Aspiring law student seeking info from lawyers

[Anonymous]

I am an aspiring lawyer who would be going to law as a second career. Since I would be putting my family through a lot to pursue this, I want to be sure that I have a clear picture -- good, bad, and ugly -- of what a law career involves. I have asked friends who are lawyers and have tried to read widely on the subject (including going through the archives here). There seem to be many happy government lawyers (nice to hear!) but I don't have a clear sense of the day-to-day in the various types of law. I have read that often people who like law school don't necessarily like practicing law and I am nervous about all the fellow moms at DC's school who are former lawyers with no plans to return to the field.

Bit of background:

My interests are in public interest law, child advocacy, and family law (to use my experience in 1st career as a mental health counselor), though I am open to developing some new interest in law school. My kids are in elementary school so work/life balance is important but I don't have to worry about daycare or nursing or anything like that.

Anyone willing to share a typical day? Any suggestions for how to realistically assess whether law is a good fit? Any thoughts and experiences are appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Go read Above the Law and the many discussions there about how students at even top schools, who are graduating with mountains of debt, are unable to find jobs. The legal sector is a disaster right now. A law career isn't the happy ending movies make it out to be. If you're interested in public interest, child advocacy and family law, you need to be interested in living with a low income. Unless you're getting a free ride to law school, I really would not recommend it to anyone right now.

[Anonymous]

I would definitely talk to someone doing exactly what you think you'll want to do -- someone doing child advocacy law. I agree with the PP, unless you're getting a free ride or the cost doesn't matter to you, law school is soooo expensive now and the job prospects are so poor that it just doesn't make financial sense.

[Anonymous]

I have to agree with the PP. Times are tough for new lawyers nowadays, especially if you are looking for a law firm job. I am not an attorney but I work for a firm so I see the current situation. However, it is getting better so perhaps by the time you graduate, it may be a better market.

Having said that, have you considered working in a law firm for a year or two to see what its like? Or even interning? I know this seems like a step back but if you take a few months to work in the legal field and then hate it, you will end up saving yourself thousands of dollars in tuition.

I personally like working in the legal field a lot but there is a big difference (in both salary, hours and quality of life) between staff and attorneys. Especially in the beginning when you are expected to work evenings, weekends, whatever it takes. This is probably very different than government attorneys or in-house counsel though. I think their schedules tend to be much more regulated and allow a better quality of life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go read Above the Law and the many discussions there about how students at even top schools, who are graduating with mountains of debt, are unable to find jobs. The legal sector is a disaster right now. A law career isn't the happy ending movies make it out to be. If you're interested in public interest, child advocacy and family law, you need to be interested in living with a low income. Unless you're getting a free ride to law school, I really would not recommend it to anyone right now.

I agree completely. Right now law school is a risky investment.

[Anonymous]

Do a lot of research into what practice in a particular specialty would actually involve on a daily basis.

I enjoyed law school, and I liked employment law a lot. Right out of law school, I went to the labor & employment group in a big firm. I hated it. I still find the subject matter very interesting, but the practice is all litigation-based and there is very little counseling work (esp. for junior lawyers). To make matters worse, in a big firm, much of the litigation work in the labor and employment context is class-action work. These are huge cases with hundreds of potential witnesses, rooms full of documents, and they take 10 yrs to come to a resolution. I realized pretty quickly that this was just not something I wanted to spend my life doing. And I really don't like litigation or adversarial work at all, as it turns out.

I spent 4 yrs at my firm b/c the pay was good and I was able to repay my student loans ahead of schedule. As soon as they were paid off, I took a government job in a completely different field (financial regulatory) and now I do exclusively legislative and regulatory work, no litigation whatsoever. If you asked me in law school (or before) if I wanted to do legislative work for a federal financial regulator, I would have said I had absolutely no interest. I still don't love what I do now, but I don't hate it, I know I'm good at it, and I'm earning a salary commensurate with my degree, so it has worked out. But having an interest in a subject area and enjoying the practice of law in that same area are two very different things.

I would also do salary research b/c the areas you are talking about tend to be fairly low-paying. That's not a reason not to do something, but if you have to take on debt for law school, you want to earn enough to pay it off.

[Anonymous]

I wish I could disagree with the PPs, but I can't. From a financial standpoint, law school is not a good investment right now. It's incredibly expensive and the job market is very tight. You've got a very small chance at high-paying private sector and good government jobs unless you go to a top-tier law school and get top grades, and even those are no guarantee anymore.

That being said, if you really want to pursue a career in the law, you should do it. Law school is rigorous and boring, but it's an amazing education, and many law jobs are interesting and fulfilling. People tend to get trapped by high law school loans and they take whatever job they can to pay back the loans. If you can minimize your loans by attending a less-expensive school, getting scholarships, working part-time, etc., you will be able to look for a job that you will enjoy rather than the one with the biggest paycheck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would definitely talk to someone doing exactly what you think you'll want to do -- someone doing child advocacy law. I agree with the PP, unless you're getting a free ride or the cost doesn't matter to you, law school is soooo expensive now and the job prospects are so poor that it just doesn't make financial sense.

Yes, yes, yes. You need to work backwards on this -- what exactly do you want to do after you graduate from law school, what will it take for you to get such a position, what the typical salaries and hours are, and THEN is it worth it to you to make the major investment of time and money required for law school.

