Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
There is a contingent in tech (and probably other areas like Wall Street) that is absolutely delusional about what most people consider comfortable middle class--or even upper middle class--salaries.
Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble
241–250 of 296 posts
Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble
#242Earlier 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…
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
* If you are deployed, I believe there may be some tax advantages?
* You may get combat pay
* Don't you still get a pension? And free/subsidized healthcare, even after you leave?
* Does a captain typically pay for housing?
All that said, your point is taken. However, I'm not sure anyone is joining the US Army to get rich.
Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble
#243I was part of the crowd that used law school to avoid entering the job market on the tail end of the 2007 crisis. I actually really enjoyed law school itself; it's a good fit for people with brains that are a combination of analytical and philosophical. Of course, it's trite at this point to mention the reality that law school does not prepare you whatsoever for the job of being a lawyer. Imagine if med school classes were all about the 'idea' of medicine, the philosophy of medicine, that sort of thing, and actually practicing medicine was limited to electives and extracurriculars.
I went to a school that was T20 and on the cusp of being T14, so a good school. I had a half tuition scholarship on $40,000+/yr and still walked away with nearly $150k in student loans.
Law schools are extremely cheap for universities to run, but they can get away with charging astronomical tuition because everyone is convinced law school will make them rich. (It won't, unless you have a dedication to the work of being a biglaw attorney that most people don't have.) Universities love law schools because they can use them to pay for more expensive programs (science labs, etc.).
The idea of making multiple six figures is almost universally a myth that schools love to cultivate. You only really have a shot at this if you go to a T20 school (or are highly connected). And even if you do get this sort of job, it is soul sucking work; your job at that sort of firm is simply to maximize billings. Nothing of value is created. You will work 70/80 hour weeks creating nothing. I had many friends from school go to these sort of firms and, almost to a one, they have all quit the biglaw scene.
But what the law schools don't tell you is how oversaturated the legal employment market is, and oversaturation => depressed salaries. If you are not one of the few to go biglaw (or do not want biglaw), good luck. I worked as a criminal prosecutor because I found the work interesting. I started at $39k -- in a fairly major city, too. I know so many people with eye-wateringly expensive law degrees who are thrilled to be finding contract or temp work at $20 an hour.
As for me, it took me about six months to realize the practice of law wasn't for me and a total of six years to get out of it. I ended up rediscovering a love of programming I had had from when I was a kid, and spend 4 years self-studying CS/software dev. I transitioned to a software dev role going on 3 years ago now and feel like a new person. I can't really say I regret law school, firstly because I met my wife and many good friends there and in the legal profession generally, but secondly because there's a chance having the degree from a well known school could pay off down the road in some sort of management role. However, was it worth the cost? Almost certainly not.
I'll close by saying, if you are someone who loves building things, you will likely not do well with the law. It is mental work, yes, and logic is involved definitely, but the 'products' you will be creating are motions, briefs, and memos. If you are someone who has a love for collaborative problem solving, you will likely hate it. There is very little I found collaborative in law. Even in law school, absurdly competitive attitudes abound, and in the big firms themselves, the ones who will succeed are in constant 'cold war'-style competition for things like partner track. If your work is litigation, then by definition the work is the polar opposite of collaborative. This was what probably put me off the practice the most; I would be handling a criminal case and my brain would be aching for an easily available compromise, but being an advocate means fighting for your client (in my case, the "people").
Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble
#244It'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.
Even at Harvard and Yale Law, the median score is outside this range (173), and all other schools have a lower median.
Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble
#245Earlier 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…
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…
Everyone goes into law school thinking they will be the one to get high grades, but in my experience, working hard was not well correlated with good grades. Even if you work harder than anyone else, it still somewhat comes down to a coin flip. This can be so frustrating, I cannot even begin to describe it.
Even if you then make it into biglaw (a low percentage), you then need to make partner (an extremely low percentage). This is far more about a) office politics, b) connections, and c) your ability to "rain make" by bringing in big new clients; than about your skill as a practitioner of law.
I would also caution against looking at numbers like salary in isolation. Law is full of unhappy rich people. 36% of the profession suffer from alcohol use disorders, compared to ~12% of the general population. Nearly half experience depression at some point (compared to 15% in the general population, in the stat I was able to locate). It's not a happy field.
Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of people took a gap year last year (who otherwise wouldn’t have). Why pay for college if you won’t get to actually go? Many of those people are showing up now as applicants.
To graduate faster
Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of people took a gap year last year (who otherwise wouldn’t have). Why pay for college if you won’t get to actually go? Many of those people are showing up now as applicants.
To graduate faster
Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble
#248Earlier 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 number I want to see his how much their salaries increased after law school, what they made over and above their pre-lawyer income. At law school I ran into many students who "earned" lots of family money prior to school. Some were on trust funds but other had token jobs in family firms. One of the top earners in our class was a guy hired immediately by his father's firm, but I think he was already some form of on-paper employee with them prior to law school too. Other people came from relatively stable jobs prior, only to struggle to find work afterwards.
Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble
#249Earlier 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?
It's also a ton of rote memorization, which luckily isn't very important for programming because I'm terrible at it.
Re: Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
He got extremely worked up over a simple question is the point I was trying to make.
>Slipping and falling could cause a life-changing injury that no amount of money can undo,
Which is easily prevented in a number of ways in the middle of a Canadian winter.
Like preparing for a coming storm by buying what you need to survive it beforehand, or wearing ice grips on your shoes if you insist on venturing out into what is sure to be a slippy-step every 10 feet or so.
Further reading about slips and falling on ice in Canada if you're interested [0]
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/legal-pointers-on-sl...