Deposited at HYS. Having doubts. Forum

[dabigchina]

I worked in software testing. At the end of my run, I was working with a bank account platform and opened about 100 fake accounts per day to ensure that the system worked. Every 1000 accounts or so, I'd find something wrong and it would get fixed by an offshore development team withing a couple of weeks. So I'd find about 36 mistakes per year and worked on a base salary with no bonus so I ended up making around $2500 per mistake identified. There was zero upward mobility and the only way up was to supervise what I was doing and there was about 6 people on line in front of me to supervise. If you just want to make $90k per year forever and don't care about what you have to do to get there, get into software testing.

Go to HYS. Seriously people ITT are acting like it's not a phenomenal opportunity/privilege. It is. When life hands you a high GPA and an LSAT you ride life's silver platter to the top. Maybe you won't be SCOTUS, but it beats making test accounts all day.

Agree. Had plenty of 70k opportunities with Oil and Gas Accounting and as a public accountant. That sounded like hell then, and sounds like hell now.

HYS has already opened doors for me that never would have opened before. I've emailed people in the NBA, NFL, and MLB on my job search and got immediate responses and interviews. I had previously emailed the same people from my state UG and never got responses. That @HYS.edu email is incredibly underrated.

1.Public accountant

2. Low stress

Choose 1

[albpert]

If you were accepted to at least one of Harvard, Yale & Stanford law schools, then you should have been offered substantial scholarship money from other T-14 law schools. If so, have you considered taking a full-tuition scholarship to a T-14 law school ?

Only full tuition I received was from USC/UCLA. The more I think about it though, assuming I have 100k total saved by the time school starts irrespective of financial aid, debt shouldn't be that much of a problem if (BIG if) I get SAs. I'm frugal as shit (like <$14k total expenses last year in HCoL area). I can already cover 1L out of pocket and avoid that onerous 8% for the first year. I'm URM, so hopefully I can snag a 1L SA to cover living expenses for 2L and not have to take out a full tuition loan by using what was left over from my initial 100k. Rinse and repeat for 2L summer with the added bonus of getting some type of paying job 3L to cover expenses/some tuition. This assumes I don't get any grants and seems like <$100k debt.

My current job is really cush and there is upward mobility, but things could take a turn for the worst (or best, who the hell knows). Because of this I'm hesitant to base my long term plans solely on my current situation. I'm in one of those rare industries where a JD wouldn't necessarily count against me if I decided to return for a non-legal job.

If I go, worst case scenario seems to be I decide to make a career shift after a couple years in BigLaw, have a positive net-worth, got to spend 3 years learning shit that interests me, and have a respected credential. With the biggest obvious downside being the opportunity costs. Is there something I'm missing?

[Ron Don Volante]

HYS has already opened doors for me that never would have opened before. I've emailed people in the NBA, NFL, and MLB on my job search and got immediate responses and interviews. I had previously emailed the same people from my state UG and never got responses. That @HYS.edu email is incredibly underrated.

yeah, but u have 2 b a lawyer, tho

I don't think the standard "only go to law school if you want to be a lawyer" advice applies to someone w/ YS acceptances. I don't see any great reason OP should not do this.

[Cogburn87]

huh?

[Ron Don Volante]

huh?

There's a reason Yale's LST stats kind of suck compared to CCN. You're not pigeonholed as a lawyer when you go there; the flexibility boomerism is a relatively real thing for their purposes.

[Cogburn87]

I think a better way to ensure you're not pigeonholed as a lawyer is to not become one the first place. But w/e i guess.

[PeanutsNJam]

I think a better way to ensure you're not pigeonholed as a lawyer is to not become one the first place. But w/e i guess.

He's talking about special unicorn jobs that you can only get out of YLS. Plus, law school only pigeonholes you if you take on debt anyway. You're not forced to be a lawyer if you go to law school. Sometimes you have no choice (cause debt), but ykwim.

[Cogburn87]

He's talking about special unicorn jobs that you can only get out of YLS.

