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The law school scam reaches Hacker News
| fishy shivering state dog poop | 08/14/14 |
| drunken haunted graveyard | 08/14/14 |
| outnumbered ape brunch | 08/14/14 |
| Arousing Salmon School Round Eye | 08/14/14 |
| fishy shivering state dog poop | 08/14/14 |
Poast new message in this thread
Date: August 14th, 2014 11:31 PM Author: fishy shivering state dog poop Let's see what some of the top startup bros think about LS:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8180690 |
Date: August 14th, 2014 11:32 PM Author: drunken haunted graveyard JustinCEO 6 minutes ago | link
Law school grad here (top 10 school). Anyone asks my opinion (which seems to happen an awful lot -- I guess lots of people consider law school at some point or another), I tell them I think it's a pretty bad idea. 1) The cost (direct and opportunity) is ENORMOUS. And even with special federal govt repayment plans, if you don't get that big firm job, the debt will potentially weigh you down well into middle age (with the possibility of a nasty tax bite at the end if you have any assets and the law isn't changed). 2) The likelihood of getting a high paying job is slim. It's even pretty risky from top 10 schools. 3) Even during the boom times, when people from top schools were getting jobs at top BIGLAW firms left and right, people were HATING LIFE at the firm because they didn't realize what it was going to be like. And more broadly, lots of people get all the way through law school and realize they don't wanna be lawyers. This is super common. 4) Non-big-firm opportunities are either super competitive (like govt or public interest), super low paying (also includes lots of govt and public interest), or not a great value proposition (how'd you like 200k in debt to try scratching out 50k a year as a solo?) Lots of the reasons people want to attend law school are pretty dumb/false (stuff like: like to argue, wanna be prestigious, think its a safe/good-paying career track). The people that should attend law school are those who won't be financially ruined by the decision, actually want to be a lawyer, and have some real sense of what being a lawyer actually means (e.g. they spent at least a couple years working at a firm in some non-lawyer capacity, or have a parent who was a lawyer and told them lots about their job, or spent tons of their time researching law and legal practice. In other words their knowledge of legal practice is not based entirely on fictional TV and movie lawyers). I'd say that describes under 1% of the people enrolled in law schools nationwide. |
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Date: August 14th, 2014 11:36 PM Author: outnumbered ape brunch wtf is a top 10 law school? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2645520&forum_id=2#26131357) |
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Date: August 14th, 2014 11:43 PM Author: Arousing Salmon School Round Eye NBMVP (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2645520&forum_id=2#26131412) |
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Date: August 14th, 2014 11:34 PM Author: fishy shivering state dog poop omegaham 49 minutes ago | link There are way, way too many lawyers in this country. Back in the good ol' days, law was a profitable endeavor. It was limited to the elite, and as a result there was a great scarcity of people who were able to become lawyers. They could then charge a lot of money for their services and become rich. This changed as soon as law schools became the dumping ground for people who wanted to become professionals but sucked at math. Can't do engineering? Programming's a bitch? Your lab grades suck too much to get into med school? Law school will take you! They'd better; they're charging 40k a year for it. Then these kids get out into the working world and find out that BigLaw firms will work your ass to the bone. Why not? You can't quit; you're lucky to have the job in the first place, and you have $250k of debt. Okay, so BigLaw is out if you don't want to be driven to a nervous breakdown. How about being a public attorney? $35k a year salary. Okay, that sucks... how about being an ambulance chasing personal injury lawyer? Not going to happen, because there are tens of thousands of people just like you who went through the above options and realized that they were just as fucked. So now every billboard in town has a different grim-looking face promising the moon to anyone with a slip-and-fall case. "I don't get paid until you get paid!" There's only so many people who can slip and fall on a rogue can of peas at the Kroger, and you can't pay the bills with the few that will come to you. As a result, almost a majority of people who go to law school don't end up as lawyers. The ones who do almost universally say that they wouldn't do it over again if they had the opportunity. The organizations that profit from this? BigLaw and the law schools. BigLaw firms profit immensely because they have a massive supply of new lawyers who will take anything that's given to them. 90 hour weeks? Thank you sir, may I have another! I have student loans to pay! The law schools also make a killing because, like many other colleges, they've managed to convince people that a college degree is The One True Path to attaining the American Dream. The people who get shafted, of course, are the newly minted lawyers. |