What's the value of a PhD? Forum

[johnmikeanderic]

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[BankruptMe]

with acceptances at HYS and $$$ at CCN, is it worth it to defer and do a PhD or to bounce between programs to complete a JD/PhD? or is the time not worth the eventual, possible benefit? PhD would be in philosophy at an ivy that doesn't have a law school. my interests are academia, philosophy of law and international law, but I think it's possible they will change. I would also pursue fluency in an additional language while completing PhD work.

You have to decide what kind of prof you want to be. DO NOT pursue this road unless you are 100% sold on academia. A PhD holds 0 value outside of academia. If you want to be a law prof, then you can do that with HYS JD alone. If you want to be a philosophy prof, go for a PhD in Philosophy and skip law school.

There are not many jobs, if any at all, where you need both. I should know...I am leaving my PhD program to go to law school.

[jselson]

with acceptances at HYS and $$$ at CCN, is it worth it to defer and do a PhD or to bounce between programs to complete a JD/PhD? or is the time not worth the eventual, possible benefit? PhD would be in philosophy at an ivy that doesn't have a law school. my interests are academia, philosophy of law and international law, but I think it's possible they will change. I would also pursue fluency in an additional language while completing PhD work.

You have to decide what kind of prof you want to be. DO NOT pursue this road unless you are 100% sold on academia. A PhD holds 0 value outside of academia. If you want to be a law prof, then you can do that with HYS JD alone. If you want to be a philosophy prof, go for a PhD in Philosophy and skip law school.

There are not many jobs, if any at all, where you need both. I should know...I am leaving my PhD program to go to law school.

I strongly disagree with this (and I left my PhD program to do law school as well, but that's because I didn't want to work as an academic anymore). If you wanted to become a non-academic lawyer, then a non-science, non-econ PhD probably wouldn't do much, although I think it would help if you had already finished it, but not enough to pursue additionally. BUT, the academic job market is awful (though legal academia less so than, say, the humanities), and a PhD and JD helps in multiple ways: 1) It legitimates you as a scholar (the JD does not prep you for real scholarship), 2) It opens up two job markets for you (Philosophy depts and law schools), 3) A lot of folks you'll be competing with for legal academia WILL have PhDs, so you don't want to be at a disadvantage, especially in the status-obsessed worlds of academia and law, 4) You'll have a leg-up over anyone who doesn't have a PhD (or a JD, for the Phil market), 5) Two prestigious Ivy League degrees is ridiculously awesome, and the Ivy League gets their people jobs, and good ones, 6) Philosophy and Law clearly signals your niche specialty, 7) You'll get personal fulfillment out of having both, and You'll be setting yourself up to have the best shot at doing what you love, which is invaluable. So my vote is pursue the PhD.

[mx23250]

Added bonus: you get called "Dr. XX" while your non-PhD attorney colleagues get called "Mr./Ms. XX".

[A. Nony Mouse]

Added bonus: you get called "Dr. XX" while your non-PhD attorney colleagues get called "Mr./Ms. XX".

Is that common in IP? Because lord knows I would never go by "Dr. Mouse" as an attorney, but I'm also not in the sciences/IP.

[mx23250]

Added bonus: you get called "Dr. XX" while your non-PhD attorney colleagues get called "Mr./Ms. XX".

Is that common in IP? Because lord knows I would never go by "Dr. Mouse" as an attorney, but I'm also not in the sciences/IP.

I've often seen them described as "Dr. XX" in attorney bios for IP attorneys, but I'm not sure how they're formally addressed on the job. I would imagine a firm might want to introduce an attorney as "Dr. X" to convey credibility/advanced education to a client, but within a law firm I know I'd prefer just being addressed on a first name basis. It is kind of weird thinking of someone saying, "I'd like to introduce you to one of our best attorneys, Dr. XX" lol

[BankruptMe]

with acceptances at HYS and $$$ at CCN, is it worth it to defer and do a PhD or to bounce between programs to complete a JD/PhD? or is the time not worth the eventual, possible benefit? PhD would be in philosophy at an ivy that doesn't have a law school. my interests are academia, philosophy of law and international law, but I think it's possible they will change. I would also pursue fluency in an additional language while completing PhD work.

You have to decide what kind of prof you want to be. DO NOT pursue this road unless you are 100% sold on academia. A PhD holds 0 value outside of academia. If you want to be a law prof, then you can do that with HYS JD alone. If you want to be a philosophy prof, go for a PhD in Philosophy and skip law school.

There are not many jobs, if any at all, where you need both. I should know...I am leaving my PhD program to go to law school.

