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Law School is a sham

M

marquee moon

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http://www.salon.com/2013/04/06/law_school_is_a_sham/

Today there’s a lawyer for every 265 Americans*more than twice the per capita number in 1970*but for future attorneys, there won’t be enough legal jobs for more than half of them.

...

Some people go to law school because it’s the last resort of the liberal arts major who doesn’t know what to do next. In that respect, the decision to enroll has long resulted from a process of elimination that proceeds something like this: being a member of a profession is the ultimate achievement, but medical school requires science-oriented interests and talents that don’t fit most students in the humanities; postgraduate degrees in history, philosophy, English, and the social sciences are for future professors; business school is for those whose principal ambition is to make lots of money. That leaves law school, which offers students a three-year reprieve from the world while they pursue a noble course that presumably creates even more options. Sometimes that plan works out okay; for too many others, it leads to a place where dreams go to die.
 
When I post this stuff it's because I am so fed up with the ABA.

Shit I went to a top tier law school. I do well. I have no complaints, but there are too many fucking lawyers.

Lawyers fucked up the whole model. Greedy short sighted lawyers
 
Law schools desperate to get their hands on tuition/student loans fucked up the model. There are too many damn law schools lying about their employment numbers.
 
You're telling me going to ABA-approved, 600 per class Charlotte Law and racking up 250k in loans is a bad idea? They told me I'd have a great future, they just didn't specify in what.
 
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Fayettenam said:
You're telling me going to ABA-approved, 600 per class Charlotte Law and racking up 250k in loans is a bad idea? They told me I'd have a great future, they just didn't specify in what.
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I assume you are joking and exagerrating, but, anyone dumb enough to rack up loans like that for law school outside the Ivy League shouldn't be allowed in.
 
scooter84 said:
I assume you are joking and exagerrating, but, anyone dumb enough to rack up loans like that for law school outside the Ivy League shouldn't be allowed in.
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God no. It is more an indictment of the fact that the ABA allowed for a 7th law school in NC knowing it would be enrolling over 1000 people in an already saturated market, as mentioned above.
 
Law school is not a sham for people who actually want to be lawyers. It can be a sham for those simply trying to get an advanced degree for the hell of it, delay working for a few years, or who think they *might* want to be a lawyer. But honestly, I don't feel too bad for those folks; I don't know anybody who would feel sorry for someone entering medical school or dental school or advanced engineering school with that level of doubt, so I'm not going to feel sorry for someone who enters law school in that situation.
 
Knight said:
Not surprisingly, the people who are dumb enough to think that racking up 200k in student debt at Charlotte Law is a good idea are also the same individuals who fall right in the target-LSAT range for Charlotte Law.

I worked in Law School Admissions for three years at a Tier 1 school. Let me relate to you an example:

About three years ago, I received a call from a "prospective" student. LSAT scores had just come back, and call volume was heavy. This particular individual wanted a paper application mailed to him and also wanted to set up a time to visit the campus as he was going to tour North Carolina schools. He was very proud of his LSAT score and told me that he scored "better than perfect." Naturally, I asked him how that was possible. He replied with, "cause I got better than 100 percent - I got 128 percent." I wrote down the individuals name, mailed him a paper application, and then waited.

A few months later I was surfing around the database and the guy's name came up. I remembered our conversation and I decided to find out what happened to him. I first checked Campbell's admittee list; no dice. Then I checked Charlotte Law's list - bam. There's my boy, class of 2013.

I have no idea if he is getting ready to graduate at this point or not - but there is a chance that someone that dumb is getting ready to be a licensed attorney in North Carolina this year.
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Let's all hope the Bar Exam does what it is supposed to do and protects the public from this guy.
 
Knight said:
A trained monkey could get lucky and pass the bar. I agree that it weeds some people out, but there are so many subjective factors that play into the results of that exam that it is unreliable at best.

I'd just like to add that the guy in my story becoming a lawyer 1) doesn't help him (huge debt), 2) doesn't help the people that will be his clients (malpractice), and 3) doesn't help other attorneys who will undoubtedly have to deal with all the fuckups that this neanderthal will create. The only group that benefits is Charlotte Law, they milked ~200k out of the guy with a literal government-endorsed death grip on the guy's finances.

'merika.
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won't the bolded group make out okay getting PAID?
 
The tier 1 school I attended for my 1L year costs over 250k. Nine months out, less than 40% of the class of 2012 were in a full-time, long-term, JD required position. When I was applying, I thought I did my research. I talked to lots of attorneys and they said, go to a tier 1 school in the market you want to practice in, and you will be fine. Those attorneys were full of shit.

I can't say that this story has a happy ending, but I did transfer out of there. While I'm still racking up a shitload of debt, I at least should have a better shot at post-grad employment.
 
One of the guys from my LLM class announced via facebook this week that he was abandoning the practice of law to make a mix tape.

You want to talk about over saturation of law schools look to FL. This guy went to FAMU school of law. I had not idea they even had a law school.
 
DDeac08 said:
The tier 1 school I attended for my 1L year costs over 250k. Nine months out, less than 40% of the class of 2012 were in a full-time, long-term, JD required position. When I was applying, I thought I did my research. I talked to lots of attorneys and they said, go to a tier 1 school in the market you want to practice in, and you will be fine. Those attorneys were full of shit.
I can't say that this story has a happy ending, but I did transfer out of there. While I'm still racking up a shitload of debt, I at least should have a better shot at post-grad employment.
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Not necessarily. Any one of those other 60%, or several of them together, should be (given proper professional mentoring) generally equiped to open their own practice, which is a large part of ultimately being a lawyer (whether that practice is truly solo or within a firm). That is what law school, in theory, is designed to help you do. There is a difference between being a practicing professional and a corporate employee. The two overlap in certain scenarios, but that overlap is not necessary. I know very few lawyers from tier 1 schools who have failed at opening their own practice.

Note: I do not think someone from a tier 3 or 4 school should be starting their own firm, that is a disaster for everyone involved. The tier 3 and 4 schools need to get gone. But most people from a tier 1 school should be able to do it if they want to. That said, I think tier 1 schools should have mandatory classes on the business side of practice management. But they (especially the one I went to) want to think that all of their grads are going to be arguing constitutional theory for $800/hour charged to a faceless megacorp instead of knowing how to balance their trust account.
 
how is this any different than going to one of the 1000s of bull shit undergrad institutions and getting a degree in leisure sports or whatever instead of just going to learn how to be a welder?
 
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