The fundamental problem with practicing lawyers Forum

[bjsesq]

To further clarify (and to further risk outing myself), my family is high-achieving with regard to wealth; not so much with education. They were all in awe when I got my LSAT score. I've essentially carved out a niche as the family egghead. I don't expect to compete with regard to net worth.

Then teabag 'em with your CCN degree, breh. You've already begun ahead of where they did.

[buffalo_]

Re: high-achieving family. It's a more common problem than you think, and I know several people who are in similar situations. Heck, my brother is HYP -> GS/MS/JPM, and his girlfriend is HYP -> GS/MS/JPM -> HSW. It was definitely a chip on my shoulder that helped me gun in law school. But you really don't want to go too far down that road. It's an absolutely toxic way to live life, and a lousy reason to pick a particular career.

A lot of wisdom in this post, and it's completely true for NYC. I read today that the top 1% of earners in NYC begins with people making approximately ~$800,000 a year, and there are roughly 35,000 people in this category. How many of them are lawyers? Definitely some but not the majority. And as a big law associate you are making 1/5th of what the lowest paid top 1% earner is making. So if the goal is solely $ and prestige that's kind of a tough pill to swallow. A very small percentage of lawyers in NYC will end up in the top 1% (a lot of big law partners do not even make 800k).

How prestige fueled are people on here? $800k is a TON of money. That's more than many people would even dream of making in 20 years, let alone one. You do realize that median household (that's both partners) income is around $50k a year? And the $160k starting salary is already in the 92nd or 93rd percentile nationwide?

I get that it is all relative of who you compare yourself to, but you realize what a crazy good position you are in already if you are in BigLaw? I think this is part of the reason that grads on here are unhappy with their careers. Because they work at a place with many MUCH wealthier people that are not in debt. And those are their friends, or they have other LS friends not in debt making and saving obscene amounts of cash. So relatively, yeah you feel pretty poor compared to those around you. But if you can take the perspective of looking at yourself relative to the other 300 million people in this country your situation is AMAZING. Not just good, it is freaking AMAZING.

ETA: To further cement this. If you live at median household income (~$50k/yr), which exactly half of all households live on or less, then you can still pay over $45k toward debt repayment in your first year and more each year after that.

[Theopliske8711]

How prestige fueled are people on here? $800k is a TON of money. That's more than many people would even dream of making in 20 years, let alone one. You do realize that median household (that's both partners) income is around $50k a year? And the $160k starting salary is already in the 92nd or 93rd percentile nationwide?

Yea, but they aren't saying that 800K is not a lot of money; he basically said that many who have reached the peak of monetary compensation in law don't make a salary remotely comparable to those with similar years and experience in, say, private equity or I-banking.

If you want to know what big money is. My cousin is the personal assistant of a manager of a small hedge fund. She lives in Park Ave and the walls of her home are lined with actual silver. She also works pretty good hours by comparison to Biglaw.

[rad lulz]

How prestige fueled are people on here? $800k is a TON of money. That's more than many people would even dream of making in 20 years, let alone one. You do realize that median household (that's both partners) income is around $50k a year? And the $160k starting salary is already in the 92nd or 93rd percentile nationwide?

Yea, but they aren't saying that 800K is not a lot of money; he basically said that many who have reached the peak of monetary compensation in law don't make a salary remotely comparable to those with similar years and experience in, say, private equity or IBanking.

If you want to know what big money is. My cousin is the personal assistant of a manager of a small hedge fund. She lives in Park Ave and the walls of her home are lined with actual silver. She also works pretty good hours by comparison to Biglaw.

Right. We're saying that doing law to get rich or for "prestige" is stupid

[KatyMarie]

Re: high-achieving family. It's a more common problem than you think, and I know several people who are in similar situations. Heck, my brother is HYP -> GS/MS/JPM, and his girlfriend is HYP -> GS/MS/JPM -> HSW. It was definitely a chip on my shoulder that helped me gun in law school. But you really don't want to go too far down that road. It's an absolutely toxic way to live life, and a lousy reason to pick a particular career.

