Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble • Hacker News Board

Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble

#191

Post by xphilter » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

flavius29663 wrote: post #169

xphilter wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect, this comment is wrong in so many places. “High five figures” is not a lot of money considering the opportunity cost (and actual cost of a law degree) (7 years and likely $200,000 all in). The 1 in 4 figure is not close to right either—it’s typically fewer than 1 in 10 get the actually high paying jobs outside of t-14 schools. And I’m glad commenter likes the grind, but most lawyers that I’ve worked with…

I don't see how high 5 figures is not high salary. 100k is literally double the average salary for the US, and 3 times the median wage. And a lot of people earning the median are also deep in student debt. If earning 3 times the median is not good money, maybe your view of what "good money" means something else. The lawyer median wage is 125k, and the 75 percentile is 186k. I consider 186k to be a high wage, it's 6 t…

The vast majority of folks earning “high five figures” don’t have to waste three years on dubious education at a cost of $50k per year (not including debt for living expenses because you can’t work your first year at all). So you’re right, high five figures could be a great salary if you’re a manager of a target and didn’t go to law school, but it’s a bad salary if you had to go to law school to get it.

Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble

#192

Post by dalbasal » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

mason55 wrote: post #176

dalbasal wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting thread. GP's point and your own are not necessarily at odds. A lot has to do with which real lawyer is used as representative. Are we looking at average experience, median, 76th percentile... Taking into account those who never started practicing, etc. The same can be said of other professions, but the details vary a lot. Relative merits depend on where we put the probe. A well to do lawyer, 40+ lawyer ca…

> Tech careers "naturally" progress into management, whereas lawyerly one progress into seniority The equivalent of tech progressing into management is lawyers progressing into sales. The people who make the most aren’t the ones who know the law the best, they’re the “rainmakers,” the ones bringing in all the business. At a certain point your career and monetary progression will be limited if you’re not moving to a r…

You can probably reduce it multiple ways. But ultimately, it's a different culture with different norms;)

Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble

#193

Post by triceratops » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #164

triceratops wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If graphic design doesn't count as a profession, what does?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession Law, medicine, etc. There's no professional body for corporate design is there?

Not for corporate design specifically - some graphic designers specialize in that. However, there are certainly professional bodies for graphic designers.[1]

From the Wikipedia link you provided, graphic design has achieved the first 4 milestones of being a profession:

"an occupation becomes a full-time occupation, the establishment of a training school, the establishment of a university school, the establishment of a local association".

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Institute_of_Graphic_...

Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble

#194

Post by ghaff » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

feteru wrote: post #171

skt5 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they are as bimodal like lawyer salaries. I have no quantitative data to back that assertion though.

Dan Luu wrote a blog investigating this exact comparison and also didn't have good enough data to draw a strong conclusion. https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/

Yeah, you have this stereotype that you have partners at white shoe law firms who all went to Harvard or Yale and all the other lawyers doing real estate closings from an office in a strip mall.

In practice, there are plenty of lawyers who are in-house counsels for large companies, own successful law practices in smaller cities and large towns, etc. who make decent money often in moderate cost of living areas.

Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble

#195

Post by x86_64Ubuntu » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

310260 wrote: post #183

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proof is in the pudding, very rarely do people with STEM degrees have to vouch for the usefulness of their degree. We already know why mechanics, engineers and statisticians are useful as career fields, it's the Create Haiku majors that always seem to have to explain the "value unseen" in their degree.

Yes. Because STEM degrees have perceived economic value and liberal arts degrees don't. That does not mean liberal arts degrees are useless. It is, at the very least, short-sighted to think so. I majored in comp sci but I'm not gonna sit around and pretend every aspect of culture and humanity can be solved by my engineering work...

Once again, your point hinges on "unseen value" of liberal arts. People in STEM, including the trades, don't have to do such shell game tactics.

Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble

#196

Post by dpweb » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #7

When I was considering going to law school I learned some sobering facts: - something like 75% of lawyers would not recommend their children go in to law - there is a high rate of burnout among lawyers - while the public perception is that lawyers are extremely high paid, that's only the case some elite lawyers that went to elite schools and work for elite firms[1] For someone like me, who doesn't just want to help t…

- something like 75% of lawyers would not recommend their children go in to law

Yes, but it must be like what IT has become to some extent. Many people go into it because it's a (seemingly) high paying job with lots of jobs available, but they aren't passionate about it. Then get disillusioned about it. So you have a high rate of dissatisfaction amongst professionals in the field. Personal experience you can go from 50k/yr to 250k/yr and still be depressed if you're not excited about what you are doing.

