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Law school is over... now what?
EmptyGlass
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey all, I'll be brief. I'm about to take the July Bar Exam and become a lawyer. Problem is, that's the last thing I can see myself doing. I'll sum up briefly: wanted to play baseball, didn't happen, didn't care what I did after college, mom went to law school, seemed like an OK way to go. So you're caught up.
So I'm thinking about what I would like to do, if currently utilizing my law degree isn't among them. I think it would be neat to work in the exercise field - I worked at a gym in college, got my ACE personal training certification (though it has since expired), and majored undergrad in Kinesiology/Sport Management. So this isn't out of left field.
Anywho, I figure I would have to get at least a masters', which can take as little as a year. But I funded law school with loans loans loans, and currently owe in the neighborhood of 180k to friendly sounding names like sallie mae, and of course the juice is still running (read: interest). I can defer for a year or so, and especially if I'm still in school. But is it wise to do this? I'm not certain. I've always underachieved scholastically, if still getting by (B's get degrees). However, never in my life have I really thought about what I wanted to do (aside from standing 60' 6'' from home plate). I think I want to do this.
I'll turn 25 next month, so my thinking is that if I really want to do this, I should go ahead and do it. Worst case scenario, I owe 20k or so more and have another degree to put on the wall. Thoughts? Thanks for replies.
So I'm thinking about what I would like to do, if currently utilizing my law degree isn't among them. I think it would be neat to work in the exercise field - I worked at a gym in college, got my ACE personal training certification (though it has since expired), and majored undergrad in Kinesiology/Sport Management. So this isn't out of left field.
Anywho, I figure I would have to get at least a masters', which can take as little as a year. But I funded law school with loans loans loans, and currently owe in the neighborhood of 180k to friendly sounding names like sallie mae, and of course the juice is still running (read: interest). I can defer for a year or so, and especially if I'm still in school. But is it wise to do this? I'm not certain. I've always underachieved scholastically, if still getting by (B's get degrees). However, never in my life have I really thought about what I wanted to do (aside from standing 60' 6'' from home plate). I think I want to do this.
I'll turn 25 next month, so my thinking is that if I really want to do this, I should go ahead and do it. Worst case scenario, I owe 20k or so more and have another degree to put on the wall. Thoughts? Thanks for replies.
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EmptyGlass on
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What's stopping you from re-upping on your ACE certification and working at a gym like Gold's?
Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose.
Once you become a member of the bar association, I believe you need to pay fees to maintain your membership. I'm not sure what happens if you just up and stop paying. It might be as simple as no longer being a member of the Bar for that particular state, or outright disbarrment from practicing law. Probably the former, but best for you to read up on these things as it's probably different for each state.
When all is said and done, if you really don't want to be a lawyer, don't take the bar exam. You'll save yourself ~$4000 since you won't have to pay for test prep or the actual exam fees.
Edit: now that I see you're $180K in the hole, whatever you do I suggest it be well paying within about 6 mos, because your loan payments are going to be at least $1.5K/month. Taking the bar and practicing law has a good chance of doing that for you. I don't know enough about personal training to say if that will cut the mustard.
He's 180k in debt. The 20k is for his personal training thing.
Bad idea in my opinion. Have you ever given any thought to teaching? You have a juris doctorate now, so that would probably open up some education doors.
do you mean starting payment? because how in the crap is he supposed to pay off 180 grand in six months?
I don't care what your degree is in, that's not within the range of your starting salary
Unless he works out something with his lenders, yes, his total starting payments for $180K of debt will probably be ~$1500/month, give or take $200. This usually kicks in after a six month grace period, which starts the day after graduation. But that's just guessing on my part, based on typical lending practices and personal experience with student loans. I have no idea what he's personally worked out with his lenders.
And with a JD and as a member of the bar, he can definitely find a job that will pay him enough to pay back loans and get by. I guess this is also somewhat depedent on geographical region and past experience, but it can be done. I'm not sure what that figure would be since I don't know enough about his personal situation, but I'd say somewhere in the range of $65 to $80K.
