To law school or not to law school Forum

[fats provolone]

only go to law school if you are going to get a good job and be good at it.

[withoutapaddle]

only go to law school if you are going to get a good job and be good at it.

I have no way of knowing this

[withoutapaddle]

What sucks about being a lawyer besides the hours?

[Johann]

Today I searched through PDFs for specific words. It fucking sucked. A good day is having a 2 hour phone call and taking notes through the whole thing and then spending 8 hours to organize it in a cogent memo. Then hopefully the partner doesn't read it because if he does surely I will omit the one thing he cared about having in the memo.

[fats provolone]

only go to law school if you are going to get a good job and be good at it.

I have no way of knowing this

exactly

[withoutapaddle]

Today I searched through PDFs for specific words. It fucking sucked.

I actually laughed at this. I can imagine hitting control F for a long period of time would get tedious

[fats provolone]

Today I searched through PDFs for specific words. It fucking sucked.

I actually laughed at this. I can imagine hitting control F for a long period of time would get tedious

the worst part is if you come up with a creative way to do it faster you're just wasting hours

[baal hadad]

Today I searched through PDFs for specific words. It fucking sucked. A good day is having a 2 hour phone call and taking notes through the whole thing and then spending 8 hours to organize it in a cogent memo. Then hopefully the partner doesn't read it because if he does surely I will omit the one thing he cared about having in the memo.

That sounds like such an awesome day

[Johann]

Today I searched through PDFs for specific words. It fucking sucked.

I actually laughed at this. I can imagine hitting control F for a long period of time would get tedious

the worst part is if you come up with a creative way to do it faster you're just wasting hours

Yep. This actually crosses my mind all the time when I'm not very busy and have only one task. I never want to do it efficiently. So I actually end up usually over killing it. Like the person told me to search xyz documents and that's it. I found a reference to document a in document z so I searched through a afterwards. Even though I wasn't assigned it. Wtf is wrong with us.
Edit - but I also searched it because even though I wasn't assigned document a I'd be held responsible for it somehow.

[tomwatts]

What sucks about being a lawyer besides the hours?

I think a lot of lawyers end up with jobs that they find tedious and boring. I tried a little bit of transactional work, and my reaction was, "I'm literally just doing paperwork for business deals between companies that I don't care about, and I can't even tune out and do it on autopilot because I have to check a crapton of things and make sure that it all makes sense." I would have flamed out pretty quickly doing that. Working long hours is okay, but working long hours on something really boring (but attention-heavy) is not okay.

But there are things that I like doing in law. I just had to try a lot of things to find them. (Like, a lot of things. I'm on my sixth internship during law school right now.) I consider myself pretty fortunate, and I know I'm probably unusual, but I'm in a pretty good place as far as where I'm headed.

EDIT: Also apparently a lot of people in managerial roles in law are jerks. People complain about Partners At Law firms more than they complain about any other bosses in any other capacity I've ever heard of. I've generally worked with pleasant people — again, fortunate — but I know that a lot of people don't.

[ub3r]

@OP

I remember reading somewhere what some successful attorney with a lot of JD-MBA friends had to say. He said a lot of them told him they should have just gone with the MBA, since what they love about finance is the power and autonomy that you feel when closing deals and such. What they did as corporate lawyers didn't align with what they liked about business, and they always felt second-in-command to the client or the corporation. That is to say, if analyst-related stuff is what you most enjoy, you may not get to do the things you like the most as a attorney, and then you might see your associates who went the MBA path doing what you really want to be doing. For the same amount of money, to boot.

If I find the passage I'm paraphrasing I'll post it for you.

[withoutapaddle]

what do big law firms look for when interviewing at OCI? I've seen on here that students at top schools have struck out. What causes someone to strike out? Is each interview 30 mins long?

[tomwatts]

What do big law firms look for when interviewing at OCI? I've seen on here that students at top schools have struck out. What causes someone to strike out? Is each interview 30 mins long?

Dude, you literally just made this topic.

