Which Law Schools Make Rational Economic Sense to Attend? Forum

[UnicornHunter]

The major flaw I see is that this data from the class of 2012 will be barely relevant to the class of 2017. With 35% less people graduating in 2017 one would expect a major deviation from the results of 2012. The c/o 2012 graduated into the height of the legal recession, and was glutted with new lawyers. The c/o 2017 will (most likely) graduate into a recovering legal market, and will be far less glutted with new attorneys.

I think what this study shows is that there are only a few schools who's value remains constant through troubled economic times.

Also 10 years is kind of an arbitrary cutoff point. A law degree may not pay off until year eleven, but in a 30-40 year career, that gap grows substantially. IIRC the latest study still showed a $1m average addition in earnings for a JD over a bachelors.

I'd be very, very surprised if that were still the case. Any study looking at lifetime earnings for a JD would inevitably focus on the careers of people who entered a very different world than freshly minted JDs do today. When today's partners graduated law school and passed the bar, they were entering a profession. There was a reasonable expectation that as long as they did good work and did not (get caught) commit any gross ethical violations, they could make equity partner. In today's legal environment, that is absolutely not the case. If you go into BigLaw following law school, your first five years out of school are likely to be the highest earning years of your life.

[Hutz_and_Goodman]

The major flaw I see is that this data from the class of 2012 will be barely relevant to the class of 2017. With 35% less people graduating in 2017 one would expect a major deviation from the results of 2012. The c/o 2012 graduated into the height of the legal recession, and was glutted with new lawyers. The c/o 2017 will (most likely) graduate into a recovering legal market, and will be far less glutted with new attorneys.

I think what this study shows is that there are only a few schools who's value remains constant through troubled economic times.

Also 10 years is kind of an arbitrary cutoff point. A law degree may not pay off until year eleven, but in a 30-40 year career, that gap grows substantially. IIRC the latest study still showed a $1m average addition in earnings for a JD over a bachelors.

I'd be very, very surprised if that were still the case. Any study looking at lifetime earnings for a JD would inevitably focus on the careers of people who entered a very different world than freshly minted JDs do today. When today's partners graduated law school and passed the bar, they were entering a profession. There was a reasonable expectation that as long as they did good work and did not (get caught) commit any gross ethical violations, they could make equity partner. In today's legal environment, that is absolutely not the case. If you go into BigLaw following law school, your first five years out of school are likely to be the highest earning years of your life.

This is an exaggeration. Many many people even with YHS law degrees from the 70s, 80s, or 90s never made equity partner despite working as hard as they possibly could. But I agree with you that it's gotten worse. And if you talk about T14 graduates, even the percentage who are still practicing law after ten years is not going to be more than about 75% (admittedly pulling this number out of thin air).

[UnicornHunter]

The major flaw I see is that this data from the class of 2012 will be barely relevant to the class of 2017. With 35% less people graduating in 2017 one would expect a major deviation from the results of 2012. The c/o 2012 graduated into the height of the legal recession, and was glutted with new lawyers. The c/o 2017 will (most likely) graduate into a recovering legal market, and will be far less glutted with new attorneys.

I think what this study shows is that there are only a few schools who's value remains constant through troubled economic times.

Also 10 years is kind of an arbitrary cutoff point. A law degree may not pay off until year eleven, but in a 30-40 year career, that gap grows substantially. IIRC the latest study still showed a $1m average addition in earnings for a JD over a bachelors.

I'd be very, very surprised if that were still the case. Any study looking at lifetime earnings for a JD would inevitably focus on the careers of people who entered a very different world than freshly minted JDs do today. When today's partners graduated law school and passed the bar, they were entering a profession. There was a reasonable expectation that as long as they did good work and did not (get caught) commit any gross ethical violations, they could make equity partner. In today's legal environment, that is absolutely not the case. If you go into BigLaw following law school, your first five years out of school are likely to be the highest earning years of your life.

This is an exaggeration. Many many people even with YHS law degrees from the 70s, 80s, or 90s never made equity partner despite working as hard as they possibly could. But I agree with you that it's gotten worse. And if you talk about T14 graduates, even the percentage who are still practicing law after ten years is not going to be more than about 75% (admittedly pulling this number out of thin air).

