Do they deserve to be lawyers? Forum

[Aroldis105]

I think we can all agree that:
-There are too many law schools
-There are way too many bad law schools
-Law school is too expensive
-Too many people are going to law school

However, there is a chain of logic that is commonly purported on this website regarding the likelihood of practicing law after graduating. It usually reads as follows "Graduates from XYZ law school only have a 55% chance of becoming a lawyer". My question is not a defense of law schools or even reasoning for more people to go, it's more of a search for a general consensus of TLS; what chance should a school give you of practicing law after you graduate, what do they owe you for your time and money?

Should a law student in the bottom third or even bottom half of their class with a sub 3.0 GPA be guaranteed of anything? Obviously law school is substantially more challenging than undergrad, but bottom half of your class most likely means that 150+ kids just proved over the course of 3 years that they bested you. Sure you worked incredibly hard and paid a lot of money, but can you really expect to be hired with half of your competition outranking you? Not to mention the other 5+ schools that are likely feeding into your same market.

Again, I'm not trying to rationalize school's low employment numbers, just gauging TLSers expectations of their law degrees.

[lukertin]

someone needs to rep folks in traffic court.

[MKC]

someone needs to rep folks in traffic court.

Repping folks in traffic court requires bar passaged. 45% won't be able to do that preftigious repping.

[84651846190]

Law schools should operate like med schools and protect the public from dumb lawyers. Unfortunately, I know they are failing at this because I know way too many dumb lawyers. The state bar exams are way too easy to pass, it's way too easy to get into law school, and we just need to shut down at least half of the law schools.

[californiauser]

The problem begins prior to law school matriculation. Does someone deserve to the chance be a lawyer with a 2.5 GPA and a 140 LSAT?

[hobie2515]

B-B-B-But I was always told that I could be anything I wanted to be. That's not fairrrrrr.

[sadday]

A school does not guarantee anything, but students do deserve to know a school's real employment prospects, and not the too often published employment numbers that are false/misleading.

[09042014]

I think we can all agree that:
-There are too many law schools
-There are way too many bad law schools
-Law school is too expensive
-Too many people are going to law school

However, there is a chain of logic that is commonly purported on this website regarding the likelihood of practicing law after graduating. It usually reads as follows "Graduates from XYZ law school only have a 55% chance of becoming a lawyer". My question is not a defense of law schools or even reasoning for more people to go, it's more of a search for a general consensus of TLS; what chance should a school give you of practicing law after you graduate, what do they owe you for your time and money?

Should a law student in the bottom third or even bottom half of their class with a sub 3.0 GPA be guaranteed of anything? Obviously law school is substantially more challenging than undergrad, but bottom half of your class most likely means that 150+ kids just proved over the course of 3 years that they bested you. Sure you worked incredibly hard and paid a lot of money, but can you really expect to be hired with half of your competition outranking you? Not to mention the other 5+ schools that are likely feeding into your same market.

Again, I'm not trying to rationalize school's low employment numbers, just gauging TLSers expectations of their law degrees.

Why are you so afraid to lose your job to a functional retard?

[Danger Zone]

This assumes that performance on law school exams correlates in some way with job performance. Would like to see the justification for that.

[BitterSplitter]

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[BitterSplitter]

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[09042014]

I think we can all agree that:
-There are too many law schools
-There are way too many bad law schools
-Law school is too expensive
-Too many people are going to law school

However, there is a chain of logic that is commonly purported on this website regarding the likelihood of practicing law after graduating. It usually reads as follows "Graduates from XYZ law school only have a 55% chance of becoming a lawyer". My question is not a defense of law schools or even reasoning for more people to go, it's more of a search for a general consensus of TLS; what chance should a school give you of practicing law after you graduate, what do they owe you for your time and money?

Should a law student in the bottom third or even bottom half of their class with a sub 3.0 GPA be guaranteed of anything? Obviously law school is substantially more challenging than undergrad, but bottom half of your class most likely means that 150+ kids just proved over the course of 3 years that they bested you. Sure you worked incredibly hard and paid a lot of money, but can you really expect to be hired with half of your competition outranking you? Not to mention the other 5+ schools that are likely feeding into your same market.

Again, I'm not trying to rationalize school's low employment numbers, just gauging TLSers expectations of their law degrees.

Why are you so afraid to lose your job to a functional retard?

Some functional retards have more social skills than some smart people. Also, not all the those ppl are functional retards; they r able to work for companies like prepaid legal and lower the rates top attorneys can justify charging

Wedding bands aren't lowering the premium for what Queens of the Stone age charges for a show. So some shitlawyer doing traffic tickets isn't going to lower your rate IF you are worth more than him.

My firm could easily replace me with someone who makes 25% of what I will. But there is a reason they won't.

[y2zipper]

The model needs to be changed a bit. Yeah, there are too many law schools, but too many high-priced law schools is a bigger problem. If there were less schools altogether and people could become traffic ticket/ insurance defense / solo and whatnot without a debt-load that requires mega corporate biglaw, this wouldn't even be an issue. Striking out with 20K or 40K in debt sucks and 100% of people who go will never get jobs, but that debt load doesn't kill anybody. It's the 150K price tag that does people in at a bad school.

The healthcare industry would have the same problem if there was no insurance industry.

