How fulfilling is Law School. Forum

[Richie Tenenbaum]

I like law school, but I like school in general so it's not that big of a surprise. There's plenty of annoying things about law school but I think the good significantly outweighs the bad, at least for me.

[Odd Future Wolf Gang]

TO UNEMPLOYEDS:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/01/05/aba ... ave-known/

ABA President says you should have known better.

Thoughts?

[Grizz]

TO UNEMPLOYEDS:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/01/05/aba ... ave-known/

ABA President says you should have known better.

Thoughts?

This is why law as a profession is becoming a joke

[keg411]

Got grades?

Ummmmm... yes. They're good. So that helps. I still felt that way before I got them, but the warm fuzziness is now intensified.

OCI next year will likely kill your fuzziness (and that's if you get a job). HTH.

[Grizz]

Got grades?

Ummmmm... yes. They're good. So that helps. I still felt that way before I got them, but the warm fuzziness is now intensified.

OCI next year will likely kill your fuzziness (and that's if you get a job). HTH.

tcr

[FeelTheHeat]

Got grades?

Ummmmm... yes. They're good. So that helps. I still felt that way before I got them, but the warm fuzziness is now intensified.

OCI next year will likely kill your fuzziness (and that's if you get a job). HTH.

[Errzii]

TO UNEMPLOYEDS:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/01/05/aba ... ave-known/

ABA President says you should have known better.

Thoughts?

There's some truth to what he's saying. People really do need to do their research before investing in law school as it's a pretty big commitment in terms of money/time. It's just foolish not to. On the other hand it doesn't change the fact that many schools are outright lying when putting out their employment data and there definitely should be more strict regulation on that. IMO, both sides are equally at fault, students who don't do enough research before attending and schools for misleading them.

[JoeFish]

Well, no real argument there. I figure if my warm fuzzy feeling is lowered to a somewhat optimistic but very jaded, tired, angry feeling, I'll still be happier than all of my classmates who were like that before OCI...

[sparty99]

[quote="Geist13"]what the hell is all this juvenile romanticism? Look, fulfilling is a good book or a great camping trip with some friends. Law school is SCHOOL which is supposed to lead to a JOB. These are not fulfilling things, nor are they intended to be. Even if you're thinking about fulfilling in the sense that your 300 level philosophy class was kind fulfilling, law school is not. Legal concepts and reasoning operate at a very simple level. It is uncomplicated, incredibly easy to grasp and usually dry.

+ 100,000

[rayiner]

I have never been as intellectually unchallenged as I am in law school taking first-year courses.

You sound like a tool.

[IAFG]

Wow there is a lot of mouth-breathing going on in this thread.

[Pato_09]

People that complain about law school (especially at T-14) just have the wrong perspective. I grew up in a third world country; people work their ass off to earn 15K-25K a year.

A T-14 education gives you a great shot of a 160K starting salary. C'mon guys.

[sparty99]

But the OP wasn't worried about $160,000. He wanted to know how fulfilling law school was.

OP: Law school is hardly fulfilling. They scare you to death, but the exams are crazy hypotheticals that would never happen in real life. While the cases can be interesting, the amount of reading that you have to do is so much that you just want to end the reading and go back to enjoying your Saturday watching football. I have yet to find law school fulfilling, but this isn't supposed to be a time where you "find yourself" and travel the world in Tibet, saving orphans from hunger. You need to get that "fulfilling" falacy out of your head. It is b.s.

However, I do find it fulfilling that I can tell my friends and family that I am in law school..You will get an instant ego boost and people will be impressed as they will be naive and have no idea that the law school grading system is bull-shit and the chances of landing legal employment is slim to none. Also, as a minority, it is slightly fulfilling to see that I'm on the "right side of the law" versus the majority of people in my demographics. However, this is no reason to go to law school.

[r6_philly]

I find law school fulfilling. You may find this interesting since I am one of the persons who have the most life experience on this board, so my expectation is very high. I don't expect my younger peers to find law school fulfilling - frankly most of them are still trying to figure out what they want in life. I did my share of living, and I have figured out what I want out of life. Thus, coming to law school and receiving what I thought that I would receive - studying the things that reflect why the world around me is the way it is - is very intellectually and personally fulfilling.

[094320]

..

[johansantana21]

Who comes to law school for fulfillment? That's your mistake right there.

[philly_law]

You're about as likely to find fulfillment as you are to get a job paying the "median" private sector salary that your law school reports.

