How many people in 2013 still clueless about law school? Forum

[20130312]

I don't even try to talk to people about it because people have ridiculous fucking egos. Just say "congrats" and be on your merry way unless they specifically ask for advice or your opinion.

This. Most of the pre-law people are aware that the market is "bad" but don't chalk it up to much more than the rest of the economy. For a lot of people I know, the very idea of going to law school has not lost its luster or prestige, so simply going to law school is a huge fucking deal (plus, what else are you going to do with that humanities degree ITE?). Special Snowflake Syndrome is very, very real, unfortunately.

There's got to be a line or two...or three..you can use that will be a strategic way to talk to people.

In my situation, I think I lacked that touch of showing concern, wanting to tell the truth, and also respecting that person. I think my acquaintance literally thought I was putting her down (her intelligence). ...It was maybe the way I worded it you know. ...It made me wonder if I could have come up with a different approach that would make this more digestable.

I've thought of telling super horror stories, lol., Ones taht would make them see the seriousness of it all.

Why do you care so much?

[scifiguy]

civic and moral duty

[20130312]

civic and moral duty

Nonfeasance, bro. Abort.

[moonman157]

I don't even try to talk to people about it because people have ridiculous fucking egos. Just say "congrats" and be on your merry way unless they specifically ask for advice or your opinion.

This. Most of the pre-law people are aware that the market is "bad" but don't chalk it up to much more than the rest of the economy. For a lot of people I know, the very idea of going to law school has not lost its luster or prestige, so simply going to law school is a huge fucking deal (plus, what else are you going to do with that humanities degree ITE?). Special Snowflake Syndrome is very, very real, unfortunately.

There's got to be a line or two...or three..you can use that will be a strategic way to talk to people.

In my situation, I think I lacked that touch/balance of showing concern, wanting to tell the truth, and also respecting that person. I think my acquaintance literally thought I was putting her down (her intelligence). ...It was maybe the way I worded it you know. ...It made me wonder if I could have come up with a different approach that would make this more digestable.

I've thought of telling super horror stories, lol., Ones taht would make them see the seriousness of it all.

Ya, the difficulty is in making sure that you don't sound condescending. It's especially tough to tell someone that they should look to better schools when they know you're T14 bound (see how douchey I just sounded right there? Now imagine you're hearing that but you're still thrilled about your TTT acceptance. That kind of perceived put-down gets dismissed right away, as we've seen a ton of times on this site. "You're all a bunch of prestige whores who don't think any school outside the top 14 is worth it so I'm not going to listen to you egomaniacs").

[Rahviveh]

I don't even try to talk to people about it because people have ridiculous fucking egos. Just say "congrats" and be on your merry way unless they specifically ask for advice or your opinion.

This. Most of the pre-law people are aware that the market is "bad" but don't chalk it up to much more than the rest of the economy. For a lot of people I know, the very idea of going to law school has not lost its luster or prestige, so simply going to law school is a huge fucking deal (plus, what else are you going to do with that humanities degree ITE?). Special Snowflake Syndrome is very, very real, unfortunately.

There's got to be a line or two...or three..you can use that will be a strategic way to talk to people.

In my situation, I think I lacked that touch/balance of showing concern, wanting to tell the truth, and also respecting that person. I think my acquaintance literally thought I was putting her down (her intelligence). ...It was maybe the way I worded it you know. ...It made me wonder if I could have come up with a different approach that would make this more digestable.

I've thought of telling super horror stories, lol., Ones taht would make them see the seriousness of it all.

Ya, the difficulty is in making sure that you don't sound condescending. It's especially tough to tell someone that they should look to better schools when they know you're T14 bound (see how douchey I just sounded right there? Now imagine you're hearing that but you're still thrilled about your TTT acceptance. That kind of perceived put-down gets dismissed right away, as we've seen a ton of times on this site. "You're all a bunch of prestige whores who don't think any school outside the top 14 is worth it so I'm not going to listen to you egomaniacs").

Most people will have that reaction - some people do listen though. You just have to be delicate and stick to what the stats say.

[scifiguy]

Ya, the difficulty is in making sure that you don't sound condescending.

I KNOW!!! I think you get what I mean

It's especially tough to tell someone that they should look to better schools when they know you're T14 bound (see how douchey I just sounded right there? Now imagine you're hearing that but you're still thrilled about your TTT acceptance. That kind of perceived put-down gets dismissed right away, as we've seen a ton of times on this site. "You're all a bunch of prestige whores who don't think any school outside the top 14 is worth it so I'm not going to listen to you egomaniacs")

I even felt in my mind that I sounded that way when I was saying it.

