Legal Employment... worse than your worst nightmare

It's no secret that the employment picture for law school grads is abysmal right now.  Frankly, I don't even think anybody is willing to explore the depressing realities for those who are graduating at the bottom of T3/T4 classes. 

If I had to thumbnail, I'd say your odds of getting a job as an attorney if you finish in the bottom 50% of your T3/T4 are probably somewhere on the order of 1 in 5.  Frankly, I think 1 in 5 is still too generous, but it's illustrative.

I was visiting with some new acquaintances who are all graduates of a similar law school to the one I'll be entering.  It's in the same state, classes are about the same size, and from what I can gather, the general characteristics of the school are pretty darned close to the school I'm going to.  (Same general rankings, historically, etc.)

Out of the 5 who I met, only one of them got a job after graduation.  The job was in document review for a relatively large firm. 

The real eye opener was when they mentioned the #2 graduate in their class who didn't get a law related job at all.

That was a new one for me.  Time was, you could still claw your way into a great law job from a lesser school:  you just had to graduate at or near the top of your class. 

Granted, these are anectdotes and based on secondhand accounts, but what a nightmare out there.  Take whatever you thought was a horrible law hiring environment and make it twice as horrible.  That's an idea of how bad it is right now.

For entering 1Ls or folks considering applying to enter in 2012, I'd say think long and hard about this one.  Really.  Then, think twice.

I can't tell you the number of times acquaintances (practicing attorneys) have said things like, "I advise young people that if you can do ANYTHING, anything at all other than going to law school, you should do that other thing." 

Granted, a lot of that is your typical whineyness that you encounter any time you bump into an insular professional group of people, but the information I'm getting from recent grads is so much worse than anything I could have ever imagined. 

It's unreal. 

Now, fortunately for them, they all found a career path (tangentially related to the law) that pays pretty well.  They could have gotten in with either an MBA or a JD.  Just so happens that they have JDs.  In fact, the recruiters for this field started hitting the law schools hard and heavy when they found out that JDs are just flat-out desperate for jobs.

So, I shared a view that I have, which is that prior to about 1970, a JD was a credential that was considered roughly on-par with an MBA as far as academic preparation for a career in business.

Granted, things were different, then.  Fewer part-time MBA programs.  There wasn't the proliferation of idiotic non-AACSB MBA programs.  Most MBA programs were 2 years long.

So, JDs and MBAs were more analogous back then.

I shared that with the guys and they pointed out that the starting salary in this field (which would be considered okay, but not great, for a recent MBA graduate) was a tough one to accept based on their student loan debt.

OUCH. 

(Contrast to their classmates who may have gotten MBAs after just one year of study, especially at the crappy non-AACSB schools.)

Law is a real pisser of a career.  Basically, if you don't get on the train right after graduating from Law School, it's going to be very, very difficult to get on the train sometime later in life.  Your destiny starts to be engraved in stone starting the day you start 1L.  It's very hard to distance yourself from a bad 1L year, a bad degree, a bad first job.  In the law, your first baby steps are pretty close to a destiny.

Also people are looking at this current economic downturn as something we'll "recover" from.  Like, after another couple of bad years, we'll go back to the way things were.

Personally, I don't think things are going to go back to how they were anytime soon.  Maybe not in my lifetime.  This thing shows every indication of staying bad for 10 more years at least.  And when they get better, they may get better very incrementally and slowly.

Honestly?  I think this is the new normal.  You can wait for things to get better if you want, but the people who succeed from this point forward are going to learn to fight the battle on THIS battlefield.  They're not going to wait for a recovered economy to save them.

I don't mean to beat a drum of doom here, but going to law school is going to be the biggest mistake a lot of young people could ever possibly make right now. 

Honestly, the prognosis was so dreadful that it made me question whether this is a good idea at all.  Under different circumstances, I wouldn't be doing this.  I think (perhaps arrogantly and wrongly) that what I'm doing and how I'm doing it will allow me to thread the needle here, but there's not a lot of margin for error for law school grads these days.

Just Got My Schedule

Just got my schedule and I'm pretty happy about how it works out.

