New York Times: Is Law School a Losing Game? Forum

[orangefanta]

Anyone catch this in today's Times? Not exactly encouraging.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/busin ... wanted=all

Is Law School a Losing Game?
By DAVID SEGAL
Published: January 8, 2011

IF there is ever a class in how to remain calm while trapped beneath $250,000 in loans, Michael Wallerstein ought to teach it. Michael Wallerstein, who has a law degree, has $250,000 in loans and only the occasional job as a legal temp.

Here he is, sitting one afternoon at a restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a tall, sandy-haired, 27-year-old radiating a kind of surfer-dude serenity. His secret, if that’s the right word, is to pretty much ignore all the calls and letters that he receives every day from the dozen or so creditors now hounding him for cash.

“And I don’t open the e-mail alerts with my credit score,” he adds. “I can’t look at my credit score any more.”

Mr. Wallerstein, who can’t afford to pay down interest and thus watches the outstanding loan balance grow, is in roughly the same financial hell as people who bought more home than they could afford during the real estate boom. But creditors can’t foreclose on him because he didn’t spend the money on a house.

He spent it on a law degree. And from every angle, this now looks like a catastrophic investment.

Well, every angle except one: the view from law schools. To judge from data that law schools collect, and which is published in the closely parsed U.S. News and World Report annual rankings, the prospects of young doctors of jurisprudence are downright rosy.

In reality, and based on every other source of information, Mr. Wallerstein and a generation of J.D.’s face the grimmest job market in decades. Since 2008, some 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs at large firms have vanished, according to a Northwestern Law study. Associates have been laid off, partners nudged out the door and recruitment programs have been scaled back or eliminated...

[NYC_7911]

Just to keep this conversation in one thread, here's a link to an ongoing discussion of this article: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 1&t=143622

[orangefanta]

Didn't see it. Mod, please delete.

[vanwinkle]

Locked as redundant.