MidwestJosh wrote:chiwachiwa wrote:That's a great outcome; congratulations. Of the 36 people who are listed at 1-10 person firms, do you honestly think more than the small number you've positively identified (4, in a later post) have near-six-figure incomes? I appreciate the anecdotal evidence, but you must agree with me that a large proportion of those 36 people working in 1-10 person firms are not making $90,000, and are making closer to the lower mode of the bi-modal distribution that we all know and love.
Well I agree that they aren't mostly toward 100K, I also suspect very few are making less than $55-60K. I know A LOT of people and don't know a single one making anywhere in the vicinity of $35K. If other UMNers know of that and want to step forward, please do - I just have absolutely no knowledge or experience of that. And for you to make that statement and say that "we all know...' when all you're basing that "knowledge" off of is the BS machine that is this forum, is troublesome.
First: what I call a "good outcome" is getting a job that, had you known when you were deciding to go to law school you would end up with that job, you would have still made the decision to go to law school.
I don't think I said $35k, and if I did, my apologies. The lower mode of the bimodal distribution is around $50k. (
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/f ... laries.gif), and that's what I was referring to. Do you really think most people who have $55k jobs in 1-10 person firms consider that a good outcome? If so, we have vastly different ideas of what a good outcome is, and this argument is pointless. (I suspect most people would agree that a $55k job out of a Tier 1 law school is not a good outcome. Even objectively, from a financial perspective, the break-even point, where going to law school makes sense, is when the salary you earn is greater than or equal to the amount of tuition debt you incurred over all three years. Not many people incur less than $55k in debt.)
I'd like to hear how misguided I am, because all I did was add up five or six numbers that are on UMN's own website. Do you think people in the "academia" category are actually law professors? Do you think the majority of people in the "business" category are in jobs for which they would have decided to go to law school, ex ante? I really don't see how what I did is so uninformed or manipulative, and if you're going to call me a liar I'd like to know why.
You made leaps and bounds of assumptions and took liberties with your number calculations to the extent that your outcome is incredibly misleading; and honestly, it came across as highly disrespectful and misguided For example: 1) Throwing out 1-10 firm sizes as "shitlaw", as I outlined above.
Sorry for the disrespect. But my numbers argument still stands (see above).
2) Not including state clerkships. That's interesting considering at least two of those clerkships were to the Minnesota Supreme Court. I know one student who deferred RobinsKaplan for that clerkship.
Again, anecdotes versus statistics. I'd gladly include the 2 SSC clerkships in the "good outcomes" category. But most state and local clerkships, we can agree, are not good outcomes, and so shouldn't be included. (This goes back to my original post, where I said that any arguments one might have about my assumptions are unlikely to have a
material effect on the data. Sure, we can add a few 1-10 jobs that make $90k, and a few SSC clerkships, but you're quibbling around the edges.)
3.) Minnesota is a HUGE public interest school. That's why we have so many joint JD/MPP's. Your grudging assumption is disrespectful to a large swath of students who enter law school with an actual plan to work PI. (Which by the way, is indicative of the broader point that I'll get to in a moment...)
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I
included all PI jobs as "good outcomes." I'm not making a judgment about PI at all; I'm just trying to come up with the right number. Surely you can agree that at least some people who get PI didn't actually want PI and are just settling for it? But guess what, I included even those people as having "good outcomes." Not sure how this is a knock against me.
4.) Your ratio should have been using 212, not 205.
Nope, because 212 includes part-time jobs, which in my opinion are never "good outcomes."
And you're wrong that the vast majority of non-bar required jobs are classified as business, especially considering most of the business jobs are in-house counsel positions at companies like Cargill, Best Buy, and Target.
Again, anecdotes against statistics. You say the "vast majority," but where does that information come from? Surely the non-JD jobs come from somewhere, right? There are 27 jobs that don't require a JD. I doubt they exist in the "law firm" category, so where are they? They must be in the business category or the government category, so that's why I applied them there.
5.) You're also wrong about the academia jobs. It is not rare as you think for professors to start teaching directly out of law school, especially at some of the lower ranked law schools. I don't know the two who were placed for the 2010 class from which this data comes, but I do know that someone who graduated from 2009 is a now a prof at a fourth tier school in the upper Midwest. At any rate - you don't know their positions. They could have taken jobs in admissions, student services, etc that all pay well above 60K.
Quibbling around the margins. We're talking about 2 people here. You can have them. It doesn't change the overall number.
I have plenty of debt, and am perfectly happy with MY outcome from law school, as you seem to be as well. And that's great for the two of us. But most people (more than 50%) at my school, and I am willing to bet at UMN, are not happy with THEIR outcomes.
And my point is that I don't see that sentiment here. Perhaps everyone at UMN just hides it well, but I'm doubting that. And my point is, your willingness to bet on your assumptions are not a foundation for dispensing advice by way of numerical manipulation.
More anecdotes...and do you think the people who don't have jobs are eager for everyone to know they don't? Don't you think there's a heavy dose of (unwarranted) shame that goes with not being able to find a job?
I'm not sure what's wrong with that attitude, or why it's indicative of anything, let alone desperation. In fact I made an assumption that undercuts my own argument, and bolsters yours. You must agree with me that there are some people for whom PI is a legitimate goal going into law school, and some people who settle for PI when they can't find anything else. I've counted everyone in the PI category as the former (which gives the benefit of the doubt to the school, and to you) and none as the latter.
This gets to the broader point that I'm trying to make - which is that you presume that the vast majority of people enter law school with complete uncertainty as to what they want to go into, how much they want to make, what kind of debt load they're comfortable with, etc. While I'm not denying that such naivety is certainly pervasive, I think it is terribly misguided to make the assumption that the majority or all students are the same way. Thus, the underlying theme in all of your commentary (that everybody is "scrambling for something, anything") is what feeds the advice that you and so many other peddle on this forum. And I think that's truly saddening.
I didn't say anything about people entering with uncertainty. There are people (at every law school) who enter with a very specific idea of what they want to do (whatever it may be), but they CANNOT GET IT. Joe wants biglaw in NYC, but he can't find it. So what does he do? He ends up in the MSP public defender's office. But I don't know why you're arguing with me on this point, because I included Joe (and any others like him) as a "good outcome" person, when he almost certainly is not.
<snip>My point is this: stop dispensing purely subjective opinions as if they are fact.
I don't know how else to say this: I have not given a single subjective opinion in this thread, let alone a "purely" subjective one. I am trying to parse the ACTUAL EMPLOYMENT DATA from the UMN website. You are countering that data with your feeling about the "sentiment" at UMN, your personal job, the jobs of 4 of your friends, etc. Do you not understand the word subjective?
EDIT: I'm not having another quote-fest with you. It has become apparent to me that you are just defending your school because you go there; it's human nature to recoil when your personal decisions are questioned by others. I get that. And it's especially hard to see how bad the big picture is when your individual situation may have turned out great. But ask yourself this: do you really think that for the average/median person, going to a school like UMN or UA (or any other regional school) with no ties to the area is a good idea? Do you think the median kid at your school with 0 ties to the local area is happy with the $100k he dropped on tuition? The problem, of course, is hindsight is 20/20. And sure, if you know you want to be a PD, then go wherever and enjoy IBR & PSLF. But that's simply not the case for most people, and to act like that is the norm is delusional.
