current job goes further–at least in the short term–towards repaying off my debts than working for a law firm would), and I consider the experience of going to law school to be more valuable than anything I’ve foregone. I I was also lucky enough to be able to do my business degree concurrently, so the extra time spent at university wasn’t an issue. But be very careful: four years isn’t a terribly long time, but it’s not time to be thrown away lightly. Also consider the extra cost and the opportunities you’ll forgo while working through law school.

A law degree is in no way a substitute for an MBA, incidentally.

5

Welcome to the SDMB, Ceen

Since you’re looking for advice more than facts, I’ll move this thread to the IMHO forum.

bibliopahge
moderator GQ

6

There have been a bunch of threads on this, Ceen. You may want to try to revise your search.

I think you would need to do a realistic cost/benefit analysis. If you are not thrilled with the possibility of practicing law, you have to try to estimate how the time and money spent on law school will help you in whatever field you pursue.

You also need to try to assess the job market in law and other fields when you will be ready to graduate. The marketability or new lawyers has varied widely over the past couple of decades.

I would counsel against incurring substantial debt. I know a great many young-ish lawyers who are saddled by huge school debt.

My recommendation would be to try to spend your 4 years identifying what subject truly interests and excites you. Then, get additional education in that area.

7

A law degree isn’t even close to an MBA. Not that it doesn’t have its value and in some lines of work might be considered more useful than an MBA, but it’s not a “super MBA” by any stretch of the imagination. The lines of study are completely different.

I myself think an MBA has a lot more usefulness and can be applied to a wider variety of industries than can a J.D. It’s not all about consulting or crunching numbers. There are lots of places in which a law degree could be useful, other than actually practicing in a law firm, but if you’re considering going to law school only because you don’ t know what else to do, I would say that you’re going for the wrong reason.

8

Thanks for the advice guys,

I have no idea what to do now. I am a polysci major…which could pose a problem if I don’t go to law school. Hm…hmm…

I have no idea how to find out what sort of jobs interest me. To be honest, I just want a job that can intially pay off the loans and help me save for my true goal (to open a business that is socially concious).

I thought about consulting because I know they get to travel (which is what I’d love to do).

hmm…lol…hmm…

Thanks.

9

Yeah it’s the best :rolleyes:

Seriously though, if you aren’t sure what you want to do, you might be better off working as a consultant than a lawyer. I don’t want to go into a whole JD vs MBA thing here but an MBA is definitely more versetile. You learn aspects of marketing, finance, business law, accounting and operations. JD is pretty much teaches you law stuff. This is not to say that you couldn’t go into banking or accounting with a law degree. It’s just that most of the lawyers who became consultants that I know feel that they are veiwed as “former lawyers” or “non-practicing lawyers”.

But I wouldn’t worry. Both tracks can lead you to a rewarding career slaving 100 hours a week for a stodgy partner, bound by the shackles of huge debt, seeing the inside of office cubicals all over the world and raking in a salary that’s just a little tiny bit higher than your friends.

10

lol…great…your last part really scares me…

11

Go to your school’s co-op office and find out what sort of co-op or intern positions they have available. It might even be worth taking a semester off and working as an intern to get a taste of different career paths.

I’m all for education for education’s sake (dual major; English and Philosophy), but having some idea of where you want to go professionally and what course of study to undertake to support that is important.

Dittos to what others have said about not incurring debt you don’t have to. The payment I make on my student loan would be a nice car…too bad I can’t drive it around town.

rainy

12

“Yes, but . . .”

The essential thing that law school does, to paraphrase Professor Kingsfield, is to take your head full of mush and teach you to think like a lawyer. And thinking like a lawyer is essentially an exercise in applying legal principles to the facts given. Once you get out of school, the main place where those skills can be practiced and honed is the law firm. Indeed, the corporate in-house counsel, and government prosecutor (whether agency like the SEC or the generic state’s or U.S. attorneys’ offices), have essentially the same job description - apply law to the facts and achieve the best result for the client. The judicial clerkship is a tad different, but judicial clerkships are not intended to be permanent employment.

The law firm is also the best paying environment by far. In the recent thread on ratio of salary to SAT score, I had the highest number, simply because a lawyer, particularly a specialty lawyer, in a metropolitan practice is compensated at a rate that borders on the obscene. Never once in my career have I been able to afford what I charge my clients.

A law firm is also considered one of the best environments to make the contacts that get you the other jobs. Many moons ago, you pledged your troth to a firm, busted ass to make partner, and stayed with the firm till they scraped your fetid carcass out of the chair in the corner suite. It’s now a lot different, and people go into law firms, particularly large law firms, with the expectation of getting out in a few years. Many go to work for the clients they come into contact with during their practice.

Anyway, you can avoid the law firm if you want, but it may not be a financially realistic option, and any career path you choose may be well served by a few years in the private practice trenches.

