JD Unemployment Reaches New High (15%) Forum

[NYSprague]

Problem with DJM's study is that it's for a state, not a school

Yes, but bar admission shows the school. She considers the difference in outcomes based on school prestige starting on page 47.

Right but people want to see the data by school for comparison. Even if we look at the primary state into which a school feeds you might find just a small percentage of the state's grads there. That's why taking this data and making it into a school by school thing would be quite the accomplishment.

Isn't employment mostly location based?

At any rate, the information of people who have passed the bar is available. Most practicing attorneys have an online presence. It should be possible to find a list of grads and look them up. The salary information won't be available but you could get an idea of the employers.

Again, the 10 year data might be misleading compared to what current grads can expect, but it's better than nothing, I suppose.

I'm just saying it shouldn't be this huge mystery. It's just the matter of doing the work.

Edit: thinking about it, going back to 2010 is probably the most reliable year for comparison. 2009 was a disaster. Before that, not representative of current circumstances.

[JCougar]

Good luck. I sincerely wish you well. Your career search sounds really shitty.

I went back and read some of your earliest posts. Back then you said you didn't buy that people in doc review were "making the most of their opportunity by looking for jobs anywhere they can find one..."

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 5#p2248774
Skimming the thread it looks like you then felt that people could find jobs if they tried hard enough, even as others were explaining about deferrals, Harvard closing down its program to pay the 3rd year of tuition for public interest students, lack of jobs.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 0#p2249708

I think you have tried as hard as you can.

I am not quoting those posts to make you feel bad and I hope it doesn't.

I quoted those to show that it can be almost impossible to get 0Ls to accept the reality of the lawyer oversupply.

I'm actually really glad you brought that up. People think I'm overly negative on here, but I was once a naive, starry-eyed 0L at one point too, that thought that people who complained just weren't trying hard enough. It should be alarming to 0Ls just how close I once was to them.

It's funny how quickly your perspective changes once you are exposed to this scam from the inside. It's hard to wrap your head around just how corrupt and scammy these "prestigious" institutions are until it actually happens to you. You think, "how can it be that bad when these places are so preftigious?"

[lacrossebrother]

aren't you like 40?

[BiglawAssociate]

This is all true enough to make me have another drink tonight. Law is such a hit or miss affair; if you don't make it into some kind of a feeder position right out of the gate you are essentially screwed. If you are one of the lucky ones - and at this point I really see it as being "lucky"- then you're probably set barring another 2008 or some kind of a personal melt down in your life or firm.

Honestly, if you're smart enough to pass the bar exam then you're probably smart enough to do any number of careers that are in seriously high demand at the moment. Learn to code. Stop being afraid of numbers. Learn a trade. I think my outcome out of law school is fairly good and I still kick myself sometimes for not following my own advice.

Wow, aren't you still a 3L? Is it because you saw your loan amount?

I actually have a significantly smaller debt load than most people coming out of UVA or any other law school for that matter. In the last three years I just had a large flip in interests from government to business/industry. My wife is also a citizen of another country and we're not entirely certain that we want to stay in the United States the rest of our lives, and given my current practice area I'm not entirely certain how I could continue my career in this other country. It's not that we want to live outside of the United States permanently, but it would be fun to live there for a few years.

I'm also one of those persons who has more interests than is good for them. I program a little on the side. I think finance is interesting: I do a lot of trading and that will probably have to stop once I'm a lawyer. Carpentry is kind of cool. I like doing dangerous things. And the list goes on. So there is a little heartbreak in knowing that in one way or another I'm not going to do X as a career.

Honestly, I could be singing a different tune in a few years. The practice group I'm headed to is a great group of people and I really like the general firm culture as well. But I also know a lot of people that have been burned by becoming a lawyer. Admittedly, a lot of those people are not the folks I went to school with. I may also be a bit fatalistic at times.

Edit: I feel stupid saying this now, but in writing this post I became more excited to start working again. More than anything, I may be burnt out a bit by academics and politics in general.

Well I'm a few years into biglaw, and not sure if I am going to stay in law. Half of my friends in biglaw are the same way. As long as you don't have kids, you can do whatever you want no matter your age (I strongly believe this). I want to do a bunch of things - start a business being one of them. I wish i didn't take such a long detour from realizing there are a LOT of other things that I want to do in life (and can do) that doesn't require paying a shitload of money into the higher education scam, but whatever.

Since you have little debt at least you're free to explore something else - but yes, doing grad school is taking time out from doing all of these things, and you soon realize that life is too damn short to really get to do a lot of things you want to do. I really don't want to wake up in the blink of an eye and be 60 after toiling away in an office for 35 years wondering wtf happened to my life.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Sometimes, but not invariably. I think the paths to non/post-biglaw careers are less set or clear cut than people here assume. Someone who graduates Seattle U and goes to a small PI shop isn't likely to end up as a biglaw partner, no. But most biglaw associates don't make biglaw partner, either. The Seattle U person could end up in the same place as a lot of former biglaw associates, just without doing the biglaw part to start.

I'll concede this probably doesn't hold true for the tip top most unicorn jobs. But frankly most T14 grads don't end up in those, either.