You should only go to law school if you want to be a lawyer. That definitely does not change because some people from HYS potentially have a shot at some undefined non-legal unicorn job.

Plus, law school only pigeonholes you if you take on debt anyway. You're not forced to be a lawyer if you go to law school. Sometimes you have no choice (cause debt), but ykwim.

Law school closes more doors than it opens. Only go if you want to be a lawyer.

[nedstarksbastard]

I think people underestimate the significance of the fact that law school is three years of your life. That's three years that you're a) not making money b) not advancing in a career c) potentially putting off major life steps like kids, relationships, ect. And when you graduate you'll likely be entry level in a brand new field. I'm not saying don't go - maybe you really do want a law career enough to make it worth it - but law schools costs more than just money, you know? It's a big commitment to make if you're unsure/just going for the hell of it.

[jbagelboy]

Agree. Had plenty of 70k opportunities with Oil and Gas Accounting and as a public accountant. That sounded like hell then, and sounds like hell now.

HYS has already opened doors for me that never would have opened before. I've emailed people in the NBA, NFL, and MLB on my job search and got immediate responses and interviews. I had previously emailed the same people from my state UG and never got responses. That @HYS.edu email is incredibly underrated.

I hate to always be the contrarian voice to these posts recently but no offense, it seems like you really put your blinders on when you log on here.

You are talking about 1L summer positions, right? these organizations take 1L legal interns from a large number of law schools. your email account isn't underrated. national football sports leagues just don't take spam emails from UOK seniors for their legal departments. When you're looking for the unicorn jobs on the actual market it gets more complicated. yes your degree helps tremendously in the abstract, but only for certain purposes, and this post requires a healthy dose of caveat to receive a fair interpretation for any prospective student.

[Instinctive]

Agree. Had plenty of 70k opportunities with Oil and Gas Accounting and as a public accountant. That sounded like hell then, and sounds like hell now.

HYS has already opened doors for me that never would have opened before. I've emailed people in the NBA, NFL, and MLB on my job search and got immediate responses and interviews. I had previously emailed the same people from my state UG and never got responses. That @HYS.edu email is incredibly underrated.

I hate to always be the contrarian voice to these posts recently but no offense, it seems like you really put your blinders on when you log on here.

You are talking about 1L summer positions, right? these organizations take 1L legal interns from a large number of law schools. your email account isn't underrated. national football sports leagues just don't take spam emails from UOK seniors for their legal departments. When you're looking for the unicorn jobs on the actual market it gets more complicated. yes your degree helps tremendously in the abstract, but only for certain purposes, and this post requires a healthy dose of caveat to receive a fair interpretation for any prospective student.

Caveat: Haven't applied for legal positions.

[PeanutsNJam]

Law school closes more doors than it opens. Only go if you want to be a lawyer.

Stating bullshit as facts doesn't make it so. I know too many HYS/T6 grads who are working in non-JD required jobs with no debt and are very happy with their choice for that to be true.

ETA - Actually debt doesn't matter, they're making bank anyway. One SLS grad is doing tech consulting (he's vague about the job description, but it sounds lofty) in socal. Met a NYU law grad recently in Shanghai starting a new company. Both dudes under 30 FYI. Did they need their law degree? No. Did their law degree help them get to where they are? I don't know, I don't have enough info. Did a law degree preclude them from doing what they're doing? Clearly not. These are the two I most recently talked to. Although they both worked in biglaw for a few years before branching out. My point is law school doesn't close any doors, especially HYS law schools.

[Cogburn87]

Forgive me, sir. I had no idea you were an acquaintance of at least two LOFTY gentlemen making BANK. It sounds like you've really crunched the anecdata on this one, and I must be mistaken.

[PeanutsNJam]

Forgive me, sir. I had no idea you were an acquaintance of at least two LOFTY gentlemen making BANK. It sounds like you've really crunched the anecdata on this one, and I must be mistaken.

Okay, where's your data supporting the idea that law school (specifically, HYS) closes more doors than it opens?

