Summer Associate Offers Plummet, Hitting 17-Year Low Forum

[los blancos]

I'm still chuckling at the "above median at a T20 will get you BigLaw now" posts. How in the world are people still that delusional?

Seriously... I have a T10 acceptance and I'm not willing to bank on that.

[09042014]

I'm still chuckling at the "above median at a T20 will get you BigLaw now" posts. How in the world are people still that delusional?

Seriously... I have a T10 acceptance and I'm not willing to bank on that.

As a fellow pseudo T10 0L I'm going to allow this trolling.

[Mr. Pablo]

Well, at least interest paid on student loans is tax deductible...

My man/woman, I feel your pain, but forget even the phaseout. I believe no matter what you make you can only deduct $2500 per year in educational loan repayment! Basically it is a complete joke of a deduction.

I said it above, but I will say it again: The maximum deduction on student loan interest is $500. I know because I claim it every year.

Off topic? But to correct, the maximum deduction is the lesser of $2500 or the amount of interest you paid. There are income limits, etc.

http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch ... 1000178280

You are right if you are currently attending school at least half-time. When you graduate this paltry deduction goes down to $500.

[los blancos]

I'm still chuckling at the "above median at a T20 will get you BigLaw now" posts. How in the world are people still that delusional?

Seriously... I have a T10 acceptance and I'm not willing to bank on that.

As a fellow pseudo T10 0L I'm going to allow this trolling.

(not convinced UVa is better than NU or Duke)

[sumus romani]

An earlier point raised needs further consideration, in my opinion. I'm just going to put forth a proposition, and I could be mistaken. Earlier, people wrote of a "bottleneck" in legal employment. But some kinds of legal employment (biglaw, and perhaps other areas), require a "pipeline" to function properly. Some new people must be brought in every year. It is not the case that every firm can rely on lateral hires in to the firm: the system would collapse in a few years. Not all job markets have this pipeline structure (in law or out). But it seems that at least in some legal employment markets, the pipeline helps new law grads out. This is especially true in biglaw employment, since very few people get into it after a year or two out of law school.
I just thought I would propose this possible ameliorating aspect of legal employment. Thoughts?

[bees]

An earlier point raised needs further consideration, in my opinion. I'm just going to put forth a proposition, and I could be mistaken. Earlier, people wrote of a "bottleneck" in legal employment. But some kinds of legal employment (biglaw, and perhaps other areas), require a "pipeline" to function properly. Some new people must be brought in every year. It is not the case that every firm can rely on lateral hires in to the firm: the system would collapse in a few years. Not all job markets have this pipeline structure (in law or out). But it seems that at least in some legal employment markets, the pipeline helps new law grads out. This is especially true in biglaw employment, since very few people get into it after a year or two out of law school.
I just thought I would propose this possible ameliorating aspect of legal employment. Thoughts?

Pipelines can narrow pretty quickly.

[sumus romani]

An earlier point raised needs further consideration, in my opinion. I'm just going to put forth a proposition, and I could be mistaken. Earlier, people wrote of a "bottleneck" in legal employment. But some kinds of legal employment (biglaw, and perhaps other areas), require a "pipeline" to function properly. Some new people must be brought in every year. It is not the case that every firm can rely on lateral hires in to the firm: the system would collapse in a few years. Not all job markets have this pipeline structure (in law or out). But it seems that at least in some legal employment markets, the pipeline helps new law grads out. This is especially true in biglaw employment, since very few people get into it after a year or two out of law school.
I just thought I would propose this possible ameliorating aspect of legal employment. Thoughts?

Pipelines can narrow pretty quickly.

Ha! I suppose that an argument that we are not quite as screwed as at least some other employment fields is not an argument that we are not seriously screwed!

[A'nold]

Median salary for a law school grad is north of $60k/year. The vast majority of law school grads start out at over $45k/year. The median annual income in the US is ~$50k. So the average liberal arts major law school grad that is 25-30 years old will be making more than the average American in their first year on the job.

A few caveats: Law school is much less likely to be a good investment for people who pay T14 prices for a TTTT school, people who pay T14 prices at a TT/TTT school and graduate at the bottom of their class, people with degrees that would allow them to make good money straight out of undergrad (e.g. engineering), or people with established careers before going to law school.

Ok...this falls far short of proving your claim that law school is a good investment for most grads. This would be the case even if all your premises were accurate, which they are not.

I assume that you are relying on the NALP salary data when you claim that the median salary for law grads is above 60k. Sorry to break this to you, but that data is based on surveys with about a 50% response rate for the salary data. You might as well assume that only the top half reported their salary, in which case that 60k+ figure becomes the 75th percentile. (The kicker is that it seems the actual survey had a high response rate while it was only the salary field that was low). This is a common mistake that people make about that data.

So there is a lot of missing information about what law grads actually get. Salaries that are even lower than most on the chart, unemployment, jobs they could have landed without going to law school, 60k but in NYC where it is like making 35k anywhere else, etc. etc.

Beyond that, more problems. I'll just point out that the income of the average American is a completely useless basis of comparison in determining whether law school was a good investment. It reveals nothing about the opportunity costs of the people that actually go to law school, which is a very small percentage of the overall population (though ever-increasing!).

You aren't counting future potential earnings though. The "average" American will continue to work middle management at Wal-Mart for the rest of their lives, striving as hard as they can to get that director of HR position that they are attending online BA school to "help them" get it. Those jobs probably top out at around 45-60k. 10 years down the road most lawyers (that actually practice law) could get close to 100k even at some po-dunk firm or county office.

[TTT-LS]

.

[A'nold]

Officially, 0Ls can stfu in the employment thread unless they are asking seriously relevant questions that somehow doesn't belong in the Choosing a Law School, Law School Student, or Admissions forums.

Your advice, when you choose to give it, is so very shitty that it threatens the integrity and reliability of the forum. I am going on Warrior mode in this forum.

That's the second time you've almost made me spit out macaroni and cheese in the two minutes I've been eating and reading. You're on a roll tonight.

[bigben]

You aren't counting future potential earnings though. The "average" American will continue to work middle management at Wal-Mart for the rest of their lives, striving as hard as they can to get that director of HR position that they are attending online BA school to "help them" get it. Those jobs probably top out at around 45-60k. 10 years down the road most lawyers (that actually practice law) could get close to 100k even at some po-dunk firm or county office.

I'm not trying to prove anything here. Just pointing out the woeful inadequacy of the reasoning provided to back up the other poster's bald assertion that "law school is a good investment for most grads."