who else is excited beyond belief for LS Forum

[LoveXOXO1]

I would first like to say thank you to the administrators of TLS for banning me and removing all but the first paragraph of my post. Real classy. For the benefit of 0Ls, I am reposting what I wrote, along with a reply I was about to submit before I got banned. If you ban me again, I'm only going to ramp up the postings, and good luck trying to block the thousands of different proxies out there. Also, I wouldn't doubt that this site collaborates with law schools in order to make law school seem 100% easy-breezy... Maybe I'll send out a couple FOIA demands to state schools like BoalTTT and UM, because I'd like to at least find out.

To better comply with TLS's Terms and Conditions I have removed the expletives I used in my first somewhat-heated posting. Although my user account and IP will probably be banned again, as long as this information is getting out to 0Ls before they take out massive amounts of debt, then I'll be satisfied. At least I tried to give you all a heads-up.

------

You are all a bunch of [0Ls]. You don't need to go 100-200K into debt to meet new people and move to a new city to get a graduate degree that is essentially worthless unless it is from a Top 6 law school. You literally do not learn how to do anything that an actual practicing attorney knows how to do. All you will do is read, outline, and [crap] yourself come exam time, all while bleeding money to pay for your law school and its professors (making $200K/yr teaching [poopooheads]) who were smart enough to get out of private practice while they could.

I know 1Ls, 2Ls, 3Ls, and LLMs that want to kill themselves because of their debtload and the fact that they have no legal job lined up. If this is the kind of misery you want to bring upon yourself, then go for it. Additionally, if you have no serious family connections to managing partners, don't have a full ride or parents that are paying 100% of your expenses, are a poli sci [majors] or possess any other useless UG degree, have an intense lisp or foreign accent, have any level of asperger's, or are a [jerk] or unattractive in any way, DON'T ATTEND LAW SCHOOL. You'll be flushing money down the toilet.

All you [0Ls] talk about is how intellectually stimulating LS is going to be... you are plainly [naive]. It's just a [fricking] rat race where you are in class all day taking notes, being scared [crapless] you don't get called on because you didn't really read the cases assigned (or even if you read them, your professor will make you feel like an idiot because your notes will be worthless), spend your nights and weekends slaving over pointless casebook reading and legal memorandum that take hours and hours to research, write, proof, revise, edit, repeat. Come November, you slave away over cover letters and resumes only to get rejected everywhere. Spring semester will follow suit, but with intensified stress levels as you pointlessly apply to jobs online through Symplicity, freaking out about how you are going to afford to pay rent and feed yourself over the summer because you couldn't get a paid job or a public interest grant. Your Career Development Office will continue to send you emails about jobs and fellowships that for which they are perfectly aware that no one is qualified for, and will be utterly useless.

Then Fall On Campus Interviewing (OCI) will roll around, where only the top 15% of 1L students will get interviews with firms paying $80K-$160K, a good number won't even get callbacks, and many of the few who get offers will then get no-offered at the end of the summer, and you will all again scramble to find a legal internship for 2L and 3L summers, repeating the stress which consumed you 1L year. You will take pointless classes 2L and 3L year which only gloss over the substance of the law, and none will make you any more qualified for a particular practice area (e.g., international law, human rights law, environmental law, and all other imaginary concentrations law schools claim to be the best at, but which lead to no improved employment opportunities).

Everyone is confident that they will get top 10% of their class, [crap], I was, too. Fact is I finished below median at my T20 after my first semester. (You will quickly learn that the legal recruiting process only cares about 1L grades, and that you are instantly barred from ever getting those $160K jobs if you aren't top of your 1L class.) However, I played my hand right. I had family connections, had a scholarship, have an engineering degree from a prestigious school, am sociable, tall, and good looking. Combine these, and boom, I have a summer associateship where I'm making $3K/week. Out of my 250-270 student class of 2012, I am one of maybe four students that has a paying firm job. But all my friends and classmates are either (1) lucky enough to snag an unpaid public interest job [where they will take on more debt this summer/max out their credit cards/work at Starbucks/Radio Shack part-time... but to be fair, a few dozen were able to snag $4-5K grants at my school, and some T14 schools (like Columbia) pay any student who does an unpaid internship], (2) have some type of family legal connection, but not with a managing law firm partner, and will be working unpaid for some [CRAP]LAW solo practitioner and living back at home, or (3) totally without a job and therefore foreclosed from future law firm jobs and [crapping] themselves and contemplating killself. I am lucky as [crap] that I have a job with an awesome firm and don't have to worry about finding employment during finals and am pretty much set for life. But sadly, I am the exception.

Even medians and below at top 14s (T14) are getting the shaft: --LinkRemoved--

If you need more evidence of how poorly your gamble to attend law school can turn out, please read these links from people who are living the nightmare: http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/, http://joblesslawyer.com/, --LinkRemoved--, http://esqnever.blogspot.com/, --LinkRemoved--, http://temporaryattorney.blogspot.com/.