Yes, it was an exaggeration and I have no good data to point at. But it seems we agree on the bigger point which is that it doesn't make much sense to assess the projected value of a modern JD in terms of career earnings by looking at the results of lawyers who got their JD in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Again, no data, and I think data would be impossible to produce for this, but I would be willing to bet that even the people who do make equity partner in today's environment don't necessarily get a net career earnings gain from their JD. These people probably have a set of skills and traits that would have served them well in corporate America, where the potential earnings are much much higher.

[Cicero76]

yeah but do you really think school-funded is necessarily going to be "didn't make biglaw, had to settle for school-funded" at a school like YLS? my understanding is that those school-funded positions are actually pretty coveted by PI types. at least, that's what some yalies in another thread were saying.

Your understanding is that because stupid 0Ls say so on threads like this.

nah it was that guy cicero who said this. pretty sure he's a current YLS student, not a 0L. maybe he's just a fanboy for his own school though, dunno.

Idk about them being "coveted" by PI orgs, but I do know they're coveted by students because they pay well and generally end up in a job that the person wants

[iamgeorgebush]

yeah but do you really think school-funded is necessarily going to be "didn't make biglaw, had to settle for school-funded" at a school like YLS? my understanding is that those school-funded positions are actually pretty coveted by PI types. at least, that's what some yalies in another thread were saying.

Your understanding is that because stupid 0Ls say so on threads like this.

nah it was that guy cicero who said this. pretty sure he's a current YLS student, not a 0L. maybe he's just a fanboy for his own school though, dunno.

Idk about them being "coveted" by PI orgs, but I do know they're coveted by students because they pay well and generally end up in a job that the person wants

i didn't mean coveted by PI orgs; i mean't coveted by students w/ an interest in PI.

[SLS_AMG]

The pessimism on this board is a sad commentary on lawyers in general. There's no question that law school is too expensive and that many law schools should be shut down. Moreover, someone with a good job should not give it up unless they hate that job AND get into a good law school.

What I think people on this board fail to realize is that most incoming students KNOW that law school isn't a guaranteed path to riches. But when these students have philosophy, political science, or English degrees, they aren't going to get into Johns Hopkins for med school or Wharton for business school. Law school doesn't offer a great chance for riches for these people, but it offers a better chance than almost everything else.

My biggest problem with the pessimism on this board is that too many posters act like everyone can just go off and get a 100k/year job with no problem if they forego law school. Sure, if you take out 200k in loans and then have a 40k/year salary you're gonna be debt pwned, but is that really worse than working on a non-livable wage as a barista at Starbucks with no debt?

[Kimikho]

The pessimism on this board is a sad commentary on lawyers in general. There's no question that law school is too expensive and that many law schools should be shut down. Moreover, someone with a good job should not give it up unless they hate that job AND get into a good law school.

What I think people on this board fail to realize is that most incoming students KNOW that law school isn't a guaranteed path to riches. But when these students have philosophy, political science, or English degrees, they aren't going to get into Johns Hopkins for med school or Wharton for business school. Law school doesn't offer a great chance for riches for these people, but it offers a better chance than almost everything else.

My biggest problem with the pessimism on this board is that too many posters act like everyone can just go off and get a 100k/year job with no problem if they forego law school.

DF or rad lulz should take this one.

[SemperLegal]

The pessimism on this board is a sad commentary on lawyers in general. There's no question that law school is too expensive and that many law schools should be shut down. Moreover, someone with a good job should not give it up unless they hate that job AND get into a good law school.

What I think people on this board fail to realize is that most incoming students KNOW that law school isn't a guaranteed path to riches. But when these students have philosophy, political science, or English degrees, they aren't going to get into Johns Hopkins for med school or Wharton for business school. Law school doesn't offer a great chance for riches for these people, but it offers a better chance than almost everything else.

My biggest problem with the pessimism on this board is that too many posters act like everyone can just go off and get a 100k/year job with no problem if they forego law school. Sure, if you take out 200k in loans and then have a 40k/year salary you're gonna be debt pwned, but is that really worse than working on a non-livable wage as a barista at Starbucks with no debt?

Or, you can go back to UG and get a real major or do a Post-Bac in a year and try again. Tripling your debt is not the best way to recover from having made poor academic choices.

[SLS_AMG]

The pessimism on this board is a sad commentary on lawyers in general. There's no question that law school is too expensive and that many law schools should be shut down. Moreover, someone with a good job should not give it up unless they hate that job AND get into a good law school.