I don't know. I still see having school-specific, mid-career employment data as being one of the most useful things we could have to evaluate where (or if) someone should get a JD, at least as long as entry-level employment outcomes remain heavily correlated with law school prestige. I can't really argue with the fact that some people from less prestigious schools can and do get good jobs (or that people from better or worse schools can wind up in the same place), but that doesn't really seem like all that strong of a point to make when the employment data we have now confirms that graduates from better schools are much more likely to make enough to pay their loans off and have a position that requires a JD when they're 9 months out. To see whether that correlation holds up later, we would need better mid-career data. Otherwise, we're left with anecdotes/speculation, and to me that doesn't justify the cost of most schools.

I agree that the data would be great to have - I think as people get further out it's going to be harder to draw a direct correlation between school prestige and success, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look at the data. I'm also not saying that the lack-of-straight-path justifies the cost of schools with lesser employment outcomes - I would still recommend people go to the school with the best employment outcome/debt ratio they can find. I just find that the more people I meet in practice, the wider the range of outcomes is, so I don't want people who do end up somewhere other than the T14 to feel they're doomed to a certain career path (or conversely, for people in the T14 to think the same thing).

But I'm also not in biglaw, nor am I in NYC/LA/Chicago/DC, so may have a broader definition of success than some people.

[JCougar]

aren't you like 40?

No.

[ReasonableNprudent]

Some people do everything right and get shut out. That's a fact. Couger seems to have played the cards he was dealt in a very reasonable way and still nothing. He seems like a good person and I sincerely hope his luck turns around. After his PSLF slave labor runs its course, you would think so long as he is bar licensed and applies broadly within his state, even to rural offices, that he could get something, eventually.

But maybe not. There are always going to be outliers.

But they are outliers. I know, I know, 40k graduates and only 25k jobs, yadda yadda, but this is far from reality. Even at my T1 school, there were tons of people that had no idea if they wanted to be lawyers. They spent their weekends and many weekdays partying or spending time and energy outside of their alleged future career. They had no real reason to attend law school in the first place.

There are thousands of students like this all over the country, especially at lowly schools. The underlying problem is that it is ridiculously easy to go to law school and many peers consider it a socially acceptable thing to do. Many of us could obtain a score of 155+ on the LSAT without any study, and that score will now get you into MOST law schools in the country. When you are 24 and working a boring job that neither impresses your peers or your mother, you go to law school.

But the good news (unless you are one of these people) is that you can beat out most of these folks in the job hunt with a strategy and substantial effort. Here are some anecdotes. In my law school class, everyone I know who worked an internship during the school year is employed. Every single person. The people who are unemployed consist of people who failed the bar exam or people who would have been voted most likely to be unemployed after law school during orientation week, + 1 or 2 true outliers.

The T1 and T2 true employment rate (long-term, full-time JD required) is probably 60%, plus or minus a few points? This rate seems to shock most on this site (especially the regular posters, who overwhelmingly went to T20 schools). This rate sounds about right to me. At least 40% of these students had no business enrolling in law school to begin with. I may not blame couger for his specific position because I don't know his story, but I blame many similarly situated people for their own predicaments. They can't all be outliers.

Thanks for the kind words, but like I said, it's not just me.

You would cringe if you worked with me on my previous volunteer-ship--for a while spending hour upon endless hour with a pair of T6 grads pulling files out of the HR department of a government office and making photocopies. Listening to their stories about how they blew their bidding strategy was just downright sad. I mean, I was stupid enough to attend a trap school and think I could at least eek out something making $60K worst case scenario. But the higher school you attend and strike out at, the more difficult it is to explain to your family how a government secretary with a neck tattoo is ordering you around and telling you where the extra reams of paper are to restock the copy machine.

Back then, I was living in a roach-infested tenement where the heating gas was shut off because the slumlord wasn't paying the bill even though it was "included" in the rent. We later got bedbugs, and I had to spend my entire weekend wrapping all my belongings in garbage bags so the exterminator could come in and apply the treatment. At least my friend let me sleep on her couch while the place was getting fumigated so that I wouldn't get cancer inhaling all the fumes. That was when I was getting my sub-minimum-wage stipend from my school to count me as LT, FT, JD-required employed. A stunning success story! I can now be portrayed as such to the next wave of hapless suckers about to send in their FAFSA promissory notes and sign away their lives so Stephen F. Diamond's and Brian Leiter's peers can write intellectually-vapid-yet-superficially-Marxist "research" to be published in journals run on the slave labor of a hopelessly-indebted underclass.

But I digress. The real point is that I can't be wrote off as some "rare exception." Like I said, in addition to my previous experience, there are 4 other people on this project are my trap school peers. One quit her shitlaw job because doc review was actually more lucrative, if you can believe that. Another got into one of those "decent" small plaintiff's firms that actually does more than just cut n' paste shitwork. But then his boss went nuts, fired a bunch of people, and then committed suicide--thus, no more firm. That's not his fault either, but it doesn't matter. You see, there's so many people applying for any other job that pops up in this industry that anyone without a job--whether their fault or not--is immediately and easily filtered out and dismissed as a loser because it is automatically assumed that it's your fault for not having anything.

