lawyer

#Is it true that attending any but a top-tier law school is a personal and financial mistake?

Quora User HLS 11

Under most circumstances, yes, it s true.

My basic assumption is the following: it is foolish to borrow more to attend school (any school) than you can reasonably repay with your post-graduate employment. So, I m saying that you shouldn t go to law school because (1) you will borrow tons of money at a high interest rate and (2) you are very unlikely to get a job that will enable you to pay that off. In addition I ll talk about (3) why you should be leery of anecdotal advice.

If my assumptions aren t true for you - if you can attend law school cheaply; if you have a reasonable expectation of a sufficiently good job - then go, by all means. What I am saying is that data about the debt loads and compensation of recent graduates of non-top-tier law schools suggests that, in general, going to these law schools is not a sound economic decision.

(1) You will borrow lots of money.

Attending most law schools is expensive. In 2010, 85% of graduates of ABA accredited law schools had an average debt load of $98,500 [1]. So what does that mean for a prospective student, who won t start before 2012? It means that our prospect will have even more debt, because tuition at law schools is rising at an astronomical rate [2].

That was 2010. What do you think it ll be like in 2014? Oh, and, just in case you thought you found a loophole - these loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. If you have student loan debt, you will have it until you pay it off, or until you die. But the government subsidizes it, so it s got the reasonable interest rate of 7.9% [3].

(2) You won t get a job that will let you pay this debt off.

Of the 40% of 2010 law graduates who reported their starting salaries, the median salary was $63,000 [4]. That s not really enough to live reasonably while making debt payments on $100k of student debt at 7% interest. And, as we ve discussed, you ll probably be more in debt than $100k, since tuition is rising. Also, you probably won t make $63,000. That s because the distribution of law salaries looks like this [5]:

See that big peak on the right? Those are salaries of big firm lawyers; you are very unlikely to get a job at a big firm if you don t attend a top school. Outside of the top handful of schools, big law firms only take the top 5 or 10% of students.

See that big hump on the left? That s where you ll be. If you re lucky - this graph only represents about 40% of law graduates. The other 60% didn t report their salary. I ll leave it to you to decide how this underreporting biases salary information.

Here s a pretty picture. NLJ250 firms are the ones that pay those big salaries at the right of the previous graph. Notice that odds of getting those jobs shrink pretty fast once you leave the top 15 or so schools. Also, this is a chart from 2005, when the legal market was booming. Jobs are significantly harder to get now.

(3) People who give advice about attending law school generally don t know what they re talking about.

If someone tells you that they know plenty of classmates (class of 85) who didn t attend top schools and are now doing fine; that he graduated from law school 10 years ago, but because he was top 5%, he got a good job at a regional law firm; that a law degree is so versatile and he can t imagine that education is ever a bad investment - run, don t walk.

This isn t your father s legal market. Tuition has skyrocketed (even inflation-adjusted). Applicants to law school have skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, the legal market has gone the other way:

More graduates while the legal market shrinks? Tuition that, at private schools, has quintupled since 1985? You do the math.

[3] http://studentaid.ed.gov/ PORTALS. Note that some aid will come in the form of Stafford loans, which are at 6.8%, and that you can save about 50bps off these numbers by getting private loans.

[5] From the Something Awful law school thread, which really ought to be required reading if you are considering law school. http://forums.somethingaw ful.com.

My old answer (preserved for posterity):

I completely agree with the assertion in that article. This is well-known in the legal community - that most law schools are three-year and $200,000 scams. I would only advise someone to go to law school if she were going to a top-10 school.

Why? As other answerers have pointed out, people from lower-tier schools can succeed, and some people from good schools are idiots (*cough*). Consider an analogy:

Many people want to become actors. One of the standard ways into acting is to move to LA, get a job as a waiter, and then audition like crazy. There are lots of successful actors who ve done just this. So if you want to be an actor, you should do this, right? NO! Not unless you re crazy. Most people who quit their job, uproot their life, and move to LA to become actors end up as career waiters.

Law school, if you don t attend a top-tier school, is like this. If you attend one, you have a small shot at a job if you re top 5% and on Law Review; even then, you ll have to hustle. If you are median, or worse, you re going to have to hustle very hard to find a job that pays better than waiting tables. Just like moving to LA to act, going to a lower-tier law school is uprooting your life, spending all your money (including lots of money you probably don t have), all for a slim chance at a mere entry into a profession. If you think that s a good idea, great, but for most of the people who attend lower-tier law schools, it isn t.

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