Seriously, please, tell me when some dude applied for a job and they said "oh man you look like a great candidate but it says here you graduated from Yale law school, so too bad look elsewhere"

[Ron Don Volante]

What are you claiming happens to the quarter of students at Yale and Stanford who do not become lawyers. Are they unemployed? We're not talking about a few random people per class; it's a serious chunk of the population. And you have to assume the majority of students prefer to be in law.

I agree that someone contemplating attending still needs to, at some level, want to become a lawyer. OP has some interest or he wouldn't be here, and he wouldn't have spent time on the LSAT/applications/etc. It's not exactly something you do lightly, especially someone as presumably informed about the profession as OP.

For someone like OP who has already settled into some other profession (and has thus closed quite a few doors since leaving undergrad), what doors exactly is he closing by going to Yale law? He gets one of the most highly regarded credentials in existence and puts MBB on the table, at worst.

[Cogburn87]

A survey I personally conducted whereby I asked various non-legal employers if they would consider hiring me despite the fact that I spent three years of my life obtaining a degree that trains me for nothing followed by prestigious biglaw experience editing documents for correct comma usage at an inflated hourly rate.

Admittedly, n = 1 here, but I too know some lofty dudes conducting the same survey and I will get back to when the rest of the data is in.

[Cogburn87]

What are you claiming happens to the quarter of students at Yale and Stanford who do not become lawyers. Are they unemployed? We're not talking about a few random people per class; it's a serious chunk of the population. And you have to assume the majority of students prefer to be in law.

I agree that someone contemplating attending still needs to, at some level, want to become a lawyer. OP has some interest or he wouldn't be here, and he wouldn't have spent time on the LSAT/applications/etc. It's not exactly something you do lightly, especially someone as presumably informed about the profession as OP.

For someone like OP who has already settled into some other profession (and has thus closed quite a few doors since leaving undergrad), what doors exactly is he closing by going to Yale law? He gets one of the most highly regarded credentials in existence and puts MBB on the table, at worst.

I'm sure they do non-legal things, and I'm sure the ability to do those non-legal things is easier coming from HYS than anywhere else.

However, that does not change the advice that you should only invest 3 years of life and 200k in law school if you want to be lawyer.

ETA: Lol. Missed the "worst case scenario you just do MBB" at the end. ok. Im done with this thread.

[PeanutsNJam]

A survey I personally conducted whereby I asked various non-legal employers if they would consider hiring me despite the fact that I spent three years of my life obtaining a degree that trains me for nothing followed by prestigious biglaw experience editing documents for correct comma usage at an inflated hourly rate.

Admittedly, n = 1 here, but I too know some lofty dudes conducting the same survey and I will get back to when the rest of the data is in.

And you're certain the reason you're not getting these jobs is because you went to law school, such that if you could legally omit your law degree from your life history, you would get the job?

I'm not saying it's a good idea to go to law school if you don't want to be a lawyer. But let's not pretend that law school forces you to become a lawyer. If you have other marketable skills, and want to do something else after graduating, a law degree isn't going to prevent you from doing that.

[jbagelboy]

I don't think anyone denies Yale Law School provides great signaling. And there are a handful of students each year for whom that provides true added value on its own terms. For many others who already have prestigious degrees, good grades and a strong network, if you want to become an attorney/judge/law professor, you'll need law school, but for nearly any other career path there's a better, less costly, less onerous, more efficient way to get there.

That's why when cogburn says only go to law school if you want to practice law in some form, he's not saying you won't be able to become anything non-law, he's saying law school isn't actively helping you get there vis a vis another better option.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Leaving aside HYS, if you're applying for a non-legal job as a JD, you likely are better leaving the JD off (except for the pesky explaining what you did for those three years). It's not a benefit. HYS JDs may well be an exception, but I'd wager a lot of that comes down to the fact that the people going to HYS (especially YS) are pretty damn impressive to begin with and probably would do well anyway.