A lot of wisdom in this post, and it's completely true for NYC. I read today that the top 1% of earners in NYC begins with people making approximately ~$800,000 a year, and there are roughly 35,000 people in this category. How many of them are lawyers? Definitely some but not the majority. And as a big law associate you are making 1/5th of what the lowest paid top 1% earner is making. So if the goal is solely $ and prestige that's kind of a tough pill to swallow. A very small percentage of lawyers in NYC will end up in the top 1% (a lot of big law partners do not even make 800k).

How prestige fueled are people on here? $800k is a TON of money. That's more than many people would even dream of making in 20 years, let alone one. You do realize that median household (that's both partners) income is around $50k a year? And the $160k starting salary is already in the 92nd or 93rd percentile nationwide?

I get that it is all relative of who you compare yourself to, but you realize what a crazy good position you are in already if you are in BigLaw? I think this is part of the reason that grads on here are unhappy with their careers. Because they work at a place with many MUCH wealthier people that are not in debt. And those are their friends, or they have other LS friends not in debt making and saving obscene amounts of cash. So relatively, yeah you feel pretty poor compared to those around you. But if you can take the perspective of looking at yourself relative to the other 300 million people in this country your situation is AMAZING. Not just good, it is freaking AMAZING.

ETA: To further cement this. If you live at median household income (~$50k/yr), which exactly half of all households live on or less, then you can still pay over $45k toward debt repayment in your first year and more each year after that.

Thank you...I suspect a lot of this is relative.

I think that's probably why I just can't buy into the horror stories that people tell of being in 160k+debt (or 110k+debt or whatever), when I was raised on a combined income of much less than that. I'm sure the reality of paying it back is much different and that you're expected to spend money on clothes/dry cleaning or whatever than it is in my head...but even if I'm making 100k and paying back ~$2,000 a month in student loans, I still have more money to spend than my parents had combined when my brother and I were young...and we never exactly went hungry

[chem]

How prestige fueled are people on here? $800k is a TON of money. That's more than many people would even dream of making in 20 years, let alone one. You do realize that median household (that's both partners) income is around $50k a year? And the $160k starting salary is already in the 92nd or 93rd percentile nationwide?

Yea, but they aren't saying that 800K is not a lot of money; he basically said that many who have reached the peak of monetary compensation in law don't make a salary remotely comparable to those with similar years and experience in, say, private equity or I-banking.

If you want to know what big money is. My cousin is the personal assistant of a manager of a small hedge fund. She lives in Park Ave and the walls of her home are lined with actual silver. She also works pretty good hours by comparison to Biglaw.

Silver is so TTT

[dwil770]

At first that's what I thought, but then when they start saying how miserable big law is they just say, "ugh it's just office drudgery, the hours are long, and there isn't good job security.". How naive can you get if that isn't what you expected? It is sad that that is what is considered a good outcome now but that's just how it is.

Have you even read the posts talking about biglaw? That's not what people are complaining about.

I've read many posts on it and those are the most common negatives of the job itself. Have you read "the posts"? Because those things are absolutely complained about the most universally.

[FuriousDuck]

...

[jimbeam21]

How prestige fueled are people on here? $800k is a TON of money. That's more than many people would even dream of making in 20 years, let alone one. You do realize that median household (that's both partners) income is around $50k a year? And the $160k starting salary is already in the 92nd or 93rd percentile nationwide?

Yea, but they aren't saying that 800K is not a lot of money; he basically said that many who have reached the peak of monetary compensation in law don't make a salary remotely comparable to those with similar years and experience in, say, private equity or I-banking.

If you want to know what big money is. My cousin is the personal assistant of a manager of a small hedge fund. She lives in Park Ave and the walls of her home are lined with actual silver. She also works pretty good hours by comparison to Biglaw.

