Comment by JustinCEO | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JustinCEO | Hacker News Reader

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Law school grad here (top 10 school). Anyone asks my opinion (which seems to happen an awful lot -- I guess lots of people consider law school at some point or another), I tell them I think it's a pretty bad idea.

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.

Law should be an undergraduate major you can switch out of when you don't like it, not something you have to invest three years and $150k into. The expense pushes people towards jobs that might not be the best fit for them. My friends doing public interest work, small law, or plaintiffs' work are almost uniformly happy. Most of my friends at large firms are counting the days until they can go in-house.

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.

What led to you choosing the field of law over programming?

Career longevity, smaller organizational structures, no investors. As a litigator: confrontation.

I do miss the creative aspect of designing code, though.

I can understand. On the other side, my career is still going strong after, well, a very long time.

Software consultancies seem like a great way to achieve that in engineering.

Engineer turned law student here.

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.

Why finish?

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?

Maybe I'm doubting myself, but I'm not ready. My programming skills have deteriorated so much. I'm also utilizing law school as a safe haven where I can try to fully grok combinators, functional programming (Haskell), and meta-programming (macros in Lisp).

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.

Oh, you're in Canada. Your situation is far less dire. Though articling adds to the time required to pass the bar.

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.

I completely agree with you. But when every single person in your life is telling you to just finish and article, it is really hard not to. I feel silly about it already, I only wish I had the balls to disregard the opinion of everyone in my life, but I really don't have it in me.

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.

It's tough. I still remember calling my dad to tell him I didn't want to go to law school anymore. "Oh shit" was his reaction.

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 am in the exact same boat. Went from programmer to top ten law school to top ten patent practice in Silicon Valley. Lasted two years. Now back in programming.

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.

This made me think about a moment that brought me a bit more understanding of the plight of my friend, also an ivy league lawyer. We were teasing each other about how we both worked for companies that the other thought brought little value to the world and I made the tired "blood suckers" remark about lawyers. She got quiet and said, more to herself than to me, "Except for those of us who were idealists ready to change the world until we had to sell our souls to eat." At her firm, the biggest client was a well known and widely disliked arms manufacturer and I'd already gathered that she felt at odds with herself about serving them, but this was the moment when I realized that she probably spent a lot of time wondering if she'd made a smart decision by getting into the field. Because of the student loans, she didn't feel she had any choice but to see it through. It was a sad thought.

Have you found any way of framing this that actually convinces prospective law students to change their minds?

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.

I've given people basically the above points and managed to persuade them. But like I said, only if they ask. Some people don't wanna hear it cuz they think law school is their only possible life plan, so if you tell them it's a bad plan they get mad.

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.

Have you asked them to explain as clearly as they can why they want to go? Easiest way to change someone's motivations is to speak to those motivations.

Number 4 is somewhat misleading. I'd say gov't and public interest are both appealing options, regardless of the pay. You can get the advantages of the public service loan forgiveness program and, in some cases, some extra soft benefits. For example, my wife gets two official paid weeks, and extra time when the judges take time en masse (i.e, Christmas), so her two weeks is in reality four or five.

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.

Can you link some of these govt jobs that don't have serious competition? I know people that might be interested in them.

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?

>> 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...

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.

For someone who is interested in doing small town law or public interest law, what do you think about the much more affordable online and correspondence law programs offered in California?

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