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Comment by willium | Hacker News Reader

Fascinating. I've been interesting in going towards law school, but am not sure I'd actually like to practice law at the end. This uncertainty plus the cost of attending, has been discouraging.

I wonder how she was able to go through both since each comes with a steep cost

Law School: $34,300 (avg per year) * 4 = $137,200

Medical School: $32,889 (avg per year) * 4 = $131,556

137,200 + 131,556 = $268,756

One would need to make quite the pretty penny to recoup those investment costs

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Especially if you are not going to practice at the end, consider going abroad to study (might be possible even with family, definitely possible without).

The costs in western europe are about 15%-20%. The costs in eastern europe are half that, and in some places in Asia it is cheaper still. If you want to practice in the US, you will have to take some local-law courses (law) and pass the bar/board exams - but it will still be infinitely cheaper than in the US.

And it will be an adventure.

Good advice for probably every field except law. Law is so different in most European countries that it won't be of much use in the US. Also a lot in civil law hinges on subtleties in the respective language.

Possibly; I've met two Israeli lawyers and two British lawyers who moved to the US and were able to pass the bar exam within a year or so - I have no idea how hard they worked at it (and what preparations they did before moving to the US), but it was certainly cheaper then going to school in the US.

If you are a lawyer in one country and want to practice in another then take the exams in the country you want to practice for sure. Going to law school in another country to save money is a completely different thing.

Also: UK and US both have Common Law traditions whereas most of Europe does not. Israel is a more involved case.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Map_of_t...

I'm confident that most people on HN can pass the bar exam without law school. Law school really wasn't much of an advantage for the bar exam, just do the prep course and study hard full time for six weeks and you would be fine. Unfortunately I don't think any states still allow sitting the bar exam and being admitted without a law degree.

Some states have a sort of apprentice style path to the bar.

For example:

http://admissions.calbar.ca.gov/Education/LegalEducation/Law...

It's multiyear and supervised by a lawyer, so not quite at the level you are talking about.

Depends where she was studying as well. I'm in the UK and my elec engineering masters was £4k. They've since hiked the fees for higher education and my medical degree is ~£36k. Still, that's 9 years of education for 1 years of dev salary, plus I work for a startup whilst studying. It's definitely doable!

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