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Burdened with Debt, Law School Graduates Struggle in Job Market
- bruceb 12y agoI know someone in this situation. It is sad having $100k+ debt. That being said seems good thing the country to need fewer lawyers. With the excess where is the $49hr lawyer available for people? I have seen some on freelancer/uwork sites for $88 but would think could lower than that.
- Wingman4l7 12y agoMaybe they'd be cheap, but they'd presumably be a recently-graduated student desperate for work, with no experience. People don't tend to prefer hiring a lawyer with no experience.
- marincounty 12y agoI've been wondering about that to. I think the lawyers from top schools can lateral into other fields easily. The lawyers I know all do something else besides law. One teaches. One rents out bedrooms in his home. One barely scrapes by waiting for the phone to ring, and hoping the person will accept $400/hr.? One got a real estate brokers license.(you don't need any prior experience if you passed the bar.) I think it will just take time for the profession to realize they will probally not make what other generations made. I do think there's a huge need for reasonably priced lawyers. Something between Nolo Press and $400 hr.? Some areas of law are pretty straight foreword. If a person without many assets(expensive home--mainly), and just has unsecured debt; a straight chapter 7 is something a lawyer could guarantee.(As long as the client is completely honest?) I'm surprised more don't advertise in that light--instead of hiding their work in mystery. To any lawyer who tries to scare a client into paying whatever--the climate has changed. We know a little more than we did before the Internet, and Nolo. At least in civil matters.
- breitling 12y agoMany people believe that you get what pay for with Lawyers, Accountants, and other professional services. I don't think we will likely see such low costs for good lawyers anytime soon.
- burnte 12y agoI'm slowly working my way through school again in my mid-30s to go to law school, although so many lawyer friends have advised against it due to an overcrowded marketplace. I really haven't yet decided if I'll actually do it due to such horrid numbers...
- M8 12y agoConsider reading this: http://www.amazon.com/Worthless-Young-Persons-Indispensable-Choosing/dp/1467978302 http://www.amazon.com/Worthless-Young-Persons-Indispensable-... Or at least watch some of his videos about degrees, e.g.: "Before You Get Your MBA or Law Degree" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNQqXyfsye0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNQqXyfsye0
- panglott 12y agoWow, that books looks just priceless, almost a parody of the position it advocates, to judge by the Amazon reviews. English degrees are worthless, except perhaps if you want to avoid getting dinged by every other reviewer for your poor writing and grammar.
- bruceb 12y agoWhat is needed is law school graduate employment numbers broken down by undergrad degree. I would think those who have undergrad in some STEM would be doing better than those with no technical background.
- cbd1984 12y ago> What is needed is law school graduate employment numbers broken down by undergrad degree. It's too easy to game these numbers if law schools give their grads little temporary (not necessarily temp) jobs right out of school and then lay them off soon after, once the statistics stop following those people.
- graeme 12y agoCheck out law school transparency. They've got stats for every school, including what percent are school funded jobs like you describe. http://www.lstscorereports.com http://www.lstscorereports.com
- grabeh 12y agoWhy would you think that those with a STEM undergraduate degree would do better than those with an arts background? I think you can extract potential benefits from any degree which could serve you well in practising the law. Take History for example, where you're taking different interpretations of the past, and concocting arguments in support of a particular interpretation, which is similar to what you will be doing as a general litigator.
- mauricemir 12y agoOne high profile barrister in the UK commented that a good lawyer has some elements of being a good actor.
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- laurentsabbah 12y agoThe world is changing...even here in Israel, without any debt, salaries for law school graduates are extremely low and it is very hard to land a job even at that, a real struggle. On another note, the hi-tech and startup jobs are extremely good, huge demand, good salaries.
- acd 12y agoWho questions the use of central banks? Their purpose, their market intervention in setting the price of new money and creating debt?
- ximeng 12y agoFX traders, economists, ratings agencies
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y agoBitcoiners and other libertarians?
- CurtMonash 12y agoIrony not called out in the article: Despite poor job prospects for law school graduates, LSAT tutoring still pays well.
- danielweber 12y agoIf people in the bottom half of the law school class are using LSATs, it's a waste and they should stop. The top half of the class is still doing okay. Of course, everyone thinks they are in the top half.
- graeme 12y agoI'm in this industry. Two comments. First, if you are going to law school, the ROI of a better LSAT score is astounding. Likely $200000 in scholarships and then who knows how much in future earnings. That is what justifies the high fees. But second, the market for LSAT tutors has actually shrunk dramatically. It's been cannibalized by an explosion in free/affordable online resources that are as good or better than a tutor. I know johnathan, the tutor in the article. He has his own platform that generates clients. It's very, very hard to be an LSAT tutor now if you don't have that. Only the visible minority can consistently charge $100+ an hour ar enough volume to do it full time. For anyone curious about these online resources, the main company in the field is 7sage. They've done the most to destroy demand for tutoring (this is a good thing!). They have free explanations for the logic games section. This used to be what everyone asked tutors about. Now almost no one wants logic games help. While I do tutoring, I mostly focus on products and on creating free/inexpensive resources. This is my own contribution to eliminating the need for people like me: http://lsathacks.com/explanations/ http://lsathacks.com/explanations/ (They're free explanations for a bunch of LSAT practice tests.)
