The Law-School Scam
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
1) The cost (direct and opportunity) is ENORMOUS. And even with special federal govt repayment plans, if you don't get that big firm job, the debt will potentially weigh you down well into middle age (with the possibility of a nasty tax bite at the end if you have any assets and the law isn't changed).
2) The likelihood of getting a high paying job is slim. It's even pretty risky from top 10 schools.
3) Even during the boom times, when people from top schools were getting jobs at top BIGLAW firms left and right, people were HATING LIFE at the firm because they didn't realize what it was going to be like. And more broadly, lots of people get all the way through law school and realize they don't wanna be lawyers. This is super common.
4) Non-big-firm opportunities are either super competitive (like govt or public interest), super low paying (also includes lots of govt and public interest), or not a great value proposition (how'd you like 200k in debt to try scratching out 50k a year as a solo?)
Lots of the reasons people want to attend law school are pretty dumb/false (stuff like: like to argue, wanna be prestigious, think its a safe/good-paying career track). The people that should attend law school are those who:
a) won't be financially ruined by the decision,
b) actually want to be a lawyer, and
c) have some real sense of what being a lawyer actually means (e.g. they spent at least a couple years working at a firm in some non-lawyer capacity, or they have a parent who was a lawyer and told them lots about their job, or they spent tons of their time researching law and legal practice. In other words their knowledge of legal practice is not based entirely on fictional TV and movie lawyers).
I'd say that describes under 1% of the people enrolled in law schools nationwide.
I agree entirely. And eventually, the bubble will burst, and presumably we'll have a sane system of lawyer training. But for now, there's a lot of misery in the pipeline.
I work in LSAT prep. I've found I can tell people this, to no effect.
Also you can find out what schools they are targeting and link them to http://lawschooltransparency.com. Amazing to see the jobless rates of students at even pretty good schools.
And, while our case might be an exception to the general outlook for families of two newly minted lawyers (2012 grads), her government job also enables us to lower our payments since we can contribute to an IRS 457 plan to defer compensation and lower our AGI, in addition to her retirement plan. So, that helps keep her payments lower during the required 120 payment period, while enabling us to dedicate more to addressing my law school loans.
Finally, I don't think even most government and public interest jobs are competitive in the sense that other candidates are the reasons why people can't get these jobs. Admittedly, this will be the case in more sought after positions, but there are many government jobs that don't have serious competition, where you are competing against a few other applicants. A lot of the time, the problems with people finding these jobs have to do with character issues from their past. Government jobs, notably state attorneys general, district attorneys office, or other governmental posts affiliated with law and enforcement, do scrutinize the background of the candidates more than others. So, any mishaps in character would cull you from the pool. But that's not competition, because you could be the only applicant and you still not get the job.
And what sort of issues do you think are preventing people from getting government jobs "a lot of the time" that aren't caught by the C&F committee when you are trying to join the bar in the first place?
I am just finishing my term as a summer associate at a top IP boutique. I deal with patents everyday and it is literally soul crushing at times.
Especially with software patents, it is the most ridiculous thing I have ever spent time on. After I get called to the bar, I am going back to my programming roots. Unfortunately, I've been rusty while attending law school and basically have to relearn everything.
That's okay though, because I'd rather do it and become an example to other people so they won't make the same mistake I did.
I left law school in the middle of my second year to start a business. Typically, when I talk to non-practicing lawyers now, they say "I wish I did that".
If you're sure you don't want to do law, then finishing it + passing the bar is pure waste. Time is precious. Your 20s are especially precious.
It sounds like you've got a year or two left on this path. That's 10-20% of your 20s. What does it get you?
Since I only aim to pass in law school, I don't go to any classes at all. It is almost exactly the same as not having school or a job. Having this kind of free time and the (temporary) lack of financial pressure is valuable and I can use it to grok more hipster things that will hopefully help me code better later on.
On another note, I am in Canada but want to move to the US. I'm thinking of building a good portfolio and then grabbing a job down in silicon valley to get into the US. I'll need time to do that, law school gives me time.
