via the economist

I feel like the above chart can be presented without commentary, but here's the gist of the article anyway:

Graduating from college in America places you above your peers in numerous foreign nations. I can't help but wonder what happens when you compare the debt loads of those students, but I'm not an Economist writer. (Also, how much do engineers and a few other majors skew the stats off of all the grads who end up working for Vector, Amway, and waiting tables in Chicago?)

Sometimes it's easier with pictures

When I read scam blogs, I tend to see a chorus of students claiming that they will be in the top 10% of their classes. Most lawyers don't seem to be great with math or conceptual math, but I thought I'd offer a few graphics detailing what that means.


Source: http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/rankings


Bar Applicants (2009)
79,125
Bar Passage (2009)
54,027
Bar Failure
25,098
Source: http://www.ncbex.org/fileadmin/mediafiles/downloads/Bar_Admissions/2009_Stats.pdf
For those of you wondering, nearly a third of all bar takers in 2009 failed, according to the National Conference of Bar Examiners. If you ever sat in a classroom and did the "look at the person to your left, now look at the person to your right, now look at yourself" thing, yeah, one of those three people has a pretty strong chance of failing the bar at least once.

And for the sake of argument, assume that the tuition costs associated with law school and costs of room and board increased, if only a little bit, since the following was produced in 2008. Also assume that where it says more than 80% of students, from any law school tier, will have debt, that I assume you will have some amount of debt, because the chances are hugely in favor of that being the case. Finally, assume that the percentages of students employed as cited will have decreased since 2008 (the publication date) and 2006 (the data year).


Please note that in 2006, with boom hiring, the average top 14 graduate was close to $100K in debt. Both law school and undergraduate tuition has increased dramatically since 2006.

Stuck

"Stasis is a trap between anger and fear. Anger that you aren’t living the life you want. Fear that if you let go, you’ll lose everything." - The People's Therapist

I rarely read the People's Therapist. His choppy writing style and reinforcement of platitudes tend to drive me mad. But occasionally, his topics resonate with me.

I never wanted to be a lawyer. I hoped I would fail out of law school first year and not be invited back. I hoped I would fail the bar, and not be able to get a job. The longer I stayed in law, the more it looked like I was going to be trapped for life in a field that doesn't interest me. Law trapped me in a state as my friends moved away for graduate degree and mobile careers. Being a lawyer has, so far, trapped me in law. When I try to get my foot in the door in one of those alternative careers so frequently lauded during the law school admission process, interviewers assume that there's no way their company could pay enough for me to seriously consider them.

TPT suggests that chasing dreams is more important than money. In law school, I never felt remotely passionate about 75% of classes. The repeated promises that practice would be different and better than law school kept me frozen, much to my present regret. Practice has been more interesting, but it's rare that I want to share the ins-and-outs of my day like I did when I worked in a lab. But without the ability to get back into work I care about, I (like a surprising number of lawyers) am unwilling to risk my present circumstances for a chance at a more satisfying condition.

Occasionally a blog crops up such as Attorney to Temp, telling the tale of an attorney fed up with practice and looking for a better quality of life even if it means taking a lower pay check. Given the growth of the legal job market over the last ten year compared to the number of new lawyers each year, it seems apparent to me that there must be numerous attorneys living this life, but the stigma associated with looking for something different to do with ones life remains. Even other lawyers who recognize that the practice of law to be a bad environment for many people can't countenance other people leaving it voluntarily.

Some of my coworkers and supervisors know that I dislike the law and hope to find a better fit for me. The reaction of my peers is, of course, that I've put so much of my life into law school that I should stick it out for at least a decade, just to be sure. Some of the partners, on the other hand, believe that because I'm relatively young and unmarried, I should have no trouble moving my life to create a new career.

Part of that view is the idea that, as a person in my 20s, I shouldn't be interested in having a house or ties to a particular geographic area. Instead, I should be willing to explore and risk in the hopes of finding some grand adventure. Settling down, getting married, and having kids is for your 30s, they say.