Especially don't attend a festering TTT (schools not even within the top 100, but realistically anything outside the top 25).
1Ls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAmaVKthIk8
2Ls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvd6bJA639g
3Ls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4fXTlFTQHY, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBbgXhac-Rs

Moral of this long post (which I took the time out of my studying for finals to write so that more innocent people in their 20s won't get sucked into the farce that is law school):
1. Don't add a useless law degree onto a useless undergrad degree. (So don't take on more crushing debt just because you couldn't find your dream job or are "bored" at your current job. It's not worth the debt and stress of law school and the legal profession.)
2. Don't assume that you will finish in the top percentiles of your class. You have an inverse chance of doing just the opposite.
3. Read/listen to every [fricking] link that is in this post. If you don't, you will regret it for the rest of your [fricking] lives.
4. A URM? Still [fricked] (--LinkRemoved--).
5. Think you are T14 safe? Think again (--LinkRemoved--).
6. If you aren't T6/engineering/well-connected/top 10%, start getting used to craigslist legal board: http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id ... forum_id=2

So how should you decide if law school is a good gamble/risk of the rest of your life? I highly advice you go only if at least one of these factors apply to you (but the more factors that you have, the better):
1. You get into Harvard/Yale/Stanford (HYS).
2. You get into other schools in the T14 with $.
3. Your parents finance your entire law school adventure.
4. You are well-connected to partners at a law firm that expressly tell/promise you employment.
5. You have an undergraduate degree in (starting with the best) either a (1) BS, MS, or Ph.D. in electrical engineering, (2) BS, MS, or Ph.D. in chemical engineering, (3) Ph.D. in a biological science, or (4) any other engineering or hard science (not sociology or psychology), but these won't be in as much a demand.
6. You get a 100% full ride.
7. You got at least a 170 LSAT.

Hope this post helps you make a wise and thought-out decision. I hate seeing my law school friends dealing with depression, inevitable bankruptcy, crushed dreams, and a bleak future, and I certainly don't want any others to experience the same. I am going to repost and bump this until the message finally gets through all of your thick skulls. I'm sure that it feels that I'm trying to crush your dreams, but you will seriously thank me for crushing those than creditors crushing the rest of your future.

Love,
XOXO

P.S. More links that you will find useful:
--LinkRemoved--
I'll add more as I run across them...

PART 2.

You should never go to law school without weighing the costs of attendance, how you are going to pay off loans, why you want to be a lawyer etc. But if you have weighed those things and are making a well thought out decision, then by all means I think you should go to law school.

I 100% agree with this statement, rando. (And this is exactly what I'm trying to get 0Ls to do.) But when I see my friends take on an obscene amount of debt (which is easily available compliments of the federal government and its debt-machine), it literally breaks my heart to how badly they are struggling.

The primary problem is that students are "weighing" these factors with the wrong assumptions because law schools downright lie about their employment statistics. Like Duke's 100% employment-at-graduation. Are you [fricking] kidding? Not even Yale had 100%! And in the Great Depression, all Duke law students, even the one student who finished dead last in the class (probably with below a 2.0 GPA and on academic probation) found gainful employment? Doesn't that also assume that they had a 100% bar passage rate? No [fricking] way. Up and down the T14 are students finding themselves without legal jobs.

Ask yourself, of the schools you are looking at, which ones are being the most transparent about their employment statistics? Consider University of Chicago. They provide a complete class list which shows where each graduate is landing after 3L year. (See here: --LinkRemoved--, and the http://www.lawschooltransparency.com site in general.) With many other schools, you'll be lucky to find detailed employment statistics on their websites. Even so, graduating law students AREN'T required to report their employment status or salary. Do you really think someone who got totally shafted and scammed by a law school is going to reply to an employment survey? In reality, it's going to be the lucky ones with solid firm jobs that reply back.... this obviously skews the data upwards.

Law schools skew and manipulate their data like crazy. For instance, how do you know that a school's employment statistics don't include temporary contract work (a.k.a. "doc review") or non-legal jobs? You don't! You wonder why admissions people claim a JD to be so versatile? Because in the unfortunate situation that you don't find legal employment (and much more likely these days), you bet your ass you're going to make it versatile. But an unemployed 3L is damaged goods for law firms and over-qualified for every other non-legal job. If you find yourself in this situation, you better pray to God that he swoops in and saves your ass through family connections or a networking miracle.

Be skeptical, and don't be scared to grill admissions officers on that fact. YOU are the one about to fork over thousands of dollars to them. You have the right to know that your TRUE odds of finding a job are.

Let me rephrase my point in more direct terms: If you are going into ls for the $ and power, there is a BIG chance you will hate your decision to attend, even if you land a 160k prestigeous biglaw gig out of school. It is not all it is cracked up to be. If you are going to law school b/c you love challenging, intellectual stimulation and want an interesting career OR have a purpose such as becoming a prosecutor, judge, DOJ attorney, JAG, etc. you will likely love your choice.

Again, I agree with this poster's comment. But an "intellectual stimulation" doesn't cost six figures of debt. It's not [fricking] free money bud. And with today's DirectPLUS loans at like 7-8%, your interest will be nasty. And tack that on to any accruing interest from your UG loans. You absolutely need to balance the "benefits" (intellectual stimulation, maybe it'll be interesting if you find a great job or discover your passion) with the "costs" (time, opportunity cost, DEBT, stress, golden handcuffs, etc.).

But like I said, if you don't have any work experience and find yourself as a senior in undergrad with a degree that has awarded you with minimal/zero employment prospects, don't go to law school because you think it's a safe backup. It isn't. Don't tack on all that debt with another inherently useless degree. Pay down your UG debt, build up some savings, and then reassess your life situation in a few years. Take some more time to study and increase your LSAT score to expand your long-term career opportunities, and also reflect on whether the legal profession is truly something you can see yourself doing.