I clerked for a small two-attorney firm my second year, but those guys barely had enough to scrape by themselves. The first one didn't care, because his wife was a teacher and they could retire on her pension--plus he was formerly a government attorney and could retire on that. He was in his 60s and seemed somewhat happy. But the other attorney there was chewed up and spit out by the small firm down the street. He was the best associate there for 8 years, but instead of letting him become partner, his bosses dropped the hammer and took all his clients. His wife divorced him, and he limped across the street to partner up with the other guy. They were both great people, but they were grinding it out and billing between 1-2 hours a day. At least they got to go home at around 5pm and see their kids. I doubt either of them were pulling in much more than $60K after 20 years of practice or whatever. The second guy was totally stressed out and ready to snap at any moment. There was no way they had any room for a schmuck like me to eat into whatever meager overhead they had for a year or two while I learned the ropes.

Divorce and suicide are common in this industry. Either you make shit money and your spouse is mad at you, or you make good money but you're never home. The only exception is maybe people who manage to score government jobs--as dead-end as most of them may be intellectually. I need more than two hands to count the number of people who privately alluded to me the fact that they entertained thoughts of suicide because of this shitty industry. Some of them eventually made it, but others are still scraping by. You really have to develop a sense of humor about this shit quick, because if you start taking it too seriously, you won't last long. I am still worried about some of these people.

You see, this locus of control stuff is like walking a tightrope. If you blame it all on yourself, you'll quickly jump off a bridge. If you blame it 100% on the scammy way legal education and the legal industry are set up, you will probably be to angry to still bust it out in the trenches and try and make something of your life, and will sit around getting high and playing video games in your parents' basement for the next 5 years. It's very important to parse out what you can control from what you can't, otherwise you'll start circling the drain pretty quickly. I keep a copy of the quote from Slaughterhouse Five handy with me for the rough times:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I think they use that at AA meetings.

Can some other practicing attorneys weigh in on the tone and spirit of the stories above, preferably those that graduated in the last few years from "trap" schools in the 20-30 range?

I know it can be rough, but it seems like jcougar has particular scorn for the law. Sometimes life just sucks but is all the misfortune in these stories rightfully attributed to the the decision to go to law school?

The doom and gloom above is not representative of the stories of the attorneys I know personally. Admittedly, some of them regret their decision or "wonder if it was all worth while." The reality is most people I know that went to law school (most of whom went in the past few years) are on a reasonable career track, even if their debt isn't being paid off at a rapid pace. No, I don't know droves of attorneys, but statistically I think I've got a large enough sample that there really should be more complete duds in there if things really are so horrible for most grads.

One thing that did cross my mind in reading the post is that sometimes work involves taking shit from people that are, in some way, beneath you. Such inferiority might include neck tattoos and sometimes the work might involve loading a copier despite a professional degree. Menial tasks and putting up with shit are sometimes part of the gig and are in no way limited to law. That's just work.

[JCougar]

Good luck. I sincerely wish you well. Your career search sounds really shitty.

One more point. Shitty as it might be, I hope no one takes this as a sob story. It's not.

It is the essence of American liberty to de-legitimize corrupt, bureaucratic, wasteful, passive-aggressive, rent-seeking institutions that look not to produce gains for society, but look to extract rent from others and then dance on their graves. The legal industry had a good start in this country, but at this point, it has turned into a mockery of itself: cannibalizing its own in the name of pure greed, and then pretending like that's "prestigious."

And then the greedy hyenas that run this profession have the gall to call Millennials "entitled."

The basis of American liberty, whether you're conservative, moderate, or liberal, is that innovation and ingenuity create value that an entire society can enjoy. You won't find any of this in law school. What you'll find is an archaic, established power devouring anything and everything in its path, until the majority are left begging for scraps in roach-infested dwellings while the "successful" are working grueling hours for years just to get back to square one with their debt payments. No value is created--only obfuscation, lies, delay, rent-seeking, and financial cannibalism.

The tuition of the weak subsidizes the strong. The debt of the young enriches the old. Empty prestige laughs at ingenuity, innovation, and change.

This system goes against almost every single liberal value this country was founded upon--liberal values that are normally especially embraced by the average person at the average law school. It's not a cry for help to laugh at it, mock it, damn it, dismiss it, or scorn it. It's time to tear this scam down and start anew.

[NYSprague]

Some people do everything right and get shut out. That's a fact. Couger seems to have played the cards he was dealt in a very reasonable way and still nothing. He seems like a good person and I sincerely hope his luck turns around. After his PSLF slave labor runs its course, you would think so long as he is bar licensed and applies broadly within his state, even to rural offices, that he could get something, eventually.

But maybe not. There are always going to be outliers.

But they are outliers. I know, I know, 40k graduates and only 25k jobs, yadda yadda, but this is far from reality. Even at my T1 school, there were tons of people that had no idea if they wanted to be lawyers. They spent their weekends and many weekdays partying or spending time and energy outside of their alleged future career. They had no real reason to attend law school in the first place.