I think maybe syaing something like "You know what? I actually was in the exact positoin you were in a while back. I was thinking of applying to ______ school and as I started to research the legal economy and hiring, I learned _______. And could believe it! I had no idea! And then I started to learn ______ and ________."

...Something like that might get them to be more open and even curious, because they can relate to you possibly or know that you were in their shoes. Werehas if you come out saying how they need to attend Harvard or Yale or they'll be unemployed, then it really does sound super condescending and probably offensive!!! I"m sure it would to me!

But if you get them to feel you're like them and learned something valuable that maybe they should check out what you'/re saying....and that you really want to help them, then they may really be open and be like "really?????" and they may be vcurious....

[09042014]

No, scamblogs are more recent - product of the economic nosedive. Nando, king of the scambloggers, didn't start until August 2009. The blogs I checked on his blogroll all start after that. Campos doesn't start till August 2011.

(And it's really creeping me out to see you with someone else's avatar.)

But things like JDUnderground existed way before. It was never a good idea to go below T1. It was easier to get shitlaw, but shitlaw still didn't pay well.

The economy basically pushed each tier of school down a peg. HYS were basically- pick which V20 you wanna go to. CCN was Pick your V50. And the rest of the T14 minus Gtown was pick your V100. Vandy, UCLA, USC, Texas placed more like the lower T14 does now.

And the top regional were putting the top third of their classes into big law. Even the lower T1 and top T2 schools were sending 10%.

But many grads remained unemployed. Doc review temp work was still going strong. And most lawyers went into shit law, for long hours and shit pay.

Law school, in general, was always a scam. It only got attention when top schools started struggling a bit.

[scifiguy]

No, scamblogs are more recent - product of the economic nosedive. Nando, king of the scambloggers, didn't start until August 2009. The blogs I checked on his blogroll all start after that. Campos doesn't start till August 2011.

(And it's really creeping me out to see you with someone else's avatar.)

But things like JDUnderground existed way before. It was never a good idea to go below T1. It was easier to get shitlaw, but shitlaw still didn't pay well.

The economy basically pushed each tier of school down a peg. HYS were basically- pick which V20 you wanna go to. CCN was Pick your V50. And the rest of the T14 minus Gtown was pick your V100. Vandy, UCLA, USC, Texas placed more like the lower T14 does now.

And the top regional were putting the top third of their classes into big law. Even the lower T1 and top T2 schools were sending 10%.

But many grads remained unemployed. Doc review temp work was still going strong. And most lawyers went into shit law, for long hours and shit pay.

Law school, in general, was always a scam. It only got attention when top schools started struggling a bit.

But what high school kid or even college kid (that's not mayhbe a senior) is going to know this?

I didn't. I only know because I have LOTS of friends and acquinatances in law school, graduted from law school, and applying. I would hear them talk about TLS and "third tier toilets" and laughed (being a super immature kid back then). I never checked this site out until I got to college and was interested in law school and remembered them talking about it year ago. But if I didnt' know people who had used this site I would never look up those statistics on my own probably.

I know some people like that. It's different when you've actually seen people struggle, b/c then you know firsthand about some of the issues and can readily believe these scamblogs. Bujt if you're a hs or college kid doing your own t hing and don't know anyone in law or have any reason to go to TLS, then you might just be lazy not not check ot simply not know.

[BruceWayne]

Literally everyone, except those that have done an ounce of research. Even people that I go to law school with are completely clueless.

Exactly which blows my mind. They're people with NO JOBS talking about all the doors that a top 14 opens at my school. It's unreal.

[star fox]

Do people get offended if you try to tell them?

I treid having this talk to someone I met who was applying, but she didn't seem very interested and I got the feeling she was still going to apply. I don't think she fully understood the implications of what I was saying, nor fully believed me maybe. Or she thought she was a special snowflake.

But also, I think that she may have been offended ...I don't know, but here's what I feel based on my impressions. I think she thought I was saying SHE was NOT smart enough to go or something like that. YOu know...like I figured she wasn't law school material and was just highlighting the negative and not giving her a complete picture with the positives. I can't tell for sure, but just based on some indicators, that's what it felt like. It's as if she thought I was challenging her intellect somehow and didn't want to hear it. She had planned on law since high school I think ....at the very least since college from which she graduated about a year ago. I think she just had her mind made up and me telling her something negative felt like it was a threat to her in some way. That's how I kind of felt.