Also, the economy's somewhat shitty right now, and even lawyers are having difficulty finding jobs. There's that to consider too.
uh..that's patently untrue. in this economy he'd be lucky to find any legal job at all, and could well end up doign shitalw at some insurance defense firm for 45K in new jersey. hence my question, which has gone unanswered. you, as an aside, should seriously reconsider LS given the way things are going. this year's 2Ls are screwed at OCI. many firms are cancelling their summer associate programs for the year. there's no indication of when things will get better. my expectation is that they never will, and that firms will just ousource stuff to India instead, as they have a robust and comaptible common law tradition and crushing poverty, which combine to make outsourcing cheap and effective.
"but kaliyama", you say "i don't want to work for a firm!" All well and good. But the people that would ordinarily be working for a firm are going to be job hunting in areas and avenues they previously avoided. What does this mean? It means the people who will work for firms, and thus have the highest GPAs at their school, are going to crowd out everyone else. We're already seeing this take shape in public interest law, especially with deferral/skadden-ish programs. I'm lucky that i'm only getting deferred until january or march. Many people got put off for the whole year, though with a compensation package.
my satellite office, which hired 9 summers last year, hired 2 this year. legal hiring continues to decline and many places are experiencing large layoffs.
sorry, I totally misread your post, I thought you were saying the OP should try to pay back the loans entirely within 6 months, plus I missed your second edit, and thought you were suggesting this would be outside of the realm of complete fucking fantasy with a PT gig.
Seeing a pattern here?
@kaliyama: I went to a decent school, second tier by the industry lingo.
Should I go for a year or so to pursue a master's, etc, I can fully defer the loans, though of course the interest continues to accrue. Seeing as how it's almost August, the very earliest I'd be able to enter a program would be the spring of '10, though the fall may be more likely. So in the interim, I'd need to work regardless. Advice I've gotten from family is to apply for some jobs, whether they sound like something I'd love to do or not. I can make a little money, maybe renew my ACE certification, and study for the GREs, if that is the path I should choose.
@deadonthestreet: I didn't have quite the credentials you had, either. Slightly above average grades (top 1/3), but no law review or anything notable to speak of regarding extra curricular activities
@Kyougu: the pattern is not lost on me. All that I can say, is that after college I had truly given no thought to what I wanted to do. I was living in the clouds (maybe I still am). But I know that I get a good feeling from helping people physically better themselves. I know I love exercising and being active. No, it seems to me that I for once do know what I want to do, and all that stands in my way is my fear of doing it at this point in my life. There are a hundred reasons why it is probably imprudent (more like 180k reasons) to think about doing this, but I really can't live the way I have been. I'm the type of person who has great difficulty compartmentalizing things; if I don't like my job and don't feel fulfilled, I don't like myself, which affects my relationships with people very negatively. I'm sure that to a certain degree that's true of most people, of course. I guess I'm only now realizing that I belong to the class of 'most people.' Right now there's nothing special about me. But I'd like there to be. The only way that's going to happen is if I'm doing something I'm happy about. I'd rather have to eat ramen noodles for the next decade then be miserable.
However, as others have pointed out, simply going back and collecting yet another degree may not be in your best interest. Student loans will catch up with you, and while a law degree will help you find a job to help pay them off, you can't ignore them forever, and the longer you put them off, the more you’ll have to pay in the end.
The other thing I would suggest is that you actually practice a little law before you give up on it. Law School is nothing, I repeat, nothing like being a card-carrying, courtroom-swinging lawyer, and you might like it more than you think.
Yeah, that's what I've been hearing as well. I suppose it depends at least in part on geographical location. There still seem to be a lot of legal jobs in the NJ/NY/CT area, though certainly less than there were. But as others have said, it's probably true that a lot of jobs aren't coming back. I don't completely buy the doom and gloom, however; you can outsource legal work to a point, but you really need American lawyers working in the American legal system. American common law and British common law are pretty different, so I imagine our system compared to India's is pretty different as well.
Anyway, this is grossly off topic, so I'll stop now. The resounding advice I would agree with, however: OP, don't go back to school unless you are sure this is what you want to do. You have spent your entire life in school. Consult with your school's career counselers, take some time to find work in fitness field, see if that really floats your boat. It's the only way to know for sure.