What I think people on this board fail to realize is that most incoming students KNOW that law school isn't a guaranteed path to riches. But when these students have philosophy, political science, or English degrees, they aren't going to get into Johns Hopkins for med school or Wharton for business school. Law school doesn't offer a great chance for riches for these people, but it offers a better chance than almost everything else.

My biggest problem with the pessimism on this board is that too many posters act like everyone can just go off and get a 100k/year job with no problem if they forego law school.

DF or rad lulz should take this one.

The pessimism on this board is a sad commentary on lawyers in general. There's no question that law school is too expensive and that many law schools should be shut down. Moreover, someone with a good job should not give it up unless they hate that job AND get into a good law school.

What I think people on this board fail to realize is that most incoming students KNOW that law school isn't a guaranteed path to riches. But when these students have philosophy, political science, or English degrees, they aren't going to get into Johns Hopkins for med school or Wharton for business school. Law school doesn't offer a great chance for riches for these people, but it offers a better chance than almost everything else.

My biggest problem with the pessimism on this board is that too many posters act like everyone can just go off and get a 100k/year job with no problem if they forego law school. Sure, if you take out 200k in loans and then have a 40k/year salary you're gonna be debt pwned, but is that really worse than working on a non-livable wage as a barista at Starbucks with no debt?

Or, you can go back to UG and get a real major or do a Post-Bac in a year and try again. Tripling your debt is not the best way to recover from having made poor academic choices.

Yeah, doubling it would be a much better choice. If only we had all majored in pre-med.

[Kimikho]

The pessimism on this board is a sad commentary on lawyers in general. There's no question that law school is too expensive and that many law schools should be shut down. Moreover, someone with a good job should not give it up unless they hate that job AND get into a good law school.

What I think people on this board fail to realize is that most incoming students KNOW that law school isn't a guaranteed path to riches. But when these students have philosophy, political science, or English degrees, they aren't going to get into Johns Hopkins for med school or Wharton for business school. Law school doesn't offer a great chance for riches for these people, but it offers a better chance than almost everything else.

My biggest problem with the pessimism on this board is that too many posters act like everyone can just go off and get a 100k/year job with no problem if they forego law school.

DF or rad lulz should take this one.

The pessimism on this board is a sad commentary on lawyers in general. There's no question that law school is too expensive and that many law schools should be shut down. Moreover, someone with a good job should not give it up unless they hate that job AND get into a good law school.

What I think people on this board fail to realize is that most incoming students KNOW that law school isn't a guaranteed path to riches. But when these students have philosophy, political science, or English degrees, they aren't going to get into Johns Hopkins for med school or Wharton for business school. Law school doesn't offer a great chance for riches for these people, but it offers a better chance than almost everything else.

My biggest problem with the pessimism on this board is that too many posters act like everyone can just go off and get a 100k/year job with no problem if they forego law school. Sure, if you take out 200k in loans and then have a 40k/year salary you're gonna be debt pwned, but is that really worse than working on a non-livable wage as a barista at Starbucks with no debt?

Or, you can go back to UG and get a real major or do a Post-Bac in a year and try again. Tripling your debt is not the best way to recover from having made poor academic choices.

Yeah, doubling it would be a much better choice. If only we had all majored in pre-med.

supply and demand then doctors would just become the new lawyers

besides, doctors already get 300k+ in debt and then can't become pediatricians. the only difference is that they are practically guaranteed a job.

[SLS_AMG]

The pessimism on this board is a sad commentary on lawyers in general. There's no question that law school is too expensive and that many law schools should be shut down. Moreover, someone with a good job should not give it up unless they hate that job AND get into a good law school.

What I think people on this board fail to realize is that most incoming students KNOW that law school isn't a guaranteed path to riches. But when these students have philosophy, political science, or English degrees, they aren't going to get into Johns Hopkins for med school or Wharton for business school. Law school doesn't offer a great chance for riches for these people, but it offers a better chance than almost everything else.

My biggest problem with the pessimism on this board is that too many posters act like everyone can just go off and get a 100k/year job with no problem if they forego law school.

DF or rad lulz should take this one.

The pessimism on this board is a sad commentary on lawyers in general. There's no question that law school is too expensive and that many law schools should be shut down. Moreover, someone with a good job should not give it up unless they hate that job AND get into a good law school.