There are thousands of students like this all over the country, especially at lowly schools. The underlying problem is that it is ridiculously easy to go to law school and many peers consider it a socially acceptable thing to do. Many of us could obtain a score of 155+ on the LSAT without any study, and that score will now get you into MOST law schools in the country. When you are 24 and working a boring job that neither impresses your peers or your mother, you go to law school.

But the good news (unless you are one of these people) is that you can beat out most of these folks in the job hunt with a strategy and substantial effort. Here are some anecdotes. In my law school class, everyone I know who worked an internship during the school year is employed. Every single person. The people who are unemployed consist of people who failed the bar exam or people who would have been voted most likely to be unemployed after law school during orientation week, + 1 or 2 true outliers.

The T1 and T2 true employment rate (long-term, full-time JD required) is probably 60%, plus or minus a few points? This rate seems to shock most on this site (especially the regular posters, who overwhelmingly went to T20 schools). This rate sounds about right to me. At least 40% of these students had no business enrolling in law school to begin with. I may not blame couger for his specific position because I don't know his story, but I blame many similarly situated people for their own predicaments. They can't all be outliers.

Thanks for the kind words, but like I said, it's not just me.

You would cringe if you worked with me on my previous volunteer-ship--for a while spending hour upon endless hour with a pair of T6 grads pulling files out of the HR department of a government office and making photocopies. Listening to their stories about how they blew their bidding strategy was just downright sad. I mean, I was stupid enough to attend a trap school and think I could at least eek out something making $60K worst case scenario. But the higher school you attend and strike out at, the more difficult it is to explain to your family how a government secretary with a neck tattoo is ordering you around and telling you where the extra reams of paper are to restock the copy machine.

Back then, I was living in a roach-infested tenement where the heating gas was shut off because the slumlord wasn't paying the bill even though it was "included" in the rent. We later got bedbugs, and I had to spend my entire weekend wrapping all my belongings in garbage bags so the exterminator could come in and apply the treatment. At least my friend let me sleep on her couch while the place was getting fumigated so that I wouldn't get cancer inhaling all the fumes. That was when I was getting my sub-minimum-wage stipend from my school to count me as LT, FT, JD-required employed. A stunning success story! I can now be portrayed as such to the next wave of hapless suckers about to send in their FAFSA promissory notes and sign away their lives so Stephen F. Diamond's and Brian Leiter's peers can write intellectually-vapid-yet-superficially-Marxist "research" to be published in journals run on the slave labor of a hopelessly-indebted underclass.

But I digress. The real point is that I can't be wrote off as some "rare exception." Like I said, in addition to my previous experience, there are 4 other people on this project are my trap school peers. One quit her shitlaw job because doc review was actually more lucrative, if you can believe that. Another got into one of those "decent" small plaintiff's firms that actually does more than just cut n' paste shitwork. But then his boss went nuts, fired a bunch of people, and then committed suicide--thus, no more firm. That's not his fault either, but it doesn't matter. You see, there's so many people applying for any other job that pops up in this industry that anyone without a job--whether their fault or not--is immediately and easily filtered out and dismissed as a loser because it is automatically assumed that it's your fault for not having anything.

I clerked for a small two-attorney firm my second year, but those guys barely had enough to scrape by themselves. The first one didn't care, because his wife was a teacher and they could retire on her pension--plus he was formerly a government attorney and could retire on that. He was in his 60s and seemed somewhat happy. But the other attorney there was chewed up and spit out by the small firm down the street. He was the best associate there for 8 years, but instead of letting him become partner, his bosses dropped the hammer and took all his clients. His wife divorced him, and he limped across the street to partner up with the other guy. They were both great people, but they were grinding it out and billing between 1-2 hours a day. At least they got to go home at around 5pm and see their kids. I doubt either of them were pulling in much more than $60K after 20 years of practice or whatever. The second guy was totally stressed out and ready to snap at any moment. There was no way they had any room for a schmuck like me to eat into whatever meager overhead they had for a year or two while I learned the ropes.

Divorce and suicide are common in this industry. Either you make shit money and your spouse is mad at you, or you make good money but you're never home. The only exception is maybe people who manage to score government jobs--as dead-end as most of them may be intellectually. I need more than two hands to count the number of people who privately alluded to me the fact that they entertained thoughts of suicide because of this shitty industry. Some of them eventually made it, but others are still scraping by. You really have to develop a sense of humor about this shit quick, because if you start taking it too seriously, you won't last long. I am still worried about some of these people.

You see, this locus of control stuff is like walking a tightrope. If you blame it all on yourself, you'll quickly jump off a bridge. If you blame it 100% on the scammy way legal education and the legal industry are set up, you will probably be to angry to still bust it out in the trenches and try and make something of your life, and will sit around getting high and playing video games in your parents' basement for the next 5 years. It's very important to parse out what you can control from what you can't, otherwise you'll start circling the drain pretty quickly. I keep a copy of the quote from Slaughterhouse Five handy with me for the rough times:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I think they use that at AA meetings.

Can some other practicing attorneys weigh in on the tone and spirit of the stories above, preferably those that graduated in the last few years from "trap" schools in the 20-30 range?