It seemed she was annoyed by me possibly. Anyone else get that?

People have it in their head that they want to go to Law School. A kid majors in Political Science what else are they going to do? Become a Political Scientist? When they're a senior in high school and freshman in college they're not thinking too deeply about their career. I know I wasn't. Law School was a vague concept that I always had in my head. I wasn't researching information on the internet about law school graduates. Everyone always says "yes Law School is a great idea.. it's always smart to pursue more education.. lawyers are super wealthy".

People interpret you saying "Don't go to tier 2 law school" as "you can't be a lawyer because you can't get into Yale". The key is informing people that they can and should re-take the LSAT and waiting a year or two is not a bad idea. Frame the discussion more about you and see what they want to say. If someone isn't a close friend than don't worry too much about it.

[timbs4339]

Back in 2008 when I first discovered TLS, the scambloggers had been around for awhile. There was JDU, and Loyola2L who was voted ATL Lawyer of the Year in 2007, and a bunch of others who have come and gone and come back (areyouinsane/sadsituationJD was once rumored to be an old scamblogger skaddenfarts). It was generally considered a movement for people who'd paid too much to attend NYC area TTT schools, like Seton Hall, St. John's, Hofstra, NYLS. Bill Henderson was calling foul back then too. I think Campos/Tamahana started stirring in 2010.

Law school has long been a losing proposition for many students, what changed is 1) tuition shot up real fast over the last decade, so that attending a TTT went from being a waste of three years to a life-ruining decision, and 2) the bottom fell out of the T50, which were charging as much as the T14 and not delivering nearly the placement into decent jobs that would justify the cost.

I feel old now.

But in order to really know that law school is a bad idea you have to be exposed to this information in the first place or go looking for it. And it was my experience that very few people in my BIGSTATE poly sci program really did that much outside research into law schools, so they never saw the info in the first place. Once you get the information, you have to process it correctly, which is difficult to do with confirmation bias and optimism bias (special snowflake syndrome).

[magp90]

There's also an element of denial. I know people who are confronted with the reality of the legal job market (and even can see the effects within their own families), who think that they can be hotshot attorneys after going to TTTT with a terrible work ethic.

There is a rising awareness of the impact that the economy has had on lawyers (hence, also, the decline in applications), but even the personality type of the typical applicant is often a head-strong person, so many believe it may not ultimately affect them.

[ndirish2010]

You just have to be honest with people. Who cares if they don't like you? If they don't get it, they will soon enough.

I think I successfully talked a guy out of attending a Chicago T2 while playing poker with him a couple of months back. He had no idea about anything.

[Unoriginalist]

Frame the discussion more about you and see what they want to say. If someone isn't a close friend than don't worry too much about it.

+1

Can't force people to take advice they don't want or don't ask for and expect them to take well to it, in my experience.

[Rahviveh]

Frame the discussion more about you and see what they want to say. If someone isn't a close friend than don't worry too much about it.

+1

Can't force people to take advice they don't want or don't ask for and expect them to take well to it, in my experience.

It also depends on WHEN you give them advice.

If you are giving them advice when they've already applied, received decisions and are choosing between schools - you will just be perceived as putting down both them and the schools they got into, especially if you are T14 bound.

If you tell them about the job market and the importance of going to a "good school" before that process and while they are studying - they are more likely to listen and prep harder for the LSAT.

Once someone is at the point where they've already taken the test, it's usually pointless to tell them anything. It's just too late and most people don't want to retake.

[Crowing]

One of my good friends actually came to me asking about law school back in the fall. I was honest with her but tried to avoid giving opinions and just presented her with resources to make the decision on her own. Eventually she decided not to go to law school.

But there are plenty of people who never bother to research things before they dive off into them. The question then is whether they don't do so because they just assume everything is rosy or because they just don't care about facts. If it's the second one then anything you attempt is going to be a lost cause.

[TheThriller]

Everyone I know heading to law school besides (besides one person who is at Yale, and who originally showed me TLS) are going to TTT/TTTT without scholarships. Hell one girl I know instragramed a picture of her acceptance email from John Marshall with the comment "my dreams are finally coming true" and all her friends were so proud of her. Its a shame, shes wasting a decent gpa.

No sympathy for her though, she asked me at a bar earlier in the year about where I wanted to go to LS and I told her I was pretty much gunning for T14/strong regional with $$$. She told me I was arrogant and elitist.

