
The Law-School Scam - gautamnarula
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-law-school-scam/375069/
======
JustinCEO
Law school grad here (top 10 school). Anyone asks my opinion (which seems to
happen an awful lot -- I guess lots of people consider law school at some
point or another), I tell them I think it's a pretty bad idea.

1) The cost (direct and opportunity) is ENORMOUS. And even with special
federal govt repayment plans, if you don't get that big firm job, the debt
will potentially weigh you down well into middle age (with the possibility of
a nasty tax bite at the end if you have any assets and the law isn't changed).

2) The likelihood of getting a high paying job is slim. It's even pretty risky
from top 10 schools.

3) Even during the boom times, when people from top schools were getting jobs
at top BIGLAW firms left and right, people were HATING LIFE at the firm
because they didn't realize what it was going to be like. And more broadly,
lots of people get all the way through law school and realize they don't wanna
be lawyers. This is super common.

4) Non-big-firm opportunities are either super competitive (like govt or
public interest), super low paying (also includes lots of govt and public
interest), or not a great value proposition (how'd you like 200k in debt to
try scratching out 50k a year as a solo?)

Lots of the reasons people want to attend law school are pretty dumb/false
(stuff like: like to argue, wanna be prestigious, think its a safe/good-paying
career track). The people that should attend law school are those who:

a) won't be financially ruined by the decision,

b) actually want to be a lawyer, and

c) have _some real sense of what being a lawyer actually means_ (e.g. they
spent at least a couple years working at a firm in some non-lawyer capacity,
or they have a parent who was a lawyer and told them lots about their job, or
they spent tons of their time researching law and legal practice. In other
words their knowledge of legal practice is not based entirely on fictional TV
and movie lawyers).

I'd say that describes under 1% of the people enrolled in law schools
nationwide.

~~~
ibopm
Engineer turned law student here.

I am just finishing my term as a summer associate at a top IP boutique. I deal
with patents everyday and it is literally soul crushing at times.

Especially with software patents, it is the most ridiculous thing I have ever
spent time on. After I get called to the bar, I am going back to my
programming roots. Unfortunately, I've been rusty while attending law school
and basically have to relearn everything.

That's okay though, because I'd rather do it and become an example to other
people so they won't make the same mistake I did.

~~~
graeme
Why finish?

I left law school in the middle of my second year to start a business.
Typically, when I talk to non-practicing lawyers now, they say "I wish I did
that".

If you're sure you don't want to do law, then finishing it + passing the bar
is pure waste. Time is precious. Your 20s are especially precious.

It sounds like you've got a year or two left on this path. That's 10-20% of
your 20s. What does it get you?

~~~
ibopm
Maybe I'm doubting myself, but I'm not ready. My programming skills have
deteriorated so much. I'm also utilizing law school as a safe haven where I
can try to fully grok combinators, functional programming (Haskell), and meta-
programming (macros in Lisp).

Since I only aim to pass in law school, I don't go to any classes at all. It
is almost exactly the same as not having school or a job. Having this kind of
free time and the (temporary) lack of financial pressure is valuable and I can
use it to grok more hipster things that will hopefully help me code better
later on.

On another note, I am in Canada but want to move to the US. I'm thinking of
building a good portfolio and then grabbing a job down in silicon valley to
get into the US. I'll need time to do that, law school gives me time.

~~~
graeme
Oh, you're in Canada. Your situation is far less dire. Though articling adds
to the time required to pass the bar.

But lack of financial pressure is an illusion. Unless you've got family
support that will end with school, you're running up debt, not getting income,
and not learning a skill that will be of any use to you.

If you're truly certain law is not for you, the only thing finishing really
gets you is an ability to not look silly to others when you describe what
you're doing with your life.

You'll value that now, but feel silly about it later.

~~~
ibopm
I completely agree with you. But when every single person in your life is
telling you to just finish and article, it is really hard not to. I feel silly
about it already, I only wish I had the balls to disregard the opinion of
everyone in my life, but I really don't have it in me.

That's also why I want to move to the US, so I can get away from these risk-
averse people who have my "best interest" at heart. Because they end up living
my life for me, and enough is enough.

I also think people are more open to entrepreneurship in US, whereas people in
Canada feel pretty comfortable with their situation.