Right now its tough to find any employment, and in the legal world many people will show you evidence that the bubble has indeed burst and many recent law grads (especially ones in positions like yours) are screwed. Yet right now you have done most of the work, and paid most of your dues, towards becoming a lawyer--talk to your school, to classmates, to recent lawyers and find out what options you might have. If I were in your shoes I'd try to find a job as a lawyer, but then again I'm three years behind you and I'm going into it thinking I'd really like to practice law.
Depending on your stomach for grueling, thankless (but well compensated) hours, you may be entirely miserable, but out of debt, or you may find you enjoy the work. Such jobs are certainly not easy to find right now, but they are out there.
the point of my post is that -there are no biglaw jobs-, and if there are, laid-off midlevel associates are going to take them.
If you went to a TT, odds are you don't have a good loan repayment program. but the best way to handle this, if you happen to do so, is do public interest long enough that your loans get paid off, unless you can find something renumerative. if you can find a sufficiently-well-paying lawyer job, your best bet is to spend 3-5 years paying off as much principal as you can.
If I were in your shoes (I'm about $50,000 in debt from law school), I'd suck it up and take whatever pays the bills (i.e. practicing the profession you just spent three years studying) for a few years. Between living expenses and repaying your mortgage-sized student loans, you really can't afford to work in a gym.
If Harvard is telling people to go to Milwaukee, nobody in this thread considering law school has any business going themselves.
While I cannot back up such a dire statement, there is a lot more evidence that is at least mostly in line with kaliyama.
Actually, pretty much every story on here is mostly in line with kaliyama.
But, on the other hand--lots of job markets are suffering similarly. The economic downturn is hurting most everyone, its just more unfortunate that many law students went into school thinking their careers were set and having to accept huge loans to finance this. This is one of the biggest reasons I chose to attend the law school I did, so that I could receive a quality legal education (a top 50 school in USNews) without burdening myself with debt, over trying to move up the rankings a few spots and having to take loans out to the tune of $30-50k a year. The game is changing, bigtime, and this generation is the one who will get to suffer it.
Which brings me to ask: when will people start hiring again? When will this economy improve? I'm hearing a lot of stuff about "End of '09'" or "2nd Quarter '10." This stuff bothers me every hour of the day and every night when I go to sleep.
I'm sorry if this is a bit off topic, but it may also shed more light on when jobs can be available for the OP/others reading this, and it would certainly help me.
No way to tell. Hiring is going to be different by sector. Especially if you're coming out of school w/o much debt, I wouldn't sweat it. Do something you think is interesting for a few years - work for a think tank, a nonprofit, bain/mckinsey or ibank(GS posted record profits), whatever, and then go to school.
Two quick things:
1. If anyone here knows exactly when the economy will rebound, please let the rest of the world know, ok? I'd love to invest a bit more right beforehand though, so just drop me a PM maybe about a week in advance. :^:
2. On a more serious note of economic recovery in regards to legal jobs--I have read that the law market seems to be a "trailing" market, meaning that often it is a little behind other sectors in its ups and downs.
Also, in some regards people are indeed talking about the bubble being burst on how the current American legal education and employment system have run in recent years. If it has, or what it means is even more muddled though. What one has to watch out for right now is what is happening--where schools are still charging its students prices that the job market cannot allow a substantial number of graduates to recoup, and too many law students thinking their JD will be a license to print money. Too many institutes graduate kids with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in a field that pays like this:
And with this economic crisis, its the jobs on the right that are now suffering a lot too. Making sure every law student knows what they are in for these days is paramount--some schools are tackling the emerging legal economy head on, others, not so much. If you can afford to take some time off to see it sort out, it might be for the best.
Part of the problem all these humongous firms are having trouble is because they, with their hordes of ivy-league law school grads, were charging $800/hour for their services. But there are lots of small and medium-sized firms charging a fraction of those costs, and they have managed to retain and even acquire new clients in this market.
A lot of jobs for the big firms aren't coming back sure. And yes, the bubble has certainly deflated, and will not return to its previous size. You might not work for a firm like Cravath coming out of law school, but I think one is always better served by a law degree. Being able to decipher the underpinings of America's legal system is a valuable skill, and one that people will always need.
