Law School

If law as a discipline interests you, law school is fun. Making a living as a lawyer can be challenging, especially if you look and act frum, or have serious concerns about engaging in immoral conduct (such as helping evil-doers prosper). Remember that the big money is law is in being a hired gun for people whose misconduct requires one – helping the innocent is less lucrative. One can have a perfectly respectable career as a lawyer, and one totally compatible with a hareidi lifestyle, but you probably will not even be in the running for the “filthy rich” lifestyle many law school students aspire to. Note that public law schools in one’s home state are usually affordable, and well qualified students can get merit scholarships at private law schools (but borrowing $150K on the assumption that in three years you’ll be making that much as an associate at a fancy law firm is probably folly, especially for a frum person). If a legal career appeals to you independent of the hope of getting an upper class parnasah out of the deal, you should probably consider going to law school.

I work in an accounting firm and hope to become a CPA. My boss always tells me to go to law school and become a lawyer because she says accounting is 90% work and 10% bs…..but law is 10% work and 90% bs….so hatzlacha to you!!!!

As one who has practiced law for fifteen years, Akuperma is completely wrong about the practice. Law is what you make of it. Rarely are people completely “innocent” or entirely “guilty.” Like the rest of life, there are significant gray areas. Most disputes are often honest misunderstandings of the facts with the sides having divergent interpretations or recollections. Having said that, there are honest lawyers and dishonest ones. The betters ones, those who are well respected and the most successful, in my experience, are the honest ones.

Seems like something happened to my previous post…

What it should have said is:

Ironically, the Partners at the firm where I work all agree that given the chance to do it all over, they wouldnt become lawyers, and I qoute, “Its a waste of time and money”

Sacrilege

So what’s better? Accounting? Finance? Everything got hit!

WIY

The consensus is that they would work on Wall Street.

Moq

The Partners didnt graduate yesterday. A lot of lawyers were fired in the down turn as well, I’m going to guess the Wall Street Financiers who were fired werent the 20+ year veterans.

The logic was that in order to become Partner you have to put in 80 hour work weeks (for arguments sake) On Wall Street you work 9-5 and make pretty much the same salary.

Granted, once you make Partner life is good, until then…not so much.

Wall Street has been firing countless financers with 30+ (and less) years experience, left and right.

By the way. Lawyers need to bill 2000 hours per year. That works out to 8.4 billing hours per day on a 5 day workweek with 15 days vacation.

That is not an 80 hour week.

neither is every billable minute working.

Nononsense is 100% correct about medical school. DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT GOING TO MEDICAL SCHOOL IF YOU ARE IN IT FOR THE MONEY. I say that as someone who is married to a physician who finished her training with over two hundred thousand dollars of debt and who has taught medical students since 1998. Physician salaries aren’t what people think they are; only a few specialties are lucrative today. And the training is grueling: 80 hour weeks including 24 hour shifts.

when i was looking into career possibilities I asked my uncle now a successful lawyer in the ny area whether law is a good field to go into? he said he 100% wouldn’t recommend it since the few success new comers are ones who went to the ivy league universities! the competition is huge there are tons of young lawyers without work at all and the only “in” is to have someone who will promise to take you in their firm…

if you still have a chance to decide your career plan the lucrative fields today are: medicine,business (and accounting is always needed around the world)

Ender

If you are good in math/statistics maybe look into becoming an Actuary. While you cant apply a full BTL towards the degree, if you get a BA in accounting or mathamatics you may be able to apply some Yeshiva credits if you get the degree through Touro.

(my background: finished law school a few years ago, work as a patent attorney, obviously have many friends/acquaintances who are attorneys.)

– whoever mentioned it before, i cannot emphasize enough that the legal marketplace (as a whole) was hit very hard. this is true nationwide, but nowhere moreso than NYC. put simply, the demand for lawyers has gone down drastically, but the supply of lawyers (i.e, the number of new law school graduates coming into the job market every year) is higher than ever before. you don’t need a degree in economics to understand what this means.