My bosses do not recognize that I attended engineering school, and later law school, with the expectation that I would never have a grand adventure. I am painfully risk averse, and being unable to call anywhere home has long been an annoyance, not a source of joy. The fact that a number of publications, including the National Post and Wall Street Journal have indicated that I will, essentially, not be able to settle down without becoming independently wealthy, is disappointing verging on upsetting.

"One thing is certain," he says in Chapter One. "[An] emerging way of life, which some already refer to as an impending 'new normal,' will be less oriented around cars, houses and suburbs."

Back to some of those difficulties fitting Toronto into this theory:

1. People still want to own their houses

"Mobility and flexibility are key principles of the modern economy. Home ownership limits both," Mr. Florida writes in a chapter of The Great Reset about a coming "shift toward renting." A labour force attached to its houses is less competitive than an unfettered one, he argues.

He explains that a robust rental market has contributed to the success of cities from San Francisco to Washington and New York. "When 40% to 45% of your housing stock is rental, it enables you to adjust much better to economic changes," Mr. Florida says.

from: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/urban+upset/3145777/story.html#ixzz0s76Y9bkC

Wall Street Journal article (subscription required):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559004575256703021984396.html?KEYWORDS=richard+florida

As I read it, today's recent law grad needs to remain mobile to have any hope of success in the early years of his or her career. At the same time, because of the restrictions imposed on new lawyers by the various state bars, willingness to relocate often is not enough to gain or maintain a new position. According to a 2004 ABA article, it takes three to five years for a firm to break even on a new associate. How are young law graduates supposed to project permenance to hiring partners while maintaining the flexible/mobile living arrangements that may be needed to gain a job in the first place?

On Debt Discharge

Via Espn :

Mark Brunell, the three-time Pro Bowl quarterback who as a backup in 2009 for the New Orleans Saints won a Super Bowl, planned to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection Friday, the apparent result of a string of failed real-estate investments.

. . .

Brunell, who has made nearly $52 million during an NFL career spanning more than
15 years, told The Times-Union he had for years covered the group's loan payments as it sought a resolution with its creditors.
"In the end, we couldn't, and I am no longer able to shoulder this burden," Brunell said.

I'm not especially familiar with his financial investments, but find it interesting and a small amount of annoying that Brunell can discharge his debts and will continue to have relatively valuable assets not available to typical college and graduate students.

I don't mean to imply that Brunell is gaming the system or taking inappropriate advantage of bankruptcy laws, but it's disconcerting to realize that he has the option when a lot of underwater lawyers and other post-graduates aren't currently able to walk away from their poor investments.

Great Expectations

Per a comment left by a law student/commenter Danielle at First Tier Toilet:

As a general point, it would be very helpful to 0Ls if the scam bLAWgers
could outline their decision to pursue law school in the first place...something that details expectations and the sources of those expectations. It would make
it easier to relate, given that we haven't matriculated. People with different
expectations/source of expectations may be more likely to have a different
experience.

Though I'm certainly not the level of fame in the scam blog community, I'm happy to respond.

Age entering law school: 21

Full time, permanent jobs held prior to law school: 0 (I went straight through college to law school)

Decision to apply to law school made: At age 21, 7 months shy of graduation from my engineering program.

Primary motivation for going to law school: Suggestion from then-girlfriend.

Number of law schools applied to: 5 (one top 25, one top 50, one second tier, two third tier)

Number of law schools accepted at: 5

Exposure to law prior to applying: One volunteer program coordinated by a lawyer, defended once in my youth in a situation that really shouldn't have required a lawyer. No legal coursework, political science, or even LSAT prep courses. One philosophy course taken as a sophomore.

