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Law School is a sham

forensicdeac said:
How screwed am I? I have been seriously thinking about law school because because I am so tired of going to court as an expert witness and knowing more/having more experience than most prosecutors. Basically, I want to pay a lot of money to take a substantial pay cut.
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dude, seriously, DON'T DO IT. If anybody wants to organize an intervention for forensicdeac, PM me.
 
BacktoBack said:
7%, OUCH
locked mine in at around 3% thankfully.
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Yeah I'm so royally fucked financially, it's not even funny. The first $40,000 is fixed at 6.8%, the rest up to the cost of attendance (For Rutgers Medicine, C of A is $65,000 - $70,000 depending on which of the four years) is even higher - 7.9%. The government also got rid of subsidized loans so interest starts on Day 1 for each year of attendance.

Want to laugh really hard - just having run my numbers the other day with loans and interest, I'm looking at a grand total in the ballpark of $310,847.85 just at the end of the next four years of school. Then let's say for my four year residency (making $50K/year), I qualify for forbearance - my grand total at the end of those next four years will be $410,918.05... someone cue up a joke about setting up a PayPal account.
 
There's the tag I was looking for - reveal yourself for some positive reputation.

Knight - really don't see any alternatives but you can see why the field is facing a shortage. 8.0% is robbery - but I guess their opinion is that you will make enough down the road to pay it back. That being said, this continually adds to the primary care crisis - who in their right fucking mind is going to take on this much debt and then open up an office and wait for half ass medicare/medicaid reimbursements to come in. I'm heading straight for anesthesia and the money.
 
P4nthers11 said:
hypothetically, lets say a law student comes out of school and starts his or her own practice fighting parking tickets, doing basic transactional stuff, etc. Is it even possible to then jump to a firm where one would be doing generation skipping trusts after starting down the solo road? I just don't imagine that happens often. I am not above anything-- I spent my life up until this point working crappy jobs-- but I also would prefer to not fight parking tickets.

I too am in law school (2L). I went to law school because I didn't have any better ideas and I thought I could be a pretty good lawyer. I had no idea what being a lawyer entailed. Basically I very easily could have screwed up my entire life, but I at least had the good sense to pick a school that gave me money and the good fortune to do well enough to have employment during the summers.
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I mean, you could do generation skipping trusts on your own at a solo firm after a pretty short amount of time to address that specific example. But the bigger answer to your question is yes and no. If you are a successful solo, then a firm may come along who wants to buy your practice. The flip side of it is that once people start to make it on their own, they don't have much reason to want to sell out and work for the man unless there is a ton of cash involved.

Perfect example: when the economy tanked in 2008, we hemmed and hawed over offering one of our 2L summer clerks (from a second-tier school) a post-graduation fulltime job because we were uncertain about future workflow. So he graduated and started his own practice (again, traffic tickets) with a buddy of his from school who wanted to do domestic work (i.e.: crappy divorces). We helped mentor him as he was starting, and even offered to buy his practice a few years into it. But by that point he didn't need us, as he is his own boss and doing quite well. He is living like the Zack Morris / Road Trip Guy lawyer show on TNT and loving it. To me, that is the end goal and he just sacked up and went for it right from the outset. Good for him. Donald Ross took a similar path, but he worked for a firm for like a year or two before going out on his own.
 
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WFdeacon04 said:
There's the tag I was looking for - reveal yourself for some positive reputation.

Knight - really don't see any alternatives but you can see why the field is facing a shortage. 8.0% is robbery - but I guess their opinion is that you will make enough down the road to pay it back. That being said, this continually adds to the primary care crisis - who in their right fucking mind is going to take on this much debt and then open up an office and wait for half ass medicare/medicaid reimbursements to come in. I'm heading straight for anesthesia and the money.
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The people who can't get the anasthesia/dermatology residencies are the ones that are going to be doing it. Unless they get out of school and say "I want to be a doctor, but I don't want to fight your parking ticket... oops, I mean I don't want to treat your goiter" so they start waiting tables and bitching about the job market instead.
 
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DeacHawk said:
WF04, consolidation an option?
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No idea yet - still in the shock phase of getting my FAFSA return a couple weeks ago. I figured out that with $410K in debt, I could (in theory) pay it off in 5 years with monthly payments of $8,300 (which would make the grand total $498,000). Sure - $8,300 is a ridiculous amount to pay each month, the hope is that I'm making enough in speciality to just continue to live like a poor fuck for those 5 more years and put my debt behind me as fast as possible - I'll be 41 years old at that point. That gives me 25 more years of work to try to make as much as I can.

... and you're right Knight on all fronts. If the government actually prioritized their educational loans, I wouldn't need to pay half of $1 million fucking dollars when all is said and done to become a physician in the United States. Have fun going to get your daily check up and medications from a nurse practitioner in 5-10 years because it will be impossible to find a primary care doctor. Thank god we have all these lawyers though...

Let's just say my kids won't even be sniffing Wake Forest for college.
 
ibleedgoldandblack said:
The people who can't get the anasthesia/dermatology residencies are the ones that are going to be doing it. Unless they get out of school and say "I want to be a doctor, but I don't want to fight your parking ticket... oops, I mean I don't want to treat your goiter" so they start waiting tables and bitching about the job market instead.
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Slight difference between the two - 'Not wanting to fight your parking ticket' is more of a 'I'm too good to be doing this' mentality. 'I don't want to treat your goiter' is more of a 'I don't want to make 5 figures when I owe $400,000+ in loans.' But sure - definitely gives you motivation to bust your ass and land a good high paying residency.

