no, you probably shouldn't go to law school.

hey everyone if you're watching this then chances are that you once saw this he's our best closer well if you're the best closer where the hell you've been for the last three hours well gerald i specialize in troubled situations when i left here at 7pm this deal wasn't in jeopardy so i'm just trying to figure out what happened in the interim or this [Music] excuse you you're in my way or even this that's why she testified that she saw dr jacobs leaving dr westlake's office the night of the murder to protect you and thought that being a lawyer looked really really cool but then you probably started talking to some lawyers who discouraged you from going to law school or told you about how much they hated their lives and you began second guessing yourself so i'm going to take on the task of helping you decide whether you should go to law school and become a lawyer is becoming a lawyer worth it for you [Music] i know there's a theoretical path where you cannot go to law school and become a lawyer which is what kim kardashian is doing but i honestly would not recommend it for most people kim can do whatever she wants because she's already rich and well connected for most people i really wouldn't recommend this route because the point of law school and most education really is to broaden the opportunities available to you and most people do not have already the opportunities that kim kardashian has law school is a little unique as a grad school i think because it tends to be the default grad school option for college grads who don't exactly know what to do with their lives med school requires fulfilling the pre-med requirements which are a lot including organic chemistry and in that way forces people to consider really consider whether they want to go to med school before they even apply if you're hating organic chemistry junior year and really starting to like software engineering then that's going to prompt you to reconsider whether you want to go to med school at all i don't think this is a bad thing in fact i wish more careers had built-in checkpoints for people to really consider along the way whether the path that they are going down is still the path that they want to go down a phd program is similar to med school there's usually a lot of research required in order to get into a funded phd program so if you did not love economics research as an undergrad then you're not going to do the amount of economics research necessary to get into a funded economics phd program business school is like the others there is a built-in checkpoint for you to decide whether you actually want to go to b-school or not business school admissions usually requires work experience and in that way it requires a proactive decision on your part to take yourself out of your inertial state if you really like your job out of college and don't see a reason to go to b-school then you wouldn't even apply to b-school in the first place law school on the other hand is like a fever dream of inertia it doesn't have any course requirements doesn't require work experience and doesn't require any extracurriculars in fact all you need is your gpa lsat score and personal statement because of this it's an extremely appealing type of grad school for people who don't know what to do with their lives don't have the prereqs for the other types of grad schools and find continuing in the academic environment comforting not desirable comforting this is all understandable but it does mean that more students enter law school who probably shouldn't be there than other types of grad schools now then if law school admissions won't require you to really consider whether law school is for you because honestly the law schools don't care they get your tuition money either way and that's their goal then that's where i come in let's tackle some common reasons for going to law school i want to make a lot of money i want to help people being a lawyer looks fun and exciting and i don't know what else to do with my life first i want to make a lot of money to be honest this is partially why i went to law school in the first place as well i thought that law would offer a stable and lucrative salary i saw my mom worrying a lot about money and our house growing up and that honestly scarred me so i wanted to make sure that i had a job in the future where money could not hurt me i did end up graduating and getting that stable lucrative paycheck from a large law firm that big old compensation though is not typical yes some new law grads will have a salary of 215 000 right out of law school that salary however is not typical according to now a fantastic resource by the way if you're considering law school or in law school the median reported salary for the class of 2020 was actually 75 000 which is a far cry from the 215 000 that we see in the news for new grads working at small law firms which account for about half of all jobs taken at law firms salaries of 60 000 to 85 000 are typical and if you want to work in public interest disabuse yourself of any notion that you're going to make a ton of money straight out of law school the government median salary was 64 000 public interest organization median salary was 55 000 and judicial clerking median salary is 60 000. this incredible variance in salaries for new lawyers means that making a lot of money out of law school is not guaranteed while more than one-third of lawyers surveyed reported making over a hundred thousand dollars more than half surveyed reported salaries of 75 000 or less going to a higher rate law school improves the probability that you might land one of those higher paying jobs but even that big loss hour is not as attractive as it initially sounds that's because we haven't discussed two very important factors law school debt and work life balance while making 215 000 right out of law school sounds great most graduates do not get to put all that into their bank accounts your paycheck will likely be more money than you will have ever seen in your life but it will also be a lot less than you thought it would be as well because of taxes other pre-tax deductions that you should do as a responsible adult like retirement and health savings and of course student loan repayment the american bar association young lawyers division conducted a survey and found that the average student loan debt was 165 000 and one in four lawyers surveyed borrowed 200 000 or more in student loans that's a lot of debt and certainly repayable with a big loss salary or really any other salary in law but it still takes time and takes