What I think people on this board fail to realize is that most incoming students KNOW that law school isn't a guaranteed path to riches. But when these students have philosophy, political science, or English degrees, they aren't going to get into Johns Hopkins for med school or Wharton for business school. Law school doesn't offer a great chance for riches for these people, but it offers a better chance than almost everything else.

My biggest problem with the pessimism on this board is that too many posters act like everyone can just go off and get a 100k/year job with no problem if they forego law school. Sure, if you take out 200k in loans and then have a 40k/year salary you're gonna be debt pwned, but is that really worse than working on a non-livable wage as a barista at Starbucks with no debt?

Or, you can go back to UG and get a real major or do a Post-Bac in a year and try again. Tripling your debt is not the best way to recover from having made poor academic choices.

Yeah, doubling it would be a much better choice. If only we had all majored in pre-med.

supply and demand then doctors would just become the new lawyers

besides, doctors already get 300k+ in debt and then can't become pediatricians. the only difference is that they are practically guaranteed a job.

The unfortunate reality is that a lot of law students don't have the skills required to earn $160k+ in other fields.

[UnicornHunter]

My biggest problem with the pessimism on this board is that too many posters act like everyone can just go off and get a 100k/year job with no problem if they forego law school. Sure, if you take out 200k in loans and then have a 40k/year salary you're gonna be debt pwned, but is that really worse than working on a non-livable wage as a barista at Starbucks with no debt?

While I've seen a couple "just do IB or consulting or med" posts on this board, I'd say the vast majority of posts don't say "don't go to law school," they say, "minimize debt." If you only look at the T14, you see that the modal outcome, market BigLaw, is virtually the same at every single school, with the main variance being geographical. Once you get to BigLaw, it doesn't matter what school you went to, odds are you are only going to be there for 3-5 years. Thus what the TLS hive mind is realizing is that unless you have a rock-solid reason to believe you're a special snowflake (i.e. you have a Ph.D. in Econ from MIT and you want to do legal academia,) it makes way more sense to take the cheapest t14 option available. Five years from now, you'll have money in the bank while your peer who took out $250,000 to go to a school ranked 5 spots above yours still is six figures in the hole. Neither of you are going to make equity partner and strike it rich, so you will be in a much more comfortable position for that second round of job searching if you didn't take out massive debt to go to law school.

Obviously, the analysis is a little more difficult for super-splitters with humanity degrees from TTT UGs. I'm not sure if the TLS hivemind has reached a consensus on that scenario. Probably still ED UVA and YOLO.

[dixiecupdrinking]

The unfortunate reality is that a lot of law students don't have the skills required to earn $160k+ in other fields.

This is true. And I'm a naysayer in general re law school but I agree with you. Even if you borrow a lot of money you can still end up ahead financially if you go to a top school. I took out a bunch of loans for a T6 and think I probably made an economically rational choice. What I didn't account for is that subjectively I'd probably rather have stuck with my old career path. I.e., practicing law kind of sucks, at least in the jobs that make attending law school economically rational. But that's not what this study is trying to capture.

Of course -- voluntary attrition due to crappy jobs probably could be captured and that would reduce the expected return on law school. Any model that assumes people making $160k out of school will be making $300 or whatever ten years out is useless.

[Ricky-Bobby]

The unfortunate reality is that a lot of law students don't have the skills required to earn $160k+ in other fields.

The unfortunate reality is that most law students don't have the option to make $160k+ in the legal field, either.

[timbs4339]

The unfortunate reality is that a lot of law students don't have the skills required to earn $160k+ in other fields.

The unfortunate reality is that most law students don't have the option to make $160k+ in the legal field, either.

This. We're not talking 160K vs 100K. For most students it might be 30K starting out of UG, with unknown potential, vs 50K at a small law firm or an ADA with 200K debt.

[SLS_AMG]

The unfortunate reality is that a lot of law students don't have the skills required to earn $160k+ in other fields.

The unfortunate reality is that most law students don't have the option to make $160k+ in the legal field, either.

If you read my post you'd see that I acknowledged that law school does not provide good odds for big law at all. I believe something like 8-10 percent of all law grads get big law (can't remember the exact number). That's certainly not high odds for a salary of 160+, but it's much higher than virtually every alternative for someone with a useless degree.