If you do have a strong passion of "becoming a prosecutor, judge, DOJ attorney, JAG," then I fully support your decision to attend, and I think that's great. One place there is an unmet need is legal aid. But the skyrocketing cost of tuition is preventing so many great people from pursuing it. They become trapped in debt and have to work non-stop to meet their loan payments. They don't have time to serve those who need it. And when state budgets are getting cut right and left, fellowships for legal aid attorney salaries are getting slashed. Trust me, it's a really tough job market out there, public interest and private practice. And think about some of those jobs. What percentage of law students become judges? A scintilla. Don't be stupid. DOJ Honors program require top academic creditials. Prosecutor budgets are shrinking rapidly. People (from BIGLAW down to [CRAP]LAW) are flooding JAG with applications in the hope that they won't be unemployed after graduation/unemployment benefits run out. Just, whatever you do, think your decision through for God's sake.

Also think about attrition in the legal market. Senior attorneys and partners (think 50 years old and up) lost a [crap] ton of money and probably a good chunk of their retirement savings. You think that they are still going to retire when they thought they would? Hell no. They have to work several more years to recoup their losses, and this is keeping new attorney spots from opening up.

if you notice, they always have <50 posts and are usually new

So what? Does this make any of what I've said invalid? Maybe I can't stand the fact that everyone here is drunk on the koolaid. Maybe I've been busy as [crap] with law school. Maybe these posts I'm writing are worth ten-[fricking]-million posts, you [dunce].

JDU and xoxo trolls that think they have a mission to crap on everyone and convince them out of ls as a career b/c they are unhappy and they buy into the JDU hype b/c their lives suck.

Sure I look at these sites, but I'm no troll. (Those are mostly Ivy students anyways...) But the [crap] is real. My best friend got no-offered from BIGLAW DC... they gave like 4 offers to a summer class of over 20. She thought the firm was financially healthy. Guess what? DING[FRUIT]. She's so depressed and just not herself anymore. And she was on E-board of a journal and had great grades. Now she carries the no-offer BLACKSPOT. I can name so many 2Ls that are scrambling and clawing for unpaid positions (normally positions for 1Ls).

But think about where I'm coming from. I was lucky enough to snag a great job. Thinking about it, I feel like I survived a slaughter. (Think the Titanic scene when the boiler rooms were flooding and the iron doors were slowing closing, trapping people inside. I shit you not, that is how I felt.) Law school these days, in such a saturated market, is a dangerous game of survival. And no, I don't recommend you become a plumber or apprentice. lol I recommend you get an entry-level job out of UG, and think REAL HARD about your graduate school decisions.

Depends on the class but in general, my view is that:

-Material itself isn't very hard as a general matter.
-Interest in materials varies by class and topic.
-When the material is boring, it's horrible BECAUSE of the volume.
-Classes are interesting, when you're interested in the class material (slightly redundant but you catch my drift).
-Classes are boring when you really don't care (e.g. me in crim).
-Law school teaching and grading systems are incomprehensibly stupid (personal opinion).
-I'm tired of studying crim law.

I concur with most of this. For me, I loved Civil Procedure, Legal Writing, and (surprisingly) Con Law, but felt like everything else was rather boring. Anyways, after the bar I'll never have a need for that information again. (If I did have a contract dispute or a constitutional law question, I'd obviously hire a lawyer who has been practicing in that area for many years. Not like I'd take up the case and rely on my one semester class lol)

I think this comprises a huge segment of the student body, but not all regret attending law school, esp. when coupled with a desire to do something in particular. But I guess than can fall into the second bolded part. However, I don't think it needs to PI/government. There are lots of interesting things in biglaw (even outside of patents).

The people that I know who don't regret going to law school are employed. Or at the least aren't drowning in debt. And to be fair, one of my friends is a personal injury lawyer who loves the work that he has been doing for the past 10 years, although he's told me that he will never be able to pay off his loans (unless of course he gets lucky with a windfall tort case). But at least he knew what he was getting into and knew that it was going to be an uphill battle. Plaintiff personal injury is his passion (don't laugh) and he's a great lawyer, it's just tough to make ends meet out there.

Alright, back to slaving over my law school outlines. Good luck 0Ls with your decisions. I really hope you do what will make you happy in life, but just remember that student loans are a big, big deal, and can cause more problems than just financial stress. If you are 100% sure that law is your passion (and it has been for many years, even before the economy's shit-storm) then you should go. But this is a decision that will affect the rest of your life, so don't take it lightly.

[Mickey Quicknumbers]

I would first like to say thank you to the administrators of TLS for banning me and removing all but the first paragraph of my post. Real classy. For the benefit of 0Ls, I am reposting what I wrote, along with a reply I was about to submit before I got banned. If you ban me again, I'm only going to ramp up the postings, and good luck trying to block the thousands of different proxies out there. Also, I wouldn't doubt that this site collaborates with law schools in order to make law school seem 100% easy-breezy... Maybe I'll send out a couple FOIA demands to state schools like BoalTTT and UM, because I'd like to at least find out.

To better comply with TLS's Terms and Conditions I have removed the expletives I used in my first somewhat-heated posting. Although my user account and IP will probably be banned again, as long as this information is getting out to 0Ls before they take out massive amounts of debt, then I'll be satisfied. At least I tried to give you all a heads-up.

------

You are all a bunch of [0Ls]. You don't need to go 100-200K into debt to meet new people and move to a new city to get a graduate degree that is essentially worthless unless it is from a Top 6 law school. You literally do not learn how to do anything that an actual practicing attorney knows how to do. All you will do is read, outline, and [crap] yourself come exam time, all while bleeding money to pay for your law school and its professors (making $200K/yr teaching [poopooheads]) who were smart enough to get out of private practice while they could.