[r6_philly]

You're about as likely to find fulfillment as you are to get a job paying the "median" private sector salary that your law school reports.

So you mean fulfillment is positively correlated with school ranking?

[jarofsoup]

Law school is fulfilling is that you meet people that are pretty cool. But you get gradually more bitter as the year goes on. Especially towards the administration(at least at my school).

[blsingindisguise]

I think to an extent you can make your law school classes more or less challenging for yourself depending on what you put into them, and I think people who challenge themselves tend to do better. I do kind of wonder how many of the people here who claim law school classes are "easy" are the same ones who whine about how "arbitrary" the grading is. Because I remember people first year who would talk about how "easy" everything was, but their idea of mastery of the subject was often very basic, like a flashcard/soundbite version of law, and those people tended to get pwned on exams.

As far as the thread question, I agree with above posters about abandoning the fantasy of "fulfillment." That said, there were a few things I liked about law school. One is that I just enjoy obsessively analyzing things. Another is that I came away feeling like I knew more about how 'the real world' works, especially through courses like Corporations and Real Estate Transactions -- in fact in retrospect I always got more out of courses like this than out of high-flying seminars, and I wish I had taken more of them. I also enjoyed the competition itself, just the license law school gave me to try really hard to win at something. A lot of people in this thread seem to be resistant to or afraid of that. Maybe it's the first time in a lot of people's life that they have to really compete for something knowing there's a significant chance they might not win.

[anom217]

So, does all this doom-and-gloom and bleakness I'm hearing in regard to the legal job market apply to the T-14? Top half of the T-14?

I've heard someone say you shouldn't go to law school unless you're going to a T14 school. With the profusion of lower tier law schools, I can understand not being able to find a decently paying job coming out of there. But I would have thought the tier 1 graduates would still have good chances at well paying jobs.

This question isn't about fulfillment, but I couldn't help but notice the despair of law school in general that permeates this thread.

[IAFG]

So, does all this doom-and-gloom and bleakness I'm hearing in regard to the legal job market apply to the T-14? Top half of the T-14?

I've heard someone say you shouldn't go to law school unless you're going to a T14 school. With the profusion of lower tier law schools, I can understand not being able to find a decently paying job coming out of there. But I would have thought the tier 1 graduates would still have good chances at well paying jobs.

This question isn't about fulfillment, but I couldn't help but notice the despair of law school in general that permeates this thread.

You should never pay a school a penny before confirming the school can get you the job you want (or would think law school was worth it if that was your outcome) from median. This obviously includes making sure someone is hiring people to do the job you want.

[bk1]

So, does all this doom-and-gloom and bleakness I'm hearing in regard to the legal job market apply to the T-14? Top half of the T-14?

I've heard someone say you shouldn't go to law school unless you're going to a T14 school. With the profusion of lower tier law schools, I can understand not being able to find a decently paying job coming out of there. But I would have thought the tier 1 graduates would still have good chances at well paying jobs.

This question isn't about fulfillment, but I couldn't help but notice the despair of law school in general that permeates this thread.

As simplistically as I can put it (though you really should just read up on the many threads on TLS about this, as well as looking at LST):

T14: You will likely get a full time legal job, but there is a decent chance (somewhere in the 30-50% area) that you won't get a job that can service the $200k+ in debt it costs. Whether T14 at sticker is a good decision is basically whether you can handle gambling 6 figures on a coinflip. Probably not a wise decision at sticker if you could instead go to a decent T1 school with 5 figures worth of debt.

Good T1's: Decent shot that you will get a job that can pay off 6 figures of debt (let's say around 20%). Decent chance that you won't find a full time legal job (also around 20%, maybe higher). Ideally your debt should be around $100k if not less. (Examples - BC/BU/Fordham/etc)

Bad T1's: Small shot at a job that can pay off 6 figures (around %10). Pretty large chance that you won't get a full time legal job (around 30-50%), most often due to the legal market where the school resides. I would generally avoid these schools if you can since they aren't really any better than some of the top T2's. (Examples - Davis/Hastings/Boulder/etc)

This really is a very simplistic gloss on the schools and misses a lot of the nuances. Check out http://www.lawschooltransparency.com and see what percentage of each school is known to be making a certain salary and what percentage of a school gets full time, bar passage required jobs. Look at those percentages and at the debt the school would cost you and that will tell whether the school is worth that debt.