I strongly disagree with this (and I left my PhD program to do law school as well, but that's because I didn't want to work as an academic anymore). If you wanted to become a non-academic lawyer, then a non-science, non-econ PhD probably wouldn't do much, although I think it would help if you had already finished it, but not enough to pursue additionally. BUT, the academic job market is awful (though legal academia less so than, say, the humanities), and a PhD and JD helps in multiple ways: 1) It legitimates you as a scholar (the JD does not prep you for real scholarship), 2) It opens up two job markets for you (Philosophy depts and law schools), 3) A lot of folks you'll be competing with for legal academia WILL have PhDs, so you don't want to be at a disadvantage, especially in the status-obsessed worlds of academia and law, 4) You'll have a leg-up over anyone who doesn't have a PhD (or a JD, for the Phil market), 5) Two prestigious Ivy League degrees is ridiculously awesome, and the Ivy League gets their people jobs, and good ones, 6) Philosophy and Law clearly signals your niche specialty, 7) You'll get personal fulfillment out of having both, and You'll be setting yourself up to have the best shot at doing what you love, which is invaluable. So my vote is pursue the PhD.

You make good points. Ill give you that...Maybe I am just jaded lol

[banjo]

I also left a Ph.D. program (humanities) to go to law school, and I think pursuing a Ph.D. would be a mistake.

One issue is that, depending on the timeline and structure of the J.D/Ph.D., you may not have access to the traditional OCI hiring model. Typically, rising 2Ls interview in August. They get summer associate positions for the following summer, after which the vast majority receive an offer to return to the firm after they graduate. In your case, you may have several years of dissertation work to complete after you graduate.

Plus, even with your credentials, you may end up bouncing from one VAP/fellowship to another with the hope that you'll one day secure a tenure-track job. Worse, you may have no easy way of re-entering the practice of law. Big firms all hire in a limited number of ways (2L OCI, post-clerkship, etc.), and are also wary of investing in someone who might flee for academia. The life of an itinerant philosopher might sound appealing now, but you could be in your early thirties without a tenure-track job or a legal career of any kind.

My opinion is that you should forego the Ph.D. and enjoy HYS. Try to clerk, practice for a few years, and if you still desperately want academia, apply to fellowships.

[theotherone823]

Added bonus: you get called "Dr. XX" while your non-PhD attorney colleagues get called "Mr./Ms. XX".

Technically as a doctorate degree a JD (juris DOCTOR) entitles you use the title "doctor". You are lame if you do though.

[PrideandGlory1776]

My opinion is that you should forego the Ph.D. and enjoy HYS. Try to clerk, practice for a few years, and if you still desperately want academia, apply to fellowships.

+1

[jbagelboy]

I think in addition to the instructive comments jselson and banjo made, you should consider what you want to study and actually be doing during your time in school. Law school coursework is mostly reading cases/judicial opinions, law review articles and occasionally some literature in political-economy or legal philosophy but it's at best tangential. You can also expand to clinics, where you are pseudo-practicing law, seminars on negotiation or other relevant skills, ect. And of course you can take a few classes at other schools in the university in your upper years.

I'm sure you already know what graduate school entails: on it's face it is also just a whole lot of reading, but the subject matter, emphasis and evaluative criteria would be quite different. As far as publishing is concerned, law school provides journal and LR opportunities on a pretty wide range of legal subjects, but all contained within a selective readership (and obviously, restricted to relating to law). Research and writing (and often field/archival work) constitute vastly more significant elements of the academic experience in a phd program, and obviously you aren't just taking curved exams. My SO is currently a history grad student so I have a pretty good idea of the lifestyle & substance of work.

This distinction would be important for me in terms of what I want to study and how I want to spend the majority of my time throughout my 20s.. this is NOT to say these considerations would outweigh any of the career-advancement related points presented by others.

[A. Nony Mouse]

To be honest, I also think law school is terrible at teaching how to do research, identify research questions, develop a research agenda - the things you will need to do as a prof. Some people take to this naturally or come to law school having developed such skills from previous education, but if you haven't, I think a PhD program is better for this kind of thing than the JD. (But if you go this route you will really be going all in academia, which is risky for all the reasons everyone's mentioned.)

[aboutmydaylight]

Added bonus: you get called "Dr. XX" while your non-PhD attorney colleagues get called "Mr./Ms. XX".

Is that common in IP? Because lord knows I would never go by "Dr. Mouse" as an attorney, but I'm also not in the sciences/IP.

Don't even think it has to be IP. Know an Econ PhD/JD professor who although never referred to himself as doctor, and no student ever called him doctor, that's how he listed himself on official documents. As far as I know Dr. is not a title Econ PhDs typically use.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Added bonus: you get called "Dr. XX" while your non-PhD attorney colleagues get called "Mr./Ms. XX".

Is that common in IP? Because lord knows I would never go by "Dr. Mouse" as an attorney, but I'm also not in the sciences/IP.

