Top Law Schools

whereskyle wrote:wait, so why be a lawyer? Self interest? High paying job? Sounds like everything that is wrong with the legal field and the reason why schools are crowded and so damn expensive.

Just out of curiosity, from where do you draw your apparent limitless knowledge of the legal field?

why is this thread still a thing

whereskyle wrote:wait, so why be a lawyer? Self interest? High paying job? Sounds like everything that is wrong with the legal field and the reason why schools are crowded and so damn expensive.

Just because I'm a sucker: Law is a service profession. Many many lawyers spend their time solving people's problems. Those problems may be being charged with a crime, or wanting to merge two companies, or running a business and managing employees, or running a city/county, or getting divorced, or adopting kids, or wanting to figure out how to leave your money to your kids or how to handle the taxes for your small/large business, or resolving a conflict between you and the guy who was supposed to paint your house and didn't, or working out a system of access when you and your neighbor both have land abutting a public beach, or enforcing environmental laws, or buying oil/gas leases, or enforcing an insurance policy, and so on. With the exception of the criminal stuff, none of those things generally have anything to do with the constitution. And lots of them aren't especially high-paying.

Law schools are expensive because federal loans are incredibly easy to get and so people continue to pay ever escalating-prices.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

whereskyle wrote:wait, so why be a lawyer? Self interest? High paying job? Sounds like everything that is wrong with the legal field and the reason why schools are crowded and so damn expensive.

Just because I'm a sucker: Law is a service profession. Many many lawyers spend their time solving people's problems. Those problems may be being charged with a crime, or wanting to merge two companies, or running a business and managing employees, or running a city/county, or getting divorced, or adopting kids, or wanting to figure out how to leave your money to your kids or how to handle the taxes for your small/large business, or resolving a conflict between you and the guy who was supposed to paint your house and didn't, or working out a system of access when you and your neighbor both have land abutting a public beach, or enforcing environmental laws, or buying oil/gas leases, or enforcing an insurance policy, and so on. With the exception of the criminal stuff, none of those things generally have anything to do with the constitution. And lots of them aren't especially high-paying.

Law schools are expensive because federal loans are incredibly easy to get and so people continue to pay ever escalating-prices.

I want to add that law schools are expensive because they justified massive tuition increases under the guise of false employment and salary statistics. The main reason applicants has dropped like a rock is that truth
/ transparency is starting to see the light of day. Applications would never have grown so high had schools not been filled with, and run by, liars. A few of them have actually been caught in the past few years.

NYstate wrote:

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

whereskyle wrote:wait, so why be a lawyer? Self interest? High paying job? Sounds like everything that is wrong with the legal field and the reason why schools are crowded and so damn expensive.

Just because I'm a sucker: Law is a service profession. Many many lawyers spend their time solving people's problems. Those problems may be being charged with a crime, or wanting to merge two companies, or running a business and managing employees, or running a city/county, or getting divorced, or adopting kids, or wanting to figure out how to leave your money to your kids or how to handle the taxes for your small/large business, or resolving a conflict between you and the guy who was supposed to paint your house and didn't, or working out a system of access when you and your neighbor both have land abutting a public beach, or enforcing environmental laws, or buying oil/gas leases, or enforcing an insurance policy, and so on. With the exception of the criminal stuff, none of those things generally have anything to do with the constitution. And lots of them aren't especially high-paying.

Law schools are expensive because federal loans are incredibly easy to get and so people continue to pay ever escalating-prices.

I want to add that law schools are expensive because they justified massive tuition increases under the guise of false employment and salary statistics. The main reason applicants has dropped like a rock is that truth
/ transparency is starting to see the light of day. Applications would never have grown so high had schools not been filled with, and run by, liars. A few of them have actually been caught in the past few years.

