From the Folks at JDunderground.com...(This may ruin day) Forum

[Darth Topher]

Author: jdundergroundhello
Subject: Top-Tier Law Grad With Terrible Life, No Job Prospects
Time: February 11, 2009 - 9:45 am

Is this what you are looking for?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 028AACplr4


Lawyers are a dime a dozen. Actually, with the proliferation of law schools and lowering of standards the degree will be as esteemed as a truck driving school certificate. A lot of law schools admissions policy is if you got the dough, or are willing to take on debt, you can go.

Look at Massachusetts School of Law and Appalachian Law School in Virginia for examples, it is a joke, they should have truck driving academies right next to their schools. You would not see those low standards at a dental or medical school. Some people talk about doctors being sued and high malpractice insurance, do not let the medical profession fool you, doctors and dentists make the most money in our society even after paying for their malpractice insurance. If you eliminated med-mal suits it would have little or no impact on the affordability and accessibility of health care, the docs would just pocket the extra money. By the way I have sued lawyers for malpractice but never a doc/dentist, I look forward to it.


I am an attorney. However, I went to a top 15 school and had mediocre grades. I found the job market to be depressing. So much time, planning, and money went into undergraduate school, I had a 4.0 GPA, and scored above the 95th percentile on the LSAT, 171. I naively thought going to a top school their would be plenty of lucrative and exciting jobs waiting for me and I would be set to have a good quality of life. I remember sending out 300 letters one time and getting no positive response, either they said some nonsense about you are great, you have good accomplishments, but at this time we cannot offer you a position, we will keep your resume on file.

I took the Bar Exam in two states wasting time studying and not earning any money. I had to move back in with my parents, fun. Meanwhile many of my friends and people that I knew from High School and College were establishing themselves in their careers and making money, gettng promotions, etc. I worked post-law school as a car salesman and a mortgage broker. Finally, a family friend had a friend who was a solo attorney, I worked for him basically for free, actually it was negative because I spent money on travel, long distance phone calls, etc., still living at home with mom and dad, saddled with law school debts, the student loan people started calling wanting $$$.

Eventually, I left that attorney. I struggled to find another attorney job. I got a job in 2003 at a firm paying the princely sum of $25,000 per year. I moved out of my parent's house but was still subsidized by them. Dad kept threatening to cut me off, but I lived in an expensive state the cheapest place to stay I found was $1,500 a month all inclusive. My paycheck was like $430.00 a week take home. Eventually, I did go solo, it was hard, but I did make some money in real estate closings for 3 1/2 years. Now the real estate market stinks and I have no income, and I am trying to plan my next move.

I have interviewed for some associate positions and the salary range was 38k-55k, this is pretty low for someone with 5 yrs experience and a doctorate degree. My wife works at a nail salon, as a manicurist, she took a three month course and makes 50K a year. It has been an exquisitely painful road for me. In my family I am the most educated and the least financially secure. My dad makes like $350,000K engineering+MBA degree, my younger sister makes $165,000K a year psyche degree and an MBA.

My conclusion, LAW SUCKS!!!!!!!!!! Too many law schools fighting for tuition $$$, night programs, weekend programs, low academic standards, too many attorneys, lowering wages and limiting opportunities, compare to the AMA and ADA that insure a shortage of dentists and doctors. When I was solo it seemed like everyone was an attorney, or their cousin was an attorney, or their sister's friend was an attorney, or their brother was an attorney and so and so on, I lost a lot of business because of this.

I do not think doctors and dentists face such client poaching. If you are in the top 5%, law review, and went to a good school, yes, you will probably get a good job right from the start. I would have been better off not going to College and instead picking up a trade like being an electrician. Heck, if I had all the money I wasted on education, worked at a gas station during all my non-earning years and put the money into a CD I could probably be able to retire.

Looking back, if I had to do it again, if you want to through the hard work and invest the $$$ for education so it pays off you should go into healthcare. Heck their is a shortage of pharmacists and their median wage is $98,000K well above lawyers. Dentists 180,000K median and their is a shortage. Oh well this sucks but this is my life and I will deal with it, I spent my educational time and $$$, and the dye is cast.