But lack of financial pressure is an illusion. Unless you've got family support that will end with school, you're running up debt, not getting income, and not learning a skill that will be of any use to you.
If you're truly certain law is not for you, the only thing finishing really gets you is an ability to not look silly to others when you describe what you're doing with your life.
You'll value that now, but feel silly about it later.
That's also why I want to move to the US, so I can get away from these risk-averse people who have my "best interest" at heart. Because they end up living my life for me, and enough is enough.
I also think people are more open to entrepreneurship in US, whereas people in Canada feel pretty comfortable with their situation.
For the first few months, everyone thought I was nuts. For the first two years, I still heard constant doubts.
But then the doubts ceased, and people started to say "hey, that's pretty cool what you're doing" and they asked how I did it.
There's no getting around that discomfort. Right now you're prioritizing present comfort over future regret. Would you be comfortable sending this discussion thread to yourself five years from now?
What got me around that block was reading the Four Hour Workweek, especially the first couple chapters. I'd check it out – buy it right away.
(I do LSAT prep, incidently, http://lsathacks.com is my site, and I run the LSAT subreddit. You may have seen my stuff.
Also, Canada is supportive of entrepreneurs too, you just need to find the right neighborhood and social group. I live in the Plateau in Montreal, where a good quarter of the neighborhood is a student or self employed. I don't feel out of place.)
I learned a lot about how our legal system works and how corrupt our patent system is ... And I met my wife in law school ... Otherwise going to law school was the worst financial decision of my life.
For my wife and I, there isn't anything we'd rather be doing. But we're probably in the minority on that, and frankly we had no idea we'd like the field so much when we signed up to make those tuition payments. We just got lucky. Maybe schools should just offer refunds.
I do miss the creative aspect of designing code, though.
This is the most important factor, in my opinion. Work as a paralegal (or similar job) for a year before you apply to law school.
Back in the good ol' days, law was a profitable endeavor. It was limited to the elite, and as a result there was a great scarcity of people who were able to become lawyers. They could then charge a lot of money for their services and become rich.
This changed as soon as law schools became the dumping ground for people who wanted to become professionals but sucked at math. Can't do engineering? Programming's a bitch? Your lab grades suck too much to get into med school? Law school will take you! They'd better; they're charging 40k a year for it.
Then these kids get out into the working world and find out that BigLaw firms will work your ass to the bone. Why not? You can't quit; you're lucky to have the job in the first place, and you have $250k of debt. Okay, so BigLaw is out if you don't want to be driven to a nervous breakdown. How about being a public attorney? $35k a year salary. Okay, that sucks... how about being an ambulance chasing personal injury lawyer? Not going to happen, because there are tens of thousands of people just like you who went through the above options and realized that they were just as fucked. So now every billboard in town has a different grim-looking face promising the moon to anyone with a slip-and-fall case. "I don't get paid until you get paid!" There's only so many people who can slip and fall on a rogue can of peas at the Kroger, and you can't pay the bills with the few that will come to you.
As a result, almost a majority of people who go to law school don't end up as lawyers. The ones who do almost universally say that they wouldn't do it over again if they had the opportunity.
The organizations that profit from this? BigLaw and the law schools. BigLaw firms profit immensely because they have a massive supply of new lawyers who will take anything that's given to them. 90 hour weeks? Thank you sir, may I have another! I have student loans to pay!
The law schools also make a killing because, like many other colleges, they've managed to convince people that a college degree is The One True Path to attaining the American Dream. The people who get shafted, of course, are the newly minted lawyers.
Now I know it's a tough job blah, blah, but seriously the best experiences I've had with attorneys recently is when they did nothing but held my through the unnecessary complex and unfriendly legal system. I felt I got my money's worth in those instances from their familiarity of jumping through bureaucratic hoops. But I recently spent money on a lawyer that completely screwed everything up. I am certain that I would have been better off cluelessly stumbling into court.