Yes, I totally agree with that. Does that mean everyone who's been going to law school has been doing it to get a huge salary? Not exactly - it's a catch-22; tuition goes up, but b/c of the employment/salary statistics, people think they can get a massive salary to pay the debt and then go do what they want to do, so they go to law school; when it becomes clear the chance of getting those high-paying jobs is not very good, people stop going, not necessarily because they only wanted a high paycheck, but because they know they have no chance of paying off the degree expeditiously.

so, at its core, the legal profession is a "help someone out" profession. The constitution, however, isn't hiring anyone, or maybe that's what a bristow fellow is. I'm foolishly interested almost exclusively in ridiculously prestigious legal careers.

As to what I "know" about the legal profession: I became interested in the mechanics by which so many darned laws grew out of the constitution and what the heck the role of the judiciary was, so i read edward h. levi's an introduction to legal reasoning. Loved it. Recommend it. It really made me want the legal schooling, but yeah, i'm basically like, "what?" in regards to the common professional attorney route. My boss epitomizes the term stressed, and I'm trying to figure out how lawyering would not lead to a miserable life. I obviously have the "do the good dirty work" mentality.

I heard last night that a berkeley grad, who is a PD in Oakland is pretty happy.

So, I think I've come to a lot of the conclusions that tls advises, particularly "no to minimal debt for non-hys", but I'm still trying to suss out competing career paths. I like teaching a lot, and I think advocating and apprising clients of situations and legal realities and their consequences smacks of that interest. Nevertheless, it does seem to be less "pure" in my cosmology. I thank tls, because I've been encouraged to consider whether sticker debt at a t7 is for me. I don't think so. I'm just not willing to trust LRAP or IBR. I can't stand the mental weight of debt.

whereskyle wrote:so, at its core, the legal profession is a "help someone out" profession. The constitution, however, isn't hiring anyone, or maybe that's what a bristow fellow is. I'm foolishly interested almost exclusively in ridiculously prestigious legal careers.

As to what I "know" about the legal profession: I became interested in the mechanics by which so many darned laws grew out of the constitution and what the heck the role of the judiciary was, so i read edward h. levi's an introduction to legal reasoning. Loved it. Recommend it. It really made me want the legal schooling, but yeah, i'm basically like, "what?" in regards to the common professional attorney route. My boss epitomizes the term stressed, and I'm trying to figure out how lawyering would not lead to a miserable life. I obviously have the "do the good dirty work" mentality.

I heard last night that a berkeley grad, who is a PD in Oakland is pretty happy.

So, I think I've come to a lot of the conclusions that tls advises, particularly "no to minimal debt for non-hys", but I'm still trying to suss out competing career paths. I like teaching a lot, and I think advocating and apprising clients of situations and legal realities and their consequences smacks of that interest. Nevertheless, it does seem to be less "pure" in my cosmology. I thank tls, because I've been encouraged to consider whether sticker debt at a t7 is for me. I don't think so. I'm just not willing to trust LRAP or IBR. I can't stand the mental weight of debt.

I PMed you. You're right that being a lawyer is helping people, but maybe not all of those people you help are good people. Does that suck? Sure. If you can't deal with that, then don't be a lawyer. Or get incredibly rich so you can pick your cases. But if you think being a PD means you get to work on complex constitutional questions defending the poor corner boy who got roped illegally, you're in for a rude surprise, dude. You need to go outside and work a normal job. Be a server or work in retail or something. Interact with a range of people. PDs spend a lot of time defending guilty, ungrateful, and frankly terrible people. But those people deserve representation too. Just know that you're doing the same dirty tricks to get them off that you'd do if you were working white collar defense. Academia isn't going to be here for you in the future. Schools will close down and the ones that are open won't hire teachers by the dozens.

In pretty much every profession, you're not working towards a purely noble cause. Your bosses at a restaurant can be chauvinistic fucks and you're making them money. If you're a med researcher, you're growing profits for BigPharma. If you work in the White House or for a politician, you're supporting drones and civilian deaths. I don't know what you want, man.