[20130312]

This is why I don't talk to people about it. Someone recently told me they were going to attend Drexel next year and I said congratulations. End of story.

[LRGhost]

No, scamblogs are more recent - product of the economic nosedive. Nando, king of the scambloggers, didn't start until August 2009. The blogs I checked on his blogroll all start after that. Campos doesn't start till August 2011.

(And it's really creeping me out to see you with someone else's avatar.)

But things like JDUnderground existed way before. It was never a good idea to go below T1. It was easier to get shitlaw, but shitlaw still didn't pay well.

The economy basically pushed each tier of school down a peg. HYS were basically- pick which V20 you wanna go to. CCN was Pick your V50. And the rest of the T14 minus Gtown was pick your V100. Vandy, UCLA, USC, Texas placed more like the lower T14 does now.

And the top regional were putting the top third of their classes into big law. Even the lower T1 and top T2 schools were sending 10%.

But many grads remained unemployed. Doc review temp work was still going strong. And most lawyers went into shit law, for long hours and shit pay.

Law school, in general, was always a scam. It only got attention when top schools started struggling a bit.

Over 40% of kids at GW were getting Big Law before ITE, bro.

No sympathy for her though, she asked me at a bar earlier in the year about where I wanted to go to LS and I told her I was pretty much gunning for T14/strong regional with $$$. She told me I was arrogant and elitist.

Did you say it like a dick? It's easy to be cold and dickish about this shit, especially when you've had a few drinks and start talking about TTTs and shitlaw, etc.

But to answer the OP, dude, plenty of people. People still have the boomer mentality that you can bootstrap and work your way up, or that you can go to a BIGSTATEU and easily transfer to Harvard, or that your local TTT will secure great employment because it used to 30 years ago. Even with the information out there, I don't blame kids at TTTs because we've been cultured to buy into this education scam. FWIW, there's a lot of people in law school and TLS ignorant about the legal economy. There are countless posts about people confident that they can pay off 200k+ in debt with five years in Big Law disregarding the facts about class attrition and COL.

[stillwater]

There is definitely one kid here who GETS it. He carries a briefcase and wears earth tones. He understands that if he strikes out, he can always be a serial killer.

[star fox]

Frame the discussion more about you and see what they want to say. If someone isn't a close friend than don't worry too much about it.

+1

Can't force people to take advice they don't want or don't ask for and expect them to take well to it, in my experience.

It also depends on WHEN you give them advice.

If you are giving them advice when they've already applied, received decisions and are choosing between schools - you will just be perceived as putting down both them and the schools they got into, especially if you are T14 bound.

If you tell them about the job market and the importance of going to a "good school" before that process and while they are studying - they are more likely to listen and prep harder for the LSAT.

Once someone is at the point where they've already taken the test, it's usually pointless to tell them anything. It's just too late and most people don't want to retake.

Agreed. And if you want to help people out I would approach it in the right matter to someone who is ready to go to Law School. I'd approach it like "Well here's what I've been looking at.. I'm considering taking a year off to raise my LSAT because I've been looking at things like Law School Transparency and seen how the school you go to really impacts if and what job you can get.. I know it sucks to have to study for that stupid test again but I figure Law School is a big investment so I want to do whatever I can to give myself the best odds given how bad the legal market. By the way what kind of research have you been doing on your decision?" If they haven't done any research on the matter they'll probably feel like an idiot (without you implying they are) and hopefully start looking into things on their own.

If you come out and are like "don't go to tier 2 law school or else you'll never get a lawyer job! Oh by the way, I got accepted into a Top 14 so I don't have to worry because all of my lawyer dreams are going to come true!' you look like a pretentious snob akin to that kid in high school who goes to a fancy private school and tells everyone going to BigStateU that they are going to such an inferior institution and won't be as successful as him. I think a big misconception from people going to bad law schools (in terms of employment data, I'm sure they're all for the most part fine schools at teaching people the law, but the point of law school is to become a lawyer) is that while they may not get the V50 $160,000 starting salary they will still be able to find some sort of solid legal employment that will pay them ~$80,000-$100,000 out of school. Never give advice when it's not asked for unless this is someone you are really close to and concerned about. With all the available data out there, if someone wants to spend an Ivy League amount on a TII/TIII Law School then just say congrats and good luck and let them be on their way. At some point what you said will register. Hopefully it will be before they put down a deposit but for many it's not until they're in Law School or afterwards.