Fuck NYC. If any of you guys had the option of going into PE, than you wouldn't be here. If you work in NYC transactions, you're always going to be the I-banker/PE guy's bitch. Fuck NYC. There's a reason why the sweatshops there will hire any HYSCCN grad with a pulse. It's just a rotating cast of sexual slavery.

[baloneydanza]

You haven't lived until you've somehow managed to sit down with two multi-millionaires for a meal which is really just a dick-measuring contest in disguise. There's nothing like being pressured to drink a $100 shot of some weird foreign liquor which might as well be fermented piss.

You were literally at a meal with the rich and you didn't eat them? Shame.

[kaiser]

Re: high-achieving family. It's a more common problem than you think, and I know several people who are in similar situations. Heck, my brother is HYP -> GS/MS/JPM, and his girlfriend is HYP -> GS/MS/JPM -> HSW. It was definitely a chip on my shoulder that helped me gun in law school. But you really don't want to go too far down that road. It's an absolutely toxic way to live life, and a lousy reason to pick a particular career.

A lot of wisdom in this post, and it's completely true for NYC. I read today that the top 1% of earners in NYC begins with people making approximately ~$800,000 a year, and there are roughly 35,000 people in this category. How many of them are lawyers? Definitely some but not the majority. And as a big law associate you are making 1/5th of what the lowest paid top 1% earner is making. So if the goal is solely $ and prestige that's kind of a tough pill to swallow. A very small percentage of lawyers in NYC will end up in the top 1% (a lot of big law partners do not even make 800k).

How prestige fueled are people on here? $800k is a TON of money. That's more than many people would even dream of making in 20 years, let alone one. You do realize that median household (that's both partners) income is around $50k a year? And the $160k starting salary is already in the 92nd or 93rd percentile nationwide?

I get that it is all relative of who you compare yourself to, but you realize what a crazy good position you are in already if you are in BigLaw? I think this is part of the reason that grads on here are unhappy with their careers. Because they work at a place with many MUCH wealthier people that are not in debt. And those are their friends, or they have other LS friends not in debt making and saving obscene amounts of cash. So relatively, yeah you feel pretty poor compared to those around you. But if you can take the perspective of looking at yourself relative to the other 300 million people in this country your situation is AMAZING. Not just good, it is freaking AMAZING.

ETA: To further cement this. If you live at median household income (~$50k/yr), which exactly half of all households live on or less, then you can still pay over $45k toward debt repayment in your first year and more each year after that.

Thank you...I suspect a lot of this is relative.

I think that's probably why I just can't buy into the horror stories that people tell of being in 160k+debt (or 110k+debt or whatever), when I was raised on a combined income of much less than that. I'm sure the reality of paying it back is much different and that you're expected to spend money on clothes/dry cleaning or whatever than it is in my head...but even if I'm making 100k and paying back ~$2,000 a month in student loans, I still have more money to spend than my parents had combined when my brother and I were young...and we never exactly went hungry

Your reasoning should be objective. Your rationale for taking on debt should not be this kind of subjective comparison of eras that couldn't be less similar. How your parents got by on X amount of salary and in X amount of debt 20 years ago should have no bearing on your decision now. You don't "buy" what actual grads tell you is the reality beause you have an anecdote from 20 years ago that would, at the broadest level of generality, appear to refute the advice you are being given. That sound like the smart way to approach things?

[jbagelboy]

Lol @ all the cultish high finance worshiping ITT. Any of you ever worked in finance or consulting? The attorneys are far from the lowest tier. The fucking junior analyst is the slave, not the counsel, and those juniors drop like flies. You think attrition is a core feature of biglaw? Investment banking invented mass professional attrition. Kids leave their first bank after 6 months sometimes because they just can't handle it.