~~~
graeme
It's tough. I still remember calling my dad to tell him I didn't want to go to
law school anymore. "Oh shit" was his reaction.

For the first few months, everyone thought I was nuts. For the first two
years, I still heard constant doubts.

But then the doubts ceased, and people started to say "hey, that's pretty cool
what you're doing" and they asked how I did it.

There's no getting around that discomfort. Right now you're prioritizing
present comfort over future regret. Would you be comfortable sending this
discussion thread to yourself five years from now?

What got me around that block was reading the Four Hour Workweek, especially
the first couple chapters. I'd check it out – buy it right away.

(I do LSAT prep, incidently, [http://lsathacks.com](http://lsathacks.com) is
my site, and I run the LSAT subreddit. You may have seen my stuff.

Also, Canada is supportive of entrepreneurs too, you just need to find the
right neighborhood and social group. I live in the Plateau in Montreal, where
a good quarter of the neighborhood is a student or self employed. I don't feel
out of place.)

------
omegaham
There are way, way too many lawyers in this country.

Back in the good ol' days, law was a profitable endeavor. It was limited to
the elite, and as a result there was a great scarcity of people who were able
to become lawyers. They could then charge a lot of money for their services
and become rich.

This changed as soon as law schools became the dumping ground for people who
wanted to become professionals but sucked at math. Can't do engineering?
Programming's a bitch? Your lab grades suck too much to get into med school?
Law school will take you! They'd better; they're charging 40k a year for it.

Then these kids get out into the working world and find out that BigLaw firms
will work your ass to the bone. Why not? You can't quit; you're lucky to have
the job in the first place, and you have $250k of debt. Okay, so BigLaw is out
if you don't want to be driven to a nervous breakdown. How about being a
public attorney? $35k a year salary. Okay, that sucks... how about being an
ambulance chasing personal injury lawyer? Not going to happen, because there
are tens of thousands of people just like you who went through the above
options and realized that they were just as fucked. So now every billboard in
town has a different grim-looking face promising the moon to anyone with a
slip-and-fall case. "I don't get paid until you get paid!" There's only so
many people who can slip and fall on a rogue can of peas at the Kroger, and
you can't pay the bills with the few that will come to you.

As a result, almost a majority of people who go to law school don't end up as
lawyers. The ones who do almost universally say that they wouldn't do it over
again if they had the opportunity.

The organizations that profit from this? BigLaw and the law schools. BigLaw
firms profit immensely because they have a massive supply of new lawyers who
will take anything that's given to them. 90 hour weeks? Thank you sir, may I
have another! I have student loans to pay!

The law schools also make a killing because, like many other colleges, they've
managed to convince people that a college degree is The One True Path to
attaining the American Dream. The people who get shafted, of course, are the
newly minted lawyers.

~~~
jimmaswell
I've been seeing a lot of "DUI attorneys" advertised lately. Maybe that's
become lucrative?

~~~
JustinCEO
That's a bread and butter practice area for lots of criminal defense attorneys
but I'd imagine its just as glutted as the rest.

------
_delirium
Since getting a law degree here (Denmark) is tuition-free, and the incoming
class is regulated to be approximately in line with the annual demand for new
lawyers, everything in this article reads like bizarro-land. Yeah, it _would_
be a mess if students paid for educations out of pocket, and also were the
ones who decided how many people were needed in a given field (a field in
which they did not as of yet have any expertise). That does sound like a good
recipe for a bunch of people in debt not able to get jobs. Here is a solution:
don't do that.

~~~
kghose
"the incoming class is regulated to be approximately in line with the annual
demand for new lawyers"

There are dangers with trying to predict demand for individual goods and
services for larger countries/markets.

~~~
Perdition
Sure, but market signalling in a profession which takes years of education and
training can lead to the same issues.

And this article shows that market signalling is largely not working in this
case (because people do not approach education on a rational market basis).

------
imroot
I [semi-foolishly] graduated from law school in 2008. I was fortunate, as an
employer paid for the cost of my law degree (and for my bar exam), and then
laid me off in 2010 due to the economy tanking (and forgave all of my debt).

Since graduating, most of my friends (including myself) have all moved to
careers where the law is not the primary driver; most are saddled with a
mountain of debt, make between 40 and 80K/year (most first year law grads make
less than 60K in their first year).

