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Should law schools be held to a different standard than undergraduate programs? Last I checked, colleges don't advertise the employment prospects for a typical

by nhebb 14y ago

Should law schools be held to a different standard than undergraduate programs? Last I checked, colleges don't advertise the employment prospects for a typical bachelor's degree. If you are smart enough to get into law school, you should be able to do enough research to gauge your prospects after graduation based on the law school you plan to attend and your undergraduate GPA.

scarmig 14y ago
The issue is, in popular culture, law is viewed as a relatively easy way (compared to medicine) to enter the upper middle class. This is outdated, but the fact remains, and it's re-enforced by many people in high ranking positions having a background in law. Many people, particularly groups of people traditionally excluded from professional life, really have no idea about the reality. The information is out there, but if you've always been told that law is the safe, smart thing to do, you might not even know to look. Known unknowns versus unknown unknowns, and all that. Most people fall into their work not out of a rational economic analysis (which is pretty damn hard, even for people who do it for a living) but out of impressions born of the zeitgeist. When someone chose to study CS or become a programmer (or whatever it is that you did), he or she probably didn't go through heaps of research about its prospects and then read a couple of books about whether or not those would continue in the future. Most likely, he chose to do it because he enjoyed computers, had friends with big salaries out of school, and knew there was a bunch of money flowing into companies like Google. Through luck of the draw, that decision worked out.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Number of Google m/billionaires who saw many people getting rich from a CS degree when they were in school: 0. Fighting the previous war is always foolish. Money is made by leading the pack, not following it.
  - khuey 14y ago
    People don't go to law school to become billionaires. They go to law school because it used to be a pretty good odds ticket for a lifetime in the upper-middle class.
Apocryphon 14y ago
Law schools are almost always more expensive than undergraduate programs, aren't they?
- the_watcher 14y ago
  Yes. Plus the new interest rates are 6.8% and 7.9% (the majority of which is 7.9%), which accrues immediately, as subsidized loans were eliminated last year.
the_watcher 14y ago
The problem is the statistics that are given contain ABA-approval. Now, thanks to the efforts of LST and the broader scamblog movement, you should know better, but 5 years ago before anyone really talked about this? Is it reasonable to expect people not to trust the governing body's numbers to at least be in the realm of reality?
- nhebb 14y ago
  > The problem is the statistics that are given contain ABA-approval Can you expand on that? Are they providing misleading data?
  - the_watcher 14y ago
    They allow misleading data. For example: average graduate salary $150K. They do not provide link showing that this includes only graduates who report salaries (so the formula is total of reported graduate salary / total number of graduates reporting a salary rather than total of reported salaries / total graduates. There is substantial evidence that worse outcomes are less reported, plus the school actively tracks grads with high salaries, while it ignores those without). Another example: employing students in "school funded" jobs for 9 months (when they report employment numbers), then ending the employment. Check out Law School Transparency, Inside The Law School Scam, Glenn Reynold's book Inside the Higher Education Bubble, and Constitutional Daily for more information.

by nhebb 14y ago

scarmig 14y ago

The issue is, in popular culture, law is viewed as a relatively easy way (compared to medicine) to enter the upper middle class. This is outdated, but the fact remains, and it's re-enforced by many people in high ranking positions having a background in law. Many people, particularly groups of people traditionally excluded from professional life, really have no idea about the reality. The information is out there, but if you've always been told that law is the safe, smart thing to do, you might not even know to look. Known unknowns versus unknown unknowns, and all that. Most people fall into their work not out of a rational economic analysis (which is pretty damn hard, even for people who do it for a living) but out of impressions born of the zeitgeist. When someone chose to study CS or become a programmer (or whatever it is that you did), he or she probably didn't go through heaps of research about its prospects and then read a couple of books about whether or not those would continue in the future. Most likely, he chose to do it because he enjoyed computers, had friends with big salaries out of school, and knew there was a bunch of money flowing into companies like Google. Through luck of the draw, that decision worked out.

Evbn 14y ago
Number of Google m/billionaires who saw many people getting rich from a CS degree when they were in school: 0. Fighting the previous war is always foolish. Money is made by leading the pack, not following it.
- khuey 14y ago
  People don't go to law school to become billionaires. They go to law school because it used to be a pretty good odds ticket for a lifetime in the upper-middle class.

Apocryphon 14y ago

Law schools are almost always more expensive than undergraduate programs, aren't they?

the_watcher 14y ago
Yes. Plus the new interest rates are 6.8% and 7.9% (the majority of which is 7.9%), which accrues immediately, as subsidized loans were eliminated last year.

the_watcher 14y ago

The problem is the statistics that are given contain ABA-approval. Now, thanks to the efforts of LST and the broader scamblog movement, you should know better, but 5 years ago before anyone really talked about this? Is it reasonable to expect people not to trust the governing body's numbers to at least be in the realm of reality?

nhebb 14y ago
> The problem is the statistics that are given contain ABA-approval Can you expand on that? Are they providing misleading data?
- the_watcher 14y ago
  They allow misleading data. For example: average graduate salary $150K. They do not provide link showing that this includes only graduates who report salaries (so the formula is total of reported graduate salary / total number of graduates reporting a salary rather than total of reported salaries / total graduates. There is substantial evidence that worse outcomes are less reported, plus the school actively tracks grads with high salaries, while it ignores those without). Another example: employing students in "school funded" jobs for 9 months (when they report employment numbers), then ending the employment. Check out Law School Transparency, Inside The Law School Scam, Glenn Reynold's book Inside the Higher Education Bubble, and Constitutional Daily for more information.