don't get me wrong, it's a great opportunity to do fulfilling work and make a a lot of money, (but volunteers can do fulfilling work, and the lotto is also a good opportunity to make a lot of money and they won't put you almost $200k in the hole). but that really is only true for those who don't have to pay their way through with loans (remember that $200k hole?). for people like me it's more like i gotta hope i do well enough to put myself in position to rub elbows with the right people, because, let's face it, the only people who get jobs that payout enough to cover the cost of school are the ones who schmooze the best.
the top students in the class don't necessarily get the best jobs, the self promoters do. that's logical fallacy of law school number 1. logical fallacy number 2 is that law school = future success and financial windfall. that's what attracted me to it in the first place. the idea that i could do something where i could help people and make bread doing it was all i needed to know. law school was for me. the third logical fallacy of law school is what i just mentioned: the fulfilling work. yes, there are Gloria Allred types out there who advocate for causes they believe in and earn a nice living doing it (not to mention a reputation), but to be fair, it's usually only the full-ride kids who can justify "doing it for the love, not the money" type jobs. the rest of us federal and bank loan students have to get gigs that can cover those loans. we are the soulless bloodsuckers who give lawyers a bad name, but we only do so out of necessity. it's the way the system is set up. these law schools have to provide us with an immense pool of resources just to learn us the law and how to use it. in order to fund all that, especially for private schools (like mine), they charge us ridiculously high tuition. in my case when you add on fees, I'll be paying around $60k/year. 6-0. if my applications hadn't been sabotaged, (but that's another blog) I'd be in state at a state school and I'd be paying $13-$24k/year.
but I'm getting away from the real issue with law school: the real job market. when i graduate there will be hundreds of jobs available. hundreds of jobs with thousands of applicants. and each applicant without a scarlet "H" or navy "Y" on their diploma is already at a disadvantage. among the jobs that don't hire exclusively from the ivy, you have to deal with the other of the several top 40 schools in the greater NY area. once those jobs get filled, it's time to push for job as a PD or ADA which will earn you between $40k and $100k/year, which sounds good until you consider cost of living in NY. what $400/mth would get me in Durham I'd be paying $1000+ for up here. now scale that up to a home suitable for a person with a law degree. now add on price of gas, food, doctor bills, repairs -- oh yeah, and the $2,000+ you'll be paying in loans each month... get it? unsustainable. then there are the clerk positions that you could get as a 1L-2L in law school. that's what the next bit of us have to look forward to. now let's consider my unique situation: I'm not only going to have to glad-hand my way into a decent gig, but I'm going to have to do so while convincing a firm in NC that my NY education will translate to NC law. and that's if I'm lucky enough to find a job at all... did i mention that there's a very real possibility that i could go through law school and do everything right and intern over the summers and STILL wind up jobless and in debt? because that's true, too.
so I'm starting to not feel very good about my life choices. but, hey, there's always the JD-MBA route...