away from your lifetime wealth building law is not a get-rich-quick career some of the young lawyers surveyed and this is verbatim it's unbearable and i cannot pay enough each month to cover my loans my balance climbs even after a month's payment i lie awake at night worried about whether i will be able to give my children the life my parents gave me and whether i will ever know the feeling of true financial stability which is what i was seeking when i went to law school student loans made me hate the profession and work-life balance isn't always the greatest in law either impacted in part by the high student debt burden the typical billable hours requirement in big law is 2 000 billable hours annually which comes out to about 180 billable hours per month assuming that you take your 20 days of vacation annually and because you work more than just your billable hours especially in the beginning when you're much more inefficient let's say that for every billable hour you work you actually work 1.25 hours and this is being generous then to build 180 hours you need to work 230 hours in that one big wall also isn't predictable in terms of hours so one month you might build 150 and the next month over 250 and frankly any month over 200 billable hours will not be fun the most that i ever built in a month was around 2 30 and i wanted to die you will hear of associates who build more 250 300 even 400 but if they're talking about it like it's a point of pride then like really ignore them that is not healthy some aba young lawyers surveyed also noted that there was a relationship between their student debt and how they felt shackled to poor work-life balance it turns out that i hate being a lawyer but i can't afford to do anything else my mental health has aged me prematurely after student loans and caring for my sickly parents i have very little to have on my own this means i am forever beholden to law firm work and feel like i will never be able to afford a home or have a family of my own it's too expensive basically do not go to law school to make money yes you might be able to make a ton of money if you become a partner at a big law firm but think carefully about the student debt burden and the anticipated work life balance for those years and whether you'll enjoy that type of legal practice for the people that do great they found the right thing for them but for many people they don't enjoy that type of legal practice and they don't enjoy that type of work-life balance if money is your only goal then go into finance or become a software engineer if finance and software engineering don't appeal to you and this was definitely the case for me then law is not a bad way to go as long as you recognize its limitations when it comes to money as long as you recognize that you won't get rich right away then starting in big law is as good of a financial safety net as any many people then choose to go in-house or to smaller firms where they tend to have better work-life balance as long as you get comfortable with number of years that you'll be repaying your student debt and this could be over 20 years as long as you enjoy being a lawyer then it's not a bad way to live life at all the key is to have realistic expectations of how much you're going to make after law school and a good idea of what practice areas and what types of employers you might find enjoyable if you have that and still want to go to law school then yes going to law school is probably the right path for you but for those who think that law school is a way to get rich quick or those who don't have an idea of practice areas that they might be interested in and therefore wind up in a practice area that they detest then yes they will be disappointed by the comp second common reason for going to law school i want to help people this is a really good goal and if law school were free then yes absolutely go the problem is that law school isn't free for most people and as with making money law school loans will have a deep impact on your life more than 37 of lawyers in that aba survey noted that they chose a job that made more money over the job that they really wanted about 17 stated that they chose a job that qualifies for loan forgiveness rather than the job that they really wanted this means that if you are 150 gun home law school and have read the fine print so you know that your intended career path after law school qualifies for the school's loan assistance program or the federal loan forgiveness program then by all means go to law school you have done all the research necessary to making this informed decision bless i am excited for you to go forth and make the world a better place if however you want to help people but your intended career path is not covered by a loan repayment assistance or loan forgiveness program then i would highly encourage you to look into other career paths where you can help people to see whether those paths might resonate with you one of the biggest complaints that i hear from public interest attorneys is that they get tired of litigating day after day just individual case individual case and not seeing a lot of systemic changes for those people some of them eventually switch into policy and those jobs don't actually require a jd you do not need lost debt to work in those jobs and you might end up having a larger impact than you would with a jd anyway there are so many jobs out there where you can help people other than justin law informational interviews in the public interest space will really help you decide whether a jd is necessary for what you want to do law seems like an easy way to help people mostly because of what we see on tv but it's not the only nor necessarily even the best way to help people in fact there are a ton of jobs that you can work in right out of undergrad to help people search for a policy associate or program associate positions at non-profits and other organizations whose missions you love you can gain experience in the field that way while there you can network and also learn a lot more about what graduate degree if any is desired by that sector maybe it will be an mba or an mpp or an mph and not a jd don't just assume that a jd is the best way to help people but even if it turns out that a jd is the best way to help people in that field your previous work experience in that field will be pivotal to your job search during law school as public interest jobs really value track records of demonstrated experience and interest the third common reason for going to law school being a lawyer looks fun and exciting i call this the media exposure