Bottom line: I do not recommend going to law school unless you have a very clear sense of what you're going to do after you graduate. In order to do that, you need to talk with as many people as possible who work in that field. Research all the organizations (non-profits, government and private sector firms), make a ton of phone calls, set up conversations and meetings etc. -- basically, as if you've already graduated and are looking for a job.

The goals are two-fold: (1) to truly understand what these people do on a day-to-day basis and whether you're committed and interested enough to make the investment; and (2) to develop a network of contacts and a plan for finding a job for the summers and after you graduate.

You will likely be 100% on your own for the job search. DO NOT, in any way, hope or expect that your law school career services office will help you when the time comes. They're all over-burdened and under-prepared to help, especially with non-traditional searches like non-profits.

Another source to skim or jobs (law-related and policy-related), is www.bradtraverse.com. I think it's $5 a month -- great aggregator of jobs in DC, and you could search for relevant terms to see what kind of jobs come up.

One last note: it doesn't sound like you're interested in the big law firm world, but a word of caution about all that. The starting salaries at a small number of firms are indeed very high and can help pay back law school debt fairly quickly. BUT those firms expect more than a few pounds of flesh in return (crazy hours, often on an emergency/last-minute basis) AND they're near impossible to get. These days, unless you get very (VERY) top grades the first year, you're pretty much screwed. There are legions of very smart people with law degrees who are also hauling around tremendous debt because somebody has to graduate in the bottom 70% of the class.

[Anonymous]

Lawyer mom here and what the others say is almost all correct. My .02 here. There are only two ways that it makes sense financially to do this. One is to go to a great law school (locally that would really only be Georgetown) and do well there so that you can get a big firm job. Even in this economy if you can make that happen you can pay off the loans with a few years of work at a firm (our starting salary is $140K). But that strategy only works if you have all the academic credentials to make it happen. The only other way it makes financial sense is to keep your law school costs down as others have suggested and then find a non-law firm job that pays enough to pay back any debts. Having said all that you will be very unlikely to get a paying job in "public interest" or child advocacy so what you are really talking about as a feasible career choice in the area you are talking about is family law aka divorces. People who are good at this can do really well, but it's not the easiest work to do emotionally. Unfortunately there are almost no jobs where you get paid to do things like help kids on a full time basis. I agree with those who say do more research about what you want to do and weigh the tuition costs versus the job prospects very carefully.

[Anonymous]

OP - there are ways to work on the advocacy issues you want to work on without a JD. You could consider a public policy degree - I work in policy and have a grad degree in public health. I know a ton of people in advocacy who don't have a law degree.

Law school around here costs around $120K (just tuition) if I'm correct, whereas grad school might be closer to $45K and you may have more job options.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would definitely talk to someone doing exactly what you think you'll want to do -- someone doing child advocacy law. I agree with the PP, unless you're getting a free ride or the cost doesn't matter to you, law school is soooo expensive now and the job prospects are so poor that it just doesn't make financial sense.

Totally agree with this as a lawyer who has been practicing for the past 14 years. You can only get good advice about the day to day lifestyle from someone in the exact same legal speciality as you will go into - and the market is very tough right now.

[Anonymous]

The job market is terrible right now, but that could improve. Hard to say.

You will never, ever make enough money in child advocacy to pay off law school debt. So don't go unless someone else is funding it for you or you get lots of scholarships (hard to get at the law school level, it's not like college).

[Anonymous]

Lawyer here. A friend of mine put it best when they said that being a lawyer is like doing homework for a living. And that's exactly what it is -- reading, researching, writing. And repeat.

[Anonymous]

Start your exploration by talking to people at the Children's Law Center and WEAVE. There are tons of non-profits in the DC area on almost every issue. Even if you end up deciding not to go to law school, you may be able to get involved in the issues about which you care throughvolunteering with these groups.

I don't agree that you need to go immerse yourself in Above the Law. Although I agree with the PPs that law school is very expensive now, and that the top paying law firm jobs are hard to get, I don't think that is necessarily the end of your inquiry. If you are not shooting for a job at a top firm, it doesn't matter that you went to George Mason or UMD instead of Yale. The posters on Above the Law tend to post about a very small part of the legal profession - top firms in major cities. I am not sure that the chasing of the almighty dollar that goes on at ATL in boom times (NY to 190K anybody?) and the hysteria about big firm layoffs in bust times is particularly relevant to you.

The bottom line is that you shouldn't go into massive debt for a professional degree period. If you can't figure out another way to make it work, then keep looking.

[Anonymous]

I agree with the others about the job market. If you want to be sure about a job, you HAVE to go to a top school. I went to a top 3 law school and was in about the middle of the class with an excellent resume otherwise (but no law review), and there were plenty of firms that would not have taken me. And firms, especially the bigger ones, tend to be law school snobs. That said, tons of kids from schools outside of the top 10 or so get jobs, but it is 1000 times harder and more stressful, and they often pay much less.

One other thing to consider, since you have kids, is the amount of work involved in law school itself. I worked like 20-30 hours a week in undergrad, whereas law school kept me busy (and stressed) enough that I worked maybe 10 hours or so a week, here and there (and it was mostly doing research for professors, more for the point of culling clerkship recommendations than making money). Confining classes and studying to times when your children are in school could likely be tough, especially if you're worried about keeping your grades high enough to compete for jobs.

Some schools have loan forgiveness for lawyers pursuing public interest work, although I don't think it's that common. They also take into consideration your spouse's income, and I'm not sure how that would impact you.