The "Truth" About Law School
Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2011 3:41 am
I am currently waiting to hear back from some law schools I applied to, hoping to get into a T30 school in the region I desire working. When I first went into this process my main motivation was 'get out of Canada'. I loathe cold weather and I want to live somewhere WARM. As such, I initially was considering applying to T2 schools such as New Mexico (basically schools I would have no problem getting into that are in warm climates). However, during this time, I've read all the doom-and-gloom articles floating around TLS and I'm a bit confused.
First off, if law school is such a bad profession, what exactly is a good one? I have a B.Sc and an M.Sc in biology and I can tell you that those degrees don't get you much. I am working in the lab I did my M.Sc in to finish up some experiments, and the most common job for bio-M.Sc grads are as reps for supply companies. They come in with their rolling backpacks and hand out flyers telling me about sales on pipette tips and plasmid-prep kits. I suppose I could get a PhD, but all that's gonna get me is a 60 000k a year job in biotech (maybe) essentially working on mindless science. Or I could devote another 4 years of my life to being dirt poor, do a post-doc and luck out with a junior professor job at some low grade university. At this point, I'll have to work my ass off to publish all the time, push grad students through, get grants and ultimately tenure. I know a lot of bio profs, most of them are poor.
A few years back I wrote the OAT (optometry exam). I scored in the 99th percentile and was pretty much guaranteed acceptance into all optometry schools in NA. I ultimately didn't apply. Why? Because optometry is a dying industry. Companies like Costco, Walmart etc are making private practice impossible, and even if you do have a private practice, people will come see you, but take their glasses prescription to the cheapest location possible meaning revenue from glasses sales is not something you can count on. Furthermore, people in the US with vision coverage in their health insurance are generally recommended to get their eye-care from an ophthalmologist. Optometry school costs are comparable to the cost of law school (more in many cases) and it is essentially a 2-year degree dragged out over 4 years to increase costs. If you do want to make a decent living, you can expect to work nights and weekends and you'll be forced to wear a lab-coat next to the McDonald's in Wal-mart. Oh yeah, I've also met a large number of optometrists who struggle with debt and are poor....
I also wrote the DAT. You think law school is expensive? Dental school you're looking at 50k per year in tuition alone. Starting a dental practice is ridiculously expensive, and if you buy a practice off a retiring dentist you're inheriting a bunch of garbage equipment and overpriced good-will. If you rent a chair in a practice, you're paying huge overhead and basically making someone else a lot of money. Add to the fact you have 300k in debt (not many dental students get $$$$) and this is really not that attractive an option either....
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I wrote the MCAT. I score a 35T which is a pretty solid score, good enough to get me into most Med Schools, save for the absolute top ones. The medical profession is pretty much in the same shape as the dental one is in terms of private practice. I though maybe I'd go and become a surgeon, well...you think BIGLAW requires a lot of hours? Try a surgical residency. Oh yeah, add to that the 300k in debt after 4 years, plus the likely 7 year residency required to get a truly decent paying medical gig and suddenly this profession isn't looking so hot, neither will you be once you graduate because you'll be 45 years old.
So that's why I decided to look into law school. I wrote the LSAT on a whim, did decent enough and decided to throw in some apps late in this cycle. I'm definitely deterred by all these articles I'm reading, but is it really that much worse than the professions I've mentioned above? Will I be shopping in Wal-mart post graduation, envying the dude in the lab coat saying "1 or 2" because wal-mart is the only place I can afford to shop? I seriously feel like I'm running out of options here, and standardized tests to write. How's crack sales these days? Seriously, any input is appreciated....
tl;dr
Science is unstable
Optometry is unstable
Dentistry is unstable
Medicine is unstable
Is Law school that bad??
First off, if law school is such a bad profession, what exactly is a good one? I have a B.Sc and an M.Sc in biology and I can tell you that those degrees don't get you much. I am working in the lab I did my M.Sc in to finish up some experiments, and the most common job for bio-M.Sc grads are as reps for supply companies. They come in with their rolling backpacks and hand out flyers telling me about sales on pipette tips and plasmid-prep kits. I suppose I could get a PhD, but all that's gonna get me is a 60 000k a year job in biotech (maybe) essentially working on mindless science. Or I could devote another 4 years of my life to being dirt poor, do a post-doc and luck out with a junior professor job at some low grade university. At this point, I'll have to work my ass off to publish all the time, push grad students through, get grants and ultimately tenure. I know a lot of bio profs, most of them are poor.
A few years back I wrote the OAT (optometry exam). I scored in the 99th percentile and was pretty much guaranteed acceptance into all optometry schools in NA. I ultimately didn't apply. Why? Because optometry is a dying industry. Companies like Costco, Walmart etc are making private practice impossible, and even if you do have a private practice, people will come see you, but take their glasses prescription to the cheapest location possible meaning revenue from glasses sales is not something you can count on. Furthermore, people in the US with vision coverage in their health insurance are generally recommended to get their eye-care from an ophthalmologist. Optometry school costs are comparable to the cost of law school (more in many cases) and it is essentially a 2-year degree dragged out over 4 years to increase costs. If you do want to make a decent living, you can expect to work nights and weekends and you'll be forced to wear a lab-coat next to the McDonald's in Wal-mart. Oh yeah, I've also met a large number of optometrists who struggle with debt and are poor....
I also wrote the DAT. You think law school is expensive? Dental school you're looking at 50k per year in tuition alone. Starting a dental practice is ridiculously expensive, and if you buy a practice off a retiring dentist you're inheriting a bunch of garbage equipment and overpriced good-will. If you rent a chair in a practice, you're paying huge overhead and basically making someone else a lot of money. Add to the fact you have 300k in debt (not many dental students get $$$$) and this is really not that attractive an option either....
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I wrote the MCAT. I score a 35T which is a pretty solid score, good enough to get me into most Med Schools, save for the absolute top ones. The medical profession is pretty much in the same shape as the dental one is in terms of private practice. I though maybe I'd go and become a surgeon, well...you think BIGLAW requires a lot of hours? Try a surgical residency. Oh yeah, add to that the 300k in debt after 4 years, plus the likely 7 year residency required to get a truly decent paying medical gig and suddenly this profession isn't looking so hot, neither will you be once you graduate because you'll be 45 years old.
So that's why I decided to look into law school. I wrote the LSAT on a whim, did decent enough and decided to throw in some apps late in this cycle. I'm definitely deterred by all these articles I'm reading, but is it really that much worse than the professions I've mentioned above? Will I be shopping in Wal-mart post graduation, envying the dude in the lab coat saying "1 or 2" because wal-mart is the only place I can afford to shop? I seriously feel like I'm running out of options here, and standardized tests to write. How's crack sales these days? Seriously, any input is appreciated....
tl;dr
Science is unstable
Optometry is unstable
Dentistry is unstable
Medicine is unstable
Is Law school that bad??
. Good night everyone!
) with a BSc. in Computer Science, something he actually had a passion for. He soon realized that the market was completely saturated (he grew up in a time when everyone said that being a computer scientist was a guaranteed way to be rich, he graduated in 2003). Computer scientists were a dime a dozen and outsourcing has already began to foreign markets. He was forced to work at a call center for 2 years before he could land a job in his field, and one that only paid 35k/year. Upon working there, he forged some contacts and began to do some contracts for some of those firms on the side. He had creative ideas and a genuine interest in the field that employers and clients noticed. In two-three years, he left that firm and entered a new one (software for health care industry) where he made additional contacts and eventually founded his own firm. He now lives comfortably in Vancouver with a well over 6 figure salary ($200-250k/year) doing what he loves to do; being a computer scientist. 
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might need that for law school