Using the employment statistic of LST as anything besides a general guide is a mistake. It's really tough to understand how people who are either law students or lawyers, make the logical leap from "X% chance to be employed as lawyers 9 months after graduation" to "X% chance of ever becoming a practicing attorney."redmachine wrote:It's still pretty bad at some schools. Going back to George Mason, notice a few things.princetonlawgrad wrote: What a sad projection. Thousands of lawyers from TT, TTT and TTTT get jobs every year. I can't believe there are intelligent people that listen to this.
The % of graduates in full-time jobs requiring a bar license grew from 49.4% in 2013 to 64.7% in 2016. This was undoubtedly a result of the school's decision to reduce class sizes, which shrunk from 250 in 2013 to 125 in 2016.
But then they increased class size in 2017 from 125 to 150. That caused the % in full-time bar license jobs to fall from 64.7% to 60.5%. Was 64.7% too high for the school's administrators or something? Too many graduates getting real lawyer jobs? (I'm picking on George Mason but I selected them randomly. I bet you'd see the same thing at other schools.)
This relationship between class size and employment stats is particularly important for people entering law school in 2018. Reports show a lot of people took the LSAT last year. You could see huge entering classes in 2018 and really bad employment statistics in 2021.
I would also like OP to see if he can roughly confirm the law school transparency stats for his 2018 graduating class (which will come out next year). I don't think the schools are lying, but you know trust and verify and all that.
There are dozens of reasons why someone may not be employed as a full-time lawyer 9 months after graduation. Sometimes you need to lower your standards. For many, it takes just that long to pass the bar which is often a requirement before applying to certain legal jobs. In addition, many government jobs have law clerks who work at least a year until transitioning into full-time.
Anyone that thinks reading a stat sheet is an accurate picture of the legal market is seriously misguided. All it takes is one summer internship to develop one personal relationship which leads to a job offer. This happens with dozens of students graduating from local or regional schools who developed these connections in their local area while in law school. "It's all about who you know" applies to law just like every other field. Based on OP's post, it's not hard to see why he/she failed to develop such a relationship.
The really sad part about OP's post is that he/she is obviously the type of person who has zero connection to reality. To think it's somehow easier to just find blue collar job and support themselves or a family, shows he/she has probably never worked a day in their life. A bachelors today is the equivalent of a high school degree 30 years ago. Do you think the average American doesn't have debt? Has it even entered OP's mind that many of those careers' salaries max out at what an attorney would make within three years?
It's all about perspective and OP's is so skewed it's mind blowing. For some people, struggling with debt for years or having to search for a job for more than 9 months (oh the horror!) is a better option than working some crap job for the next four decades. If OP ever had a regular job for any significant time period, he/she would understand this.
To many adults with a decent perspective on life, the journey to becoming a lawyer might entail more than a three-four year transition and includes set-backs and failures. Here's a truth the stat sheet doesn't tell you, if you graduate law school and are determined to become a lawyer, you will be. You might have to sacrifice your grand delusions of biglaw and drive a Honda for a couple of years. It might take more than nine months and multiple bar attempts. But the jobs are there if you're willing to do more than give up and project your failure onto others.