People think that lawyers are glamorous, due to the fictionalization of their
career (law and order). You have attorneys who are either left or right wing
whackjobs (I went to law school with a woman who was only going to law school
so that she could overturn Roe v. Wade) who have no sense going into law, let
alone practicing with clients.

I'm much happier as a programmer/nerd. Even with being on call, I still sleep
much much better at night. I'll still do legal things (contract law, estate
planning, and not giving legal advice to drunk people), but, I never call
myself an attorney and I rarely admit that I'm a lawyer to anyone outside of
my friends and family.

With that said, Law school is something that plays on the dreams of these
kids. They're saddled with debt from undergrad and post-grad, thinking that
they're going to be the next Erin Brokovich or Jack McCoy. My friends joke
that Law School made them better drinkers, better readers, and that their
6-figure student loan debts came with a great group of friends. Sadly, that's
where most kids come out of law school with these days -- a drinking problem,
a mountain of debt, and nowhere to go.

------
burritofanatic
Yet there are hidden gems like like CUNY Law, which really should get more
looks, particularly if a student is truly interested in doing public interest
work.
[http://www.law.cuny.edu/admissions/tuition.html](http://www.law.cuny.edu/admissions/tuition.html)

Though I don't truly regret going through law school then transitioning after,
I really should have looked at financing the education like buying a home with
a 30 year mortgage. A 20% downpayment would have defrayed quite a bit of the
cost, and the path to saving that money would have given me time to consider
the decision further. This doesn't have to be the rule, but it's an excellent
guideline for anyone making such a big financial investment.

------
brerlapn
For-profit law schools aren't the problem, law schools are. For-profit
students at schools like the one in the article may be "subprime" as far as
earning potential or the ability to pass the bar goes, but for graduates of
schools outside of the top ten or fifteen schools your debt is likely to be
nearly as high as from the school in the article without much better job
prospects. Florida Coastal's tuition and costs are a lot, but they're not out
of line with private law schools and a number of public ones (UPenn-$55k per
year/UVA-$48k per year for in-state) until you get past the top 25 schools
(and if you're not going to a top school, you really need to do some deep
thinking about why you are still going to law school at all). All of the
disadvantages of student loans apply to not-for-profit law students, as well.
That's a lot of money to pay for a job market that is not great, and the
warnings about poor earning potential and high debt load that they cite for
students there are just as applicable to non-profit students, too. Law school
--for profit or not-for-profit--isn't a bad idea for _everyone_ , but it's
hardly a good idea for most, either.