The real problem is that too many people think they are the special snowflakes, and that even if they go to a bad school they'll be the exception that gets big law and winds up just fine.

[Ricky-Bobby]

The unfortunate reality is that a lot of law students don't have the skills required to earn $160k+ in other fields.

The unfortunate reality is that most law students don't have the option to make $160k+ in the legal field, either.

If you read my post you'd see that I acknowledged that law school does not provide good odds for big law at all. I believe something like 8-10 percent of all law grads get big law (can't remember the exact number). That's certainly not high odds for a salary of 160+, but it's much higher than virtually every alternative for someone with a useless degree.

The real problem is that too many people think they are the special snowflakes, and that even if they go to a bad school they'll be the exception that gets big law and winds up just fine.

Your solution to a useless degree is getting a slightly less useless yet extremely overpriced degree for a 10% chance at making $160k?

[ManoftheHour]

Your solution to a useless degree is getting a slightly less useless yet extremely overpriced degree for a 10% chance at making $160k?

If that doesn't work, you then go get a LLM.

[bizzike]

This is really just a roundabout thread about T14 or bust etc etc . Just sayin.

[SLS_AMG]

The unfortunate reality is that a lot of law students don't have the skills required to earn $160k+ in other fields.

The unfortunate reality is that most law students don't have the option to make $160k+ in the legal field, either.

If you read my post you'd see that I acknowledged that law school does not provide good odds for big law at all. I believe something like 8-10 percent of all law grads get big law (can't remember the exact number). That's certainly not high odds for a salary of 160+, but it's much higher than virtually every alternative for someone with a useless degree.

The real problem is that too many people think they are the special snowflakes, and that even if they go to a bad school they'll be the exception that gets big law and winds up just fine.

Your solution to a useless degree is getting a slightly less useless yet extremely overpriced degree for a 10% chance at making $160k?

Your reading comprehension is extraordinary.

[Ricky-Bobby]

Your reading comprehension is extraordinary.

lol k

Just because you tried to backtrack from your original stupid statement doesn't mean I have to accept it.

[SLS_AMG]

Your reading comprehension is extraordinary.

lol k

Just because you tried to backtrack from your original stupid statement doesn't mean I have to accept it.

I made clear from the first post I made in this thread that law school isn't a great option for most people, and I gave further qualification of that statement for people with good jobs.

The fact that you're too lazy and/or dumb to read and understand before responding isn't my fault, dude.

[Ricky-Bobby]

I made clear from the first post I made in this thread that law school isn't a great option for most people, and I gave further qualification of that statement for people with good jobs.

The fact that you're too lazy and/or dumb to read and understand before responding isn't my fault, dude.

Look man, I'm not going to get into a pissing contest with you. We've already shitposted this thread up enough.

I disagree with this:

What I think people on this board fail to realize is that most incoming students KNOW that law school isn't a guaranteed path to riches. But when these students have philosophy, political science, or English degrees, they aren't going to get into Johns Hopkins for med school or Wharton for business school. Law school doesn't offer a great chance for riches for these people, but it offers a better chance than almost everything else.

The heart of this argument is "I couldn't figure out anything else to do, so I guess I'll go to law school." Put as much lipstick as you want on it, it's still a pig.

[Elston Gunn]

Another 14 are in school funded jobs.

I'd bet that even straight P's is good enough for big law, but plenty of people have bad personalities. And firms don't hire those people if they figure it out.

yeah but do you really think school-funded is necessarily going to be "didn't make biglaw, had to settle for school-funded" at a school like YLS? my understanding is that those school-funded positions are actually pretty coveted by PI types. at least, that's what some yalies in another thread were saying.

Your understanding is that because stupid 0Ls say so on threads like this.

Nah, people compete for them pretty hard, especially the Heymans, and it's very possible these days to not get one despite trying hard for them. I'm actually surprised it's only 14. I checked this out once, and I think all of the school funded people from 2010 and 11 (?) I could find were in legit jobs.

And even someone with a horrible personality will almost definitely get Biglaw if they bid NYC and probably even if they don't (I know some astoundingly terrible interview personalities in non-NYC biglaw) and straight P's is good enough for V10/Skadden, not just Biglaw generally. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a couple people who miss out every year, even after mass mailing, because they're not going to advertise it.

Disclaimer: this is in no way meant to suggest someone should pay $300K for Yale.