[BigZuck]

What do big law firms look for when interviewing at OCI? I've seen on here that students at top schools have struck out. What causes someone to strike out? Is each interview 30 mins long?

Dude, you literally just made this topic.

He's probs just channeling his inner DaRascal dude, relax

[Username123]

Wait... How did you get an operations analyst job at an investment bank with a sub 3.0 GPA from college? Teach me, please?

[withoutapaddle]

Wait... How did you get an operations analyst job at an investment bank with a sub 3.0 GPA from college? Teach me, please?

My charm and good looks. No one asked for my transcripts haha.

Also, from what I understand, operations jobs aren't as difficult to get as front office. I also went to a no name state school in PA. If you get the interview it really comes down to personality, and the air plane test.

[prezidentv8]

That said, the people who I know who go / went to T14s with zero or little debt and got big law jobs or used LRAP and got high-prestige public sector jobs are often very happy.

You realize this is a comically small subset right?

[TheoO]

That said, the people who I know who go / went to T14s with zero or little debt and got big law jobs or used LRAP and got high-prestige public sector jobs are often very happy.

You realize this is a comically small subset right?

And doesn't in anyway apply to the OP....

[withoutapaddle]

Would a full ride at Wake Forest be worth it if I wanted Big Law in Charlotte?

[BigZuck]

Naw

[Johann]

Are you applying to other jobs? I'd apply to higher paying jobs and see if you get any nibbles in the next year. If not and you really want that pay increase, go to law school.
Biglaw is not that cool. And your per hour take home after tax pay I guarantee is less than what you are at now. A family income of 100k in Charlotte is very doable. Factor in 3 years of not working and lost income, (even leaving loans off the table considering full ride) and I think there's a really big chance you end up regretting the decision.

[withoutapaddle]

I can wait another year and apply to B school. I'd probably have a good chance at Deloitte or KPMG Consulting. Salaries for consultants outside MBB fall between 85K-110K.

If I came out of law school without a job it would be a huge set back. I was thinking Wake for free with ties to Charlotte would help get big law. I just looked at the schools employment stats on lawschooltransparency and they are pretty bad. Only 56% employed at graduation and 13-16% in big law.

[FlamingDragon]

Wake is a stretch for biglaw, T14s, + Vanderbilt get a lot of those spots, with the top students at UNC and Wake filling in the rest, so you would have to place very highly in your class, but it's not impossible. Midlaw is more likely, making maybe 90k in Charlotte. After 3 years, given your current situation, that may be roughly equal outcome given full ride.

If you waited and did B-school would that tuition be covered by your bank? If not, I don't necessarily see that as a much better option.

[Nomo]

Biglaw firms look primarily at grades. Work experience is secondary, and yours is good - but its hardly anything special.

There just aren't very many spots in places like Charlotte. If Charlotte biglaw is your plan - you are flirting with disaster. You can see it for yourself. Go to the NALP search page and look at all the firms in NC. https://www.nalpdirectory.com/. You can see how many summer associates each big firm had, and how many got full-time offers. Nearly every firm that can remotely be called biglaw will be there. Any larger firms that don't show up probably don't count - their most likely paying way below market rates, not taking summer associates, or not offering summer associates full-time work at a high rate.

Think about how many spots there are in Charlotte and remember that everyone in the top10 percent at UNC and Wake Forest are candidates. And there seem to be a bunch of no-name schools in NC, but their best students will be candidates too. Then throw in Vanderbilt, Duke, and T-14 kids that want in.

The odds are not in your favor.

[miamiri]

Today I searched through PDFs for specific words. It fucking sucked. A good day is having a 2 hour phone call and taking notes through the whole thing and then spending 8 hours to organize it in a cogent memo. Then hopefully the partner doesn't read it because if he does surely I will omit the one thing he cared about having in the memo.

What did you expect? That's what I would have thought it's like, at least in the beginning. Did you watch the good wife and thought you would run around staring as Cary? I don't get it. I also don't think swearing is very nice.