I know 1Ls, 2Ls, 3Ls, and LLMs that want to kill themselves because of their debtload and the fact that they have no legal job lined up. If this is the kind of misery you want to bring upon yourself, then go for it. Additionally, if you have no serious family connections to managing partners, don't have a full ride or parents that are paying 100% of your expenses, are a poli sci [majors] or possess any other useless UG degree, have an intense lisp or foreign accent, have any level of asperger's, or are a [jerk] or unattractive in any way, DON'T ATTEND LAW SCHOOL. You'll be flushing money down the toilet.

All you [0Ls] talk about is how intellectually stimulating LS is going to be... you are plainly [naive]. It's just a [fricking] rat race where you are in class all day taking notes, being scared [crapless] you don't get called on because you didn't really read the cases assigned (or even if you read them, your professor will make you feel like an idiot because your notes will be worthless), spend your nights and weekends slaving over pointless casebook reading and legal memorandum that take hours and hours to research, write, proof, revise, edit, repeat. Come November, you slave away over cover letters and resumes only to get rejected everywhere. Spring semester will follow suit, but with intensified stress levels as you pointlessly apply to jobs online through Symplicity, freaking out about how you are going to afford to pay rent and feed yourself over the summer because you couldn't get a paid job or a public interest grant. Your Career Development Office will continue to send you emails about jobs and fellowships that for which they are perfectly aware that no one is qualified for, and will be utterly useless.

Then Fall On Campus Interviewing (OCI) will roll around, where only the top 15% of 1L students will get interviews with firms paying $80K-$160K, a good number won't even get callbacks, and many of the few who get offers will then get no-offered at the end of the summer, and you will all again scramble to find a legal internship for 2L and 3L summers, repeating the stress which consumed you 1L year. You will take pointless classes 2L and 3L year which only gloss over the substance of the law, and none will make you any more qualified for a particular practice area (e.g., international law, human rights law, environmental law, and all other imaginary concentrations law schools claim to be the best at, but which lead to no improved employment opportunities).

Everyone is confident that they will get top 10% of their class, [crap], I was, too. Fact is I finished below median at my T20 after my first semester. (You will quickly learn that the legal recruiting process only cares about 1L grades, and that you are instantly barred from ever getting those $160K jobs if you aren't top of your 1L class.) However, I played my hand right. I had family connections, had a scholarship, have an engineering degree from a prestigious school, am sociable, tall, and good looking. Combine these, and boom, I have a summer associateship where I'm making $3K/week. Out of my 250-270 student class of 2012, I am one of maybe four students that has a paying firm job. But all my friends and classmates are either (1) lucky enough to snag an unpaid public interest job [where they will take on more debt this summer/max out their credit cards/work at Starbucks/Radio Shack part-time... but to be fair, a few dozen were able to snag $4-5K grants at my school, and some T14 schools (like Columbia) pay any student who does an unpaid internship], (2) have some type of family legal connection, but not with a managing law firm partner, and will be working unpaid for some [CRAP]LAW solo practitioner and living back at home, or (3) totally without a job and therefore foreclosed from future law firm jobs and [crapping] themselves and contemplating killself. I am lucky as [crap] that I have a job with an awesome firm and don't have to worry about finding employment during finals and am pretty much set for life. But sadly, I am the exception.

Even medians and below at top 14s (T14) are getting the shaft: --LinkRemoved--

If you need more evidence of how poorly your gamble to attend law school can turn out, please read these links from people who are living the nightmare: http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/, http://joblesslawyer.com/, --LinkRemoved--, http://esqnever.blogspot.com/, --LinkRemoved--, http://temporaryattorney.blogspot.com/.

Especially don't attend a festering TTT (schools not even within the top 100, but realistically anything outside the top 25).
1Ls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAmaVKthIk8
2Ls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvd6bJA639g
3Ls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4fXTlFTQHY, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBbgXhac-Rs

Moral of this long post (which I took the time out of my studying for finals to write so that more innocent people in their 20s won't get sucked into the farce that is law school):
1. Don't add a useless law degree onto a useless undergrad degree. (So don't take on more crushing debt just because you couldn't find your dream job or are "bored" at your current job. It's not worth the debt and stress of law school and the legal profession.)
2. Don't assume that you will finish in the top percentiles of your class. You have an inverse chance of doing just the opposite.
3. Read/listen to every [fricking] link that is in this post. If you don't, you will regret it for the rest of your [fricking] lives.
4. A URM? Still [fricked] (--LinkRemoved--).
5. Think you are T14 safe? Think again (--LinkRemoved--).
6. If you aren't T6/engineering/well-connected/top 10%, start getting used to craigslist legal board: http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id ... forum_id=2

So how should you decide if law school is a good gamble/risk of the rest of your life? I highly advice you go only if at least one of these factors apply to you (but the more factors that you have, the better):
1. You get into Harvard/Yale/Stanford (HYS).
2. You get into other schools in the T14 with $.
3. Your parents finance your entire law school adventure.
4. You are well-connected to partners at a law firm that expressly tell/promise you employment.
5. You have an undergraduate degree in (starting with the best) either a (1) BS, MS, or Ph.D. in electrical engineering, (2) BS, MS, or Ph.D. in chemical engineering, (3) Ph.D. in a biological science, or (4) any other engineering or hard science (not sociology or psychology), but these won't be in as much a demand.
6. You get a 100% full ride.
7. You got at least a 170 LSAT.

Hope this post helps you make a wise and thought-out decision. I hate seeing my law school friends dealing with depression, inevitable bankruptcy, crushed dreams, and a bleak future, and I certainly don't want any others to experience the same. I am going to repost and bump this until the message finally gets through all of your thick skulls. I'm sure that it feels that I'm trying to crush your dreams, but you will seriously thank me for crushing those than creditors crushing the rest of your future.

