MTal alt?

I hate to be THAT GUY, and he'll probably come back and show me why I'm an idiot...

But when he said 70% of his class had no prospects at a school ranked 15-20, that automatically set off my "scaremongering" alarm.

Yea, some of his rhetoric sounds pretty Mtalesque, but we'll see.

Ethics is an upper level course at almost all law schools, isn't it?

Eh, W&L does it 1L year, but not until second semester and the other classes don't match. It is pretty unusual to do it 1L, but not completely unheard of.

Ahhhhh I knew someone would catch on. Too many people here check every last detail. Oh well. I changed my courses so no one would know my particular institution. As I've mentioned in a previous post in this thread...I want no one to know my former school.

I said no such thing. I said the bottom 70%, in light of the legal market, loans, and the state of the economy....might want to consider it, as I did.

Believe me, I simply don't want people to know. I could prove to you I went to one of them if you insist. But I just don't want the average reader to know where I went.

Then don't. Simply my recommendations. I simply want to point out things not pointed out to me a year ago. Best of luck to you.

I'm not whoever that is. I'm just trying to maintain anonymity for the most part. This is for people with questions. No need for abrasive accusations. Not speaking to you specifically, but in general.

Fair enough.

Yea I have reason to know dude is legit. I guess he's not Mtal, as fun as that would've been.

Just a quick question - where do you think the bottom 70% of a school ranked 15-20 get jobs? Or even the bottom half? How do you think they are paying back their loans?

And I'm not being sarcastic, I don't know the answer to this question.

If 70% of people at 20-40 ranked law schools aren't paying back their loans, the student loan bubble would have collapsed already. Most people at these schools will get some sort of job and pay back some portion of their loans. They're likely just very undesirable jobs or jobs that don't require a JD.

Most law graduates are going to get a job, but few get a job that justifies the cost, time, and stress of going to law school.

What you did is what I was literally two hours away from doing spring of my 1L year. Median grades at a t10, decent summer gig lined up, but I hadn't "gunned" pretty much at all since I had started law school. I made 1 outline for my fall semester and it was the worst grade I received that fall, the rest of my classes I got outlined from other people. 1L spring...that shit was toast, literally went to maybe 15 classes TOTAL for all four of my classes, didn't start studying till the week before finals, and got owned by each one. I think the only reason I didn't drop out was the t10 on the resume coupled with people telling me not to.

No one understands when you absolutely hate law school and you know that your job prospects are melting away with each day you literally do nothing. My parents didn't and gave me the whole "you go to XX school, you'll be fine." Counselor told me "you have decent grades and a decent summer gig, youll be fine!" But no, I was totally screwed. I networked my ass off this summer, playing up my undergraduate degree to try and get a big law job and it worked to a degree, but in the end I got a ton of callbacks and not one offer. Had two hiring partners call me to tell me they veto'd giving me an offer because of my grades.

I have had to work 1000X harder than everyone this year, while I get to hear everyone talking about their 160K jobs and trying to stay sane about it...So props to you for making the financially smart move, I think you'll be a lot happier because of it.

That is so disingenuous to the point it would inspire rage in a great many people. Look, I'm not against you or law school. I'm telling my story, and part of my story is that student loans for law school are a huge mess for maaaaaany people. I never said 70% aren't paying back their loans. With these stupid Federal loans that are essentially equivalent to sub-prime mortgages (lending money to this many people who really shouldn't be getting it given the legal landscape), aaaaaanybody can go to law school. And when they're out...there are so many programs to push off payment, pay according to income....et cetera. This only pushes the problem back, and back, and back. I simply cannot believe you said what you just said.

Completely understand dude. But hey, if I were at a top 10 I might have been far more amenable to peer pressure to stay too.

That was a reply directed at sunynp's post directly above it. He asked how people are paying back their loans. I speculated that most people at the first tier must be paying back at least some part of it, but most likely at shitty jobs. My bad for not quoting. Thanks for your input, though.

Fair enough...apologies. Again, just presenting what I perceive to be the oft-forgotten side of the argument. Sort of misread you there sorry.

So basically, we don't know what jobs they get other than undesirable or don't require a JD? I wish the placement information correlated class rank with job, but I guess we can figure that out for ourselves.

I mean, I've really only looked at data from T-14 schools, and most of them at least break the jobs down a bit to give you something of an idea of what types of things people are doing. Michigan released really detailed C/O 2011 data listing the exact employer or field (sheep farmer! ha!) their students were in. Hopefully many other schools follow Michigan's lead.

OP, as a practicing attorney who has 7+ years into this miserable gutter of an industry, I salute you. So many times I look back and wish I'd bailed after first year, which deep down I really wanted to.

If you think law students are bad, thank your lucky stars you never had to deal with practicing lawyers. Most are nasty, ugly, slovenly schmucks. To boot, most earn lower-middle class type wages, and carry tremendous student loan debt.

It's also amazing how incredibly stupid most of them are, although I suppose it's really not surprising since law for the past 20+ years has been little more than acadmia's dumpster, a default place where those too stupid for hard science/math and too gutless/ugly/socially inept for business or sales end up.

Practice for the most part is mind-numbingly boring- all you do is cut/paste the same boilerplate dreck together day in and day out, churning bale upon bale of, when you get down to it, completely pointless paper from one side of a desk to another.

Take heart that, whatever path you choose to pursue going forward, you'll likely earn far more money and have a more worthwhile life than if you'd chosen to stick with law. Almost every lawyer I know/hang out with hates their job and regrets going to law school. In fact, I can't name a single attorney I've ever spoken to or dealt with who doesn't utterly despise their job.

This, right here, says far more than I, a drop out, ever could. I hope all of you read this and heed what he says. I can't speak to it, but I can say I'm not surprised in the least. Thank you for your words of encouragement. And if my words mean anything to you, given how young I am, I want only to tell you that this life we have is far too precious to waste. Every passing day is another chance lost to change whatever we don't like. I don't know your situation...but there is courage in you. If it was in me it is in you. Dump the f*ckers. I did.

I applaud your honesty and I agree w/ a good bit w/ what's been said. Still, I think it's a tad ironic that you found that law students were hollow shells w/o personalities and now you've found your home w/ the fun-loving, crazy cats at US Airways, Corporate.