I had a lot of friends in college that had the IB or consulting route open to them and chose a more interesting/fulfilling path. It's not a dream job. I went into it and was miserable for 6 months, but found my niche and a good mentor and made it work for me until I went to LS.

People always take this grass is greener shit on TLS, always outside looking in. Get a grip, lots of people transition out of trading or PE into law school. There are people from other white collar corporate professions spread throughout my own class. Believe it or not, not everyone gets a massive hardon for excel and STATA.

[Theopliske8711]

Lol @ all the cultish high finance worshiping ITT. Any of you ever worked in finance or consulting? The attorneys are far from the lowest tier. The fucking junior analyst is the slave, not the counsel, and those juniors drop like flies. You think attrition is a core feature of biglaw? Investment banking invented mass professional attrition. Kids leave their first bank after 6 months sometimes because they just can't handle it.

I had a lot of friends in college that had the IB or consulting route open to them and chose a more interesting/fulfilling path. It's not a dream job. I went into it and was miserable for 6 months, but found my niche and a good mentor and made it work for me until I went to LS.

People always take this grass is greener shit on TLS, always outside looking in. Get a grip, lots of people transition out of trading or PE into law school. There are people from other white collar corporate professions spread throughout my own class. Believe it or not, not everyone gets a massive hardon for excel and STATA.

Very true..

The grass is not much less red.

[jbagelboy]

Lol @ all the cultish high finance worshiping ITT. Any of you ever worked in finance or consulting? The attorneys are far from the lowest tier. The fucking junior analyst is the slave, not the counsel, and those juniors drop like flies. You think attrition is a core feature of biglaw? Investment banking invented mass professional attrition. Kids leave their first bank after 6 months sometimes because they just can't handle it.

I had a lot of friends in college that had the IB or consulting route open to them and chose a more interesting/fulfilling path. It's not a dream job. I went into it and was miserable for 6 months, but found my niche and a good mentor and made it work for me until I went to LS.

People always take this grass is greener shit on TLS, always outside looking in. Get a grip, lots of people transition out of trading or PE into law school. There are people from other white collar corporate professions spread throughout my own class. Believe it or not, not everyone gets a massive hardon for excel and STATA.

Very true..

The grass is not much less red.

Case in point.

[UVAIce]

I have avoided NYC like the plague, Chicago too to be honest. This is all completely anecdotal, but all of the NYC big law folks that I've met are generally tired and beaten up mentally. I'm sure some people love that stuff, but big law in NYC is essentially there to service the financial industry that exists there. You will always be second tier because NYC isn't about the "law" it's about the markets.

Everyone I've met that works DC big law is happy and likes their job. Some of them work some insane hours, and I've heard some fairly sweatshopish things about Cleary in DC, but they're essentially in DC to work with other legal types (regulators, etc.). At the same time big law in DC is a pipe dream for a lot of people.

And when it comes to secondary markets everyone I know is just happier. They make less than NYC big law types, but they are generally at the top of the income scale in their respective metro areas - unlike big law in NYC.

What I've come to believe so far, and I'm a 2L so take it with a large grain of salt, is that the real shame about the legal economy right now is that the vast majority of high salary positions, positions that actually allow people to service the debt they accrue going to law school, are in NYC where associates are worked like slaves. I know a lot of people who would be happy working for $70k-$90k where they come from if they didn't have to make $2,500 monthly loan payments. It seems that "dream" for a lot of students is to work in NYC long enough to pay off their debt and then go back "home." That just seems depressing.

I feel as if I'm in a pretty lucky situation as I'm going to a fairly low COL metro area but will making close to $160k a year - my take home will actually be higher than a 1st year NYC associate due to lower taxes. But when you count those kinds of jobs across the country they probably don't add up to the number of summer associates that the top 5 SA classes in NYC hire.

[FuriousDuck]

...