I echo what others have said here - don’t go to law school because you don’t know what else to do. Working as a paralegal is excellent advice - I talked a friend of mine into doing that, and she ultimately decided that she really did want to go to law school. But she enters with her eyes open, and with some insight into how law is actually practiced. If you don’t like it, great, you can always go on another track.

13

I’m currently in law school and have to agree with the others here. Do not, I repeat, do NOT go to law school because you can’t think of anything better to do.

You’ll never make it through. Or, you’ll make it through, and be miserable doing it. If you have no intentions of practicing law, law school is not the place for you. I’m a first year and I couldn’t freaking imagine going through what I’m going through if I had no intentions of ever practicing law.

You’re a poli-sci major, right? Any intentions of working in government? I ask because the one place I’ve found a law degree to be quite useful in other than practice, is the legislature. I currently work for the California legislature and a HUGE majority of the folks up in the Capitol have poli-sci B.A’s followed by J.D’s.

Now, no offense, but I also noticed that you’re 19, right? Well, if I were to count how many career paths I thought I wanted to travel down from the time I was 18 until now (I’m 26), I’d run out of fingers and toes. Maybe that’s just the kind of person I am, I’m sure there are many people out there who’ve known what they wanted to do since they were 6, but my point is, your outlook is very likely to change from now to when you graduate. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s good to explore a variety of paths before settling on one, but law school is a hell of a commitment to make in the name of exploration.

Good luck to you.

14

I agree with most of the objections to entering law school given above, but I do not agree that someone with no intention to practice law will suffer at law school. Myself and half a dozen of my peers entered fields other than law after graduation–investment banking, consulting, finance, accounting–and none of us ever came close to flunking law school. And we were happy while we were studying, too.

15

Guys/Gals, I appreciate the lengths you’ve gone to in giving me some advice. I think I’m going to start calling some of the cards I’ve been given over the years (from lawyers), and see if it’s for me.

Thanks…

16

There’s exceptions to every rule, of course. How many of those six people who went on to do other things began law school with no intentions of ever practicing law? It just doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like going to med school and having no intention of ever practicing medicine. Or getting a doctorate in anything really, with no intentions of doing anything having to do with what your doctorate is in. I realize that’s often the case with undergraduate degrees, but it’s seldom the case with highly specialized post-graduate degrees, such as a J.D.

Basically, if you refuse to make a general statement about not doing something for fear of someone out there having sucessfully done it you’ll find yourself hard pressed to make statements about not doing anything, you know? Just because there are people out there, such as yourself, that enjoyed and were sucessful in law school without ever having any intentions of practicing law doesn’t mean it’s a good idea in the general sense.

17

I am not putting down JERVOISE’s education in any way, but I have always understood that getting a law degree in Canada, Britian, or Australia is like getting a bachelor’s degree over here. I’m not saying it’s not harder than majoring in, say, phys ed. – maybe it’s ne of the harder courses of study? – and I think it may take more than four years, but it is a primary (first) university degree. Then you have to do some other stuff, like read for the bar and do some amount of work in the trenches (yes?), so it’s not like your “law degree” is all you need, but it is what you get when you go to university as an undergraduate. In the U.S., of course, a law degree is a post-graduate degree. In virtually every case, you have to get a four-year university degree first, and then you go full time to law school for another three years.

So if the equating of a law degree in a commonwealth (or former commonwealth) nation to an undergraduate degree in the U.S. is not totally wrong and offensive (and if it is – sorry!), then I’m not surpised JERVOISE didn’t find his/her law school such a sweat. I didn’t find university a sweat either, when I was an undergraduate, and I took some pretty rigorous classes.
In the U.S., law school is different than undergrad – by a lot. It is far more competitive, for more difficult intellectually for most, involves far more work, and is graded far more rigorously. I know there are people for whom law school really isn’t any big deal, but I think it’s fair to say that in the U.S., those people are a very, very small minority. Though I don’t know, maybe JERVIOSE is a genius. :slight_smile:

Law school is hard, law school is stressful, and law school is expensive. Don’t do it unless you think you want to practice law. It’s not a “glorified MBA,” it’s somethig totally different. I couldn’t do half the things an MBA could do, and the average MBA sure as hell can’t practice law.

My apologies if I’ve offended JERVOISE or anyone else. If my understanding of law school in other countries is wrong, I’ll gladly take correction.

18

I didn’t mean to infringe on your right to make general statements, only offer a opinion in rebuttal. Sorry if I stood on your toes, but your rather blanket statement simply did not match my experience.

An LLB studied in the Commonwealth is indeed different to a JD–which is why I’ve been very careful to confine my remarks to my own experience–however…

Not offensive, but inaccurate. Despite the “B” in LLB, most law students are postgraduates, or mature-aged students. Competition is tough (heck, I had to compete against a woman who once taught me at high school, plus others who had their degrees before I was born!) The standard of teaching and academic rigour–I’ve studied in other faculties, so I have a fair idea–is definitely a step-up from most other undergraduate courses.