Love,
XOXO

P.S. More links that you will find useful:
--LinkRemoved--
I'll add more as I run across them...

PART 2.

You should never go to law school without weighing the costs of attendance, how you are going to pay off loans, why you want to be a lawyer etc. But if you have weighed those things and are making a well thought out decision, then by all means I think you should go to law school.

I 100% agree with this statement, rando. (And this is exactly what I'm trying to get 0Ls to do.) But when I see my friends take on an obscene amount of debt (which is easily available compliments of the federal government and its debt-machine), it literally breaks my heart to how badly they are struggling.

The primary problem is that students are "weighing" these factors with the wrong assumptions because law schools downright lie about their employment statistics. Like Duke's 100% employment-at-graduation. Are you [fricking] kidding? Not even Yale had 100%! And in the Great Depression, all Duke law students, even the one student who finished dead last in the class (probably with below a 2.0 GPA and on academic probation) found gainful employment? Doesn't that also assume that they had a 100% bar passage rate? No [fricking] way. Up and down the T14 are students finding themselves without legal jobs.

Ask yourself, of the schools you are looking at, which ones are being the most transparent about their employment statistics? Consider University of Chicago. They provide a complete class list which shows where each graduate is landing after 3L year. (See here: --LinkRemoved--, and the http://www.lawschooltransparency.com site in general.) With many other schools, you'll be lucky to find detailed employment statistics on their websites. Even so, graduating law students AREN'T required to report their employment status or salary. Do you really think someone who got totally shafted and scammed by a law school is going to reply to an employment survey? In reality, it's going to be the lucky ones with solid firm jobs that reply back.... this obviously skews the data upwards.

Law schools skew and manipulate their data like crazy. For instance, how do you know that a school's employment statistics don't include temporary contract work (a.k.a. "doc review") or non-legal jobs? You don't! You wonder why admissions people claim a JD to be so versatile? Because in the unfortunate situation that you don't find legal employment (and much more likely these days), you bet your ass you're going to make it versatile. But an unemployed 3L is damaged goods for law firms and over-qualified for every other non-legal job. If you find yourself in this situation, you better pray to God that he swoops in and saves your ass through family connections or a networking miracle.

Be skeptical, and don't be scared to grill admissions officers on that fact. YOU are the one about to fork over thousands of dollars to them. You have the right to know that your TRUE odds of finding a job are.

Let me rephrase my point in more direct terms: If you are going into ls for the $ and power, there is a BIG chance you will hate your decision to attend, even if you land a 160k prestigeous biglaw gig out of school. It is not all it is cracked up to be. If you are going to law school b/c you love challenging, intellectual stimulation and want an interesting career OR have a purpose such as becoming a prosecutor, judge, DOJ attorney, JAG, etc. you will likely love your choice.

Again, I agree with this poster's comment. But an "intellectual stimulation" doesn't cost six figures of debt. It's not [fricking] free money bud. And with today's DirectPLUS loans at like 7-8%, your interest will be nasty. And tack that on to any accruing interest from your UG loans. You absolutely need to balance the "benefits" (intellectual stimulation, maybe it'll be interesting if you find a great job or discover your passion) with the "costs" (time, opportunity cost, DEBT, stress, golden handcuffs, etc.).

But like I said, if you don't have any work experience and find yourself as a senior in undergrad with a degree that has awarded you with minimal/zero employment prospects, don't go to law school because you think it's a safe backup. It isn't. Don't tack on all that debt with another inherently useless degree. Pay down your UG debt, build up some savings, and then reassess your life situation in a few years. Take some more time to study and increase your LSAT score to expand your long-term career opportunities, and also reflect on whether the legal profession is truly something you can see yourself doing.

If you do have a strong passion of "becoming a prosecutor, judge, DOJ attorney, JAG," then I fully support your decision to attend, and I think that's great. One place there is an unmet need is legal aid. But the skyrocketing cost of tuition is preventing so many great people from pursuing it. They become trapped in debt and have to work non-stop to meet their loan payments. They don't have time to serve those who need it. And when state budgets are getting cut right and left, fellowships for legal aid attorney salaries are getting slashed. Trust me, it's a really tough job market out there, public interest and private practice. And think about some of those jobs. What percentage of law students become judges? A scintilla. Don't be stupid. DOJ Honors program require top academic creditials. Prosecutor budgets are shrinking rapidly. People (from BIGLAW down to [CRAP]LAW) are flooding JAG with applications in the hope that they won't be unemployed after graduation/unemployment benefits run out. Just, whatever you do, think your decision through for God's sake.

Also think about attrition in the legal market. Senior attorneys and partners (think 50 years old and up) lost a [crap] ton of money and probably a good chunk of their retirement savings. You think that they are still going to retire when they thought they would? Hell no. They have to work several more years to recoup their losses, and this is keeping new attorney spots from opening up.

if you notice, they always have <50 posts and are usually new

So what? Does this make any of what I've said invalid? Maybe I can't stand the fact that everyone here is drunk on the koolaid. Maybe I've been busy as [crap] with law school. Maybe these posts I'm writing are worth ten-[fricking]-million posts, you [dunce].

JDU and xoxo trolls that think they have a mission to crap on everyone and convince them out of ls as a career b/c they are unhappy and they buy into the JDU hype b/c their lives suck.

Sure I look at these sites, but I'm no troll. (Those are mostly Ivy students anyways...) But the [crap] is real. My best friend got no-offered from BIGLAW DC... they gave like 4 offers to a summer class of over 20. She thought the firm was financially healthy. Guess what? DING[FRUIT]. She's so depressed and just not herself anymore. And she was on E-board of a journal and had great grades. Now she carries the no-offer BLACKSPOT. I can name so many 2Ls that are scrambling and clawing for unpaid positions (normally positions for 1Ls).