Based on the title I fully expected this article to be about the larger law
school market and graduates' debt and job prospects. "The Law School Scam" is
a lot broader than for-profit schools.

~~~
leoc
I think the article addressed this very squarely:

> It is important to note that while InfiLaw’s abuse of the student-loan
> system may be egregious, it is far from unique. Ultimately, this story is
> about not only for-profit law schools, or law schools, or even for-profit
> higher education. It is about the problematic financial structure of higher
> education in America today. It would be comforting to think that the crisis
> is confined to for-profit schools—and indeed this idea is floated regularly
> by defenders of higher education’s status quo. But it would be more accurate
> to say that for-profit schools, with their unabashed pursuit of money at the
> expense of their students’ long-term futures, merely throw this crisis into
> particularly sharp relief. To see why, consider the regulatory and political
> mechanisms that have allowed InfiLaw to make such handsome profits while
> producing disastrous results for so many of its “customers.”

[...]

> What, after all, is the difference between the InfiLaw schools and
> Michigan’s Thomas M. Cooley, or Boston’s New England Law, or Chicago’s John
> Marshall, or San Diego’s Thomas Jefferson? All of these law schools feature
> student bodies with poor academic qualifications and terrible job prospects
> relative to their average debt. In recent years, as law-school applications
> have collapsed, all of these schools have, just like the InfiLaw schools,
> cut their already low admissions standards. And, like Florida Coastal,
> Arizona Summit, and Charlotte, all of these schools now have a very high
> percentage of students who, given their LSAT scores, are unlikely to ever
> pass the bar. Ultimately, what difference does it make that none of these
> schools produce profit in the technical (and taxable) sense, because they
> are organized as nonprofits?

> The only real difference between for-profit and nonprofit schools is that
> while for-profits are run for the benefit of their owners, nonprofits are
> run for the benefit of the most-powerful stakeholders within those
> institutions.

------
jstalin
Relevant:

Imagine for a moment that you are the owner of a popular restaurant located on
a street with many restaurants. You do your best to provide the best
experience to your customers while staying ahead of the competition by keeping
your prices down. You try to avoid spending too much on labor, and do as much
of the work yourself as you can, often putting in long hours. Although there
is a good wholesale market nearby, you drive an extra hour to another market
just to get your ingredients a little cheaper.

One day a wealthy patron who is a big fan of your cooking announces a new
idea. Because he wants as many people as possible to enjoy your food, he is
going to pick up the tab for most of your customers. You can just go on doing
what you always do, but when the check arrives for many tables, this wealthy
patron will pay the tab. The next day, your waitress complains that there are
too many tables and you should hire more help. What would you do?

Normally, you would try to find a way to avoid hiring another person as it
would eat into what little profits you make. But now you realize there is
another solution. You can just raise prices. Since most of your patrons are
not paying for their meals, your place will still stay popular and you won’t
have to worry about losing business to your competition. So why not hire
another waitress? While you are at it, why not hire a manger so you don’t have
to be there all time, and stop driving to the further market?. Whatever
increase in costs you suffer you can make up for by raising prices more and
more.

Now imagine all your competitors also have wealthy benefactors picking up the
check for many of their customers. You can all raise prices constantly without
losing any sleep – or business.

This scenario is effectively what America’s higher education financing system
has turned into. There are many reasons why college tuition is rising faster
than virtually anything else, from more applicants than ever to state budget
cuts for public universities, but all of those factors are allowed to persist
because often times the person getting the degree is not the person paying the
tab – not for today anyway.

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/why-tuition-
keeps-r...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/why-tuition-keeps-rising-
spoiler-alert-government-intervention)

~~~
pzxc
> often times the person getting the degree is not the person paying the tab –
> not for today anyway

The same thing -- only an indirect connection between buyer and seller --
could be seen as a primary cause of the rise in healthcare costs as well.

~~~
sanderjd
In theory, the wealthy patron who _is_ paying the tab would be the one to
control the rate of price increases. We seem to get into these perverse
situations by balancing our desire for the government to provide beneficial
social services with our desire for the government to avoid manipulating
prices in ostensibly private industries. Libertarians and socialists may be
right that each of their extremes are better than the middle ground, but it's
much easier to get support for a compromise.

------
brianbreslin
Interesting piece. A couple local law schools here in Florida tried to double
their enrollments in the last 5 years. What ended up happening was they had to
bankroll bullshit clerkship jobs for the students to be able to get any sense
of a job, lest their rankings tank. By having these 3-6month clerkships
underwritten by the school (presumably paid for by the ridiculous tuition),
the school was able to say that 90% of their students had a job within 6 weeks
of graduation.

I at one point in my life thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I even took the
LSAT prep stuff while interning at a law firm while in college. That was the
most boring, time wasting 3 months of my life. I RARELY meet a lawyer who
loves being a lawyer.

~~~
voolite
Lawyer here-- graduated in the 1990's. I do enjoy being a lawyer, but I have a
solid job working for a government agency where my particular skills and area
of expertise (a relatively obscure set of federal regulations) are valued and
I have interesting co-workers. I would not want to work for a large firm,
however, even though I theoretically could be paid much more.

Before I went to law school, I worked for over a year in a small law office,
where I was taught the old fashioned way how to do legal research; I enjoyed
the heck out of it. All my life I've been the kind of person who likes to look
up stuff just for fun.

Funny what you say about LSAT test prep-- actually taking the LSAT was one of
the most enjoyable, exhilarating moments in my life. For those who haven't
taken it, it's basically a test of reading comprehension and logic puzzles,
all taken at breakneck speed. I've always been able to read more quickly than
most, and I enjoy logic and mathematics so it's not like these skills were new
to me, I felt like I'd been preparing for it my whole life. It was like doing
a speed run down a mountainside, but with my mind. I scored at the 99.3%.

I also really enjoyed law school, and I wound up graduating at the top 5% of
my law school class.

However, it really, really isn't for everyone.

