Tiago Splitter wrote:Meanwhile you assume someone going to a school with a 55% Biglaw+Fed Clerk score is guaranteed biglaw and incredible career success. We're both just assuming what is likely, and I don't see why someone would jump right in when the typical outcome for someone with these numbers is a near full ride at the T14. And I'm saying this as someone who didn't start law school until 28 and wishes he had got the ball rolling sooner.wons wrote:No - you assume he will be paid six figures to wait. There's uncertainty in how much better he'll do next year.
You're also ignoring just how much money you make as an attorney. Tuition wasn't all that cheaper in 2009, chief, so I get your point, but I think your concerns are better aired in the "BU or BC" threads.
No, I don't assume guaranteed Biglaw. I assume certainly a better than 55% chance, because that 55% is laden with selection bias (all PI folks want to clerk, but not all PI folks get to clerk, so there are some folks at Berkeley that are not competing in the BigLaw pool and are not reflected in the clerk #s). Also, we all agree this applicant is stronger than the typical Berkeley applicant, and there is a decent correlation (IIRC, LSAC says that a mixed LSAT/GPA index explains about half of law school GPA variance) between applicant numbers and law school performance.
So its not fair to this applicant for him to assume a 55% baseline - based on my recent experience with a friend at Berkeley, its a smidge higher than that if you demonstrate a strong interest in BigLaw. It's also not right for him to assume he'll be median - probably more accurate to assume somewhere around the top third is his median outcome, with median being his 1SD negative outcome.
Now we have to look at the value of the year he (or she, but I'm going to continue using he for convenience) loses. It's the value of the year of salary as an attorney he would lose minus the value of the salary he'll earn next year. Assume a 80% chance of Biglaw given school and LSAT/UGGPA numbers, assume (since it gets complicated if we do it rigorously) $200K salary for the year he "loses" by waiting. Lord knows what he's making now, but lets call it $40K. Ignore time value of money. In essence the "cost" in terms of lost income for the year delay is $120K. You could use different assumption and come out with far higher numbers, but this assumes the year he's losing is year 2 or 3 as an attorney and isn't a survivor. The error bar here is big on the high end.
So in my view, he needs to save $120K on law school to even break even by waiting. (If you want to quibble with my 80% Biglaw chance, that's fine, but (a) you're wrong and (b) that just brings down the $120K, it doesn't eliminate it.) Now you also have to consider the value of twiddling your fucking thumbs for a year and reapplying and maybe retaking and all the miserable shit we all had to do to get into law school. And that sucks. People spend $10K on stupid shit like fancy vacations and leather seats in their car. Even if - and I don't think this is so - you end up negative $20K by going to law school now, that's a completely reasonable price to effectively fast-foward your life by a year. How much do you think folks pay to tack on an extra year of retirement at the end of their career? (Hint: it's way more than $20K.)
Your bad advice and misguided approach arises from a good place, I'll admit. If we were talking a non T14 school, then I am right on board your train. If we were talking even a weaker applicant, then I would be banging your drum. But we're not. This guy is a strong applicant looking at good schools with very strong median expected outcomes if he attends LS on September 1st. There's downside risk if he bombs law school, but pathological avoidance of downside risk is not an optimal life strategy. If there's something here that makes downside unacceptable - he's already got kids, he's supporting a family member, then maybe I come out differently. But generally, this is a case where a calculated risk clearly maximizes expected return, AND the soft factors also point in the same direction. It's clearly better to attend than to wait.