[Jdempewo]

Re advice that 0L's would listen to: Speaking as a 0L, i think a ton of the advice given is just in terms of "biglaw." Thats not what I am interested in. My TTT (washburn) place very well in kansas. Im financing very little. I want to move back to wichita after i graduate. I dont mind finding a smaller firm or working for the government. So when i see all of the advice given it almost always centers on how much of a dream biglaw is. If your trying to disuade me from going to ls, you've already lost me.

[kaiser]

Re advice that 0L's would listen to: Speaking as a 0L, i think a ton of the advice given is just in terms of "biglaw." Thats not what I am interested in. My TTT (washburn) place very well in kansas. Im financing very little. I want to move back to wichita after i graduate. I dont mind finding a smaller firm or working for the government. So when i see all of the advice given it almost always centers on how much of a dream biglaw is. If your trying to disuade me from going to ls, you've already lost me.

I don't think anyone, student or grad, would say its a bad idea to attend a school like Washburn if you goal is to work in a smaller firm in Kansas (and don't have to go into big debt to attend). And if they did say "don't go to LS", then thats pretty silly advice because the school you chose is tailored pretty much exactly to your goals.

[rayiner]

At first that's what I thought, but then when they start saying how miserable big law is they just say, "ugh it's just office drudgery, the hours are long, and there isn't good job security.". How naive can you get if that isn't what you expected? It is sad that that is what is considered a good outcome now but that's just how it is.

I went to LS at 25-26, worked "real jobs" and expected the drudgery, long hours, and lack of job security. What I didn't expect was exactly how they would interplay with debt hanging over your head.

I'll use my post-college roommate as an example, who did a management degree. He worked 50-60 hours a week for 50k in an entry-level business position. He didn't have a blackberry, didn't get yelled at for not checking his e-mail at midnight, rarely had weekend work, didn't have $250k of debt hanging over his head, and every unpleasant encounter with a superior didn't turn into an existential issue colored by all his debt. He worked with people who were promoted based at least partly on management ability and not simply class year, and who didn't themselves have a ton of debt hanging over their head. The level of unpleasantness created by lockstep promotion, associates who are selected for test scores and not management ability, and coworkers and supervisors who are all stressed about debt cannot be adequately explained to someone who has never experienced it.

[KatyMarie]

Thank you...I suspect a lot of this is relative.

I think that's probably why I just can't buy into the horror stories that people tell of being in 160k+debt (or 110k+debt or whatever), when I was raised on a combined income of much less than that. I'm sure the reality of paying it back is much different and that you're expected to spend money on clothes/dry cleaning or whatever than it is in my head...but even if I'm making 100k and paying back ~$2,000 a month in student loans, I still have more money to spend than my parents had combined when my brother and I were young...and we never exactly went hungry

Your reasoning should be objective. Your rationale for taking on debt should not be this kind of subjective comparison of eras that couldn't be less similar. How your parents got by on X amount of salary and in X amount of debt 20 years ago should have no bearing on your decision now. You don't "buy" what actual grads tell you is the reality beause you have an anecdote from 20 years ago that would, at the broadest level of generality, appear to refute the advice you are being given. That sound like the smart way to approach things?

Obviously this is not 100% what I'm making a decision on..I'm not saying you should go blindly into debt because you can live with it. I'm balancing debt and job prospects and making a decision for my personal goals. I am just generally making a point that if you grew up riding horses and going to private schools, yeah of course you're going to be more uncomfortable with 160k+debt than someone who has experience with and is comfortable with working 50+ hour weeks and living on 30k or less. Expectations of what your life should look like are going to affect your happiness, and my expectations are going to be lower than someone who expects to live a super comfy lifestyle or has family pressure to make money/be really successful etc.

[kaiser]

Thank you...I suspect a lot of this is relative.