But think about where I'm coming from. I was lucky enough to snag a great job. Thinking about it, I feel like I survived a slaughter. (Think the Titanic scene when the boiler rooms were flooding and the iron doors were slowing closing, trapping people inside. I shit you not, that is how I felt.) Law school these days, in such a saturated market, is a dangerous game of survival. And no, I don't recommend you become a plumber or apprentice. lol I recommend you get an entry-level job out of UG, and think REAL HARD about your graduate school decisions.

Depends on the class but in general, my view is that:

-Material itself isn't very hard as a general matter.
-Interest in materials varies by class and topic.
-When the material is boring, it's horrible BECAUSE of the volume.
-Classes are interesting, when you're interested in the class material (slightly redundant but you catch my drift).
-Classes are boring when you really don't care (e.g. me in crim).
-Law school teaching and grading systems are incomprehensibly stupid (personal opinion).
-I'm tired of studying crim law.

I concur with most of this. For me, I loved Civil Procedure, Legal Writing, and (surprisingly) Con Law, but felt like everything else was rather boring. Anyways, after the bar I'll never have a need for that information again. (If I did have a contract dispute or a constitutional law question, I'd obviously hire a lawyer who has been practicing in that area for many years. Not like I'd take up the case and rely on my one semester class lol)

I think this comprises a huge segment of the student body, but not all regret attending law school, esp. when coupled with a desire to do something in particular. But I guess than can fall into the second bolded part. However, I don't think it needs to PI/government. There are lots of interesting things in biglaw (even outside of patents).

The people that I know who don't regret going to law school are employed. Or at the least aren't drowning in debt. And to be fair, one of my friends is a personal injury lawyer who loves the work that he has been doing for the past 10 years, although he's told me that he will never be able to pay off his loans (unless of course he gets lucky with a windfall tort case). But at least he knew what he was getting into and knew that it was going to be an uphill battle. Plaintiff personal injury is his passion (don't laugh) and he's a great lawyer, it's just tough to make ends meet out there.

Alright, back to slaving over my law school outlines. Good luck 0Ls with your decisions. I really hope you do what will make you happy in life, but just remember that student loans are a big, big deal, and can cause more problems than just financial stress. If you are 100% sure that law is your passion (and it has been for many years, even before the economy's shit-storm) then you should go. But this is a decision that will affect the rest of your life, so don't take it lightly.

tl;dr

i'll have plenty of time for wall-o-texts when I take out 150k for law school

[Kiersten1985]

I'm going to guess that Love didn't do so well in legal writing. Just a thought.

[Ford Prefect]

Don't want to go to biglaw? No problem. You won't get the salary to pay off your loans, but there is always IBR and public interest work right? Not really. The great deal that biglaw has cut with a lot of public interest is probably here to stay. Why would they hire you when they can get someone who is (frankly) likely to be brighter than you, and costs them nothing as the firm covers their salary.

But what about government? Have you seen the budget deficits states are running these days? This sector lags behind the economy, and there is a lot of talk about layoffs just now starting at DA and AG offices. They're just not looking to hire young blood right now.

Any job with a local/state/federal gov't or nonprofit organization will qualify for IBR, not just law jobs. Worst case, you could work at the DMV or teach high school for 10 years and wipe out your debt.

Brilliant! I'm going to law school for free now basically (as I can just go back to teaching afterword, and my loan payments will be the same). Huzzah!

Is this really something one could do?

Absolutely! http://www.ibrinfo.org/what.vp.html#pslf

Holy carp. Maybe after law school I could just go back to my first teaching job for a decade (at my original pay level). I'd only have to pay back...about $22 a month.

[imisscollege]

good thing i'm 6'2, social, somewhat good looking, and deciding between schollies to a t20 i guess

but I do appreciate all that honesty, backed up with facts.






so after all that, who's still excited?

[prezidentv8]

good thing i'm 6'2, social, somewhat good looking, and deciding between schollies to a t20 i guess

but I do appreciate all that honesty, backed up with facts.






so after all that, who's still excited?

Me! And I'm a year in...well after two more finals.

[Frank]

.

[prezidentv8]

It is ASTOUNDING how none of you are giving any heed to his advice.

I am at CLS. CLS!!!!! It is like he described here, in the T6!!!!! Bad, bad placement for BIGLAW for the c/o 2010 and 2011. Nobody is immune. It's really amazing how none of you are taking this advice to heart.

OMGZ IM SCURRED!

Yes, the economy sucks. Yes, there is debt involved. Yes, it's rough out there no matter where you go.

We know. And we know that it's REALLY bad, not just a little bad. It's just getting old having to hear about it ALL THE TIME. So here's my suggestion - if the thread topic is about being excited for law school, and one wants to post on why not to be excited for law school, then start a new thread for that. It'll still be annoying but less so.

[uwb09]

It is ASTOUNDING how none of you are giving any heed to his advice.

I am at CLS. CLS!!!!! It is like he described here, in the T6!!!!! Bad, bad placement for BIGLAW for the c/o 2010 and 2011. Nobody is immune. It's really amazing how none of you are taking this advice to heart.

not everyone is going to law school for 6 figure big law

a lot of people go to law school, because they want to be an attorney, in whatever shape or form they can, even if it's as legal aid, government work, PI, whatever

also a lot of people on here have put in good amounts of time doing research, and are at the point where they have been accepted, put down deposits, and ready to go to law school. i've read a hundred posts like the one you are referencing, and i've ready 50x as many from people who love what they do, where they are, and the future ahead of them

just because we all aren't wrapping our heads in foil and changing our entire life's course because of the internet posts of a few people doesn't mean we didn't take it into consideration, just means we have different opinions and outlooks on the situation, aka free-will

seems like you are more upset that we all aren't just buying into your own level of paranoia and skepticism, your opinion isn't the only one out there, get over it

[Frank]

.