My week starts with just one session of Civil Procedure that doesn't start until 1:00 in the afternoon.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be a bit of an adventure.  I have three classes and am in school from 10:10 to 4:50. 

Wednesday, two classes from 10:10 to 2:30.

Friday, just one class from 10:10 to 11:40.

So, my week really doesn't start until 1:00 on Monday a nd it ends before noon on Friday.  The middle is a little tough, but this is about as close as it gets to packing all my classes into 3 days of the week. 

The only thing I don't like is that Torts goes so late in the day (until 4:50), but that's not such a big deal.  There are only two sections for it and they are both at exactly the same time.  So, there's just no changing that.

All in all, this schedule is pretty near perfect.  Starts late, ends early and none of the classes start early.  I'll be able to put Logan on the bus every morning if I need to.  (His Mom can do this, too, but it's nice that we're both available for it.)

In the Final Countdown

Less than a month from now, I'll have orientation for law school.  Then begins the dreaded 1L year.  I'm really looking forward to this.  I should have done this a long time ago.  Way leads on to way, though and you find yourself years down the road wondering where the time went.

I got a laser printer for home.  Until now, I literally had no way to print anything from my house.  It was much cheaper than I thought it would be.  ($80).  It was inconvenient, but with the way my finances have been these past few years, I've avoided spending money on anything that isn't totally necessary.

I'm also working out quite a bit.  Law School is actually part of my motivation for wanting to do this.  I need the energy I get from a workout schedule.

Mostly, I do feel good about going back to school.  Although I never really enjoyed school, I enjoyed the idea that I was working towards a goal.  I've felt a little adrift ever since I finished my MBA.  Triathlon filled that void for a while, but after that, I should have taken night classes in something. 

So, not too much longer, and I'll be a full-time student again, for the first time since the early 90s.  This time, I'll be the old guy in the class.  This will bookend my experience as a 17 year old student taking classes at a community college in California.  From being one of the younger people in school to being one of the older.

Now, I'm in Training

I'm in the homestretch before classes actually start.  I have a mountain of reading to catch up on.  I'm also trying to manage the rest of my life to maximize my performance in law school.

The first and biggest thing is that I've started working out again.  20 minutes on the treadmill two days ago.  10K rowing yesterday.  Rowing is a lot easier than running for me.  I just have never been much of a runner.  I have really short legs and once I put on a little extra body weight, it's hard for them to move me along very fast.

I have been thinking of trying to get a stationary bike that's the same model the Navy uses and see if I can do my PRT on a stationary bike.  Hey, I'm old.  Give me a break.  We'll see.  The run is a struggle if I don't prepare much.  If I do prepare, it's not an issue.

I really intend to keep up with fitness throughout law school to help me manage stress and keep my energy levels up.

I need to finish my E&E on Civ Pro.  It's a drag.  I am undecided whether I'll be doing the other two E&Es prior to classes starting.  I think there's a huge benefit to going through the E&Es first:  you learn at least the basic concepts of the black-letter law before setting foot in class.  However, there's now only 2 months to go. 


I still have LEEWS and Getting to Maybe to get through.  If I do, I'll hit "Planet Law School", the two other E&Es and maybe "Later in Life Lawyers".  The only other thing on the reading list that's a bit of a wish-lister is "the slacker's guide to law school".

Fortunately, for the time being, the business is doing well.  So, that eliminates a stress in my life.  It should continue to do well for the rest of the Summer.  My finances are still in a hole, but I'm digging out relatively quickly these days.

Now for the Civ Pro E&E.  Time to get crackin'.

Time to move forward

I just finished reading Thane Messenger's book and it was a much needed shot in the arm.  It had a lot of good advice, and frankly, a lot of stark reality in there.

I am getting ready to turn in my final seat deposit and I just sent off my financial aid (student loan) applications.  So, everything should be lined up for the Fall.

I need to finish reading my Civ Pro E&E, and it's a chore.  Apparently, that's the most boring of the 1L classes and based on the E&E I find that really easy to believe.