[09042014]

I actually think more schools is the solution. Once you have more "seats" in schools that there are potential law students the price at shitlaw mills (read as anything below Cornell) will drop like a rock because students will compare schools on cost. Shit MBA schools are more affordable than shitlaw schools.

[lukertin]

I actually think more schools is the solution. Once you have more "seats" in schools that there are potential law students the price at shitlaw mills (read as anything below Cornell) will drop like a rock because students will compare schools on cost. Shit MBA schools are more affordable than shitlaw schools.

It's not the solution so long as the government is willing to hand out education loans like free candy from the creepy dude in a van

[09042014]

I actually think more schools is the solution. Once you have more "seats" in schools that there are potential law students the price at shitlaw mills (read as anything below Cornell) will drop like a rock because students will compare schools on cost. Shit MBA schools are more affordable than shitlaw schools.

It's not the solution so long as the government is willing to hand out education loans like free candy from the creepy dude in a van

It's not any worse of a problem than the bajillon masters in fine-ass fucking and other stupid degrees.

[lukertin]

I actually think more schools is the solution. Once you have more "seats" in schools that there are potential law students the price at shitlaw mills (read as anything below Cornell) will drop like a rock because students will compare schools on cost. Shit MBA schools are more affordable than shitlaw schools.

It's not the solution so long as the government is willing to hand out education loans like free candy from the creepy dude in a van

It's not any worse of a problem than the bajillon masters in fine-ass fucking and other stupid degrees.

I agree, but the only reason more schools keep offering those degrees and the only reason the price for those degrees keep going up is because of the government's free money

[bananapeanutbutter]

What annoys me about the tttt types who don't get jobs, and complain it's not fair if they have this unyielding feeling that despite all objective evidence to the contrary they are special and better at this stuff than other people who place way above them. Maybe some are, but the special snowflakes in general tend to be jerks and when there's no data supporting their cockiness, there's just nothing to respect. I can dig assholes, but the type that have some data supporting their behavior.

[09042014]

It's not the solution so long as the government is willing to hand out education loans like free candy from the creepy dude in a van

It's not any worse of a problem than the bajillon masters in fine-ass fucking and other stupid degrees.

I agree, but the only reason more schools keep offering those degrees and the only reason the price for those degrees keep going up is because of the government's free money

It doesn't really feel free. And if it does, that's not really a problem with law schools but with PAYE.

[kwais]

This is an interesting question, one that is unfortunately likely to draw canned responses (see above). I don't have a good answer, but I think there is something to the weeding-out process that many are not willing to talk about. People (rightly) point to the bogus employment statistics that their school peddled. But it still deflects attention from the question of whether, given their performance, anyone should want to hire them. Not to say that UG, LSAT or law school exam performance is an accurate measure of one's abilities (maybe it is, maybe it isn't) but on its face, seems legit for an employer to say, you couldn't outperform this group of people, so I'm not going to take a chance on you.

[MKC]

This is an interesting question, one that is unfortunately likely to draw canned responses (see above). I don't have a good answer, but I think there is something to the weeding-out process that many are not willing to talk about. People (rightly) point to the bogus employment statistics that their school peddled. But it still deflects attention from the question of whether, given their performance, anyone should want to hire them. Not to say that UG, LSAT or law school exam performance is an accurate measure of one's abilities (maybe it is, maybe it isn't) but on its face, seems legit for an employer to say, you couldn't outperform this group of people, so I'm not going to take a chance on you.

The fact that there is a group of people in this system that are guaranteed to have wasted three years kind of sucks though. Couldn't you just make sure that everyone who graduates/passes the bar will be worthy of employment? It's not like below-median med-school grads end up waiting tables.

[lukertin]

It doesn't really feel free. And if it does, that's not really a problem with law schools but with PAYE.

I don't think law schools should be forced to do anything. 90% of the fault lies with the Ed. Dep't.

[laxbrah420]

someone needs to rep folks in traffic court.

Repping folks in traffic court requires bar passaged. 45% won't be able to do that preftigious repping.

You realize the 55% he was quoting was 9 month employment statistics, not bar passage, right?

[kwais]

This is an interesting question, one that is unfortunately likely to draw canned responses (see above). I don't have a good answer, but I think there is something to the weeding-out process that many are not willing to talk about. People (rightly) point to the bogus employment statistics that their school peddled. But it still deflects attention from the question of whether, given their performance, anyone should want to hire them. Not to say that UG, LSAT or law school exam performance is an accurate measure of one's abilities (maybe it is, maybe it isn't) but on its face, seems legit for an employer to say, you couldn't outperform this group of people, so I'm not going to take a chance on you.

The fact that there is a group of people in this system that are guaranteed to have wasted three years kind of sucks though. Couldn't you just make sure that everyone who graduates/passes the bar will be worthy of employment? It's not like below-median med-school grads end up waiting tables.

yeah, we could go to that system. But I expect there are problems there too. TLS tends to romanticize anything that is not law. But, for sure, it sucks that many people invest in an outcome that does not happen.

[MKC]

someone needs to rep folks in traffic court.

Repping folks in traffic court requires bar passaged. 45% won't be able to do that preftigious repping.

You realize the 55% he was quoting was 9 month employment statistics, not bar passage, right?

I believe that was for 9 month, bar passage required employment. Doing traffic tickets requires bar passage, which means that 45% don't even get that job.