I've had this situation described to me a little differently by a friend who has been in the field since the late 70s. Over the past several years, there has been a shift in the general relationship between lawyers and clients. Back then, it would be unheard of for a client to pick through or question the bill from a prestigious BigLaw firm-- that was considered to be an insult.
But recently more clients are contesting the bill, specifically, "Why are we paying for hours from these associates you hired six months ago? We want the 40 and 50 year olds who are in their prime." BigLaw can't as easily bill hours for newbies who previously would have been trained on the client's dime, so they just hire fewer of them.
"Well yeah, the legal profession is inundated with unemployed kids in debt up to their eyeballs. That's what makes it so great!"
Would you care to explain why? My guess is that you mean that a surplus of lawyers can cause additional demand for lawyers, which can't happen for physicians. Do I understand you correctly?
If you have too many doctors and not enough hurt people for them to heal, what are they going to do? Run around hurting people so that they can then heal them?
There are dangers with trying to predict demand for individual goods and services for larger countries/markets.
And this article shows that market signalling is largely not working in this case (because people do not approach education on a rational market basis).
And I'm fairly sure I've never heard anyone say "Oh crap - we've run out of lawyers."
Our system has problems, serious problems, but I don't think that the government telling us what we can and can't do for a living is the solution.
The only difference with the Danish example is that the government refuses to write a blank check (student loans) to law schools who want to take advantage of the naivete of students.
The US system would be vastly improved if the government stopped subsidizing the education industry's market distortions, or if the government actually regulated the education market. Right now it is the worst of both worlds with the government helping the education industry to fleece students and other tax payers.
The government pays a $1000/month (pre tax) stipend to all students for up to six years, and offers a similar sized amount in loans on very generous terms. As tuition is free, this is only to cover living expenses and study materials such as books. Taxes are high, even at that income level and so are living expenses, but it's still not a trivial sum.
Government paying education costs and regulating the price can work. Government paying education costs and not regulating the price is just corporate welfare.
Also, New Yorkers making >$400k are paying 52% (39% federal + 13% state), and those making just $100K are already paying over 40%. Californians are in a similar positions, although some states are cheaper to live in.
Yes, Europeans pay more in taxes, but they get more in taxes. If anyone is fleeced, it's actually the americans - the government is going into larger and larger debt, and at some point, the people will have to pay one way or another.
Apparently (from reading another comment), who gets into the schools is determined by their "high school" grades. That isn't the government deciding your faith; that is merit.
If you still want to get this kind of education, there seems to be private schools that you can attend (judging from the other comments).
Yes, that is how things will look if you live in a sane country like Denmark.
But as the top post in this thread acknowledges, in bizarro-land people structure their lives (and "careers") according to the television. And TV says being a lawyer can only lead to good things. Moreover, most bizarro-land parents will agree with the television set.
There was a Congressional study in bizarro-land a number of years back. The title went something like: "Bizarro-land. Can we sue our way to prosperity?"
There will always be lots of litigation in bizarro-land. Because that is how they do business. When business succeeds, they sue. When business fails, they sue. Litigation is itself big business.
If you read HN, then you know about the USPTO. The bizarro-land government issues rights to sue called patents and trademarks. Needless to say, these rights to sue are extremely popular there; probably more popular in bizarro-land than anywhere else in the world. Why? In bizarro-land, one can never have too many potential lawsuits ready to file.
Can we sue our way to prosperity? "Yes, we can."
There can never be too many lawyers in bizarro-land.
I hope in DK that the taxes people pay go back to the people in some form.
Because in bizarro-land the taxes people pay go to businesses that would otherwise fail. Banks get "bailed out". Universities go after the student loan programs (as mentioned in the article). Pharmaceutical companies go after the medical benefits programs. And so on. Consumers can no longer afford the overpriced products and services of these failing businesses, so the businesses go after the government coffers: get the government to pay for them!
Denmark is one of the better countries you could live in anywhere in the world. Count your blessings.