Wife's divorce lawyer.. Guy has a small office in small town. Has one paralegal working w him. Charges his $250/hr. Not much stress. If he works around full-time per week, pays his paralegal and small office - he's doing pretty good by most salary standards.

Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble

#197

Post by tzs » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #138

kaydub wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> useless undergraduate degree Pretty narrow thinking of a liberal arts degree. As someone that works as a software engineer with a liberal arts degree I've found a lot of my STEM degree holding peers to be lacking considering my expectations and all the high and mighty talk about STEM degrees.

The proof is in the pudding, very rarely do people with STEM degrees have to vouch for the usefulness of their degree. We already know why mechanics, engineers and statisticians are useful as career fields, it's the Create Haiku majors that always seem to have to explain the "value unseen" in their degree.

Note, though, that in most threads on HN about qualifications for programming or software engineering there are usually quite a few comments from people saying that they never actually use anything from the classes they had to take to earn their STEM degree.

As far as actually teaching them things they would use on the job the STEM degree was no better than any random humanities degree. The only value they say they get out of the STEM degree as opposed to any other degree or no degree is that many employers use a STEM degree as a filter when hiring.

You can also see this whenever any thread about software interviewing comes up. People complain about having to cram memorizing a bunch of algorithms and data structures that companies like to ask about.

Those questions would be right at home on a CS class homework assignment. If the class material was something that working programmers actually had to use they would not need to cram for it when it comes up on interviews.

So yeah, a STEM degree is more valuable for a typical programming job than a humanities degree--but not for any good reason.

Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble

#198

Post by hpoe » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #85

ethbr0 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taught code-lite tools to a bunch of repurposed analysts, and your idea tracks with my experience too. Students that had an analytical perspective (e.g. from supply chain debugging) typically excelled. Students from more fuzzy, language-based perspectives (e.g. marketing) had a lot more difficulty.

Somewhere around 2004-2006 I read a blog post / article that I have been unable to find since that was supposed to be from a CS professor at a relatively prestigious university where they had done a study on entering classes for a number of years, at the beginning of the class they gave some very rudimentary problems focused on if you could handle arbitrary rules - those that could ended up passing at a significant r…

Sounds similar to this blog post by the founder of SO

https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-f...

Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble

#199

Post by Retric » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

flavius29663 wrote: post #169

xphilter wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect, this comment is wrong in so many places. “High five figures” is not a lot of money considering the opportunity cost (and actual cost of a law degree) (7 years and likely $200,000 all in). The 1 in 4 figure is not close to right either—it’s typically fewer than 1 in 10 get the actually high paying jobs outside of t-14 schools. And I’m glad commenter likes the grind, but most lawyers that I’ve worked with…

I don't see how high 5 figures is not high salary. 100k is literally double the average salary for the US, and 3 times the median wage. And a lot of people earning the median are also deep in student debt. If earning 3 times the median is not good money, maybe your view of what "good money" means something else. The lawyer median wage is 125k, and the 75 percentile is 186k. I consider 186k to be a high wage, it's 6 t…

Lumping your comparison to include people without high school degrees with lawyers is making a huge mistake. At a minimum the comparison should be between collage graduates and lawyers minus the opportunity cost of law school.

Consider, when comparing starting salary your accountant or whatever not only makes money in both years a lawyer is in law school they also likely have two raises before the lawyer gets his first paycheck and start paying back undergrad loans while a lawyer is still adding interest and new debt.

If your opportunity cost from loans, tuition, lost wages and delayed carrier advancement adds up to a conservative 10k/year after taxes for the rest of your life, then your 72k pre tax lawyer is actually making the equivalent of ~58k pre tax and 1/2 of starting Layers are doing worse than that.

Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble

#200

Post by JohnWhigham » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #115

qeternity wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can thank the unlimited backstop of federal student loans for people to study at any subpar school in any number of useless degrees. This has siphoned off the historical supply of labor in trade schools.

You can also blame society for undervaluing tradesmen. If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that even though we are able to recognize how essential a lot of jobs are, we will still refuse to respect or properly compensate the people who work them.

This one's massive, and probably the biggest culprit. I was fortunate enough to be in an area where you could choose the default high school (college prep), or be bussed to the regional vocational school where you alternate doing one week of academic work and one week of your trade. And of course, those that went to the vocational school were looked down on as being dumber. And once you're in the college prep high school, it's just always looming over you: what colleges you looking at? What major do you want to study? What are your safety schools and reach schools?? You are looking at colleges right now while you're only 15 and a freshman and have no idea what the fuck you want to do for the rest of your life right???

And then that's how you land up with the only 25% of kids that enter college actually graduating. So many kids who aren't sure what they want to do (or just straight up aren't cut out for that kind of work) are shoved into college, rack up debt, drop out with nothing to show for it, and don't know where to go next.