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Madigan
Joined: 15 Oct 2010
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 Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 9:46 am Post subject: |
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http://popecenter.org/clarion_call/article.html?id=2468
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Television and the movies have glamorized the life of lawyers. While most young people who are contemplating law school probably realize that the high-powered attorney who gets out of his Ferrari in his $3,000 suit and marches into the courtroom to win his case is just a stereotype, that image is hard to shake.
Conversely, what show or movie has ever shown lawyers who scrounge for monotonous temp jobs as they struggle with overwhelming student loan debts? That wouldn�t lure anyone into law school, but it�s closer to the norm than is, say, Boston Legal�s Denny Crane.
Thanks to a recent New York Times article, �Is Law School a Losing Game?� large numbers of young Americans who might have been seduced by the law school mystique may decide that it�s not such a wonderful path after all. The takeaway from the article is that law school has been greatly oversold and would be a disastrously bad choice for many young people.
The author focuses on a number of young Americans who have earned their J.D. degrees but can�t find anything better than peripheral legal work, if even that. One young woman with her J.D. earns what she can by babysitting! Yet they have inescapable student loans to pay off and since tuition at law school often tops $40,000 per year, they�re in the same predicament as Kelli Space, who recently explained how she accumulated $200,000 in debt to get her sociology degree.
Easy, federally-backed student loans are behind the law school bubble just as much as they are for undergraduates. Author David Segal nails it when he says that such loans are �the gasoline that fuels the system.� The student who is the primary character in this tragi-comedy borrowed so much that he spent a month studying in the south of France (we aren�t told what he studied, or how hard) prior to law school and after completing his law degree, took out $15,000 more for living expenses while studying for the bar exam. Now he�s hooked, with debt increasing much faster than he can pay it off. (His strategy is not even to try.) |
Easy money policy from the Fed coupled with guaranteed loans from Sallie Mae are the principle reasons for the sky rocketing tuition both for university and post-grad, especially law school.
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Indeed it should. One of the principles law students learn in their contracts courses is that a contract entered into as a result of fraud is voidable at the option of the defrauded party. If a law school employs false or misleading statistics to make it seem as though enrolling there is an almost certain path to a high-paying legal job, it has crossed the line. As Professor Henderson says, �law schools have a special moral obligation to tell the truth about themselves.� Clearly, some are not.
The reason why they don�t isn�t hard to find: they�re cash cows. Tuitions are high and operating costs are relatively low, despite the fact that law professors are among the best paid in the academic world. Evidently, universities are no better than most of us when it comes to temptation�if it�s a choice between shading the truth and having to give up a lot of easy money, they�ll shade the truth to avoid frightening away some students.
Where the article disappoints is its failure to thoroughly diagnose our glut of lawyers problem. Segal does mention the easy money that is available for students�law students can borrow recklessly thanks to the same federal aid programs available to undergraduates�and the strange allure that just �being a lawyer� has for some people. Those reasons, however, comprise the tip of the iceberg. The great mass of the berg is the fact that state law has made the current form of legal education, the three-year, high-cost law school, the only permissible portal for prospective attorneys. |
Are law schools even necessary? That is a good question. |
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cyui
Joined: 10 Jan 2011
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| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 11:17 am Post subject: |
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| I have heard that it IS possible to get your 2nd and 3rd year tution waved through a type of public service advocacy agreement. Not that it matters' to anyone on here, but it seems' like a pretty good deal if one is wanting to go into Policy Legisilation after Law School. |
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TECO
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 9:18 am Post subject: |
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Over the years here teaching EFL in Asia, I've met several lawyers from Canada and America. If I remember, all of them had practiced criminal law prior to coming to Korea or Japan. None of them had any intention at the time to go back to practicing law.
Previous posters have mentioned the Prestige Factor: what's more prestigious nowadays, a Law Degree or an MBA? I used to think at the turn of the century that an MBA was a degree that could easily get one a job in banking or investment firms but that having an LL.B was tough because the market was just too saturated with people with law degrees. Now I suspect that the same applies to MBA holders. Too many of both these days.
If I had a choice between going into a $100, 000 debt for an LL.B, MBA, or Ph.D, I'd do the Doctorate. |
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Madigan
Joined: 15 Oct 2010
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 9:42 am Post subject: |
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There are too many MBAs as well. I wouldn't recommend getting an MBA, or any other post-grad degree for that matter, without a substantial amount of savings. That or another way to pay for it, grants and scholarships for example.
The degrees are also an investment in time and opportunity cost for the years of lost salary.
Ph.Ds on the other hand, are paid for by the university in many cases so per haps you are right.
http://www.economist.com/whichmba/think-twice |
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Yaya
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 7:01 am Post subject: |
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| For those who might want to reconsider law school, the book Cool Careers for Dummies calls physician's assistant the coolest career. The author cited the vast number of openings, two years of training, an average salary that can hit six figures, and the rewarding aspect of seeing patients get better in that you don't deal with the really bad diseases. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 7:53 am Post subject: |
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| Maybe just skip grad school. There are many professional designations that one can earn with only a bachelor degree in any field. |
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TECO
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 9:26 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| Maybe just skip grad school. There are many professional designations that one can earn with only a bachelor degree in any field. |
True, and one does not even need a bachelor degree or to ever attend university in order to forge a satisfying and lucrative career.
I know and heard of people who have gone through trade school that can crack the 6 figure mark also. They have so much work coming their way that they have to turn a good deal of it down. |
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jdsolo
Joined: 25 Jan 2011
Location: Hell
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 10:14 am Post subject: |
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not sure if someone already posted this but I thought it was funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XViCOAu6UC0
and addressing the OP's question, yes I think it is. I personally know at least 10 people going to law school. Half of them go to schools I've never heard of before. I really don't see each and every one of them making six figures |
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Yaya
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 8:50 pm Post subject: |
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| jdsolo wrote: |
not sure if someone already posted this but I thought it was funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XViCOAu6UC0
and addressing the OP's question, yes I think it is. I personally know at least 10 people going to law school. Half of them go to schools I've never heard of before. I really don't see each and every one of them making six figures |
Yep, if you go to Podunk University's law school, you have a tough road ahead of you in that no decent firm will hire you but you'll have a fortune in loans to repay. |
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NohopeSeriously
Joined: 17 Jan 2011
Location: The Christian Right-Wing Educational Republic of Korea
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| Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 10:57 pm Post subject: |
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South Korea technically fails to improve its new American-inspired law schools anyways.
| mises wrote: |
| Maybe just skip grad school. There are many professional designations that one can earn with only a bachelor degree in any field. |
Grad schools are now extremely overrated these days. |
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Yaya
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2011 1:03 am Post subject: |
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Except for those intending to practice law in Korea (and for someone, especially a non-Korean, to pass the Korea bar would be an accomplishment just a step short of designing the Giza pyramids), who the hell would want to attend law school in Korea? Korea's least corrupt ranking is 39th worldwide but everyone knows of the corruption here.
Korea is FULL of people with advanced degrees who have jobs that require just a bachelor's. Corruption, connections and a really distorted hiring system are what keeps them from getting the jobs they deserve. I've heard a few peeps are even teaching at hakwons.
Advanced degrees don't mean all that much except in certain fields even if you do get a good job. I worked for a state-run Korean bank once and many of the staff had MBAs or law degrees but their promotion track was the same as that for people with just a bachelor's.
Also check out this thread from six years ago about going to law school.
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=42262&highlight= |
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