[Frank]

.

[honestabe84]

It is ASTOUNDING how none of you are giving any heed to his advice.

I am at CLS. CLS!!!!! It is like he described here, in the T6!!!!! Bad, bad placement for BIGLAW for the c/o 2010 and 2011. Nobody is immune. It's really amazing how none of you are taking this advice to heart.

OMGZ IM SCURRED!

Yes, the economy sucks. Yes, there is debt involved. Yes, it's rough out there no matter where you go.

We know. And we know that it's REALLY bad, not just a little bad. It's just getting old having to hear about it ALL THE TIME. So here's my suggestion - if the thread topic is about being excited for law school, and one wants to post on why not to be excited for law school, then start a new thread for that. It'll still be annoying but less so.

+1

[honestabe84]

It is ASTOUNDING how none of you are giving any heed to his advice.

I am at CLS. CLS!!!!! It is like he described here, in the T6!!!!! Bad, bad placement for BIGLAW for the c/o 2010 and 2011. Nobody is immune. It's really amazing how none of you are taking this advice to heart.

not everyone is going to law school for 6 figure big law

a lot of people go to law school, because they want to be an attorney, in whatever shape or form they can, even if it's as legal aid, government work, PI, whatever

also a lot of people on here have put in good amounts of time doing research, and are at the point where they have been accepted, put down deposits, and ready to go to law school. i've read a hundred posts like the one you are referencing, and i've ready 50x as many from people who love what they do, where they are, and the future ahead of them

just because we all aren't wrapping our heads in foil and changing our entire life's course because of the internet posts of a few people doesn't mean we didn't take it into consideration, just means we have different opinions and outlooks on the situation, aka free-will

seems like you are more upset that we all aren't just buying into your own level of paranoia and skepticism, your opinion isn't the only one out there, get over it

And +2

[prezidentv8]

It is ASTOUNDING how none of you are giving any heed to his advice.

I am at CLS. CLS!!!!! It is like he described here, in the T6!!!!! Bad, bad placement for BIGLAW for the c/o 2010 and 2011. Nobody is immune. It's really amazing how none of you are taking this advice to heart.

OMGZ IM SCURRED!

Yes, the economy sucks. Yes, there is debt involved. Yes, it's rough out there no matter where you go.

We know. And we know that it's REALLY bad, not just a little bad. It's just getting old having to hear about it ALL THE TIME. So here's my suggestion - if the thread topic is about being excited for law school, and one wants to post on why not to be excited for law school, then start a new thread for that. It'll still be annoying but less so.

You know because you are a 1L. The 0Ls do not know: they have nowhere to get this news objectively. Don't you realize that?

I disagree. SOME 0L's don't know. I knew before I was a 1L as well. This did not take much research. I'm also not special and am sure that many are like me.

And like I said...start a new thread then, if that's the concern. There are many other such panic threads on this very website. This would not be anything new. If I remember, there's even a "bad economy" thread that was actually stickied to the top of a forum. This was because of the volume of the bad economy posts. I might add that I think that a lot of posters who disregarded the panic post probably did so because they have seen the same stuff and the same information, arguably from the same sources, out there before. It. just. gets. old.

[honestabe84]

It is ASTOUNDING how none of you are giving any heed to his advice.

I am at CLS. CLS!!!!! It is like he described here, in the T6!!!!! Bad, bad placement for BIGLAW for the c/o 2010 and 2011. Nobody is immune. It's really amazing how none of you are taking this advice to heart.

OMGZ IM SCURRED!

Yes, the economy sucks. Yes, there is debt involved. Yes, it's rough out there no matter where you go.

We know. And we know that it's REALLY bad, not just a little bad. It's just getting old having to hear about it ALL THE TIME. So here's my suggestion - if the thread topic is about being excited for law school, and one wants to post on why not to be excited for law school, then start a new thread for that. It'll still be annoying but less so.

You know because you are a 1L. The 0Ls do not know: they have nowhere to get this news objectively. Don't you realize that?

What are you talking about? You can't be on TLS for 10 minutes without someone freaking out and trying to convince everyone to not go to law school.

I NEVER hear on TLS how going to law school is going to give you a fascinating career and truckloads of money.

[prezidentv8]

What are you talking about? You can't be on TLS for 10 minutes without someone freaking out and trying to convince everyone to not go to law school.

I NEVER hear on TLS how going to law is going to give you a fascinating career and truckloads of money.

--ImageRemoved--

[cmarin]

I am very excited about the fact that I got into my top choice Law School, even when the UGPA/LSAT calculator said I had about 10% chance of such thing. I am proud to have achieved the impossible.

[SportsFanatic]

Moral of this long post (which I took the time out of my studying for finals to write so that more innocent people in their 20s won't get sucked into the farce that is law school):
1. Don't add a useless law degree onto a useless undergrad degree. (So don't take on more crushing debt just because you couldn't find your dream job or are "bored" at your current job. It's not worth the debt and stress of law school and the legal profession.)
2. Don't assume that you will finish in the top percentiles of your class. You have an inverse chance of doing just the opposite.
3. Read/listen to every [fricking] link that is in this post. If you don't, you will regret it for the rest of your [fricking] lives.
4. A URM? Still [fricked] (http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id ... forum_id=2).
5. Think you are T14 safe? Think again (http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id ... forum_id=2).
6. If you aren't T6/engineering/well-connected/top 10%, start getting used to craigslist legal board: http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id ... forum_id=2

ummmm. I didn't read the entire thread, but this person went to Chapman and is complaining about getting no offers from Big Law. I stopped reading after that.