I just ordered LEEWS, and will need to read "Getting to Maybe".  There are some other books I'll try to read if I have time, but the clock is winding down.  One of them is "Later in Life Lawyers" and there's a famous book called "Planet Law School" I should be reading.

Doing all this groundwork ahead of time has already given me some good tips that should save me time and help with my grades once school starts.  Of course, I won't really know how helpful they are until I get my grades, at which point it's too late to do anything about much. 

Really, just two months until class, and I have a lot going on between now and then.  I have to take a 2 week in-residence course for my defense contracting certification.  I also need to go to my franchisor's convention.  I might just lock myself in my room and work on law school stuff.  Not sure at the moment.

It's hard to believe how time is flying.  At least, for the moment, the business is doing well for a change.  So, I'm not sweating bullets wondering how the bills are going to be paid. 

Though, I have noticed that Discover is lowering my credit limit.  Odd.  I've never made a late payment in over a decade of holding the card.  They probably pulled a credit bureau and saw how much debt I've accumulated in the past couple of years.

I am not sure I'll get all the student aid I'm shooting for.  I think some of it depends on creditworthiness.  I guess I'll know all that, soon.  At this point, I'm not very concerned about that.

My brother is moving away, soon.  He's really been my closest friend these past few years.  Prior to that, I had a good friend in the area who moved away.  I'll be seeing him this weekend to attend his son's High School graduation party.

I am looking forward to Law School to give me a circle of friends I can associate with.  I get that with the Navy Reserve, but not nearly often enough.  I guess I'm starting to feel a bit isolated in my life these days.  It'll be good to get out into society a bit.

Book Review. Law School: Getting In - Getting Good - Getting the Gold, Part one: Getting In

Thane Messenger was kind enough to send me a copy of his book, "Law School:  Getting In - Getting Good - Getting the Gold".  I'm going to give a review of it here.

"Getting In"

In the grand tradition that things were always better in the past, it is probably true that for law school students, things actually were better in the past.  It was easier to get into law school.  It didn't cost as much.

Now, stakes are pretty high.  Admissions are very competitive.  The cost is astronomical.  Perhaps most important:  a large number of people in law school will never really get good jobs.  Moreso than at any other time, a bunch of folks will really regret having attended law school, because they made a lot of bad decisions along the way.

A large part of the reason it took me this long to go to Law School is that I really didn't know what I was doing.  I didn't understand how things really worked.  Some of the guidance I got was actually wrong.

In a way, I feel like this book came to me 20 years too late.  There's a lot of advice out there about Law School, and a lot of it isn't very good.  There are a lot of misconceptions. 

Some kids are lucky.  There's a reason why Ken Griffey Jr and Sandy Alomar Jr. were major leaguers.  There's a lot of genetic lottery luck in there.  However, they also happened to grow up in the households of Ken Griffey and Sandy Alomar, respectively.

They didn't have to guess what to do or how to do it.  They had an expert in the house to help them figure it out.

To some degree, I think this happens with college educated people, too.  Children of doctors seem disproportionately to become doctors.  My father and two uncles worked in computers.  When you have a role-model who shows you the way, it is a lot easier to walk down a certain path.

I used to have a friend named Beth (not her real name) who went to law school, got a biggo job with biggo money and was a superlawyer.  Her father was also a very famous litigator in New York City.  It's not an accident that she knew what she had to do in order to get into a good law school.  Nor is it an accident that she knew what to do once in law school in order to land a dream-job upon graduation.

This book, to me, is a bit like having somebody explain those secret handshakes.  The first third goes into quite a bit of detail on everything involved in getting into law school.  I really, really wish I'd had this book 20 years ago.  My life probably would have played out entirely differently.

I did have the feeling, as I went through the "getting in" part, that I knew a lot of what he was saying, already.  Thing is, this is something I've been contemplating for 20 years.  When I was a recent college graduate, I knew, at best, maybe 10% of the stuff I knew before I read this book.

The book basically confirmed nearly everything I had already formed an impression on.  It also added to that knowledge.

In a way, that's really saying something.  I spent 20 years gaining this information and the book actually added considerably to it.

