Article - Why a law degree today offers no guarantee Forum

[psm11]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11241/1170127-499.stm

[vanwinkle]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11241/1170127-499.stm

If you're going to post something, you should at least indicate to people what it's about.

Edit: There. I gave your thread a more informative title.

[psm11]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11241/1170127-499.stm

If you're going to post something, you should at least indicate to people what it's about.

Edit: There. I gave your thread a more informative title.

Haha thanks. Sorry about that I am in the middle of doing a bunch of different things and just threw that on here without thinking.

[Samara]

Man, this article kind of sucks. The Pitt grads at the end of the story should be the focus of the article, not the guy who had to wait a whole three months to get his six-figure job at what I assume is Pittsburgh biglaw. Those people are the ones who are going to struggle with their debt and who should perhaps be dissuaded from law school.

On an unrelated note, what the hell is going on with that picture? The angle and cropping make it look like his office was designed by M.C. Escher.

[Cavalier]

...

[Bildungsroman]

Mary Crossley, dean of Pitt law school since 2005 who will resign on July 1, 2012, is pleased the ABA plans to require more detailed employment data from law schools. But unilaterally opting to collect more detailed data from recent graduates would require additional staff resources that the school can't spare, she said.

[CanadianWolf]

Enjoyed reading the article. Thank you. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is, or at least was, the leader in reporting abusive prosecutions by the federal government.

P.S. Curious as to why the law student valedictorian was unable to get, or didn't pursue, a judicial clerkship.

[SarahKerrigan]

Didn't really find the article that great. The title alone is kind of annoying to me. I don't think any schooling can guarantee you a job. The way that i look at it is law school is an investment in yourself. In my opinion it doesn't matter if you get a job that requires a JD, if it helped you, and or will help you perform at that current job it seems worth it. With that being said, i'm not just going to go to some random law school take out massive amounts of loans and not think about the position that i could be left in.

[LawSchoolChampion]

Didn't really find the article that great. The title alone is kind of annoying to me. I don't think any schooling can guarantee you a job. The way that i look at it is law school is an investment in yourself. In my opinion it doesn't matter if you get a job that requires a JD, if it helped you, and or will help you perform at that current job it seems worth it. With that being said, i'm not just going to go to some random law school take out massive amounts of loans and not think about the position that i could be left in.

Yale.

If you don't have a job, it's because you don't want one.

[psm11]

When I read stories like this I am always curious about the effort the person put into trying to find a job. For all we know the person could have blown off OCIs, networking opportunities, and just sent some resumes out.

[minnbills]

When I read stories like this I am always curious about the effort the person put into trying to find a job. For all we know the person could have blown off OCIs, networking opportunities, and just sent some resumes out.

Yeah, TLS gives the impression that everyone hussles like crazy to find work. Still, I don't doubt that the job market is as bad as people say it is.

[vanwinkle]

When I read stories like this I am always curious about the effort the person put into trying to find a job. For all we know the person could have blown off OCIs, networking opportunities, and just sent some resumes out.

Yeah, TLS gives the impression that everyone hussles like crazy to find work. Still, I don't doubt that the job market is as bad as people say it is.

I imagine people on TLS hustle because they know they need to. Someone who doesn't read what's going on out there might not realize how bad it is even for folks at the front of the class at many schools.

[Naked Dude]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11241/1170127-499.stm

You can do anything with a law degree

[romothesavior]

When I read stories like this I am always curious about the effort the person put into trying to find a job. For all we know the person could have blown off OCIs, networking opportunities, and just sent some resumes out.

The people that these types of stories often highlight are not the best, I'll give you that. (The Northwestern guy in the WSJ article who sent out a whopping 50 resumes before moving back home with mom and pops was particularly ridiculous.)

Thats said, you really cannot embrace this kind of mentality. I know many people who have good grades at a good school, made connections with as many people as they can, and have done all the right things, but are still in danger of being un- or underemployed. Even if you do everything right, you could still wind up in a sub-par job or wind up having a long and difficult road to employment, if you even wind up employed as a lawyer at all.

It is easy to be skeptical or critical of unemployed new grads, and I'm sure some of them didn't do all that they could. But most of them are competent and friendly people who tried hard to find a job. It's brutal out there.

[Grizz]

When I read stories like this I am always curious about the effort the person put into trying to find a job. For all we know the person could have blown off OCIs, networking opportunities, and just sent some resumes out.

45,000 legal grads, less than 30,000 jobs. Can't network your way into jobs that don't exist brah.

[Naked Dude]

When I read stories like this I am always curious about the effort the person put into trying to find a job. For all we know the person could have blown off OCIs, networking opportunities, and just sent some resumes out.

45,000 legal grads, less than 30,000 jobs. Can't network your way into jobs that don't exist brah.

The ABA really needs to step it up. I don't care what ridiculous arguments people make about competition, and people being willing to pay for law degrees, no supply and demand bullshit either. There has been a glut of lawyers since well before 2008.

[psm11]

When I read stories like this I am always curious about the effort the person put into trying to find a job. For all we know the person could have blown off OCIs, networking opportunities, and just sent some resumes out.

45,000 legal grads, less than 30,000 jobs. Can't network your way into jobs that don't exist brah.

