This is very true. If you are in the bottom 50% of pretty much any law school other than Harvard or Yale, good luck finding a legal job. If you are in the bottom 75% of most law schools, good luck finding a job. And if you are in any % of lower-tier law schools, good luck finding a job. There are a glut of law schools and the country just doesn’t need as many lawyers as law schools produce. Law schools know this but it doesn’t stop them from suckering kids in with the promise of a six figure salary and being set for life once they graduate. Its a crime and a fraud what law schools do to a lot of gullible students. But then again, its a crime and a fraud what most universities do to most kids. The whole system — undergraduate, graduate, law school, everything — is rotten to the core.
There are some awfully rich personal injury lawyers out there that never heard of Yale or Harvard.
I am proud to report that over the past 3-4 years, I have convinced at least 10 people to not go to law school. The one who didn’t listen quit after just one year after realizing his mistake.
Even though 57% of law school graduates have jobs requiring a law degree, a VERY large majority of them pay very little.
A good plumber who starts his own business is going to make a whole lot more money than most attorney’s and have far fewere working hours and much less stress.
I worked for a number of law firms over the years. The glut of attorneys has been going on for ages. Today it’s worse. I still keep in touch with employees of the firms I worked for. They tell me those firms are downsizing. Even if you graduate from a major law school in the top 10& of the class, you still might not get a job as an attorney.
I think there have been repeated attempts to force law schools to disclose true placement rates and true salary results for their recent grads, using consumer-protection laws at the state level.
These efforts have consistently been turned back by the law schools themselves.
Many lawsuits have been brought by recently-graduated lawyers against their schools, on the grounds that they were sold a bill of goods by their recruiting offices, that their earning potential is much less than was represented and that their job prospects are nothing like what they were told.
I think these are usually turned aside, and in the few cases where the plaintiff prevails, the settlement is made under strict conditions of confidentiality.
I have 5 peers who are lawyers. One makes a lot more than I do. Two are within $5,000 of me, and the other two make about 2/3 of what I do. The one who makes the good money got his Master’s in Mechanical Engineering before going to law school and now works for a large patent firm.
I asked him while he was in law school and he said he hated it, but that it was a means to an end for him. Now that he’s working, he feels trapped, but knows that in just a few more years he’ll have enough money to get out and do something he enjoys for the rest of his life.
I briefly looked at law school, but the industry averages didn’t justify the cost for me. Observing my peers makes me feel better about my decision...of the 5, only 1 is significantly better off than I am and I don’t have the debt load to service.