141–146 of 146 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> solely to make money is not optimal for the public good. Is there any example where the sole pursuit of money is ever optimal for the public good? Or even that individual?
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 size of the legal market is the same as it was in 1990, and so is law school enrollment. There was a spike in both legal demand and enrollment in the aughts, but the ratio of work to graduates isn't much different now than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. What's different now is not the market. Folks at Valparaiso were never getting recruited into high-paying jobs. What's different now is the extreme amounts of deb…
It's worth mentioning that you'd have been downvoted into oblivion for mentioning this on a social network just several years ago. This was also true offline, people didn't want to hear it.
Do movies and tv shows give the wrong impression and lure the wrong people to law degrees?
My guess is that police, doctors, nurses, lawyers and crime scene forensics are over subscribed to because of television serials.
If television didn't exist then those jobs would have higher rates of pay or at least less competition per job opening.
I think the intersection between jobs which are not easy to outsource + not easy to televise is an interesting one.
It reminds me of Warren Buffet's ideas about growth and value corporations. Growth jobs are obviously photogenic but may not pay as much in the long term as 'value' jobs.
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.
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 :)
Work-related stress is a big issue. Regardless, putting in long hours at work, regardless of stress level, means less time for family, friends, hobbies, recreation, exercise, sleep, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :)
Perhaps a lawyer's working hours tend to be more "efficient" or more stressful. My interaction has been primarily limited to in-house patent attorneys, and they don't seem to work appreciably harder or be more stressed out. Work-related stress is a big issue. Regardless, putting in long hours at work, regardless of stress level, means less time for family, friends, hobbies, recreation, exercise, sleep, etc.
This is definitely true, but that is precisely the difference between biglaw and in-house.
biglaw has worse-than-startup hours.
in-house is basically 9-5.
(though i've been called at 1am on my wedding anniversary before, it is basically the only thing that happened in 10 years)
There is a significant paycut associated with in-house as a result, of course.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 thei…
I believe it's a misattribution to automatically equate lower-ranked law schools with "inferior legal abilities". Especially considering that law school coursework (1) is largely the same at various law schools, and (2) rarely covers the same subject matter as actual practice. The prestige is different, sure, but that is more an amalgamation of undergraduate GPA and LSAT scores than representative of actual legal abi…