[Frank]

.

[uwb09]

Moral of this long post (which I took the time out of my studying for finals to write so that more innocent people in their 20s won't get sucked into the farce that is law school):
1. Don't add a useless law degree onto a useless undergrad degree. (So don't take on more crushing debt just because you couldn't find your dream job or are "bored" at your current job. It's not worth the debt and stress of law school and the legal profession.)
2. Don't assume that you will finish in the top percentiles of your class. You have an inverse chance of doing just the opposite.
3. Read/listen to every [fricking] link that is in this post. If you don't, you will regret it for the rest of your [fricking] lives.
4. A URM? Still [fricked] (http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id ... forum_id=2).
5. Think you are T14 safe? Think again (http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id ... forum_id=2).
6. If you aren't T6/engineering/well-connected/top 10%, start getting used to craigslist legal board: http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id ... forum_id=2

ummmm. I didn't read the entire thread, but this person went to Chapman and is complaining about getting no offers from Big Law. I stopped reading after that.

Well, you are missing some good advice, then. I go to Columbia, not Chapman, and we are as screwed as the rest of the non-T14.

please define screwed, are you screwed because you aren't getting big law? did you go to law school to become an attorney? because if you went to law school to become an attorney, and you pass the bar, then how is that being screwed? seems like mission accomplished to me, the complete opposite of screwed

go to law school -> take bar exam -> work as an attorney

if you were expecting a "-> have life laid out on a red carpet for you" as one of the steps, then maybe you didn't do enough research?

[Frank]

.

[uwb09]

Moral of this long post (which I took the time out of my studying for finals to write so that more innocent people in their 20s won't get sucked into the farce that is law school):
1. Don't add a useless law degree onto a useless undergrad degree. (So don't take on more crushing debt just because you couldn't find your dream job or are "bored" at your current job. It's not worth the debt and stress of law school and the legal profession.)
2. Don't assume that you will finish in the top percentiles of your class. You have an inverse chance of doing just the opposite.
3. Read/listen to every [fricking] link that is in this post. If you don't, you will regret it for the rest of your [fricking] lives.
4. A URM? Still [fricked] (http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id ... forum_id=2).
5. Think you are T14 safe? Think again (http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id ... forum_id=2).
6. If you aren't T6/engineering/well-connected/top 10%, start getting used to craigslist legal board: http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id ... forum_id=2

ummmm. I didn't read the entire thread, but this person went to Chapman and is complaining about getting no offers from Big Law. I stopped reading after that.

Well, you are missing some good advice, then. I go to Columbia, not Chapman, and we are as screwed as the rest of the non-T14.

please define screwed, are you screwed because you aren't getting big law? did you go to law school to become an attorney? because if you went to law school to become an attorney, and you pass the bar, then how is that being screwed? seems like mission accomplished to me, the complete opposite of screwed

go to law school -> take bar exam -> work as an attorney

if you were expecting a "-> have life laid out on a red carpet for you" as one of the steps, then maybe you didn't do enough research?

I think most people at CLS came to go into BIGLAW, sure. As worthy of a cause as you might find pursuing justice for the sake of bringing righteousness to the world, most people at CLS do not have such lofty aspirations. Like most people in the T14, we would like to be a part of BIGLAW.

And, since when is a BIGLAW attorney not a real attorney? There is nothing about a red carpet, by the way. That is one criticism I hate from people: that we feel there is some sort of entitlement because we go to a good school to earn a lot of $ (we don't feel this entitlement). But, like most people, we want to earn some $, sure. What is the issue with that?

It is preferable to work as an attorney in BIGLAW for me, and for most people at CLS, than to hang my shingle in a suburb somewhere with my 200k debt. There's no problem trying to attain this goal, is there? I think not.

PS: I am a 1L, so I have no idea how EIP will go, at the moment.

never said BIGLAW isn't a real attorney, don't know where you got that from? and the self entitlement doesn't come from the fact that you go to a T14, it comes from the fact that this whole "beware law school" movement is backed by the fact that if you don't get biglaw than you are "screwed"

if you are going to law school because you want to make bank at BIGLAW, then IMO you are going for the wrong reasons and will no doubt end up with some level of disappointment along the way, and large levels of unhappiness in law school. BIGLAW should be the goal, not the reason.

The only guaranteed outcome of going to law school (assuming you aren't at the very bottom of the pool), is that you pass the bar exam and the door opens to work as an attorney.

I guess i'm somewhat of an idealist, but this is where I come from. If you aren't pursuing something because it's your passion, you are destined for unhappiness.

I wish there was some sort of 2-3 year residency type program you had to do after law school before you could take the bar, I think this would weed out a huge amount of the tool bags who take up space in top law schools and firms, who lead very unhappy lives, and have no passion for what they do. Also get rid of all the people who go to T4s with visions in their head that "well i can just go to law school for 3 years and ill be set for life".

Kind of like how it is in med school, if you aren't passionate about medicine/being a doctor, you don't go to med school just to get rich, there is too much time and effort you have to put in to a subject area that you don't give a sh*t about.

[Frank]

.

[Always Credited]

+80000000000 to the residency idea.

[allora]

i want to leave my dumb job and do something that requires intellectual ability

my feelings exactly. i need a change.