Number of practicing lawyers among family, friends, and friends of family at the time I applied: 1 (my friend's father, who thought engineers were too stupid to breathe, especially in comparison to lawyers)

Number of non-practicing JDs among family, friends, and friends of family: 3 (though, at the time, I didn't know any had been to law school. None include the JD or Esq. on their business cards)

Recruiting pitch by law school I ultimately attended: I met with two attorneys from medium sized law firms who practiced patent law. They discussed salary expectations (between 90k and 120k starting, depending on geography), life-work balance (comparing it to the unpredictabilty of working for general practitioners), the importance of law school rankings on employment as a patent attorney, the importance of law school classes (very minimal), and projected employment percentage in the field (better than 97%). One encouraged me to apply to clerk at his firm during the school year and attend law school part time, stretching my matriculation to four years instead of three. The law school itself offered me a full tuition scholarship contingent on GPA. The admissions officers and deans who spoke to me also told me that if I chose not to pursue a career in law, my law degree would make me more attractive to a variety of employers, and that it would likely raise my starting salary by 5K to 10K.

Summary of my law school experience: Of the 80+ credits I had to take to get my degree, 40 were in required courses that have no practical impact on patent law. This included the entire first year, which bored and annoyed me by turns. I considered dropping out at the end of first year, but stayed in school because I had a GPA allowing me to continue attending law school for free* and secured a paid legal position first year. I did not write on for a journal, moot court, or join a clinic, opting instead to continue clerking for firms. My school assumed that almost all first years would take summer classes, so second and third years my typical school day was 12 hours long playing catch-up academically. I enjoyed all of my IP classes, and none of the remaining required courses. I hated most of my classes so much that halfway through my final semester, I spoke to the dean of my law school about dropping out and not finishing. He assured me that practicing for a firm would be more enjoyable than being in law school, and that I should stick out the final two months and take the bar exam. I held leadership positions in three student organizations, did well enough in OCI and at the Loyola Patent Law Interview Program, interviewing with about 22 firms total. I ultimately accepted a position for a firm I did not summer with.

Career: In 2008, I joined the firm after taking the bar exam (learning three months later that I had passed). My salary was above the range suggested in the law school's pitch to me (but almost everyone I studied with in law school makes less than $50,000/annum). Billing requirements are between 1800 and 2000 hours, depending on the year. Most of my coworkers arrive after 8 am and leave before 7 pm.

I've never felt especially welcome at the firm, and rarely felt like my colleagues gave a damn what happened to me after 7 pm on any given day. I focused on prosecuting patents, meaning I expected never to see court, and rarely was asked to do any of the legal research or memo writing law school trained me for. Following the stock collapse, patent prosecution work slowed and I and several newer associates began to work in litigation more. Litigation work is not my strong suit, my area of interest, or work I enjoy or find satisfying. I also don't get the training in patent prosecution I signed on for, because there is insufficient prosecution work to train new attorneys on. It's clear after two years at this firm that I will not have a straightforward path to partnership or otherwise controlling my career.

Outside of practicing, I have been looking for a different firm or an engineering firm in need of an entry level engineer since September. So far, I haven't been able to "do anything I want" with my law degree, as typical engineers consider me too expensive and unpolished, and law firms are generally uninterested in my level of experience (currently at the 2 year mark). I do have a benefit most lawyers don't have, in that I don't necessarily have to take another bar exam to practice law if I take a position in a different state, because patent law is federal law. Most of my graduating class, at least those working as lawyers, are geographically limited because we're too new to get reciprocity.

What do I want to do now: Practicing law is more interesting than law school, but I'm sure it's not what I want to do with the rest of my life. I'd prefer to move to engineering, if possible.

For law students and lawyers who aren't interested in patent law, after filing a patent application, it typically takes 18 months before that application is made public (meaning I can't use most of my work as writing samples. It typically takes around 18 to 24 months before the Patent and Trademark Office responds to an application, so at the two year mark, I don't even know what mistakes I made my first month.

*Tuition only. I paid (out of my pocket) way too much to live in a college town that I hated.

See Jane Try

They say everyone’s an expert after they go through it, you’re only a failure if you’re still in it.
I say everyone’s a failure after they go through it, you’re only an expert while you’re still in it.


One of my friends from law school just passed the California bar, and after a year of (as near as I can tell) doing nothing law related, she expects to open her own firm next month, after she’s sworn in.


I don’t know how to convince her that she’s making a terrible decision, but she really is. Telling her hasn't helped, and frankly, the year she lost while waiting to join the ranks of the bar passers has probably made her the wrong kind of desperate.