"You've got the causality reversed. We're not bizarro world because we sue so much; we sue so much because we're bizarro world. To put it another way, it's not surprising that a small, high-trust, high-equality, high-consensus society like Denmark has much less need for formal dispute resolution than a large, low-trust, low-equality, low-concensus society like the U.S."
Notice how he shifts from bizarro-land to "bizarro world".
The rest of the world is not in all cases just like bizarro-land, or much worse. But when you are in bizarro-land, that's how the media often portrays it. And perhaps believing this makes it easier to tolerate bizarro-land and being stuck in it. Those with such a world view have my greatest sympathies.
"... low trust, low equality, low consensus society."
Sounds wonderful.
What was that old Star Trek episode with the "energy force" shaped like a ball spinning near the ceiling causing everyone on the Enterprise to fight each other?
But at least our system isn't "bizarre", so we can always feel good about that.
Since graduating, most of my friends (including myself) have all moved to careers where the law is not the primary driver; most are saddled with a mountain of debt, make between 40 and 80K/year (most first year law grads make less than 60K in their first year).
People think that lawyers are glamorous, due to the fictionalization of their career (law and order). You have attorneys who are either left or right wing whackjobs (I went to law school with a woman who was only going to law school so that she could overturn Roe v. Wade) who have no sense going into law, let alone practicing with clients.
I'm much happier as a programmer/nerd. Even with being on call, I still sleep much much better at night. I'll still do legal things (contract law, estate planning, and not giving legal advice to drunk people), but, I never call myself an attorney and I rarely admit that I'm a lawyer to anyone outside of my friends and family.
With that said, Law school is something that plays on the dreams of these kids. They're saddled with debt from undergrad and post-grad, thinking that they're going to be the next Erin Brokovich or Jack McCoy. My friends joke that Law School made them better drinkers, better readers, and that their 6-figure student loan debts came with a great group of friends. Sadly, that's where most kids come out of law school with these days -- a drinking problem, a mountain of debt, and nowhere to go.
Though I don't truly regret going through law school then transitioning after, I really should have looked at financing the education like buying a home with a 30 year mortgage. A 20% downpayment would have defrayed quite a bit of the cost, and the path to saving that money would have given me time to consider the decision further. This doesn't have to be the rule, but it's an excellent guideline for anyone making such a big financial investment.
Based on the title I fully expected this article to be about the larger law school market and graduates' debt and job prospects. "The Law School Scam" is a lot broader than for-profit schools.
> It is important to note that while InfiLaw’s abuse of the student-loan system may be egregious, it is far from unique. Ultimately, this story is about not only for-profit law schools, or law schools, or even for-profit higher education. It is about the problematic financial structure of higher education in America today. It would be comforting to think that the crisis is confined to for-profit schools—and indeed this idea is floated regularly by defenders of higher education’s status quo. But it would be more accurate to say that for-profit schools, with their unabashed pursuit of money at the expense of their students’ long-term futures, merely throw this crisis into particularly sharp relief. To see why, consider the regulatory and political mechanisms that have allowed InfiLaw to make such handsome profits while producing disastrous results for so many of its “customers.”
[...]
> What, after all, is the difference between the InfiLaw schools and Michigan’s Thomas M. Cooley, or Boston’s New England Law, or Chicago’s John Marshall, or San Diego’s Thomas Jefferson? All of these law schools feature student bodies with poor academic qualifications and terrible job prospects relative to their average debt. In recent years, as law-school applications have collapsed, all of these schools have, just like the InfiLaw schools, cut their already low admissions standards. And, like Florida Coastal, Arizona Summit, and Charlotte, all of these schools now have a very high percentage of students who, given their LSAT scores, are unlikely to ever pass the bar. Ultimately, what difference does it make that none of these schools produce profit in the technical (and taxable) sense, because they are organized as nonprofits?
> The only real difference between for-profit and nonprofit schools is that while for-profits are run for the benefit of their owners, nonprofits are run for the benefit of the most-powerful stakeholders within those institutions.