[AR75]

Sounds from his negative bitch-fest that he's one to forego the lemonade option and just take the lemons. My school is not representative of the folks on this site, but even at my T3 I know top 5%-ers, LR people who have personalities like lumps of crap. This could very well be the case with ol' boy in the article.
Funny enough, in our 1L orientation week, I believe it was day three:

An eventual EIC of the LR was talking to our 1L section about LR and its tremendous benefits--i.e. open doors, job opportunities, blah blah blah. He even mentioned that at the end of his 1L year, he was ranked #3 of roughly 160 students. All the while I couldn't help but be distracted and put off by his snooty, condescending tone and general attitude, mixed with a splash of social akwardness masked as overconfidence.
Then, from the crowd:
1L: "So, LR is good at helping get good jobs?"
EIC: "Absolutely"
1L: "So, which firm did you work for your first summer?"
EIC: "Oh, I didn't get a job"
1L: "Well, that really sucks"
*crickets, followed by more uncomfortable silence*

Anecdotal moral: Even the best pedigree can be undercut by shitty personality. This may very well be this author's case. I'm not lay a bet on the end of the world here.

[vee]

Anecdotal moral: Even the best pedigree can be undercut by shitty personality. This may very well be this author's case.

And, combined with his lack of writing skills and self-professed "mediocre grades," well...I'm not kicking the can just yet.

[vamedic03]

also, if he was 95th percentile on LSAT he didn't score a 171 (98th percentile)

[gk101]

also, if he was 95th percentile on LSAT he didn't score a 171 (98th percentile)

he said above the 95th percentile

wasn't this same link posted yesterday by TTTsolo

[wtf180]

Yes, and it's annoying...

[JuryDueT1000]

Didn't we trudge through this same stupid story ad nauseum yesterday in a thread? (see http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... =2&t=60015)

We already came to the conclusion this story is either a flame, or the writer is simply a complete loser. After getting a 4.0 in college and then completing a JD the best job he could land is car salesman? We all know people who have done better than that, even without a college diploma.

So again I say: this is either a flame or complete loser. Regardless, he hardly represents the norm.

[bearcat0102]

I think it could reasonably be a true story. Is it all that shocking to anyone that there are people out there that may be outstanding on paper (171 LSAT) but flop once you put them in front of another human being?

[on_ne_sait_jamais]

The economy is significantly worse now than it was when this d-bag graduated, and if he couldn't get a job from a t-15 school, he really was a D-bag... although I do know someone who graduated from wustl last year whose story sounds very similar to the guy's in this article.. Then again he was a stoner drug addict who never went to class... He seriously prolly graduated dead last.... He still has a job now though~ prolly only making 80K... Waaaaa

[Darth Topher]

Sounds from his negative bitch-fest that he's one to forego the lemonade option and just take the lemons. My school is not representative of the folks on this site, but even at my T3 I know top 5%-ers, LR people who have personalities like lumps of crap. This could very well be the case with ol' boy in the article.
Funny enough, in our 1L orientation week, I believe it was day three:

An eventual EIC of the LR was talking to our 1L section about LR and its tremendous benefits--i.e. open doors, job opportunities, blah blah blah. He even mentioned that at the end of his 1L year, he was ranked #3 of roughly 160 students. All the while I couldn't help but be distracted and put off by his snooty, condescending tone and general attitude, mixed with a splash of social akwardness masked as overconfidence.
Then, from the crowd:
1L: "So, LR is good at helping get good jobs?"
EIC: "Absolutely"
1L: "So, which firm did you work for your first summer?"
EIC: "Oh, I didn't get a job"
1L: "Well, that really sucks"
*crickets, followed by more uncomfortable silence*

Anecdotal moral: Even the best pedigree can be undercut by shitty personality. This may very well be this author's case. I'm not lay a bet on the end of the world here.

good point

[whyamidoingthis]

I think it could reasonably be a true story. Is it all that shocking to anyone that there are people out there that may be outstanding on paper (171 LSAT) but flop once you put them in front of another human being?

could be a true to story, but his inability to write and spell (differentiate your and you're, please!) speak volumes about why he never got a job....