... also you won't be dealing with the ones who couldn't get the best residencies - you'll be dealing with Jose Jimenez who was trained at some Caribbean diploma factory or Sally, the local Nurse Practitioner. Good luck with that - and yes, I work with plenty of Jose's and Sally's in my hospital now - let's just say, I wouldn't trust some of these clowns to treat my dog.
 
WFdeacon04 said:
No idea yet - still in the shock phase of getting my FAFSA return a couple weeks ago. I figured out that with $410K in debt, I could (in theory) pay it off in 5 years with monthly payments of $8,300 (which would make the grand total $498,000). Sure - $8,300 is a ridiculous amount to pay each month, the hope is that I'm making enough in speciality to just continue to live like a poor fuck for those 5 more years and put my debt behind me as fast as possible - I'll be 41 years old at that point. That gives me 25 more years of work to try to make as much as I can.

... and you're right Knight on all fronts. If the government actually prioritized their educational loans, I wouldn't need to pay half of $1 million fucking dollars when all is said and done to become a physician in the United States. Have fun going to get your daily check up and medications from a nurse practitioner in 5-10 years because it will be impossible to find a primary care doctor. Thank god we have all these lawyers though...

Let's just say my kids won't even be sniffing Wake Forest for college.
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sounds like you are going to be sniffing crystal meth on the streets of nyc
 
Marquee Moon said:
sounds like you are going to be sniffing crystal meth on the streets of nyc
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Tobias: No, we are not going to do that again. This family is not about to start using. We are pushers, not takers.
 
well here's a timely article. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-jobs-crisis-at-our-best-law-schools-is-much-much-worse-than-you-think/274795/

"At some of the most prestigious law schools in the country, the numbers were only marginally better. Below, I've listed the top 25 programs in the U.S. News rankings,* along with their underemployment score as calculated by Law School Transparency. Past the top 9, underemployment hits double digits. Outside of the top 15, it mostly hovers around 20 percent.*"

The lesson right now is:

1) don't go into debt for law school unless you are going to a VERY top tier - like top 10 - school.
2) don't go to law school at all unless you get a shitload of scholarships AND you really want to be a lawyer, even if that means hanging out your shingle when you can't get a job at a firm.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
I mean, you could do generation skipping trusts on your own at a solo firm after a pretty short amount of time to address that specific example. But the bigger answer to your question is yes and no. If you are a successful solo, then a firm may come along who wants to buy your practice. The flip side of it is that once people start to make it on their own, they don't have much reason to want to sell out and work for the man unless there is a ton of cash involved.

Perfect example: when the economy tanked in 2008, we hemmed and hawed over offering one of our 2L summer clerks (from a second-tier school) a post-graduation fulltime job because we were uncertain about future workflow. So he graduated and started his own practice (again, traffic tickets) with a buddy of his from school who wanted to do domestic work (i.e.: crappy divorces). We helped mentor him as he was starting, and even offered to buy his practice a few years into it. But by that point he didn't need us, as he is his own boss and doing quite well. He is living like the Zack Morris / Road Trip Guy lawyer show on TNT and loving it. To me, that is the end goal and he just sacked up and went for it right from the outset. Good for him. Donald Ross took a similar path, but he worked for a firm for like a year or two before going out on his own.
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Lets not forget though that these people cant take a vacation outside of a three day weekend for like 5 years.
 
TheTwinAndreBen said:
Lets not forget though that these people cant take a vacation outside of a three day weekend for like 5 years.
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fuck dude, most firm lawyers dont take vacations

let the wife and kids go down to disney then fly down to meet them for 4 days mid week

meh
 
I think part of this depends on expectations.

I didn't go to law school to fight traffic tickets. And I made sure that I got into a law school that at the time meant I wouldn't have to fight traffic tickets so yeah, when I was looking for jobs when unemployed there were certain things that I just was not going to do... Like Family Law.
 
JGDeac said:
The horror!
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There are some fine NP's. For a lot of things the difference might not matter. But to think there is no difference between someone with 4 years of med school and 3 years of residency versus a BS in nursing and then a masters in NP is just wrong. The co-pay is the same ]- so you can bet I'll be seeing the family physician/internist.
 
BacktoBack said:
There are some fine NP's. For a lot of things the difference might not matter. But to think there is no difference between someone with 4 years of med school and 3 years of residency versus a BS in nursing and then a masters in NP is just wrong. The co-pay is the same ]- so you can bet I'll be seeing the family physician/internist.
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Exactly - same thing with a certified nurse anesthesist. I'm sure there are a ton of great nurses who have learned in a post-graduate Master's how to administer the correct dosage of anesthesia and respond to issues. When shit hits the fan during the operation/procedure, I would want an MD standing at the controls. Say what you want, the majority of the population would agree.
 
But think of all the useless shit the MD had to learn on top of the right dosage. They might have more school but I don't think their psych rotation is going to help you out there.
 
DeaconCav06 said:
But think of all the useless shit the MD had to learn on top of the right dosage. They might have more school but I don't think their psych rotation is going to help you out there.
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Agreed but that's just your medical school rotation. More importantly, each physician is trained in 4-5 years of a residency specific to their specialty for a total of 8 - 10 years of graduate training...
 
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