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Is it possible to go to Europe, where law is usually taught at undergraduate level, in public universities, and in some countries, with very cheap tuition fees, and then pass the bar exam back in the US?
Its hard to feel sorry for people graduating now. The lack lawyer jobs has been known for 5+ years, well before these students enrolled. I wonder if there are any stats on the wages of law professors? Seems they would trend down? Do recent grads teach first year law classes?
And most newly minted law professors have real research doctorates in addition to J.D.s or top tire law degrees or both. They have much better outside academia options than social science or arts academics and their salaries reflect that.
Why are lawsuits so expensive if there are so many broke lawyers aching for a job? It seems like a company could pay them a middling salary of $70k/year to handle ongoing lawsuits, rather than the $300-$700/hour that other lawyers demand. Obviously not for your big Oracle vs. Google lawsuits or where the entire company is riding on it, but for anything less than that. For example, every public company gets sued by op…
This is exactly what most companies do. They hire in house counsel for their baseline, routine legal needs. And then outsource to biglaw for peak law stuff (litigation, big transactions). In house counsel salaries are way less than those at a top law firm and you don't have to pay the difference between the firm's billings and what an associate--who's actually do the work-- gets paid.
Just to expand: in house counsel gets a salary and doesn't have to do the business-building that a partner at a law firm has to.
Also for tech companies, in house counsel can get stock options. In the 2000 boom this caused mass defections of gold-digging lawyers from traditional law firms, which screwed them up too (boo hoo).
Not that very many startups need any in house lawyers!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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. To be fair, the other pillar of "expensive degree leading to lucrative, high prestige career", medicine, is still doing well. As…
Don't you think AI will have a big influence in the future of medicine?
People have been hoping so since the 70s and haven't made any progress. Having worked in both fields I realize that 1. Medicine as a discipline is still poorly understood so isn't really amenable to that many automated tasks and 2. Medicine, as a social phenomenon is structured such that automation won't itself reduce costs.
In fact bootcamps seem to already been in full bubble even though they're only a few years old. You see so many hiring their own grads or using faux graduate-employment metrics, which unfortunately the 3rd and 4th tier law schools are doing too.
Is it possible to go to Europe, where law is usually taught at undergraduate level, in public universities, and in some countries, with very cheap tuition fees, and then pass the bar exam back in the US?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly what most companies do. They hire in house counsel for their baseline, routine legal needs. And then outsource to biglaw for peak law stuff (litigation, big transactions). In house counsel salaries are way less than those at a top law firm and you don't have to pay the difference between the firm's billings and what an associate--who's actually do the work-- gets paid.
> In house counsel salaries are way less than those at a top law firm Just to expand: in house counsel gets a salary and doesn't have to do the business-building that a partner at a law firm has to. Also for tech companies, in house counsel can get stock options. In the 2000 boom this caused mass defections of gold-digging lawyers from traditional law firms, which screwed them up too (boo hoo). Not that very many sta…
This is not meant as a flaming comment as I do not know enough about it but in the US it seems you do? I have read and heard a lot of silly lawsuit cases against startups over there which killed the startup because of (feared) legal costs. I have been through a bunch of legal cases in the Netherlands and here no party wins usually in business cases. Even if you win you do not really win money so most cases just settle for a few bucks or win for the same few bucks at more legal cost. You get nominal expense back if you win aka if you pay E300 per hr for your lawyer then if could be you get E70/hr back. I do not know the exact numbers but it's basically mostly a loss for all which is why it happens very little and no one is really afraid of it.
Blame the schools if you want, but I went to law school in the US and I blame the students. Once upon a time the typical law student had a useful undergrad degree. The JD was something valuable over and above the undergrad. But today's typical law student has spent the last four or five years carefully honing their undergrad to maximize GPA. Law school was always the goal and so everything else, everything useful, wa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In house counsel salaries are way less than those at a top law firm Just to expand: in house counsel gets a salary and doesn't have to do the business-building that a partner at a law firm has to. Also for tech companies, in house counsel can get stock options. In the 2000 boom this caused mass defections of gold-digging lawyers from traditional law firms, which screwed them up too (boo hoo). Not that very many sta…
> Not that very many startups need any in house lawyers! This is not meant as a flaming comment as I do not know enough about it but in the US it seems you do? I have read and heard a lot of silly lawsuit cases against startups over there which killed the startup because of (feared) legal costs. I have been through a bunch of legal cases in the Netherlands and here no party wins usually in business cases. Even if you…
> [...] in the US it seems you do? I have read and heard a lot of silly lawsuit cases against startups over there which killed the startup because of (feared) legal costs.
Don't worry, it's not as bad as it looks. I do see a lot of lawyers running up the bills at the expense of inexperienced entrepreneurs. That really ticks me off.
In the first few years of a startup my legal bills are typically under $15K/year -- well under. Setting up the company doesn't cost much, and apart from some minor routine stuff (the odd employee termination mainly, plus a few contracts and the like) there just isn't much legal stuff to do. An A or B round financing shouldn't cost more than $20K even in the valley. In fact legal bills can be lower in the valley because the firms are used to doing the kinds of thing you need.
Patent stuff is more expensive but again, most companies have no need to bring that in house. If you hire some overseas people you'll need some legal help but you wouldn't bring that in house.
Some businesses do have an explicit legal needs (e.g. Uber) if they are going after a regulated industry. But, for example, one of my startups developed a drug and got it into clinical trials -- even though it's a highly regulated field there was no need for in house counsel, and actually the legal part of that was not huge.
If you get sued you'll hire an outside firm that specializes in litigation.
Why are lawsuits so expensive if there are so many broke lawyers aching for a job? It seems like a company could pay them a middling salary of $70k/year to handle ongoing lawsuits, rather than the $300-$700/hour that other lawyers demand. Obviously not for your big Oracle vs. Google lawsuits or where the entire company is riding on it, but for anything less than that. For example, every public company gets sued by op…
The law market is a quickly-narrowing pyramid for the top jobs. If you're a top 10% (ish) grad from a top 20 school, you can get a high-paying job with one of the big firms. For 10 or so years you work super long hours for maybe 120-150k. Then after about a decade, maybe 5% of those get offered partner. Everyone else gets sent out; best case in that situation is getting an in-house counsel job at about half the pay you had before. Or you could be a public defender, for probably less money than a teacher makes.
Source: my dad works at a top 25 law school and my brother works at a firm in DC (there's probably some attenuation here)