[pany1985]

[Someperson]

Someone already posted this. Oh no, some idiot Cooley-grad failed at life.

[MAD1984]

I seriously question whether someone could have maintained a 4.0 average in undergrad and graduated from a T15 (maybe he meant tier 15? ) law school and still be this poor a writer.

[djshack]

Either this guy is full of it, or he's just a complete moron.

I graduated from a well-regarded public university with a below-par GPA, and currently work at a not-so-hot law firm as an uncertified paralegal ("case manager"), and I make $40k per year. Our starting attorneys make around $75k per year, and we hire from Golden Gate University, among others.

There are jobs. They might not be dream jobs, and they might not pay $140k per year, but this guy is simply full of it. $25k as an attorney? Car salesman? Wow.

[Dick Whitman]

The ABA controls the flow of lawyers out of law schools, and the ABA is controlled by lawyers. Why would they allow their own industry to be cannibalized by over supply?

There is nothing sinister about the distribution of attorney salaries. There is a very large demand for very basic legal services, so TTT schools churn out many lawyers of middling intelligence to do that work. On the other end, there is a growing demand for extremely complex legal work that can only be handled by the brightest of legal minds (i.e. an essentially fixed supply), thus salaries at the high end have been rapidly increasing.

Also, schools like Appalachian and the Puerto Rican schools were founded and exist to serve very specific, underserved legal markets, and their admissions standards reflect that.

[98234872348]

...

[Globetrekker]

Seriously, yet another troll. But just to humor all of the flaws in it, anyway:

1) Run-on sentences and fifth-grade spelling errors much? If your grammar and writing skills are any representation of your potential, the surprise is not that you don't have a job, but that you made it to a top law school to begin with. I'd infer from this that you didn't score too well in legal writing, huh? If your resume, cover letter, and thank-you letters followed in this style, there'd probably be 300 more firms out there who'd ignore you all over again.

2) Your bitter pessimistic look at life will certainly carry through to your "non-trolling" life. And no one will want to hire you with an attitude like that, and you entered this cycle all by yourself. Classic case of someone who, for whatever reason, though generally of his own fault, fell short of his lofty goals without doing the work needed to achieve them. Now, you're upset and mad and life's oh-so-unfair.

3) You did your math wrong. Here's your problem: 4.0 UG GPA + 171 LSAT + T14 + No Effort ≠ BALLING; rather, admitted mediocre grades = epic fail. Anyone going to a T14 attitude with the automatic assumption they will make bank and let the effort stop there is an idiot, and unless he's an idiot with great connections, he'll be the same kind of idiot as you are: a poor one.


The only speck of truth is that even those who go to T14 still have to work hard, but unless they completely just give up and blow everything, even students lower in T14 classes will end up with a job. T1's for the most part boast 95%+ employment rights 6-9 months after graduation. Your problem is you fall into that "give up" category and got what was coming to you. Sounds like you had an attitude of entitlement, and I'm glad you got humbled. "My family makes all this money; so should I!"

And as usual, props on wasting your time whining rather than doing something. There's a reason why you're in the situation you're in, and you're feeding it right now. WOO!

[Ohioboy115]

Err this is TTTSolo posting this on a new name, ignore it

[00TREX00]

...

[joobacca]

i agree with above posters about the poor writing skills. i wrote better in high school than most of them do after earning a JD.

but i think they offer sage advice. if anything, they have experienced the process, and i have not. so i am willing to give them some credibility.

[dominkay]

I call bullshit.

He couldn't find a place to live for under $1500? In 2003? There is no city that expensive. Does not exist. Untrue.

[Royal]

TL;DR

I assume this is yet another post lamenting the poster's decision to attend law school, touching on the fact that the job market sucks and no one is employed, and explaining that everyone has $200,000 in debt, and of course, that ubiquitous Popov habit.


News flash: we know.

[General Tso]

4.0/171 and went to a "top 15" school? His dad makes 350k and yet he settled for a 25k legal job out of said "top 15 school"?

No chance in hell this is legit.

[artichoke]

he he he