I know it can be rough, but it seems like jcougar has particular scorn for the law. Sometimes life just sucks but is all the misfortune in these stories rightfully attributed to the the decision to go to law school?

The doom and gloom above is not representative of the stories of the attorneys I know personally. Admittedly, some of them regret their decision or "wonder if it was all worth while." The reality is most people I know that went to law school (most of whom went in the past few years) are on a reasonable career track, even if their debt isn't being paid off at a rapid pace. No, I don't know droves of attorneys, but statistically I think I've got a large enough sample that there really should be more complete duds in there if things really are so horrible for most grads.

One thing that did cross my mind in reading the post is that sometimes work involves taking shit from people that are, in some way, beneath you. Such inferiority might include neck tattoos and sometimes the work might involve loading a copier despite a professional degree. Menial tasks and putting up with shit are sometimes part of the gig and are in no way limited to law. That's just work.

He used to think just like you. As an 0L he was sure there were jobs to be found.
I don't know how to explain to you the many levels that you just don't understand.

[JCougar]

One thing that did cross my mind in reading the post is that sometimes work involves taking shit from people that are, in some way, beneath you. Such inferiority might include neck tattoos and sometimes the work might involve loading a copier despite a professional degree. Menial tasks and putting up with shit are sometimes part of the gig and are in no way limited to law. That's just work.

Oh, I have no problem doing menial tasks. I worked on an assembly line during my summers in undergrad 50 hours a week with no air conditioning. Before that, I worked unloading trucks.

I just thought the neck tattoo story was a little bit cute and funny in an ironic way--showing how ridiculous this promise of "prestige" really is. In a way, making those copies was somewhat of a relief from sitting behind my computer all day staring into nothing, trying to figure out why a case over $200 had been going on for 13 years and had filled an entire industrial-sized file drawer full of paperwork.

[sparty99]

Some people do everything right and get shut out. That's a fact. Couger seems to have played the cards he was dealt in a very reasonable way and still nothing. He seems like a good person and I sincerely hope his luck turns around. After his PSLF slave labor runs its course, you would think so long as he is bar licensed and applies broadly within his state, even to rural offices, that he could get something, eventually.

But maybe not. There are always going to be outliers.

But they are outliers. I know, I know, 40k graduates and only 25k jobs, yadda yadda, but this is far from reality. Even at my T1 school, there were tons of people that had no idea if they wanted to be lawyers. They spent their weekends and many weekdays partying or spending time and energy outside of their alleged future career. They had no real reason to attend law school in the first place.

There are thousands of students like this all over the country, especially at lowly schools. The underlying problem is that it is ridiculously easy to go to law school and many peers consider it a socially acceptable thing to do. Many of us could obtain a score of 155+ on the LSAT without any study, and that score will now get you into MOST law schools in the country. When you are 24 and working a boring job that neither impresses your peers or your mother, you go to law school.

But the good news (unless you are one of these people) is that you can beat out most of these folks in the job hunt with a strategy and substantial effort. Here are some anecdotes. In my law school class, everyone I know who worked an internship during the school year is employed. Every single person. The people who are unemployed consist of people who failed the bar exam or people who would have been voted most likely to be unemployed after law school during orientation week, + 1 or 2 true outliers.

The T1 and T2 true employment rate (long-term, full-time JD required) is probably 60%, plus or minus a few points? This rate seems to shock most on this site (especially the regular posters, who overwhelmingly went to T20 schools). This rate sounds about right to me. At least 40% of these students had no business enrolling in law school to begin with. I may not blame couger for his specific position because I don't know his story, but I blame many similarly situated people for their own predicaments. They can't all be outliers.

Thanks for the kind words, but like I said, it's not just me.

You would cringe if you worked with me on my previous volunteer-ship--for a while spending hour upon endless hour with a pair of T6 grads pulling files out of the HR department of a government office and making photocopies. Listening to their stories about how they blew their bidding strategy was just downright sad. I mean, I was stupid enough to attend a trap school and think I could at least eek out something making $60K worst case scenario. But the higher school you attend and strike out at, the more difficult it is to explain to your family how a government secretary with a neck tattoo is ordering you around and telling you where the extra reams of paper are to restock the copy machine.

Back then, I was living in a roach-infested tenement where the heating gas was shut off because the slumlord wasn't paying the bill even though it was "included" in the rent. We later got bedbugs, and I had to spend my entire weekend wrapping all my belongings in garbage bags so the exterminator could come in and apply the treatment. At least my friend let me sleep on her couch while the place was getting fumigated so that I wouldn't get cancer inhaling all the fumes. That was when I was getting my sub-minimum-wage stipend from my school to count me as LT, FT, JD-required employed. A stunning success story! I can now be portrayed as such to the next wave of hapless suckers about to send in their FAFSA promissory notes and sign away their lives so Stephen F. Diamond's and Brian Leiter's peers can write intellectually-vapid-yet-superficially-Marxist "research" to be published in journals run on the slave labor of a hopelessly-indebted underclass.