– the reason for this is (in part) due to the fact that the barrier for entry into law school (and the legal profession) is very low. there are no prerequisites for law school (case in point

– you can get a BTL, take the LSAT, and go to law school). as a result, 10’s of 1000’s of college graduates with relatively-worthless (from an employment/earning standpoint) undergraduate degrees (think philosophy, history, sociology, etc., etc.) apply to (and attend) law schools every year.

– the case has always been (and is true all the moreso now) that, when all things are equal, the best jobs will go to the most qualified students. since there are far fewer jobs now, the competition for them is incredibly fierce. if you do a bit of searching, you can find many reports, articles, etc., documenting how so many lawyers are unemployed now, including many ivy league graduates, etc. so, the only way that investing 3 years and probably around $150k in student loans is worth it, is if you attend one of the top 14 law schools (the higher the better in large part), or you finish at the very top (say %5-10) of one of the top 100 law schools. any school ranked below 100 (on the US news list) is simply not worth attending, in most cases. the reason being what i wrote above – would you rather hire a top student from hofstra, touro, etc., or an average student from columbia (again, assume all other factors are equal)? you simply do not have a good chance of getting a job paying more than 50k/year (starting salary) if you attend a law school ranked below 100 or so.

the ONLY exceptions to this rule (in sum: either go to a top 14 school, or else do VERY well at a top 100 school, or else it is VERY unlikely that you will be getting paid more than 50k/year when you graduate) are:

1. if you have a job waiting for you when you go to law school (i.e. your parent/close relative has a firm, or is a partner in a firm, or is a major client of a firm).

or

2. you have a specialized background/education that you can apply to your legal career (and which therefore distinguishes you, and makes it so that the history, philosophy, etc., majors can’t compete with you for the same jobs), for example, a hard science/engineering degree (i.e., chemistry, electrical engineering, etc.) which enables you to practice patent law, or an accounting/finance degree which may give you something of an advantage in tax law, as well as in corporate, securities, and bankruptcy. now, there are many unemployed lawyers in these areas, too, but far fewer.

something else to think about: your law school performance is based entirely on your grades which are (for the most part) given based on a single blind-graded (i.e., the professor does not see your name, just your answers, and gives the grade “blind”) exam for each class. the exams almost always consist of 3-5 essay questions, the answers to which are usually 10-20 paragraph responses. many BTL graduates have poor english writing skills, especially when compared to college graduates who have been writing essays/papers for 4 years. even with a “gemmara kup,” this puts many BTL graduates at a significant disadvantage.

not trying to dissuade you if you really think its for your, but you need to know the truth (at least from my own experiences/observations). law schools in particular try to skew their salary reporting data, because they make tons of $$$ every year from student loans from every student who goes to law school thinking they’re gonna make good $$ when they leave. if the schools were honest about this, far fewer people would go to law school, and the legal market would slowly normalize (hopefully).

Other than some punctuation issues 🙂 , I’ll agree with almost all of what Zalmy said.

Popa,

Ever since Cornell rejected me, they no longer deserve a position as a ‘top’ school.

Divorce lawyers have been particularly hard hit.

I had a discussion recently at the nearby probate courthouse with a divorce lawyer who said business has been down terribly. Divorce is the ultimate discretionary purchase. Many people are putting off divorces until times get better.

Lawstudent, have you checked the summer internsips at any of the City agencies and especially the Corporation Counsel?

Homeowner, I sure have, NYC Law Dept, D.A. etc. Already have judicial internships on the resume so not that. There are lots of applicants for not too many jobs, however, and that causes fierce competition for the most basic jobs. I am currently part-time doing heavy motion practice at a plaintiff-side PI litigation firm.(paid, but not great $$) If you know of anything….

A23

Maybe they heard that you like herring and yogurt…

A23

Cant really blame them then… 😉

asyyeger, which DA’s office were you in? I spent time with RMM.

asyyeger, did you know Justice Collins? He was my bureau chief.

asyyeger, no, don’t know any Bongiorno. John was chief of the Complaint and Consumer Protection Bureau, which after he got on the bench broke into two bureaus.