[JCougar]

Back in 2008 when I first discovered TLS, the scambloggers had been around for awhile. There was JDU, and Loyola2L who was voted ATL Lawyer of the Year in 2007, and a bunch of others who have come and gone and come back (areyouinsane/sadsituationJD was once rumored to be an old scamblogger skaddenfarts). It was generally considered a movement for people who'd paid too much to attend NYC area TTT schools, like Seton Hall, St. John's, Hofstra, NYLS. Bill Henderson was calling foul back then too. I think Campos/Tamahana started stirring in 2010.

Law school has long been a losing proposition for many students, what changed is 1) tuition shot up real fast over the last decade, so that attending a TTT went from being a waste of three years to a life-ruining decision, and 2) the bottom fell out of the T50, which were charging as much as the T14 and not delivering nearly the placement into decent jobs that would justify the cost.

I feel old now.

But in order to really know that law school is a bad idea you have to be exposed to this information in the first place or go looking for it. And it was my experience that very few people in my BIGSTATE poly sci program really did that much outside research into law schools, so they never saw the info in the first place. Once you get the information, you have to process it correctly, which is difficult to do with confirmation bias and optimism bias (special snowflake syndrome).

This. A lot of the scam-blogs go back well before the crash. Loyola 2L, and Tom the Temp (who I'm pretty sure is skaddenfarts/areyouinsane/sadsituation JD) goes back to 2006 or something. The latter seemed to start out as a bitch/moan session about the NYC document review circuit.

For a long time, no one took these dissenters seriously, because they were "only a few disgruntled people with the internet to amplify their views." Most people who fucked their lives up via law school just receded into the background--too embarrassed or self-conscious to make a big stink over it.

The fact that the hiring crisis has moved up into the T14 has sort of legitimized people's plight. As in, if T14 attorneys are getting screwed over, than it's okay to admit I got screwed over at my T2. Also, all those people that graduated cum laude from a T10 school that got either no-offered or laid off during the bursting of the bubble caused a big stink. That's when people started changing their minds and thinking "this could happen to anyone."

[LRGhost]

If you come out and are like "don't go to Tier 2 Law School or else you'll never get a lawyer job! Oh by the way, I got accepted into a Top 14 so I don't have to worry because all of my lawyer dreams are going to come true!' you look like a pretentious snob akin to that kid in high school who goes to a fancy private school and tells everyone going to BigStateU that they are going to such an inferior institution and won't be as successful as him. I think a big misconception from people going to bad law schools (in terms of employment data, I'm sure they're all for the most part fine schools at teaching people the law, but the point of law school is to become a lawyer) is that while they may not get the V50 $160,000 starting salary they will still be able to find some sort of solid legal employment that will pay them ~$80,000-$100,000 out of school. Never give advice when it's not asked for unless this is someone you are really close to and concerned about. With all the available data out there, if someone wants to spend an Ivy League amount on a TII/TIII Law School then just say congrats and good luck and let them be on their way. At some point what you said will register. Hopefully it will be before they put down a deposit but for many it's not until they're in Law School or afterwards.

This is the problem right there. You can talk to people thinking about going to LS but if you're an aspie fuck, you probably suck at talking to people and derive some type of pleasure from a weird position of inflated superiority. Another point to maybe drive home is to explain that a TTT and HLS will cost roughly the same amount of money at sticker but only one of those schools is feeding enough people in worthwhile career paths.

FWIW, I was guilty of being a dick when I first started looking into LS. I told a friend at a TTT that I'd rather become a manager at Walmart than go to LS and work a 40k job. Regardless of where I was coming from, that's not really a nice thing to tell someone at LS.

[moonman157]

Another thing to remember is that there's a reason why some of the biggest drops in apps have come from students with 170+ LSATs. If you're willing to do the work to get that score, you've probably done your homework or at least enough research to be reasonably scared about law school, or you're smart enough to make a thoughtful decision about your future. It's amazing that there are so many of us T14-bound 0Ls who (myself included) are absolutely terrified about going to law school, and then I'll see people post on facebook about being accepted to the local TTTT and brag about how they're going to be a rich hot-shot lawyer someday.

[TatNurner]

You guys raise good points about this widespread ignorance. I've noticed it too. My friend is writing the Feb LSAT. He was talking proudly about how he was PTing in the high 150s. He's a capable guy with a super high GPA. I told him with a better LSAT he has a serious shot at T6 and he nearly slapped me as if I was talking blasphemy.

I cant help but feel like this ignorance is not just limited to law school. It seems like its something structural, something that cuts right across the way society operates in general. We may be just seeing one manifestation of it up close.