But I digress. The real point is that I can't be wrote off as some "rare exception." Like I said, in addition to my previous experience, there are 4 other people on this project are my trap school peers. One quit her shitlaw job because doc review was actually more lucrative, if you can believe that. Another got into one of those "decent" small plaintiff's firms that actually does more than just cut n' paste shitwork. But then his boss went nuts, fired a bunch of people, and then committed suicide--thus, no more firm. That's not his fault either, but it doesn't matter. You see, there's so many people applying for any other job that pops up in this industry that anyone without a job--whether their fault or not--is immediately and easily filtered out and dismissed as a loser because it is automatically assumed that it's your fault for not having anything.

I clerked for a small two-attorney firm my second year, but those guys barely had enough to scrape by themselves. The first one didn't care, because his wife was a teacher and they could retire on her pension--plus he was formerly a government attorney and could retire on that. He was in his 60s and seemed somewhat happy. But the other attorney there was chewed up and spit out by the small firm down the street. He was the best associate there for 8 years, but instead of letting him become partner, his bosses dropped the hammer and took all his clients. His wife divorced him, and he limped across the street to partner up with the other guy. They were both great people, but they were grinding it out and billing between 1-2 hours a day. At least they got to go home at around 5pm and see their kids. I doubt either of them were pulling in much more than $60K after 20 years of practice or whatever. The second guy was totally stressed out and ready to snap at any moment. There was no way they had any room for a schmuck like me to eat into whatever meager overhead they had for a year or two while I learned the ropes.

Divorce and suicide are common in this industry. Either you make shit money and your spouse is mad at you, or you make good money but you're never home. The only exception is maybe people who manage to score government jobs--as dead-end as most of them may be intellectually. I need more than two hands to count the number of people who privately alluded to me the fact that they entertained thoughts of suicide because of this shitty industry. Some of them eventually made it, but others are still scraping by. You really have to develop a sense of humor about this shit quick, because if you start taking it too seriously, you won't last long. I am still worried about some of these people.

You see, this locus of control stuff is like walking a tightrope. If you blame it all on yourself, you'll quickly jump off a bridge. If you blame it 100% on the scammy way legal education and the legal industry are set up, you will probably be to angry to still bust it out in the trenches and try and make something of your life, and will sit around getting high and playing video games in your parents' basement for the next 5 years. It's very important to parse out what you can control from what you can't, otherwise you'll start circling the drain pretty quickly. I keep a copy of the quote from Slaughterhouse Five handy with me for the rough times:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I think they use that at AA meetings.

Can some other practicing attorneys weigh in on the tone and spirit of the stories above, preferably those that graduated in the last few years from "trap" schools in the 20-30 range?

I know it can be rough, but it seems like jcougar has particular scorn for the law. Sometimes life just sucks but is all the misfortune in these stories rightfully attributed to the the decision to go to law school?

The doom and gloom above is not representative of the stories of the attorneys I know personally. Admittedly, some of them regret their decision or "wonder if it was all worth while." The reality is most people I know that went to law school (most of whom went in the past few years) are on a reasonable career track, even if their debt isn't being paid off at a rapid pace. No, I don't know droves of attorneys, but statistically I think I've got a large enough sample that there really should be more complete duds in there if things really are so horrible for most grads.

One thing that did cross my mind in reading the post is that sometimes work involves taking shit from people that are, in some way, beneath you. Such inferiority might include neck tattoos and sometimes the work might involve loading a copier despite a professional degree. Menial tasks and putting up with shit are sometimes part of the gig and are in no way limited to law. That's just work.

Actually, you twat, you have no idea how rough it can be for law graduates. No one gives a shit about the attorneys that you know personally. I've had two interviews since September. I have classmates who are on food stamps. You are just a naive little brat.

[ReasonableNprudent]

Some people do everything right and get shut out. That's a fact. Couger seems to have played the cards he was dealt in a very reasonable way and still nothing. He seems like a good person and I sincerely hope his luck turns around. After his PSLF slave labor runs its course, you would think so long as he is bar licensed and applies broadly within his state, even to rural offices, that he could get something, eventually.

But maybe not. There are always going to be outliers.

But they are outliers. I know, I know, 40k graduates and only 25k jobs, yadda yadda, but this is far from reality. Even at my T1 school, there were tons of people that had no idea if they wanted to be lawyers. They spent their weekends and many weekdays partying or spending time and energy outside of their alleged future career. They had no real reason to attend law school in the first place.

There are thousands of students like this all over the country, especially at lowly schools. The underlying problem is that it is ridiculously easy to go to law school and many peers consider it a socially acceptable thing to do. Many of us could obtain a score of 155+ on the LSAT without any study, and that score will now get you into MOST law schools in the country. When you are 24 and working a boring job that neither impresses your peers or your mother, you go to law school.

But the good news (unless you are one of these people) is that you can beat out most of these folks in the job hunt with a strategy and substantial effort. Here are some anecdotes. In my law school class, everyone I know who worked an internship during the school year is employed. Every single person. The people who are unemployed consist of people who failed the bar exam or people who would have been voted most likely to be unemployed after law school during orientation week, + 1 or 2 true outliers.