I think that's probably why I just can't buy into the horror stories that people tell of being in 160k+debt (or 110k+debt or whatever), when I was raised on a combined income of much less than that. I'm sure the reality of paying it back is much different and that you're expected to spend money on clothes/dry cleaning or whatever than it is in my head...but even if I'm making 100k and paying back ~$2,000 a month in student loans, I still have more money to spend than my parents had combined when my brother and I were young...and we never exactly went hungry

Your reasoning should be objective. Your rationale for taking on debt should not be this kind of subjective comparison of eras that couldn't be less similar. How your parents got by on X amount of salary and in X amount of debt 20 years ago should have no bearing on your decision now. You don't "buy" what actual grads tell you is the reality beause you have an anecdote from 20 years ago that would, at the broadest level of generality, appear to refute the advice you are being given. That sound like the smart way to approach things?

Obviously this is not 100% what I'm making a decision on..I'm not saying you should go blindly into debt because you can live with it. I'm balancing debt and job prospects and making a decision for my personal goals. I am just generally making a point that if you grew up riding horses and going to private schools, yeah of course you're going to be more uncomfortable with 160k+debt than someone who has experience with and is comfortable with working 50+ hour weeks and living on 30k or less. Expectations of what your life should look like are going to affect your happiness, and my expectations are going to be lower than someone who expects to live a super comfy lifestyle or has family pressure to make money/be really successful etc.

Oh I feel the complete opposite. Usually its the rich kids who have no conception of debt, since they were handed everything. The idea of just taking out the debt is no big deal because they have always gotten what they wanted. For the kid who actually grew up seeing their family in debt, living by far more simple means, one would think that would breed a certain level of financial responsibility that would caution against taking on too much debt.

But in the end, it really shouldn't be based on "comfort" with debt vs. "discomfort". Rather, it should be an objective cost-benefit analysis of the marginal benefits of the better school vs. the marginal cost difference. And grads are integral in helping with that because they actually see in practice what the marginal benefit differences are (vs. what a prosective student may conceive them to be). In other words, grads can help guide you as to what the difference between certain schools is "worth", in a general sense. Of course, this doesn't take into account the unique desires and circumstances of each individual, but it should provide some general guidance. And the reality is that the marginal benefits we perceived as 0L's simply didn't end up being as huge in practice as we thought they would be. This is why so many grads say its probably better to take the money at the slightly less elite school.

[rayiner]

Lol @ all the cultish high finance worshiping ITT. Any of you ever worked in finance or consulting? The attorneys are far from the lowest tier. The fucking junior analyst is the slave, not the counsel, and those juniors drop like flies. You think attrition is a core feature of biglaw? Investment banking invented mass professional attrition. Kids leave their first bank after 6 months sometimes because they just can't handle it.

I had a lot of friends in college that had the IB or consulting route open to them and chose a more interesting/fulfilling path. It's not a dream job. I went into it and was miserable for 6 months, but found my niche and a good mentor and made it work for me until I went to LS.

People always take this grass is greener shit on TLS, always outside looking in. Get a grip, lots of people transition out of trading or PE into law school. There are people from other white collar corporate professions spread throughout my own class. Believe it or not, not everyone gets a massive hardon for excel and STATA.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing that finance and banking aren't miserable. I wouldn't want to be a banker or consultant. But, objectively, finance is higher on the totem poll than law, especially in NYC where many of the "prestigious" law jobs are. If you go to law school for "prestige" rather than because you want to be a lawyer, I think you'll have a hard time.

[UVAIce]

Lol @ all the cultish high finance worshiping ITT. Any of you ever worked in finance or consulting? The attorneys are far from the lowest tier. The fucking junior analyst is the slave, not the counsel, and those juniors drop like flies. You think attrition is a core feature of biglaw? Investment banking invented mass professional attrition. Kids leave their first bank after 6 months sometimes because they just can't handle it.

I had a lot of friends in college that had the IB or consulting route open to them and chose a more interesting/fulfilling path. It's not a dream job. I went into it and was miserable for 6 months, but found my niche and a good mentor and made it work for me until I went to LS.