trap we tend to be influenced by what we see and we tend to want jobs that are more visible to us after all we can't really want to do a job if we don't know that it exists in the first place so the more visible a job is media then the more likely we are to want to have that job especially if it's portrayed in media as glamorous or lucrative or exciting and this is fine except for the fact that often media portrayals of jobs do not actually capture the realities of that job law for example certainly is glamorous and lucrative and exciting like suits and legally blonde animal clooneys seem to suggest it is but only 10 of the time so meeting about being a lawyer portrays the 10 of the time where the job actually is as exciting as it seems on the screen but if you're gonna hate the other 90 of the time then doing 90 of something that you hate in order to do 10 of something that you like does not seem like a good trade-off but how do you figure out what the other 90 of the job is like well you subscribe to my channel because that's what i'm hearing for and ask for informational interviews with all different types of lawyers in all different practice areas and different employer contests your college's career services should maintain a list of all alums and what they do after graduation including going to law school ask for this list and reach out for lawyers to learn about what they do in their particular settings when you talk to these lawyers ask for what their days and weeks look like in terms of what they read and what written deliverables they produce ask them what they like the most about a particular practice area and what they like the least as you listen to them ask yourself whether their responses resonate with you often i will listen to someone explain to me why they like a certain practice area or what they do i don't think to myself there is no way that i would like something for that reason and that is okay focusing on your internal response to their responses will help you decide what elements of their practice you want in your own or not law is such a varied field that i think most people would be able to find a way of practicing law that they like not necessarily that they would like over another job altogether but that they would be fine enough with the difficulty though lies in figuring out the details of what that looks like what practice area what type of employer there are so many different ways to practice law and in law related fields if you hope for the best you might walk out and wind up in the legal practice that you like but you also might not be lucky and land in a legal practice that you absolutely hate the more information you have about the different types of legal practices and where you would like or at least don't mind that 90 on glamorous work that the media doesn't show you then the more likely you're going to be happy with going to law school and becoming a lawyer okay last common reason i don't know what to do with my life for all the other reasons there are certainly situations where going to law school still makes sense for this reason though because you don't know what to do with your life it is not a good reason to go to law school why because law school isn't a place that you should go to find yourself or learn more about yourself and what you want going to law school because you don't know what to do with your life is a bad use of three years and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars i know it's scary to think about leaving the academic environment but going to law school isn't going to make it any less scary you just delay it by three years accrue more debt and at the end of the day you still have to face the music and stare into the void of the rest of your life and wonder where is it all going you shouldn't use law school to extend your undergrad years because it's really not for that purpose you'll get a lot more out of law school and your legal career if you go into it having a purpose and believe me some of your classmates especially those who have work experience in between undergrad and law school will enter law school with a very clearly defined purpose and that purpose that intentionality will enrich your law school experience and your career so much more sure you might find your intentionality during law school the law school is too long too expensive and too stressful to really go on the off chance that you might find yourself if you're struggling with what to do after college know that you aren't alone so many others including myself have started on what they thought would be their terminal career path only to turn around and completely pivot and that is normal in the stanford course designing your life professors burnett and evans stated that the typical person now has two to three completely different careers during their lifetime so don't put too much stock on your first career or job right out of college or even law school chances are your career will likely change a few times like myself and that is totally normal as you're trying out different jobs and talking to other people about their jobs your goal isn't to figure out what job you like or dislike your goal is to figure out what elements of your job or their job that you like and what elements that you don't like the more you focus on elements of a job rather than see jobs as predefined career paths that you have to follow the more that you'll be able to customize your career in a way that maximizes the elements that you do like while minimizing the elements that you don't that being said maybe you have law school costs covered by your family or a full ride and you really really do not know what else to do for three years if you don't mind spending three years in law school trying to figure it out then sure go to law school you'll likely learn a lot in law school and it is an incredibly enriching academic experience but even if that's the case truly consider the opportunity cost of those three years maybe you would like to work and then go to business school business school is a lot more fun than law school maybe you could just try different jobs in different industries for a year and talk to other people in other industries for a year rather than spending three years in law school point is if you're in this very narrow set of circumstances i still wouldn't recommend going to law school but your downsides are much more minimized than otherwise [Music]

Channel: Cece Xie

Views: 229,865

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Id: 3pwO0-4JGDM

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 21 2022