While I managed to graduate law school on the front edge of Lost Generation and snagged myself, at least briefly, paid legal work, I’m not confident that Jane* is ever going to make as much practicing law as she would have made and saved by waitressing for the past four years instead of going to law school. It breaks my heart a little bit to see.

Pigeonholing

I never wanted to go to law school for my own reasons. It was a decision premised on a relationship that didn't survive my 1L year rather than any particular desire to practice law for the rest of my life. As a means to that end, law school was a terrible decision, and I halfway realized that at the time.

I was concerned then, as now, by the idea of a resume gap. In essence, I wanted to take some time off before beginning my engineering career full time, and I wanted it to be justified on paper. Law school gave me that, although I discovered this solution in a short-sighted fashion. As I've attempted to leave the practice of law and sneak back into the measurably more pleasant field of engineering, I've come to learn that even that one year outside engineering made me less attractive to technology companies.

But wait! What of that oft-reinforced phrase "your J.D. will make it possible for you to do anything?"

Not really. People who have J.D.s do a lot of different things, but the J.D. is more often than not simply a gap filler. Those people could open the same consulting businesses, become the same artists, and run for the same political offices if they had gotten MBAs instead of attending law school. Ambition, vision, and luck place former lawyers in their new positions more than ancillary academic credentials.

Law schools, or at least mine, emphasize students becoming professional lawyers because it's a professional school. Law school is about one subject, and on campus interviewing is designed for one kind of employer. My first year, when I approached my school's career services office and asked them to help me find paid engineering work for my first summer, I was scolded. Partly because the CSO wasn't allowed to provide career guidance to me until November 1st, but mostly because I was supposed to be living like a lawyer. "Take a legal position. Volunteer at the public defender's office and work at a coffee shop at night to pay your bills, if you have to. The legal experience is too important for your future."

I could not convince CSO workers that for my desired position as a patent attorney, more engineering experience would help a lot more with my legal career than my ability to write an answer in to a DUI complaint. Similarly, they couldn't understand that if I couldn't ultimately get a position working in intellectual property law, I would rather transition back into engineering than anything else.

I don't say this to suggest that my law school was especially terrible or unique in its focus, but law schools and administrators could care less about people with non-lawyer aspirations. Unfortunately for me, I spent half a decade of my life learning that I wasn't interested in the future they built for me.

A Perspective

Outstanding Student Loan Debt - 2009 (fed) $605,600,000,000
Outstanding Student Loan Debt - 2009 (private) $157,800,000,000
Outstanding Total Student Loan Debt - 2009 $763,400,000,000
Outstanding Mortgage Debt - 2009 $14,287,340,000,000
Outstanding Credit Card Debt - 2009 $917,000,000,000

Sources:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/releases/mortoutstand/current.htm
http://www.hoffmanbrinker.com/credit-card-debt-statistics.html
http://www.finaid.org/loans/

Interesting, to me, which debt can be written off and escaped (and who is more likely to have that debt) and which debt cannot be eliminated through bankruptcy.

The Story So Far

I should have been an engineer. Or an eye doctor, as my father suggested. Instead, I followed my heart, and ended up in law school, effectively wasting my undergraduate education, three years of my life, and more money than I realized.

When I say followed my heart, of course, I mean I met a girl. She told me I should go to law school, and being painfully in love with her, I took the LSAT. My test score qualified for my first year's tuition, and I believed that constitutional law was a better use of my time than getting my masters degree in engineering (it wasn't).

Every semester, I told myself I'd drop out if I couldn't keep my scholarship, because on most levels, I recognized that law school wasn't worth any money. Of course, they kept not kicking me out, and though my grades were middling, I ultimately finished, took one of my firm offers, and became an attorney.

I have since lived to regret a number of these mistakes. Some of my flaws will be chronicled here.

I don't pretend that I was not partially at fault for my current life situation. At the same time, I can't help but think that without the pressure to figure out a life as soon as college graduation hits, I might not have been seduced so readily by my law school's employment statistics and by the tales of glory lovingly fed to me in books such as "bridging the gap" and "law school confidential."