law school question

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Law school costs a lot more than it did 10 years ago! From experience, unfortunately! Not everyone has the gumption to start (and maintain) their own firms. I know some attorneys that are supposedly "looking" for work, but I would swear they are waiting for a job to tap them on the shoulder.

It costs more today, but 10 years ago, it was $100K for 3 years, excluding room and board. Its not that excessively much more today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm an attorney and only because my view is so different than most everyone here am I chiming in.

If he has realistic expectations about what he wants to do and the level of debt he incurs is commensurate with his projected income he should go for it.

For the record I graduated in the middle third of my tier 2 law school. I couldn't get a job paying more than $45K my first year. . . . so I declined and opened my own firm (literally 4 months after graduating). I made $180K my first year and nearly a decade later make about $500K a year (so that there is no confusion that is the amount that appears on my W-2). I have a staff of 20 (about half attorneys) that work for me.

My husband scored 150 exactly on the LSATs. He went to the same tier 2 school. He split his second year summer at two top ranked firms. Both made him offers.

Your experience is so long ago in terms of the changes to the market that it's simply not comparable to the situation today at all. The market is just saturated with attorneys right now (and thanks to the economic crisis, a lot of seasoned attorneys that were let go took jobs that the graduating 3L would have taken for a few years, meaning lots of new attorneys are out of work or can't find it in the legal field), and the ABA keeps accrediting more schools and seems unconcerned with the state of the profession.

I'm glad you have put together a fantastic life, though...makin' me jealous.

And the market when OP's relative will graduate will be drastically different than today. We are talking 4 years till he joins the workforce.