The book goes into a great deal of depth about the importance of the LSAT.  I actually wish I had read that part prior to taking the LSAT in the Spring.  I would have gotten a better score, and probably a better scholarship, if my head had been on straight, there.

It explains quite a bit about the admissions process.  Touches on things to do before you start law school.  I feel good that I was doing most of this stuff right.  However, if I had tried going to law school 20 years ago, knowing only what I knew then, it would have been an unmitigated disaster, to be certain.

The book goes at length about law school rankings, the importance of selecting some schools over others, and other realities that, frankly, sometimes are a slap in the face.

People who don't know can form reasonable-sounding opinions based on common sense.  Unfortunately, that doesn't always work in the real world.

The tidbits of wisdom in the book are almost too numerous to mention.  For instance, are part-time programs as good as full-time?  Do the rankings really matter?  Which schools should you shoot for?  What implications do they have for your career?

In a way, this reminds me of something a guy once said in a video on getting good college grades.  Basically, it boiled down to, "If you really wanted to help your kids, you would not just say 'hey, be careful out there'.  You'd give them specific tidbits of information, one at a time, when they leave, like, 'if you're at a stoplight, dont' turn your wheels to the left while stopped, even if you're going to make a lefthand turn.  If you do, and you get rear-ended, you could get pushed into oncoming traffic and a head-on collission'."

That's a bit what this book is like.  Instead of general platitudes like, "get into the best school you can", it tells you what schools those are, and how you can do it.

I don't want to publish much of the content of the book since I think that'd be unfair to the author.  Suffice to say that I found it to be a great education in the subject of getting in to a law school that can get your career started.  Again, I wish somebody had given me this information 20 years ago. 

"Getting Good" and "Getting the Gold"

The advice in this section is partly common sense, but partly some stuff that's not very intuitive.  He focuses on what to spend your time on, how much time to spend, etc.  He also references some other resources such as LEEWS. 

It does help having a guide on this section, since once law school starts, it's almost too late to do what it takes to be a top performer. 



As for Getting the Gold, the book goes into some depth as to how few jobs are really the big money jobs that many folks envision when they enter law school. 

This section ties in a little bit with "getting good" as it describes what's important to employers.  (For instance, it addresses the question of law review or not, and whether to pursue part time or summer work.)

Again, like the first section, this is stuff you could find out if you could talk to countless top graduates, but if you can't, then this book does a great job of summing it up.

I would go so far as to say that if a person is contemplating law school and doesn't already know everything in the book, that they shouldn't make the leap before getting the information.  If you can get it from your uncle who is a partner at one of the largest law firms in town, good for you.

However, if you can't get it anywhere else, this book is a great place to find the information in one convenient source.

The link is at the bottom, here.  I get no sort of referral and I'm not even an Amazon partner.  So, my recommendation is based only on my opinion of the material:

http://www.amazon.com/Law-School-Getting-Good-Gold/dp/1888960809

CWRU Calls Today

Got a call on the cell from a 216 number.  Couldn't imagine who it would be, but it turned out to be CWRU Law.  If we rewind a little bit, CWRU Law rejected me outright a few months back.  I was a little stunned at the time.  I wasn't even waitlisted.  I was one of the "Wow, you really don't belong here" guys.

Now, I really didn't intend to attend CWRU.  It was a bit of an ego-stroke thing.  I wanted to be accepted.  I also graduated from CWRU b-school.  So, I guess there was a sort of sentimental angle to wanting to be accepted to the law school. 

The caller said they're re-evaluating some of the applicants based on some sort of new or revised criteria.  She asked if anything had changed in my circumstances or whether I would be interested in them taking another look at my application packet.

In all honesty, I was going to go to U of Toledo all along, anyway.  They actually came through with a $10,000 a year scholarship.  (Roughly half-ride.)  So, they've been pretty good to me so far.  As sure as I was that I was going there before, once I got the scholarship, that pretty much sealed it. 

For the briefest of moments, I considered lying just to see if they'd re-consider my app and perhaps admit me.  However, I simply told them the truth:  that I have decided to go to a different school.