[PeanutsNJam]

Leaving aside HYS, if you're applying for a non-legal job as a JD, you likely are better leaving the JD off (except for the pesky explaining what you did for those three years). It's not a benefit. HYS JDs may well be an exception, but I'd wager a lot of that comes down to the fact that the people going to HYS (especially YS) are pretty damn impressive to begin with and probably would do well anyway.

Would it be a good idea if your JD is still reputable and you had pretty good grades? I mean all you have to do is explain to them why you decided to pursue the non-JD job after having gone to law school, and demonstrate that you're not a flight risk right?

I'm think of extreme exception cases where you have the option of becoming a lawyer, but another opportunity presents itself. Say you're currently in biglaw or something, and your friend mentions an opening at his company and for whatever reason it's a step up for you personally. When applying for that job/submitting a resume, would you or wouldn't you put your JD/grades on there?

[UnicornHunter]

Leaving aside HYS, if you're applying for a non-legal job as a JD, you likely are better leaving the JD off (except for the pesky explaining what you did for those three years). It's not a benefit. HYS JDs may well be an exception, but I'd wager a lot of that comes down to the fact that the people going to HYS (especially YS) are pretty damn impressive to begin with and probably would do well anyway.

Would it be a good idea if your JD is still reputable and you had pretty good grades? I mean all you have to do is explain to them why you decided to pursue the non-JD job after having gone to law school, and demonstrate that you're not a flight risk right?

I'm think of extreme exception cases where you have the option of becoming a lawyer, but another opportunity presents itself. Say you're currently in biglaw or something, and your friend mentions an opening at his company and for whatever reason it's a step up for you personally. When applying for that job/submitting a resume, would you or wouldn't you put your JD/grades on there?

Almost certainly wouldn't put grades, but if you're at the point where you're working big law you might as well fess up to what you've been doing for the past 5 years. That being said, you'll be in a worse position than a parallel universe version of you who spent 5 years getting work experience in a relevant field.

Relevant WE>>>>JD+BigLaw>>5 year resume gap

[Cicero76]

If you were accepted to at least one of Harvard, Yale & Stanford law schools, then you should have been offered substantial scholarship money from other T-14 law schools. If so, have you considered taking a full-tuition scholarship to a T-14 law school ?

This is an annoyingly persistent myth

[ymmv]

If you were accepted to at least one of Harvard, Yale & Stanford law schools, then you should have been offered substantial scholarship money from other T-14 law schools. If so, have you considered taking a full-tuition scholarship to a T-14 law school ?

This is an annoyingly persistent myth

It's not a "myth" so much as an exaggeration or premature assumption. There does seem to be a pretty strong correlation between HYS acceptance and large scholarship offers to other schools.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Leaving aside HYS, if you're applying for a non-legal job as a JD, you likely are better leaving the JD off (except for the pesky explaining what you did for those three years). It's not a benefit. HYS JDs may well be an exception, but I'd wager a lot of that comes down to the fact that the people going to HYS (especially YS) are pretty damn impressive to begin with and probably would do well anyway.

Would it be a good idea if your JD is still reputable and you had pretty good grades? I mean all you have to do is explain to them why you decided to pursue the non-JD job after having gone to law school, and demonstrate that you're not a flight risk right?

I'm think of extreme exception cases where you have the option of becoming a lawyer, but another opportunity presents itself. Say you're currently in biglaw or something, and your friend mentions an opening at his company and for whatever reason it's a step up for you personally. When applying for that job/submitting a resume, would you or wouldn't you put your JD/grades on there?

The thing is, you may not get an interview to explain why you're not pursuing law. Obviously JDs do get non-law jobs, but the JD is going to add an obstacle. If it's not a JD advantage job you're just going to look odd, like you're in the wrong place. To most people, JD = lawyer = not what a non law job is advertising for.

And your example isn't really what I'm thinking about - it presumes you have legal experience and a connection to the new employer. I'm really thinking about people who go to law school and realize they don't want to do law and are trying to break into a new field cold.

I mean, I would probably put my JD on there as it's easier than coming up with an explanation for the gap. But you have to have something compelling apart from the JD to make an employer take notice and not label you as "lawyer" right away.