People always take this grass is greener shit on TLS, always outside looking in. Get a grip, lots of people transition out of trading or PE into law school. There are people from other white collar corporate professions spread throughout my own class. Believe it or not, not everyone gets a massive hardon for excel and STATA.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing that finance and banking aren't miserable. I wouldn't want to be a banker or consultant. But, objectively, finance is higher on the totem poll than law, especially in NYC where many of the "prestigious" law jobs are. If you go to law school for "prestige" rather than because you want to be a lawyer, I think you'll have a hard time.

This is all credited. But I also think that people have warped views of what "prestigious" is. People love all the silly rankings and I know so many folks that essentially adopt the Vault rankings as the objective test of prestige. But the silly thing is that all the prestige is through the lens of other lawyers!

I think another thing that people tend to forget is that the path into law is greased when you go to big law. They pay for your bar review course. They pay (some) of your living expenses while you're prepping for the bar exam. They pay for your bar exam fees. In a lot of ways its just "easier" to go big law because you have to do so little of the leg work yourself. It's a well worn path.

And debt just sucks. It blows. It's a terrible thing. It's amazing how being highly leveraged as a human being can so dramatically change that person's life path - home, marriage, kids, etc. It's even worse when you have kids, trust me. All you want is a little security to know that you can pay the rent, buy groceries, and maybe buy some new clothes once a season, and to know that the world won't end if you don't have some source of income for a month.

[jbagelboy]

Lol @ all the cultish high finance worshiping ITT. Any of you ever worked in finance or consulting? The attorneys are far from the lowest tier. The fucking junior analyst is the slave, not the counsel, and those juniors drop like flies. You think attrition is a core feature of biglaw? Investment banking invented mass professional attrition. Kids leave their first bank after 6 months sometimes because they just can't handle it.

I had a lot of friends in college that had the IB or consulting route open to them and chose a more interesting/fulfilling path. It's not a dream job. I went into it and was miserable for 6 months, but found my niche and a good mentor and made it work for me until I went to LS.

People always take this grass is greener shit on TLS, always outside looking in. Get a grip, lots of people transition out of trading or PE into law school. There are people from other white collar corporate professions spread throughout my own class. Believe it or not, not everyone gets a massive hardon for excel and STATA.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing that finance and banking aren't miserable. I wouldn't want to be a banker or consultant. But, objectively, finance is higher on the totem poll than law, especially in NYC where many of the "prestigious" law jobs are. If you go to law school for "prestige" rather than because you want to be a lawyer, I think you'll have a hard time.

I completely agree - but see some of the posts on the past 3 pages of this thread for what i'm responding to.

[neprep]

Lol @ all the cultish high finance worshiping ITT. Any of you ever worked in finance or consulting? The attorneys are far from the lowest tier. The fucking junior analyst is the slave, not the counsel, and those juniors drop like flies. You think attrition is a core feature of biglaw? Investment banking invented mass professional attrition. Kids leave their first bank after 6 months sometimes because they just can't handle it.

I had a lot of friends in college that had the IB or consulting route open to them and chose a more interesting/fulfilling path. It's not a dream job. I went into it and was miserable for 6 months, but found my niche and a good mentor and made it work for me until I went to LS.

People always take this grass is greener shit on TLS, always outside looking in. Get a grip, lots of people transition out of trading or PE into law school. There are people from other white collar corporate professions spread throughout my own class. Believe it or not, not everyone gets a massive hardon for excel and STATA.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing that finance and banking aren't miserable. I wouldn't want to be a banker or consultant. But, objectively, finance is higher on the totem poll than law, especially in NYC where many of the "prestigious" law jobs are. If you go to law school for "prestige" rather than because you want to be a lawyer, I think you'll have a hard time.

Well yeah, finance as an industry is higher on the totem poll, but I think jbagel was only comparing law firm associates to IBD
analysts.

e: though it would be interesting to see the dynamic between IB/PE MDs and law firm partners.