- graeme 12y agoWritten on my phone, hence typos. I'll correct one: the tutors name is Jonathan, no h. Oops.
- Wingman4l7 12y agoVery brave of you to voluntarily contribute to your own profession's demise by helping to provide auto-didactic services.
- brudgers 12y agoThe starting salaries of Law School Graduates in the US has become distinctly bimodal: http://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib http://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib
- HarryHirsch 12y agoBefore 2008 universities treated law schools as cash cows. It was not uncommon for a tier-2 or tier-3 school to open up a law school to make some money for the rest of the place. (Incidentally, the role has now been taken by schools of pharmacy.) Where is the interview with a law school dean of a non-top-10-school, i.e. with a person who continues to perpetuate the misery?
- wahsd 12y agoProTip: Don't go to law school. Society is already awash with lawyers, who, beyond their functional purpose, quickly represent a corrosive and corrupting impact on society. Lawyers are like algae, if you don't make sure the conditions keep it in line, it will bloom and suffocate all life in its self destructive zeal.
- mox1 12y agoHow come the overabundance of people practicing law has not driven the cost of lawyer related services down? (Supply and demand makes me assume this would be happening by now..)
- lowleveldrone 12y agoIt appears relatively few are establishing their own practices because the income from a private practice is very uncertain. It also looks like demand for lawyer related services has also decreased. The larger firms have responded to this by laying people off - it seems they would prefer to have few, highly compensated positions rather than many lowly paid positions.
- rayiner 12y agoThe supply of "hirable lawyers," those with real experience, is gated by the amount of legal activity in the broader economy.
- intopieces 12y agoI think it has, in some respects. We have things like LegalZoom.com, which provide quick access to a law professional for things like wills and incorporation documents.
- pkaye 12y agoPeople usually want to hire experienced lawyers. So there is a large pool of recent graduates and a small pool of those experienced.
- geebee 12y agoI've wondered about this too. I agree that a newly minted JD really isn't typically ready to be a lawyer (they don't do residencies like physicians). But then I read about how much legal help an untrained (legally) but highly literate person in prison can provide to fellow inmates, and it does seem that a new grad would be better than what a lot of people get. Especially since a court appointed lawyer is only available to those who can't afford it under narrow circumstances. There are plenty of things that can lead to prison in a roundabout way that don't qualify for a count-appointed lawyer - and even if prison isn't in the cards, the stakes can be unbelievably high. Part of the problem, I think, is just how little money many people who need legal help actually have. My guess is that there's a cliff between $150/hr and the next tier that people can afford. In other words, they can pay for the "expensive" lawyer ($150/hr isn't particularly high for a legal bill), or they can't pay at all. I do think that completely restructuring the system for joining the bar might accomplish this. In other words, allow law to be an undergraduate major, or perhaps allow people to test in through self-study. Find a way for people to join the field without going very heavily into debt. That might make it possible for practitioners to get their fees down, while still offering a service that is immeasurably better than no lawyer at all. Still, pretty hard when you're multiplying by zero, which may be the case here.
- forinti 12y agoWe've had this problem in Brazil for quite a while. It persists, I think, because of the large salaries that some public careers offer. People would be better off working as plumbers or electricians (huge demand for those jobs at the moment), but there's also the need for social recognition which, it seems, is more important than money for some people (who have not realised they wil get neither).
- ddoolin 12y agoSince when was the economy "flourishing" in 2010?
- genericresponse 12y agoIt was flourishing in 2007 when he started. 2010 graduation minus 3 years.
- breitling 12y agoMany have predicted for a while now that the next big crisis will be the default of student loans (approximated at over $1 Trillion). Perhaps the Law profession will lead the way, but there must be many other professions where people are getting degrees but not jobs. After-all, it takes a lot of people to accumulate $1 Trillion in debt.
- sunstone 12y agoMBA's probably supply quite a few of these.
- StillBored 12y agoBut, in the US you can't "default" on student loans, they just keep accruing until the government starts to take it out of your social security payments. My step father is close to being in this situation, he went to medical school in his late 30's, didn't pay his loans for a couple years, and now nearing his 60's faces the probability that he won't actually manage to pay them off before he retires. The one loan you never want to take out is student loans, its total debt slavery.
- zaccus 12y agoYou can definitely default on student loans; plenty of people are. You just can't get them discharged in bankruptcy.
- StillBored 12y agoI was trying to differentiate default on a student loan from defaults on pretty much everything else. I'm not sure your credit card company can block a professional license or garnish your wages. Plus, as I understand it, its pretty common for bankruptcy judges to adjust the principal, or remove fees/unpaid interest from other forms of defaulted debt, when the debt isn't directly discharged. This is apparently really rare for student loans.
- johnaspden 12y agoAt last, an explanation for the proverbially low price of legal services!