N.Y. Times Article: Is Law School a Losing Game?
This recent New York Times article provides a lengthy analysis of the border-line scam of law school. Law students are going into debt to the tune of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars only to find out that there are no jobs for lawyers in this economy.
Along the way the article has some great lines:
“Avoid this overpriced sewer pit as if your life depended on it,” writes the anonymous author of the blog Third Tier Reality — a reference to the second-to-bottom tier of the U.S. News rankings — in a typically scatological review. “Unless, of course, you think that you will be better off with $110k-$190k in NON-DISCHARGEABLE debt for a degree that qualifies you to wait tables at the Battery Park Bar and Lounge.”
Apparently, there is no shortage of 22-year-olds who think that law school is the perfect place to wait out a lousy economy and the gasoline that fuels this system — federally backed student loans — is still widely available.
And all those losers can remain cash-poor for a long time. “I think the student loans that kids leave law school with are more scandalous than payday loans,” says Andrew Morriss, a law professor at the University of Alabama.
This gets to what might be the ultimate ugly truth about law school: plenty of those who borrow, study and glad-hand their way into the gated community of Big Law are miserable soon after they move in. The billable-hour business model pins them to their desks and devours their free time.
Hence the cliché: law school is a pie-eating contest where the first prize is more pie.
“This idea of exceptionalism — I don’t know if it’s a thing with millennials, or what,” she says, referring to the generation now in its 20s. “Even if you tell them the bottom has fallen out of the legal market, they’re all convinced that none of the bad stuff will happen to them. It’s a serious, life-altering decision, going to law school, and you’re dealing with a lot of naïve students who have never had jobs, never paid real bills.”
The bottom line is that taking out a loan to go to law school is a losing bet. It's like betting the hard ways at the craps table. There might be a big pay-off if you hit. But the odds are that you won't. Smart money stays away from losing bets.
Law school might make sense for students who will get a full scholarship or who do not have to go into debt to attend. For everyone else, it is probably a mistake.
I tell everyone in sight pretty much the same thing. It gets me when a bright kid with a good personality naively trundles off to law school then comes out and is buried in the salt mines of some large law firm with very little client contact. In the meantime, they've been burdened by a pile of debt and lost a potential three years of income. Many would be better off going into an entry level job selling just about anything legal.
I read that NY Times article with great interest. The author offers several reasons for the glut of debt-ridden underemployed attorneys. First, of course, there are the law schools who fudge their employment numbers and paint a rosy but inaccurate picture of employment possibilities. Second, the students themselves who are blithely optimistic about their futures and untroubled by taking on huge debt. The attorney featured in the article seemed utterly clueless. He used some of the loans for travel and a nice lifestyle -- ratcheting up his debt to $250,000(!) Surely he must have done some research into the industry before taking on such enormous debt. Of course there was no recession when he started law school, but as you say, it's essentially a gamble. And I know Plenty of debt-ridden attorneys who are not actually practicing for various reasons. I have to wonder how could he have gotten all of those loans when tuition was $33,000 a year?
Perhaps law school loans should not be so freely given, especially to overly-optimistic millenials.
@trail runner. They are federally guaranteed. Bank has nothing to lose virtually. Shame is the guy who picked a cruumy school that cost too much with app a reentry zero research. I don't see this for graduates of reputable but not elite state law schools.
@Shannon Ragland
Oh I definitely see it for those schools too. In fact one of the attorneys mentioned in the article went to Columbia Law (I think they were 4th this year?)
Bottom line is, its a pretty rough thing to be wrong about