I’ll point out that being an undergraduate in Australia is not the same as the US undergrad experience. Australian undergraduates immediately specialise in one field of study. There’s no time spent on introductory general learning–it’s sink or swim from the beginning. We don’t do a generalised degree before specialising; postgrad courses are nearly always an EXTENSION of undergrad learning, rather than a new field of learning. (Apologies if I misrepresent the US undergrad experience, but I get the impression that it’s markedly different to ours.)

It’s also perhaps relevant that medicine (and dentisty, and vet science) is studied in Australia at an undergraduate level. I think it would be terribly unfair to suggest med students here have it easier than US med students (or that our trainee doctors are less qualified that yours…); equally, it is inaccurate to suggest law in Australia is taught at a lower standard simply because undergraduate entry is possible.

Med grads and law grads serve a one year internship/clerkship/practical training before full admission as a doctor or lawyer. How does it work in the US? Would you argue that a newly admitted Australian doctor or lawyer is less qualified than their US-equivalent, based on the fact that they studied as undergraduates?

Finally, I’ll point out that if a high school graduate was ranked in the 98th percentile of my state’s graduating students (i.e. they beat out 98.0 per cent of the competition), they would not have enough to gain entry to my university’s undergrad law course. Competition to get into school is hard, and it follows that competition within school is at a high level.

Anyway, I hope I didn’t give the impression that law school was a breeze. Plenty of people break and crack; most struggle through a fairly stressful existence. I just happened to enjoy myself (but I’m definitely no genius!) as did several of my peers–despite the fact we didn’t intend to practice. (Possibly due to my congenital inability to become stressed! :cool: )

Sorry for the hijack, Ceen.

Oh, and you could never offend me, Jodi. I’m too much of a fan. :smiley:

19

Perhaps a minor point, on the subject of going to law school but not wanting to practice law.

I can imagine a situation where someone might want to go to law school, but not want to be a practicing lawyer. Maybe they want a career writing or commenting on government, or something like that. Or maybe they want a career in government. I can imagine many internships, clerkships, and the like being available to law students (tho I’m not sure if advanced PolSci studies would be less effective).

But the bottomline is that the thing law school qualifies you for the best is - surprise! - to be a lawyer. (Of course, you can search previous threads where I contend law schools do a pretty piss-poor job of even that!)

Unless you believe in re-incarnation, neither one’s money nor time are infinite. By the time you are in your young 20s, I would seriously counsel against taking on a multi-year and relatively expensive committment, unless I had good reasons to believe that committment would take me further along the road I wished to travel.

Hell, if you just want to be a well-rounded, educated person, law school can help considerably. So much of every aspect of your life and society is related to if not governed by legal concepts. Contracts, property ownership, liability, criminal justice. That’s broadly relevant shit.

But most young folks I know do not have the luxury of simply piling up degrees and amassing indefinite amounts of learning simply for learning’s sake.

Yet more unsolicited advice:
You don’t need to make the decision right away. You could possibly take some time off after undergrad. Travel, or work at various jobs to see what if anything you want to study further.

Part of the tough thing while you are young is deciding what lifestyle you wish. Do you want a job you love, even if it pays little? Or do you require a more comfortable lifestyle, which will require that you either develop some marketable skills, experience, and a certain resume?

You can go back to school at a later date. BUT - it gets increasingly difficult to go back to school if you have either entered into committments such as marraige or parenthood, or if you have gotten accustomed to a certain income. If you think there is a possibility that you want to return to school, you may be best served to adopt a relevantly modest lifestyle. It is easy to say you can live cheaply while a student. But once you get out of school, start making some money, and start enjoying some nice things, I can imagine it being a little hard to give that up and returning to a life of ramen noodles.

20

Hope I’m not perpetuating a hijack, but I have to address Jodi’s point about law school in Commonwealth countries being the equivalent of a US undergraduate degree. I think, Jodi, that you’d find the Canadian path to becoming a lawyer very similar to the US one.

No law school here in Canada would take a student right out of high school. Indeed, while the law school I’m thinking of applying to states that their minimum requirement is two years of undergrad work, they also state quite candidly that they very rarely accept such students. For practical purposes, they will only consider those students who already have a four-year bachelor’s degree, high grades getting it, high LSAT scores, and so on. Although I cannot say for sure, I’m pretty sure that the admission standards at other Canadian law schools would be about the same.

Law school here lasts for three years, after which the student spends a year “articling,” as it’s known here, in a law firm. After that, and assuming the student has passed all the exams, demonstrated competency, and so on, he or she is “called to the bar,” and becomes a lawyer.

As you can see, it is much more than four years of undergrad work right out of high school. True, the law degree is known here as a “Bachelor of Laws,” but I think it is more due to tradition than anything else. An LLB degree is something one gets after getting an undergrad degree in Canada; not in place of it.

Sorry for the hijack, Ceen. Good luck with whatever path you choose!