mydarktwistedfantasy wrote:Many people say to not go to law schools with the prospect of getting into biglaw and the like fresh out of law school. But what about attorneys who are great at their jobs?
Not sure what the first sentence has to do with the second.
I would understand that it would not be necessarily the greatest idea to bet on NY Law or Brooklyn in order to get into biglaw fresh out of law school, but if you're a practicing attorney with 10+ years of experience, why do the law school names matter at that point?
It doesn't. However, it's much easier to build a good reputation if you start from the top than if you start at the bottom and have to claw your way up.
I don't understand why many people say to retake the last or to defer to a following cycle for this reason. If you have a high amount of debt and you're making 50-55k a year, what difference is that between say, a medical resident?
another non-sequitur, but I'll address both. 1) why retake? because you can literally save yourself hundreds of thousands of dollars doing so, and being a year older has no negative effects on your future legal career. 2) the difference is that a medical resident eventually gets out of residency and makes a shit ton of money. If you graduate from a T3 into a $50k a year law job, you may never crack a 6 figure income.
Wouldn't it be better to have an attitude that says "I'm going to be thethe best litigator, transactionist, labor law specialist, etc. while networking my ass off, publishing papers and speaking at conferences" rather than to say "don't to to xyz school because you will have an ultimately unfulfilling career"?
As if nobody else has ever had the idea of hustling at a T3 and beating the odds? Everybody thinks they're gonna be top 10% at their T3. Sadly, only 1/10 of them are right. You're also assuming that all those people at T2s and T1s and T14s aren't also busting their asses all day and night trying to get the best outcome, too. Only they haven't been as hobbled by their choice of school. I'm reminded of a networking group I was a member of. There were a few law students in this group, most from my T1 school, but a few from the T2.5 down the road. Despite many of those T2.5ers being very hard workers and very interested in the subject matter, they simply didn't have the same opportunities as those of use who went to the T1. They were less well versed in the law, they were less familiar with the movers and shakers in the industry, and they weren't under serious consideration for the top firms in the city. While those of us at the T1 school were choosing between biglaw offers, the students at the T2.5 were planning for 3L OCI trying to get a single decent boutique offer.
I have no idea why anybody would want to intentionally put themselves at such a disadvantage. It'll take them a decade of hustling to get to the point where they have salary and opportunities available that match what I had offered to me after my 2L year.
I don't understand why we don't view attorneys who practice, build a book of business, and move up in the legal world from the bottom in a more positive light.
I don't think that anybody begrudges people who work from the bottom up. I think you're just making that up. However, there's a big difference between looking down on people who defied the odds and worked from the bottom up and
looking down on people who short-sightedly plan their future legal career around beating the odds and working from the bottom up. The debt load
simply isn't worth the risk.
Quite frankly most people (humanities majors) who went to law school probably weren't even remotely employable in the first place or even go to expensive liberal arts schools for English degrees. So why not just go to NYLS or Hofstra, bust ass in your career, and *earn* success? Everyone on TLS makes it seem like unless you make 190k out of law school you will be a mediocre attorney forever. I'm sure that an attorney with 8-10 years of experience in litigation at a boutique or someone who works up the corporate law latter can snag a job at AM 250 firms by the virtue of their abilities.
1) You're riding that sunk cost fallacy. It's really stupid to follow up a bad decision to get a worthless humanities degree with an even more expensive bad decision to get a worthless law degree.
2) Law school isn't worth it =/= mediocre attorney forever. Just because you may eventually break even and start making money on your law degree doesn't mean it's worth going. Most companies plan on reaping the rewards of an investment within 5 years. If it doesn't break even by then, it's not worth it. At a T3, your break even point may be 10, 15, 20 years down the line. It's. Just. Not. Worth. The. Debt.
So why the overwhelming negativity? Need honest answers.
The chance of you succeeding within a reasonable timeframe after graduation isn't high enough to overcome the debt burden. That simple. The same way an off-brand chromebook isn't worth the same as a macbook pro, a T3 isn't worth the same as a T1/T14, but they often charge similar prices.