I generally agree with your points, but only partners (and more senior ones at that) get billed out over 700. Most associates at big law firms are in the 269-500 range. Which is still more than a little ridiculous. Things are bad and I doubt they'll get back to the way they were. Biglaw firms are going to do away with lockstep promotions (no more pay and billable rate increase just because you're one more yer removed from law school) and probably drop first year pay to around 100-120k with performance-based bonuses accounting for more of one's salary.
But don't expect mid and small firms to take too much business from the vault top 100. There's a reason they're trusted. Companies want lower costs, but the same quality. That's not to say that smaller firms aren't as good, but Biglaw has more resources. More and more Biglaw firms are negotiating alternative payment methods (fixed fees [ie 400k for matter, regardless of the number of people or the number of hours spent on it]; fixed rate (everyone, from a first year associate to a senior partner, gets billed at one rate, like say 400), or discount rates (15% off). I don't think biglaw will disappear or suffer at the hands of smaller institutions, I think profit margins will just be smaller.
Things will recover over time. If you're a sophmore, that means you have 3 years at the least before you have 2L on campus interviews. Things will be better by then. The legal Market might look a lttle different then, but things will be better.
and go easy on those "ivy league lawyers." Lawyers are generally a douchey lot, but the T14 does have more than a few decent human beings in attendance.
Believe me, I wasn't making any digs at ivy leaguers. I only said it to categorize them. Generally, ivy league grads tend to charge (and make) more money right out of school (both undergrad and grad, law school or otherwise), but generally things tend to even out over time for non-ivy league grads. It wasn't a dig on personal character, just business practices.
And believe me there are some mid-sized firms taking business from the bigger ones. I'll grant you it's probably not a trend, but it is happening. But my main point stands: there is still a lot of legal work out there, and there always will be.
And law school tuition is unlikely to go down, not for a long time. I think that has more to do with the student loan and education industry in this country than any circumstances in the legal job market. Demand for higher education is still high, and law school is up there in terms of professions. However, schools are doing some things to alleviate costs. For example, I just got a letter from the accounting office for my school. My tuition is locked in at the current rate, which means over the course of my three year tenure at the law school I will not pay increased tuition costs every year, only the cost of tuition the year I start. Which saves me about $10,000 in the long run.
Tuition is still exorbitant, but there is some relief out there. Be active about looking for it.
This is good advice for every college student everywhere. My old roommate's brother's fiance is pretty much going to undergrad for free thanks to about a dozen minor scholarships and grants. She simply worked hard, did some legwork, and brought down her tuition $500-$2000 dollars at a time by talking to her school and doing some looking on her own.
Now that I'm going to law school I did some similar searching, and as it so happened I've knocked off almost all of my tuition costs in just a few very generous awards. There are people and places out there that still want to see people go to college--and not just for people with outrageous achievements or unique backgrounds (but it seems like it really helps). I think I'm just about as vanilla as they come, and I still found "free" money for school.
The guy comes off as a total douche. I think he knows what he's talking about, but his point of view is heavily biased by his own personal attitude and cynicism. Which... I guess isn't that different from a lot of lawyers out there. His style just wasn't to my taste.
Uh. Do you maybe, just maybe, wonder if people's "personal attitude" and "cynicism" is just realism, and that maybe your opinion that everything will be fine for everyone is untethered from reality? The United States massively overproduce lawyers (150 law schools with expanding classes every year), and supply dramatically outstrips demand. Going to anything less than a top 25 school is a serious mistake unless they're paying your way.
And you realize the reason your tuition is "locked in" is because they actuarily account for this by just charging each class a higher price than they otherwise would? They do this to help sticker shock and planning for people, but all that happens is that you're paying more than you should this year.
He earned that cynicism the hard way. Far too many law firms these days are poorly hidden pyramid schemes and new associates are nothing more than fungible labor. The guys at the top are looking to share the pie with as few people as possible. Hence non-equity partners and the like. The model relies on clueless middle class white kids like the OP (sorry dude) who drift into law because it "seemed like an OK way to go" or whatever. With 6 figure debt most people figure they have to work at a big firm at least for a little to pay it off, and before you know it you've got a wife, or a mortgage, or kids, or all three, and then they've got you by the balls. Just cause the handcuffs are golden doesn't make them any less real.