Don't even think it has to be IP. Know an Econ PhD/JD professor who although never referred to himself as doctor, and no student ever called him doctor, that's how he listed himself on official documents. As far as I know Dr. is not a title Econ PhDs typically use.

I meant in law firms/practice/a non-academic setting. Professors are regularly called Dr., including Econ PhDs (again, if they're profs). (Not common in LS of course because not all profs have doctorates.) Dr. as opposed to Prof. may be more common in schools with grad programs (because generally you have to have a PhD to teach grad students, whereas an UG only school may historically have had MA-only profs who couldn't be called Dr. but were of course profs). But it's entirely normal in academia.

(Unless you meant the JD/PhD in Econ guy is referred to as Dr. outside of where he teaches, in which case, never mind the above!)

[aboutmydaylight]

Added bonus: you get called "Dr. XX" while your non-PhD attorney colleagues get called "Mr./Ms. XX".

Is that common in IP? Because lord knows I would never go by "Dr. Mouse" as an attorney, but I'm also not in the sciences/IP.

Don't even think it has to be IP. Know an Econ PhD/JD professor who although never referred to himself as doctor, and no student ever called him doctor, that's how he listed himself on official documents. As far as I know Dr. is not a title Econ PhDs typically use.

I meant in law firms/practice/a non-academic setting. Professors are regularly called Dr., including Econ PhDs (again, if they're profs). (Not common in LS of course because not all profs have doctorates.) Dr. as opposed to Prof. may be more common in schools with grad programs (because generally you have to have a PhD to teach grad students, whereas an UG only school may historically have had MA-only profs who couldn't be called Dr. but were of course profs). But it's entirely normal in academia.

(Unless you meant the JD/PhD in Econ guy is referred to as Dr. outside of where he teaches, in which case, never mind the above!)

I actually disagree that even in academic settings, most econ professors I've known were not called Dr., nor ever referred to themselves as such.

[jbagelboy]

Added bonus: you get called "Dr. XX" while your non-PhD attorney colleagues get called "Mr./Ms. XX".

Is that common in IP? Because lord knows I would never go by "Dr. Mouse" as an attorney, but I'm also not in the sciences/IP.

Don't even think it has to be IP. Know an Econ PhD/JD professor who although never referred to himself as doctor, and no student ever called him doctor, that's how he listed himself on official documents. As far as I know Dr. is not a title Econ PhDs typically use.

I meant in law firms/practice/a non-academic setting. Professors are regularly called Dr., including Econ PhDs (again, if they're profs). (Not common in LS of course because not all profs have doctorates.) Dr. as opposed to Prof. may be more common in schools with grad programs (because generally you have to have a PhD to teach grad students, whereas an UG only school may historically have had MA-only profs who couldn't be called Dr. but were of course profs). But it's entirely normal in academia.

(Unless you meant the JD/PhD in Econ guy is referred to as Dr. outside of where he teaches, in which case, never mind the above!)

Lol you really like to use parentheticals.

I don't think you can teach undergrad without a PhD circa 2010 on. I never had a prof in UG who wasn't a "Dr".

[A. Nony Mouse]

aboutmydaylight - don't know what to tell you, I have been in settings where Econ profs were called "doctor."

jbagel - parentheticals are one of my (many) fatal flaws.

But yeah, teaching UG now without a PhD, except maybe at the community college level, is really a no-go. I was thinking of how in the 50s/60s it was possible, and that a school's titling conventions may date back to that time. I worked at an undergrad school founded in the early 60s where all the profs/admin went by their first names because at the time it was founded everyone was into egalitarianism. (And most of the profs at that point only had MAs.)

[bulinus]

PhD here. Unspoken rule that you are a dildo if you make people refer to you as Dr.

You put PhD on the resume for job cred, and that's it.

Added bonus: you get called "Dr. XX" while your non-PhD attorney colleagues get called "Mr./Ms. XX".

Technically as a doctorate degree a JD (juris DOCTOR) entitles you use the title "doctor". You are lame if you do though.

[kartelite]

PhD here. Unspoken rule that you are a dildo if you make people refer to you as Dr.

Not that it's exactly the same, but I read a deposition where the deponent had a PhD, and his attorney corrected the other side when they referred to him as "Mr." When I address formal e-mails to someone with a PhD (who's not a professor), I'll often use "Dr." in the salutation.

[09042014]

PhD here. Unspoken rule that you are a dildo if you make people refer to you as Dr.

Not that it's exactly the same, but I read a deposition where the deponent had a PhD, and his attorney corrected the other side when they referred to him as "Mr." When I address formal e-mails to someone with a PhD (who's not a professor), I'll often use "Dr." in the salutation.

Yea nobody is ever dildo during a depo.