------
joshuaheard
I went to a for-profit law school and it is not a "scam" as the article
suggests. The law school described itself as the school of last resort for
those wanting to go to law school but not able to get into more exclusive
schools. They would take almost anyone into the program, but the grading was
rigorous: 1/3 flunked out the first year, 1/3 flunked out over the course of
the program, so only 1/3 of entering students graduated. At least they were
given the opportunity to try.

The problem identified in the article is not the for-profit schools. It is
rational for private enterprise to respond to government incentives. The
problem is the excessive government incentives. There are too many lawyers, so
the government should not be subsidizing legal educations. That is the
solution.

By the way, my for-profit law school has a four-year part-time night program
so I worked as a paralegal to pay for my tuition. I only took out a small loan
to take time off to study for and take the bar exam, which I passed on the
first try.

~~~
coldcode
What idiotic politician(s) thought that unlimited guaranteed law study loans
was a good idea? I guess if you own such a for profit law school it is a good
idea. But it's dreadful governance. I'm not against helping people get a
decent education but infinity is not a reasonable limit.

------
misiti3780
Imagine the irony of clicking on this article and then seeing this ad:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/smy9xlxvdynr91f/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/smy9xlxvdynr91f/Screenshot%202014-08-15%2000.08.03.png)

~~~
rquantz
I got the same thing. Amazing.

------
dmarble
Georgetown law grad here who maxed out loans, worked during school, and put
the excess capital into my first startup (cheaper than a small business
loan!), which was law/tech-related. Not that I recommend that approach... I'm
now back in software product management, which is what I did before law
school.

I tell people law school is a bad book club. You read a crap-ton of mostly
boring books, talk about them, and usually take a test at the end of each
course. Occasionally there's an amazing instructor to make a subject
enjoyable.

I'd prefer in the US we keep law as a graduate program, but tear down the
antiquated 3 year system. Law school should be one year, with optional
"residency" and specialist training like medicine. You'd get the research,
writing, and basic subjects in that one year, which are all you need for most
actual lawyering. Residency would be the hands-on training you never get at
law school unless you had an amazing clinical program. Bar exams should be 1
basic exam covering that 1-year curriculum, and additional exams if you want
to be certified to practice a specialty.

------
rrggrr
Prospective law students, some things to look forward to at many firms: \-
Wannabe litigators, most of your cases will settle. You'll spend agonizing
hours preparing and rarely see a courtroom battle. Your time will spent
posturing for your client and opposing counsel, pandering to your client's
aspirational fantasies of outcome, and dealing with internal office politics.
When you do make it to Court inept Judges and unsympathetic clients will weigh
on you. \- Transactional attorneys, your eyes will bleed from the thousands of
pages of boilerplate text you're going be reading every day, and the copy &
paste keys on your keyboard will be worn beyond recognition. The dissonance
between helping clients manage risk (ghost chasing) and not screwing up their
deals will be maddening. \- The pressure to bring in business can be crushing.
You signed on to practice law, only to find out it soon becomes a sales,
marketing and customer service gig.

------
spiritplumber
My cousin graduated from arguably the best law school in our country, got a
job with a multinational firm right out of school... and six months later I
(who was still in engineering school) had to go wrestle with him, AND security
guards, to get him out of the office where he had barricaded himself after a
paranoid breakdown. Later, he had to talk me out of demolishing the firm. I
have no first hand experience with the legal profession other than paying the
guy who does my patent paperwork, but from what I've read, there is way too
much stress, both in and out.

------
brotoss
I dropped out after my 1L year last summer and could not be happier with the
decision. I landed a job working in compliance and have time to teach myself
to code or whatever else. Law school is the worst.

------
VMG
> For-profit law schools are a capitalist dream of privatized profits and
> socialized losses

Oh come on now...

------
dandare
"...capitalist dream of privatizing profits while socializing losses" \- what
a nonsense! Socialising losses has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism as
an economic system. Take your stinky socialist agenda elsewhere.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Socialising losses has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism as an
> economic system.

That (and how) it socializes harms while privating profits, and thereby serves
to advance the interests of the capitalist class at the cost of others, is the
feature for which the system was given the name "capitalism".

------
GoldenHomer
I was reminded of a Simpsons quote: "You let me down, man. Now I don't believe
in nothing no more. I'm going to law school".