As kaliyama pointed out, there's also the law of supply and demand to think of. Almost all those nice jobs advising I-banks and the like are gone now, and most won't ever come back. The few firms who still do this ultimately won't be able to charge as much as a result of the current economy, and so pay and hiring will take a hit. This will go hand-in-hand with companies shopping around more to cut costs. Eventually it's a race to the bottom for all but the best firms and even the kids from top 25 schools have a tough time finding placement. So kids from 2nd and 3rd tier schools get cornholed even harder than they are now. And while tuition and the business model may eventually go through a correction and come out more sensible, tuition fixes will lag behind economic recovery so that even once things start to pick up most law school grads come out already behind the 8-ball and without the climate that made their tuitions make sense in the first place.
Or I could be talking out my ass. Things could turn up all sunshine and kittens if you just plug your ears hard enough and ignore people like me. I wouldn't want to bet my livelihood and financial future on that, but 50-1 odds do hit sometimes. Then again, so do tsunamis.
I'd argue full price stops being worth it outside the top 14. Certainly very rapidly afterwards--like 3-4 schools afterwards. As much as I liked Boston University (#20), I could not be persuaded to pay $38,000 tuition + cost of living in Boston out of pocket today. By #20 its just a list of good-but-not-great names that don't exactly pop off the resume like Harvard, Yale, Columbia, or Duke would.
Of course, this doesn't mean other schools "suck" or are a "waste of time"--in fact, most law schools can teach you to be a good lawyer, and somebody in every law class will land a sweet job and give everyone else hope. In fact, its the extreme closeness in quality of all these competing schools that keeps so many of them anonymous--any school theoretically can graduate an excellent law student, but the best of the best (biglaw) bank on the name recognition a place like a top 14 school yields because the winnowing out process pretty much happened at admissions. Thus, its important that the very real issue of cost must be answered before anyone even thinks about attending any law school. Like stated in the OP's title, once law school is over...now what?
Actually you're just reading way too much into what I said. One can be a realist and still maintain a positive attitude, and do it without being a total cock.
You make this sound like it's a problem with my school specifically, or law school in general, and not the education/student loan industry in general. Yes, I realize I'm paying 6-8% more than the 2011 grads (in line with the state's average increase, I might add). That's not different from any other undergrad/post grad school in the country. At least I am not paying 6-8% more every year.
You've spouted nothing but negative platitudes throughout this entire thread and backed them up with almost no evidence. I don't know what your problem is, but despite what you would like to believe there is still value in going to law school. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who thinks "oh well I guess I'll go to law school" but for someone who wants to pursue it as a career? Definitely worthwhile. Not many people get to attend Top 25 schools, and there is plenty legal work for those who didn't.
Those days are done. And I imagine it can sting. I'm a rising 3L; I've worked with a vault top 50 firm for two summers and throughout my 2L year. I have no idea if I have an offer, just because we've already been deferred a year and firms don't what will happen two days from now, let alone two years. Some firms have already said they aren't even going to bother recruiting for next summer. They're just going to take the summer/year off.
But look, things aren't going to be like this forever. As I mentioned above, the legal industry will change. 160 will no longer be the starting salary, think more like 100-120. Raises will no longer be lockstep, we're going to move towards a performance based model. But things will improve and lawyers will be needed. If you're a rising college senior, if you went straight through, you wouldn't be applying for your 2L summer job until two years from now. I'd take the year off, just because work experience is great and maybe you don't actually want to be a lawyer, and start in 2011. If things haven't picked up in 2-3 years, then we're all doomed.
That said, try to get into a top 3 school. If you can't do that stick with the top 14. If you must go outside the top 14, definitely go to the premier school in your state. This isn't always intuitive, though. The state where I went to undergrad had one school that was in the top 25 and another that was in the top 50 or 60. But because of the latter's football team and good-old-boy network, it was the place to attend. There is "plenty of legal work out there" but doing what interests you, at a salary you'll find comfortable is easier when you go to better schools. At the very least, only go to a tier 1 school.