An Expensive Law Degree, and No Place to Use It

Kids are being advised by parents to get an expensive degree because when they were growing up that's how you made it.

That's not how it is anymore. There's no free pass to success, no check all these boxes and then you've made it. You gotta use your brain early on, figure it out for yourself, because ultimately you're going to be the one having to live with the consequences of how you've spent your youth.

I think there are actually good opportunities in vocational schools. Marketable skills that you can use to find a good job. Law, liberal arts and communication degrees maybe not as marketable.

It seems that the story is a that a once upwards spiral is now spiraling downwards, and people and institutions must adjust.

At one point in time, law was lucrative, and there were not enough lawyers. Schools responded by growing in size and in tuition. Students could justify the loans because there was a high chance that the "investment" would pay off.

Fast forward a few decades and law as an industry is contracting. Since the profession is not as lucrative, if you follow the chain, then schools should have contracted in response, minting fewer lawyers. But they can't easily adjust when they've built a bureaucracy and dramatically increased the number of tenured faculty. That lead to them misleading applicants by not having transparency with their true employment numbers. For a while, students were duped. But at this point, the cat is largely out of the bag. Applicants numbers are down, and the demise of debt-burdened law grads have hit national headlines numerous times over the last 5 or so years. So now, in uncoordinated fashion, schools must adjust and finally down size. Too bad students were caught in the crossfire for many years before the flares went up.

I still think certain professional careers will always exist for the most passionate and high quality candidates (or, alas, the best connected).

Regarding the best connected category -- lawyers eventually move up to become partners, who are rainmakers. Their job is to bring in deals and manage the client relationship, rather than drafting the paperwork. The work is very different from that of the associate level.

WSGR takes a mix of top 5 law school grads as well as Santa Clara law school grads. The latter is seen as having a better local network through their family and upbringing (and have a better retention track record compared to their higher academically ranked counterparts), and are seen as effective future rainmakers even if their legal abilities are inferior to their peers.