The T1 and T2 true employment rate (long-term, full-time JD required) is probably 60%, plus or minus a few points? This rate seems to shock most on this site (especially the regular posters, who overwhelmingly went to T20 schools). This rate sounds about right to me. At least 40% of these students had no business enrolling in law school to begin with. I may not blame couger for his specific position because I don't know his story, but I blame many similarly situated people for their own predicaments. They can't all be outliers.

Thanks for the kind words, but like I said, it's not just me.

You would cringe if you worked with me on my previous volunteer-ship--for a while spending hour upon endless hour with a pair of T6 grads pulling files out of the HR department of a government office and making photocopies. Listening to their stories about how they blew their bidding strategy was just downright sad. I mean, I was stupid enough to attend a trap school and think I could at least eek out something making $60K worst case scenario. But the higher school you attend and strike out at, the more difficult it is to explain to your family how a government secretary with a neck tattoo is ordering you around and telling you where the extra reams of paper are to restock the copy machine.

Back then, I was living in a roach-infested tenement where the heating gas was shut off because the slumlord wasn't paying the bill even though it was "included" in the rent. We later got bedbugs, and I had to spend my entire weekend wrapping all my belongings in garbage bags so the exterminator could come in and apply the treatment. At least my friend let me sleep on her couch while the place was getting fumigated so that I wouldn't get cancer inhaling all the fumes. That was when I was getting my sub-minimum-wage stipend from my school to count me as LT, FT, JD-required employed. A stunning success story! I can now be portrayed as such to the next wave of hapless suckers about to send in their FAFSA promissory notes and sign away their lives so Stephen F. Diamond's and Brian Leiter's peers can write intellectually-vapid-yet-superficially-Marxist "research" to be published in journals run on the slave labor of a hopelessly-indebted underclass.

But I digress. The real point is that I can't be wrote off as some "rare exception." Like I said, in addition to my previous experience, there are 4 other people on this project are my trap school peers. One quit her shitlaw job because doc review was actually more lucrative, if you can believe that. Another got into one of those "decent" small plaintiff's firms that actually does more than just cut n' paste shitwork. But then his boss went nuts, fired a bunch of people, and then committed suicide--thus, no more firm. That's not his fault either, but it doesn't matter. You see, there's so many people applying for any other job that pops up in this industry that anyone without a job--whether their fault or not--is immediately and easily filtered out and dismissed as a loser because it is automatically assumed that it's your fault for not having anything.

I clerked for a small two-attorney firm my second year, but those guys barely had enough to scrape by themselves. The first one didn't care, because his wife was a teacher and they could retire on her pension--plus he was formerly a government attorney and could retire on that. He was in his 60s and seemed somewhat happy. But the other attorney there was chewed up and spit out by the small firm down the street. He was the best associate there for 8 years, but instead of letting him become partner, his bosses dropped the hammer and took all his clients. His wife divorced him, and he limped across the street to partner up with the other guy. They were both great people, but they were grinding it out and billing between 1-2 hours a day. At least they got to go home at around 5pm and see their kids. I doubt either of them were pulling in much more than $60K after 20 years of practice or whatever. The second guy was totally stressed out and ready to snap at any moment. There was no way they had any room for a schmuck like me to eat into whatever meager overhead they had for a year or two while I learned the ropes.

Divorce and suicide are common in this industry. Either you make shit money and your spouse is mad at you, or you make good money but you're never home. The only exception is maybe people who manage to score government jobs--as dead-end as most of them may be intellectually. I need more than two hands to count the number of people who privately alluded to me the fact that they entertained thoughts of suicide because of this shitty industry. Some of them eventually made it, but others are still scraping by. You really have to develop a sense of humor about this shit quick, because if you start taking it too seriously, you won't last long. I am still worried about some of these people.

You see, this locus of control stuff is like walking a tightrope. If you blame it all on yourself, you'll quickly jump off a bridge. If you blame it 100% on the scammy way legal education and the legal industry are set up, you will probably be to angry to still bust it out in the trenches and try and make something of your life, and will sit around getting high and playing video games in your parents' basement for the next 5 years. It's very important to parse out what you can control from what you can't, otherwise you'll start circling the drain pretty quickly. I keep a copy of the quote from Slaughterhouse Five handy with me for the rough times:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I think they use that at AA meetings.

Can some other practicing attorneys weigh in on the tone and spirit of the stories above, preferably those that graduated in the last few years from "trap" schools in the 20-30 range?

I know it can be rough, but it seems like jcougar has particular scorn for the law. Sometimes life just sucks but is all the misfortune in these stories rightfully attributed to the the decision to go to law school?

The doom and gloom above is not representative of the stories of the attorneys I know personally. Admittedly, some of them regret their decision or "wonder if it was all worth while." The reality is most people I know that went to law school (most of whom went in the past few years) are on a reasonable career track, even if their debt isn't being paid off at a rapid pace. No, I don't know droves of attorneys, but statistically I think I've got a large enough sample that there really should be more complete duds in there if things really are so horrible for most grads.

One thing that did cross my mind in reading the post is that sometimes work involves taking shit from people that are, in some way, beneath you. Such inferiority might include neck tattoos and sometimes the work might involve loading a copier despite a professional degree. Menial tasks and putting up with shit are sometimes part of the gig and are in no way limited to law. That's just work.