The ABA really needs to step it up. I don't care what ridiculous arguments people make about competition, and people being willing to pay for law degrees, no supply and demand bullshit either. There has been a glut of lawyers since well before 2008.

I agree what is stopping them from making accreditation requirements more stringent? Every time someone mentions capping the amount of law schools they say it could lead to an antitrust law suit, how is that?


How many law schools would need to be shut down to get the number of grads each year under 30k?

[Cornelius]

I agree what is stopping them from making accreditation requirements more stringent? Every time someone mentions capping the amount of law schools they say it could lead to an antitrust law suit, how is that?

How many law schools would need to be shut down to get the number of grads each year under 30k?

Going through Law School Transparency, and using this site's rankings, the 3rd tier graduated 7,639 people in 2009 and the 4th tier graduated 8,876 people in 2009.

[Naked Dude]

To quote my father (and I'm sure many others'): there are no guarantees in life.

[Naked Dude]

I agree what is stopping them from making accreditation requirements more stringent? Every time someone mentions capping the amount of law schools they say it could lead to an antitrust law suit, how is that?

How many law schools would need to be shut down to get the number of grads each year under 30k?

Going through Law School Transparency, the 3rd tier graduated 7,639 people in 2009 and the 4th tier graduated 8,876 people in 2009.

I don't think schools should be shut down just because of their ranking. Many of them would be on the proverbial chopping block, to be sure, but it should be based on employment figures and community need. Rural law schools, law schools in secondary markets that have a decent employment market and are very insular can and should be kept. Those and whatever others are kept should be mandated to monitor their class sizes to correct for the glut, and the rest go. There's no reason for say Miami to have 400+ students. Part of the key might be class size. If class size can be mandated to remain below a certain threshold, less revenue, less of a cash cow. Professional schools should not be built on spec. Easier said than done I know.

[Cornelius]

I don't think schools should be shut down just because of their ranking. Many of them would be on the proverbial chopping block, to be sure, but it should be based on employment figures and community need. Rural law schools, law schools in secondary markets that have a decent employment market and are very insular can and should be kept. Those and whatever others are kept should be mandated to monitor their class sizes to correct for the glut, and the rest go. Easier said than done I know

Employment figures would, in all likelihood, be worst for the schools in those tiers. How many of them, really, are in underserved markets? I could see arguments being made for, maybe, the following:

St. Louis
University NH
Arkansas - Little Rock
Idaho
Maine
Mississippi
Montana
South Carolina
Wyoming
Vermont
North Dakota
South Dakota
Widener

Of the 16,000+ 3rd and 4th Tier grads, those schools represent 2,000.

[Naked Dude]

I don't think schools should be shut down just because of their ranking. Many of them would be on the proverbial chopping block, to be sure, but it should be based on employment figures and community need. Rural law schools, law schools in secondary markets that have a decent employment market and are very insular can and should be kept. Those and whatever others are kept should be mandated to monitor their class sizes to correct for the glut, and the rest go. Easier said than done I know

Employment figures would, in all likelihood, be worst for the schools in those tiers. How many of them, really, are in underserved markets? I could see arguments being made for, maybe, the following:

St. Louis
University NH
Arkansas - Little Rock
Idaho
Maine
Mississippi
Montana
South Carolina
Wyoming
Vermont
North Dakota
South Dakota
Widener

Of the 16,000+ 3rd and 4th Tier grads, those schools represent 2,000.

I'm not disagreeing with any of this, I'm just against the idea of a blanket shutdown (not that it would ever happen)

[johnnyutah]

In my opinion it doesn't matter if you get a job that requires a JD, if it helped you, and or will help you perform at that current job it seems worth it.

Good to know that you're independently wealthy.

[CynicusRex]

When I read stories like this I am always curious about the effort the person put into trying to find a job. For all we know the person could have blown off OCIs, networking opportunities, and just sent some resumes out.

Yeah, TLS gives the impression that everyone hussles like crazy to find work. Still, I don't doubt that the job market is as bad as people say it is.

It's probably worse. My firm gets walk-ins; people show up with their resume, and it's frightening how qualified some of these people are, T14, some Ivy Leaguers, etc. Suffice it to say they are definitely hustling if they're showing up at random offices, and also suffice it to say we don't have openings for them, and by current law firm standards we're actually in fairly good shape. I would guess that the true employment rate for T14 grads is probably somewhere between 50%-75%. Rest of T1/T2 it's probably about 30%-50%, with a lot of those jobs 30k ID or doc review. I've heard T3 and T4 grads say that none of their friends have gotten jobs.

[CynicusRex]

When I read stories like this I am always curious about the effort the person put into trying to find a job. For all we know the person could have blown off OCIs, networking opportunities, and just sent some resumes out.

Doesn't really matter if that's what he did. If the valedictorian at the dominant school in your area is getting rejections then people under that are going to be rejected no matter how much they hustle. I graduated about 10 years ago, skipped OCI (not smart in retrospect), and still managed to find a decent job a few months after the bar and have been working ever since. And that was with average grades from a T2 (back when there was a T2). I just can't imagine why anyone would go to law school now unless you're going to a Top 3 school.