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An Expensive Law Degree, and No Place to Use It

nytimes.com

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Re: An Expensive Law Degree, and No Place to Use It

#121

Post by etrautmann »

reefoctopus wrote: post #88
hkmurakami wrote: post #4

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…

The distribution of salaries in law is bimodal. Lawyers at the school mentioned have never commanded big law levels of compensation. The information is readily available, and it is why I chose not to attend a top 20 law school in 2007. http://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib

Where are the huge numbers of $160,000 salaries coming from? It's like a delta function right at that one level. Is that a standard starting package for major firms?

Re: An Expensive Law Degree, and No Place to Use It

#122

Post by etrautmann »

brianwawok wrote: post #86
freyir wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're talking about 2000 billable hours and 2500-3000 actual hours (50 to 60 hours a week). Of course, many engineers work similar hours, for far less than a NYC law associate.

Some engineers work that for 50k in the name of "working for a startup to be the next zucker".

yes, but (and I'm biased), it seems plausible that a higher percentage of engineers enjoy a larger fraction of their work than law associates. I have no numbers to back this up, but very few people pick up corporate law as a hobby.

Re: An Expensive Law Degree, and No Place to Use It

#123

Post by rev_bird »

Pxtl wrote: post #117
mcguire wrote: post #79

The author has buried the lead: " “People are not being helped by going to these schools,” Kyle McEntee, executive director of the advocacy group Law School Transparency, said of Valparaiso and other low-tier law schools. “The debt is really high, bar passage rates are horrendous, employment is horrendous.” " Less than 2/3 of Valparaiso's students can pass the bar. Even if everything else is good, why would anyone re…

Lede. Yeah, it's one of those words.

It's intentionally misspelled, ostensibly to avoid old-school newsroom confusion with "lead," the linotype separators that sat between lines on a printing press. It's debated whether it's a word that was actually used back then, though.

Re: An Expensive Law Degree, and No Place to Use It

#124

Post by DannyBee »

freyir wrote: post #42
walrus01 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2500-3000 hours billable typical result: burn-out, alcoholism, drug abuse, self destructive behaviors, infidelity.

They're talking about 2000 billable hours and 2500-3000 actual hours (50 to 60 hours a week). Of course, many engineers work similar hours, for far less than a NYC law associate.

I would argue, pretty strongly, many engineers do not work similar hours (or work at such "efficiency") in as stressful a way as the lawyers are working.

Of course, I don't argue doing such a thing is necessary or even useful to being a good engineer, just that i think you are giving pretty short shrift to the other side of this :)

Re: An Expensive Law Degree, and No Place to Use It

#125

Post by sverige »

draw_down wrote: post #77
sverige wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is what's wrong with the law profession generally. It's seen as "lucrative" instead of as "a calling." No modern law school will ever create an Oliver Wendell Holmes or inspire a fictional Atticus Finch.

There is nothing wrong with doing a job for money.

I'm not saying lawyers shouldn't be paid. I'm saying that the idea of going to law school solely to make money is not optimal for the public good.

Re: An Expensive Law Degree, and No Place to Use It

#126

Post by mac01021 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #83
MichaelBurge wrote: post #23

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…

Very true. Where are the lawyers that will work for a measly $80/hr? The same amount which makes a lot of freelance programmers very happy.

Do members of both professions find clients with equal ease and reliability? A plumber or an electrician bills at a rate closer to double that, but i think it's partly because work is less steady.

Re: An Expensive Law Degree, and No Place to Use It

#127

Post by sverige »

havetocharge wrote: post #71
sverige wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is what's wrong with the law profession generally. It's seen as "lucrative" instead of as "a calling." No modern law school will ever create an Oliver Wendell Holmes or inspire a fictional Atticus Finch.

I see where you're coming from, but most people work for a paycheck rather out of higher level motives (like "I was meant to be doing this"). By the same measure, all professions would be "wrong".

Some professions (lawyer, doctor, law enforcement, clergy) should have as a fundamental motive the desire to help people rather than profit, since they have by their very nature the power to help or harm others.

Re: An Expensive Law Degree, and No Place to Use It

#128

Post by vostok »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #116
vostok wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way that $195k ($180k + $15k) is the top 1bps of wage earners at 26. That's pretty comparable to, if not less than, what you could expect in tech at that age. This is ignoring finance, small business owners, etc.

>That's pretty comparable to, if not less than, what you could expect in tech at that age Only in big "tech" cities. This article is about someone in Indiana.

It's talking about someone in Indiana who is not making the kind of money that GP mentioned.

> Yet in financial terms, there is almost no way for Mr. Acosta to climb out of the crater he dug for himself in law school, when he borrowed over $200,000. The government will eventually forgive the loan — in 25 years — if he’s unable to repay it, as is likely on his small-town lawyer’s salary. But the Internal Revenue Service will probably treat the forgiven amount as income, leaving him what could easily be a $70,000 tax bill on the eve of retirement, and possibly much higher.

Re: An Expensive Law Degree, and No Place to Use It

#129

Post by OliverJones »

This is an unintended consequence of the 2005 US bankruptcy "reform" act. That act made it impossible to discharge student loans in bankruptcy.

Because those loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy, it's less risky to make student loans. Therefore, lenders don't have the same incentive as before to underwrite their loans. That is, it isn't quite as important to make sure their borrowers have a decent shot at repaying the money.

So, it's easier to get a student loan. And, it's easier to borrow more money. So, it's easier for educational institutions to increase tuition and fees, and still fill up their classes. This turns into a vicious cycle increasing tuition and student debt.

I don't want to pick on Valpo. I don't know anything about their law school.

If the lenders were taking a close look at the Massachusetts College of Law (MCL, local to me, and struggling a bit) and asking whether their grads were getting decent jobs, they might make it harder to borrow so much money. That would put downward pressure on MCL's tuition and fees. But the lenders are not doing that.

But why should the lenders bother? It's a hassle to underwrite an educational institution. Student borrowers can't declare bankruptcy and get out from under those loans, even if the education bought with that money turns out to be worthless to them. So the lenders risk little.

It's time to repeal that part of the bankruptcy "reform."

Until then people who sign student loan papers should realize they are literally signing away their lives. Student lenders are clever and dangerous predators, and student borrowers are their lawful prey.

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