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

reuters.com

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

#221

Post by soperj »

Retric wrote: post #199
flavius29663 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fir…

not everyone who's a lawyer can be an accountant and vice versa.

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

#222

Post by sandworm101 »

xphilter wrote: post #111
rayiner wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law is a well paying profession in general, insofar as many can make high five figures and low six figures. That’s good money for real life. You’re correct that only a relatively few people make the kind of money people think lawyers make, and the profession is highly segregated by education. Most people at my law school (northwestern) went on to a big firm job with a salary of $200k rising to $500k after 8 years. A…

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…

For perspective: https://www.federalpay.org/military/army

Army Captain. Someone with a degree and a few years in the job. Someone in command of perhaps 50 people. A federal employee. The sort of person who most Americans would consider solidly middle class.

Base monthly pay = $6,023

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

#223

Post by rchaud »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

Man, so many people are going to be in for a world of hurt: 1. The increased applications and class sizes means there will be more competition for a smaller number of jobs when these folks graduate (tech is automating away a lot of legal work, too). 2. As others have commented, a huge percentage of lawyers regret going to law school. This is actually in direct contrast to many other professional degrees, e.g. MBAs sc…

The academic rigour of MBA programs vs law probably have a lot to do with the higher satisfaction scores.

MBA program usually requires several years of work experience. In some cases, your company may pay for it, so it's possible students in those programs don't share the same level of stress. I spoke to an investment banker about his experience when I was looking into doing one. For someone who was working 80 hours/week for years, an MBA was a vacation.

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

#224

Post by caddemon »

gnicholas wrote: post #25

It's not surprising that LSAT scores are higher due to the additional time to prep and the ability to control the testing environment. And in reality, it doesn't matter that much. Schools will sort students just like they always have, and students will end up roughly where they otherwise would have. The whole application process is on a curve. It's also worth noting that over the last decade, it's been increasingly e…

How much does the LSAT saturate though? The SAT, particularly the math section, is already very saturated at the top percentiles, which make up almost the entire application pool to the elite schools. That's why those schools basically just use the SAT as a quick screener now, if they use it at all. Raising scores even more would further diminish its utility and could increase the impact of a silly mistake.

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

#225

Post by rchaud »

xyst wrote: post #37
arn wrote: post #9

Apparently med school applications were up 18% (in 2020). Which surprises me, I would think COVID might have scared more people off. https://www.ama-assn.org/residents-students/preparing-medica...

just wait until they realize being a doctor at a hospital is more bureaucratic than actually practicing medicine.

Every medical resident in history has that experience, but the majority still do the work everyday. There is some level of disillusionment in every discipline.

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

#226

Post by kingaillas »

hutzlibu wrote: post #60
brundolf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My girlfriend was a lawyer for a few years. Shortly after we met she went to a bootcamp for coding, immediately got a new job, and now (a couple years later) makes something like 4x what she did as a lawyer. Of course she was doing contract work for a small local firm, but that was the best job she could find in the job market as it was.

I always wondered if studying law, also prepares your mind for coding. Lots of complex preconditions, trying to find clauses that catch all side effects - sounds familiar to me. So transitioning from law to coding is maybe "just" learning some programming language and technical details, but the mind is already somewhat prepared to the thinking?

>I always wondered if studying law, also prepares your mind for coding

Could work in reverse too. I met the author Ken Liu at a convention, and he mentioned he started out as a software engineer, and then went to law school. And then began writing on the side as well.

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

#228

Post by rchaud »

otterley wrote: post #19
lettergram wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume these people entering law school don’t intend to go into politics. I suspect a large number do intend to make the laws. Also it’s not entirely accurate that lockdowns are lawful. There’s been several Supreme Court cases that have limited what they can do in the past several months.

Spending 6 figures to go to law school for the sole purpose of entering politics is a terrible waste of money. The best way to enter politics is to run in a local race and convince people to vote for you. It'll cost you a lot less than that, and other people may even pay for your campaign. Once you're there, there are staff lawyers to help draft legislation. > Also it’s not entirely accurate that lockdowns are lawful…

Rich, connected people are not going to spend years slumming it in local politics if a more glamorous option is available. A brand-name education and a couple of years at a white-shoe law firm might not get you many votes, but it can open doors to the people that can help you mount a successful campaign.

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

#229

Post by isoskeles »

johnnyApplePRNG wrote: post #177
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…

I met a lawyer in a yoga studio changeroom once. I own a corner lot around the corner from the studio, and we were going through a really rough winter in Canada. So much so that I was worried about somebody slipping on my sidewalk, even though I was doing my best to keep it safely walkable. (It was so cold out, and we were getting pelted with so much snow for days that the salt was literally not melting anything.) Af…

> What a drag to think of treating your fellow man like that all the time.

You asked him to think about it. Slipping and falling could cause a life-changing injury that no amount of money can undo, so I’m glad he knew how to advocate for his clients.

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

#230

Post by jl2718 »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #200
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sc…

There was only one kid in my middle school that went to the regional tech school. His parents were both PhDs and he got into MIT. That’s probably an outlier, because many if not most of his classmates were only there because they got expelled from their local school. Regardless, he said it was awesome.
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