Actually, you twat, you have no idea how rough it can be for law graduates. No one gives a shit about the attorneys that you know personally. I've had two interviews since September. I have classmates who are on food stamps. You are just a naive little brat.

Interesting choice of words. I made an effort to be diplomatic. You, on the other hand, did not. Good luck with your piss-poor attitude. Sounds like you're on a roll.

Edit: Did you ever wind up doing better than 145 on the LSAT? Looking at your early post history it really seems you should have known better, even for back then. Yeah, that was a low dig. But when you go throwing the word "twat" around the gloves come off. You deserve to be unemployed, and should probably be wearing some sort of helmet.

[lacrossebrother]

I don't think he wrote that he knows what it can be like. jcougar's been dropping a bunch of "most" bombs, and I believe the other dude responded with similar language. (@sparty)

[NoBladesNoBows]

.

[NYSprague]

Yes, just to be clear, all the misfortune in these stories are attributable to attending law school and hitting a job market filled with an oversupply of lawyers.

I'm genuinely curious, what do you think the problem is attributable to? Generally people seem to want to know what an unemployed person did wrong so they can avoid it. How do you avoid a skewed job market where the bimodal salary distribution paints a clear picture of the dichotomy of success and failure (except its worse than the graph indicates because all the unemployed grads with zero income aren't included.)

[lacrossebrother]

Yes, just to be clear, all the misfortune in these stories are attributable to attending law school and hitting a job market filled with an oversupply of lawyers.

I'm genuinely curious, what do you think the problem is attributable to? Generally people seem to want to know what an unemployed person did wrong so they can avoid it. How do you avoid a skewed job market where the bimodal salary distribution paints a clear picture of the dichotomy of success and failure (except its worse than the graph indicates because all the unemployed grads with zero income aren't included.)

Let's say Juliard lets anyone in, 40% of its grads become world famous, the rest are total losers forever. You are deciding whether to go or not. Is there anything about yourself you would check? Maybe whether you can play an instrument?

Have you ever read law review write ons? What percent of law students do you think go to school saying, "Im a great reader but I can't write and I'm terrified of public speaking." I bet a lot. I think people should figure out if they can write first. And also speak.

[lacrossebrother]

"Just do retake the lsat --a test designed to measure intelligence--to try to game the system by studying way longer than other people."

[Intranetusa]

"Just do retake the lsat --a test designed to measure intelligence--to try to game the system by studying way longer than other people."

Well, the logic games are totally game-able b/c it's mostly just recognizing the pattern. And there are plenty of tricks and strategies so your scores will go up if you study enough.

[Desert Fox]

"Just do retake the lsat --a test designed to measure intelligence--to try to game the system by studying way longer than other people."

Well, the logic games are totally game-able b/c it's mostly just recognizing the pattern. And there are plenty of tricks and strategies so your scores will go up if you study enough.

It isn't supposed to be a recognizing the pattern test, it just fails once you do bunch of them.

[lacrossebrother]

I'm saying maybe don't go to law school if you get a 150 raw

[sparty99]

Go check yourself. I have had a job since graduation....

[Saddle Up]

I can see a few people missing this point, but how thousands totally miss it is inexplicable. In considering law school, you go in with a minimum UG GPA in the mid-high eights. Then a minimum LSAT in the mid-to-high one-sixties. If you cannot deliver those mediocre numbers for acceptance into a top 15-30 school, don’t apply. This strategy would eliminate a large percentage of employment fails you read about. How schools outside of tier-one manage to lure thousands of applicants is way beyond belief.

[twenty]

Let's say Juliard lets anyone in, 40% of its grads become world famous, the rest are total losers forever. You are deciding whether to go or not. Is there anything about yourself you would check? Maybe whether you can play an instrument?

1) The analogy is kind of poor because in reality, you can go to a school where 100% of its grads achieve success and are not "total losers forever." So it doesn't really matter if you can't play an instrument or not, since even if you're at the bottom x% of the music class, going is still advantageous to you.
2) Unlike "can I play an instrument or not," there's really no good way for a person to determine how well they can write superficial arguments quickly and in a way that their particular professors think is cool. Maybe someone's self-aware enough to realize that they aren't very fast on their feet/really hate reading things, but those people typically shy away from law school to begin with.
3) If anything, law seems like a pretty great place to hang out if you don't have a lot of tangible skills. When most of an incoming law school class has less than 2-3 years of work experience, their resumes are going to effectively look like "willing to put up with monotony; won't usually cry when faced with long meaningless texts."

[A. Nony Mouse]

I can see a few people missing this point, but how thousands totally miss it is inexplicable. In considering law school, you go in with a minimum UG GPA in the mid-high eights. Then a minimum LSAT in the mid-to-high one-sixties. If you cannot deliver those mediocre numbers for acceptance into a top 15-30 school, don’t apply. This strategy would eliminate a large percentage of employment fails you read about. How schools outside of tier-one manage to lure thousands of applicants is way beyond belief.

No.

[prezidentv8]

a minimum UG GPA in the mid-high eights.

I definitely got an 8.0 in college. Yep. I was real good at school.