Reply to Would you recommend a legal career?

Forum Index » Jobs and Careers

Reply to "Would you recommend a legal career? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The job market for new lawyers is in a state of collapse. It's free-falling and we won't see the bottom for a few years. Unless you can go to a top 20-25 law school, or are willing to move to an underserved market (Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota), finding a job can be very, very tough. Law school is expensive.

If you don't know what to do with your life, keep looking. Don't go to law school . Law school is not the reliable stand-by that it used to be. [/quote]

Agree completely.

When I graduated from law school 33 yrs. ago (top 25 school, moot court board director), law was still a profession.  Now it is almost entirely a business.  There is far less civility and professionalism.  I practiced with non-profits (public defender trial & appellate) for 5 years, was an arbitrator, 2 yrs. in mid-size private firm in NJ, and 26 yrs. in a federal agency, the last 21 as a manager/ senior policy advisor and a mediator (volunteer).

Job satisfaction as a lawyer has in most cases gone down in the past 20 yrs.   That was certainly my experience.  The quality of life trade-off in a federal job can be worth it, although even there the job satisfaction as a federal attorney has gone down significantly over the past 10 yrs. or so.

My advice is that unless you have a clearly thought out plan for what kind of practice you want, where you want to do it, and how you might get there and sustain yourself, law is a dicey career proposition now.  Even then it's not easy.

Most of my friends in private practice envied my independence and flexibility (and interesting work) without the pressure to be a rainmaker.  Of course, they also make 2 to 20+ (in at least one case) times what I make, but as one noted, "you have the best odds of all of us of actually living to enjoy your retirement."

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics