| Topic Name: |
Law school misconceptions |
| Message Name: |
yeah right |
| Date Posted: |
05/22/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
Law school misconceptions and other questions answered
To answer all the questions that keep getting asked over and over again, I'll post a list of law school misconceptions, as a reference source for people to refer to.
(1) It's better to take a scholarship at a lower ranked school and have no debt when you come out.
This is wrong on two counts. Number one, you will still be financially worse off because you have to forgo three years of salary in order to attend law school. And even the small debt is hard to pay off if you are unemployed. The top law school is a ticket to BIGLAW, and only BIGLAW salaries justify the expense of law school anyway.
(2) If you go to a lesser school, it will be real easy to be in the top 10% of the class and make law review.
This too is not true. You'd be surprised how random law school grades can be. It's very easy for a highly over-qualified and studious law student to miss the law review cut-off, and then without law review you are doomed to crappy jobs.
(3) Better job opportunities for 10% at lesser school than bottom of class at top school.
This too is wrong. Yes, law firms look at grades, but they'd rather higher someone from the bottom of even a lesser top school like Penn or Cornell than someone at the top of the class at a 2nd tier school.
(4) There are 15 top law schools.
No, there are only 14. UT Austin is maybe the best school in Texas, but it doesn't have a national reputation. Of course it's better than going to any other school in Texas. The top 14 law schools have been the top 14 for a very long time. The top 14 list never changes. (I have no connection to either Texas or Georgetown. Just calling it the way I see it.)
(5) You're disgruntled.
This isn't a misconception. I am disgruntled. But I sure do have lot of free time on my hands, don't I? The bigger question is why does Gurdonak have so much free time?
(6) BIGLAW jobs suck anyway, so there's no great loss if you go to a school where you can't get one.
Maybe BIGLAW jobs suck, I wouldn't know I never worked at one, although I don't see hordes of BIGLAW lawyers quitting. They like their high salaries too much. There's a book by Cameron Stracher that you can buy at Amazon.com which details his life at BIGLAW. It's entertaining, but a lot of it reads like sour grapes. It's really annoying after a while reading about him complaining about his job when he's making $140K.
I have a friend who worked at BIGLAW and complained about it, but he just complains about everything. He's just not a happy person.
But I do know that outside of BIGLAW, legal salaries deteriorate awfully fast, and if your goal is a $35K job working for the government, then you don't need three years of law school and all the debt that comes with it to achieve such a goal.
(7) With a law degree you can pursue opportunities outside of law.
This is the biggest lie of all. The law degree scares off all non-legal employers. I recommend that law school graduates looking for non-legal jobs take law school off their resume. I have much better success when I leave law school off of my resume.
(8) It's great to have both an MBA and a JD.
Wrong again. Law firms don't care about the MBA. None of the partners have one, and if they don't need one, they reason that no on does. And outside of law, the JD will just scare off employers as explained above.
If you can get into a top MBA program, then you should do that and forget about law school. After only two years at Wharton or Columbia you can get a job in investment banking that pays a lot more than even BIGLAW pays.
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| Message: |
whatever!
just so you know, I went to a lower ranked school and I have my OWN PRACTICE and my OWN CLIENTS. I know for certain that biglaw cannot beat that, and because I was at an instate tuition rate I can afford to have my OWN CHOICES. I would take that over a fancy school and a 100 hour a week slave position. And plus I really like gurodark's postings because they are honest and correct and represent the truth that there is much moore out there than dumb jobs at biglaw and they are better than that too.
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