Imagine for a moment that you are the owner of a popular restaurant located on a street with many restaurants. You do your best to provide the best experience to your customers while staying ahead of the competition by keeping your prices down. You try to avoid spending too much on labor, and do as much of the work yourself as you can, often putting in long hours. Although there is a good wholesale market nearby, you drive an extra hour to another market just to get your ingredients a little cheaper.
One day a wealthy patron who is a big fan of your cooking announces a new idea. Because he wants as many people as possible to enjoy your food, he is going to pick up the tab for most of your customers. You can just go on doing what you always do, but when the check arrives for many tables, this wealthy patron will pay the tab. The next day, your waitress complains that there are too many tables and you should hire more help. What would you do?
Normally, you would try to find a way to avoid hiring another person as it would eat into what little profits you make. But now you realize there is another solution. You can just raise prices. Since most of your patrons are not paying for their meals, your place will still stay popular and you won’t have to worry about losing business to your competition. So why not hire another waitress? While you are at it, why not hire a manger so you don’t have to be there all time, and stop driving to the further market?. Whatever increase in costs you suffer you can make up for by raising prices more and more.
Now imagine all your competitors also have wealthy benefactors picking up the check for many of their customers. You can all raise prices constantly without losing any sleep – or business.
This scenario is effectively what America’s higher education financing system has turned into. There are many reasons why college tuition is rising faster than virtually anything else, from more applicants than ever to state budget cuts for public universities, but all of those factors are allowed to persist because often times the person getting the degree is not the person paying the tab – not for today anyway.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/why-tuition-keeps-r...
The same thing -- only an indirect connection between buyer and seller -- could be seen as a primary cause of the rise in healthcare costs as well.
I at one point in my life thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I even took the LSAT prep stuff while interning at a law firm while in college. That was the most boring, time wasting 3 months of my life. I RARELY meet a lawyer who loves being a lawyer.
Before I went to law school, I worked for over a year in a small law office, where I was taught the old fashioned way how to do legal research; I enjoyed the heck out of it. All my life I've been the kind of person who likes to look up stuff just for fun.
Funny what you say about LSAT test prep-- actually taking the LSAT was one of the most enjoyable, exhilarating moments in my life. For those who haven't taken it, it's basically a test of reading comprehension and logic puzzles, all taken at breakneck speed. I've always been able to read more quickly than most, and I enjoy logic and mathematics so it's not like these skills were new to me, I felt like I'd been preparing for it my whole life. It was like doing a speed run down a mountainside, but with my mind. I scored at the 99.3%.
I also really enjoyed law school, and I wound up graduating at the top 5% of my law school class.
However, it really, really isn't for everyone.
The problem identified in the article is not the for-profit schools. It is rational for private enterprise to respond to government incentives. The problem is the excessive government incentives. There are too many lawyers, so the government should not be subsidizing legal educations. That is the solution.
By the way, my for-profit law school has a four-year part-time night program so I worked as a paralegal to pay for my tuition. I only took out a small loan to take time off to study for and take the bar exam, which I passed on the first try.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/smy9xlxvdynr91f/Screenshot%202014-...
I tell people law school is a bad book club. You read a crap-ton of mostly boring books, talk about them, and usually take a test at the end of each course. Occasionally there's an amazing instructor to make a subject enjoyable.
I'd prefer in the US we keep law as a graduate program, but tear down the antiquated 3 year system. Law school should be one year, with optional "residency" and specialist training like medicine. You'd get the research, writing, and basic subjects in that one year, which are all you need for most actual lawyering. Residency would be the hands-on training you never get at law school unless you had an amazing clinical program. Bar exams should be 1 basic exam covering that 1-year curriculum, and additional exams if you want to be certified to practice a specialty.
Oh come on now...
That (and how) it socializes harms while privating profits, and thereby serves to advance the interests of the capitalist class at the cost of others, is the feature for which the system was given the name "capitalism".