Questions that No Law School Dean Will Ever (Truthfully) Answer

I'm in the process of preparing some new useful (I hope) content for Finding a Non Legal Job. In the meantime, I decided to take another crack at a traditional "scam blog" article.

Above the Law has recently started running a series on law school success stories. It profiles law graduates who claim to be better off thanks to their J.D.'s. To be fair to ATL, they have published a number of stories about the difficulty in finding legal employment and some of the associated problems with law schools. They also disclaim that these success stories aren't necessarily representative of the environment awaiting heavily indebted and poorly trained law school graduates.

That said - what is the point of these stories other than to blunt the increasingly dominant message that law school in it's present form is a bad investment and needs to be seriously restructured? While law school critics rightly point out that the full employment statistics churned out by the law schools are borderline fraudulent data, nobody claims that there is a 100% UNemployment rate either. I have no doubt that there are a decent number of graduates who find at least OK jobs, and some subset of this group may even really enjoy their work (or at least their salaries).

Focusing on this subset is nothing new for law school apologists. One of the charges these folks make against law critics is that these critics just couldn't hack it in the law, so they're projecting their own dissatisfaction. I saw a comment on JD Underground the other week alleging this very thing.

Quibbling over this charge isn't particularly fruitful. Yes, some anti-law school commentators didn't make it too far in the law. Some did. The diversity among the opponents of the law school cartel is too great to ascribe a single underlying motive to the entire movement.

While I never went down the path of practicing law, I do know some peers who appear to be happy with their decisions to become attorneys. This doesn't matter. I congratulate anyone who has found success in the law (or any other field). I don't object to people becoming lawyers. Lawyer jokes aside, society does need a certain number of attorneys to write contracts, prosecute/defend criminals, etc.

The objection isn't to the desire others may have to become attorneys. The objection is to the law school system which: 1) knowingly plunges its students into untenable levels of debt 2) fails to provide these students with marketable skills, and 3) pumps out more graduates than the market can absorb into an industry that will only pay a select few (of those lucky enough to find relevant employment) anything approaching a reasonable salary.

Yes, some graduates are satisfied with their post law school opportunities, but highlighting this cohort is just a tactic law schools use to deflect criticism regarding the far larger carnage their collective greed has inflicted onto everyone else.

The law school deans and related apologists are quite skilled at trotting out their success stories. After all, these expert marketers are great at dismissing serious objections and instead offering well engineered PR campaigns, but here are some questions I'd love hear the law school deans address...

• Do you honestly believe that it's worth $150k to $200k plus for a degree from your school?

• Does your answer change if you knew that most experts believe you shouldn't borrow more than you expect to make your first year out of school?
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• Doesn't that reasonable rule preclude most of your students from attending your institution?
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• In the cases of particularly heavy debt loads, doesn't that preclude ALL students from attending your school? (The absolute highest starting salary even at Big Law is $180k.)
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• Law school tuition has increased considerably over the past decade, do you honestly believe the benefit of attending law school has justified this?
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• If you said yes, are you saying that you dismiss all the reports of the terrible job market over the past couple of years?
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• If yes, could you please explain why there are Craiglist ads offering $30k-$40k for entry level attorneys with top credentials?
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• Do you believe that $30k - $40k is reasonable compensation for someone who undertook three years of graduate education at the cost of six figures worth of debt?
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• If so, would you make this investment?
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• Would you encourage a family member or close friend to make such an investment?
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• Do you believe it's possible to live a normal life with such a salary and loan repayment obligations?
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• Would you feel comfortable raising a family under such a scenario?
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• Would you swear under oath that the employment statistics your school publishes are the truth - the whole truth - and nothing but the truth?
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• If yes, would your answer change if this means that the figures aren't based on partially reported data; don't include temporary work; don't include working for the school (except in a long term, professional capacity); don't include menial non-legal jobs; don't include paralegal jobs; don't include entry level, non-legal jobs that were pursued only as default options?
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• Your schools likely lists roughly 10-25% of its graduates filling "business" or "corporate" jobs - Do you believe all (or at least the vast majority) of these jobs are serious professional positions?
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• Would you swear that none of these jobs are simple service sector jobs that could be filled by someone without even a college degree?
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• Assuming 10 - 25% of your graduating class ends up with non-legal jobs, do you honestly believe 10 to 25% of your class willingly enrolled in your school to end up NOT being attorneys?
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• If yes, do you honestly believe that there are any employers that are specifically seeking (or strongly desire) non practicing recent law graduates?
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• Can you name ten such employers?
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• Can you name one?
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• Do they pay anything close to your advertised average starting salary?
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• Do you honestly believe that the average starting salary reported by your school accurately reflects what an average student will make after graduation?
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• If you answered yes, and I survey ten students ranked in the middle of your class, how many of them do you think will make within $10,000 of the average starting salary the year after law school?
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• Will any of them?
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• What if we exclude document review?
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• Do you believe temporary document review is reasonable employment for a licensed attorney who completed three years of schooling at your institution?
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• If yes, would you personally be happy reviewing electronic documents for relevance as your sole professional task?
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• If no, and you stand behind the published salary data your school offers, why do so many of graduates end up in this line of work?
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• Once again, assuming you stand by your salary data, why was this an issue even (or particularly) before the recession?
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• Do you believe any students would have really enrolled in your school if they knew they would have to work long term in document review?
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• Do you believe that students would have enrolled in your school if they knew they would end up in small personal injury law, low level insurance defense law, debt collection, or landlord tenant law?
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• If so, would you have been happy working in these areas of law after receiving an expensive graduate degree and forgoing three years in the workforce?
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• Do you believe that after three years at your LAW school, your students are capable of actually practicing law?
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• If so, would you be willing to be represented by any recent graduate assuming he/she passes the bar?
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• Do you honestly believe there are enough law or related jobs available to employ your graduates after they enter the workforce?
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• If so, why is there story after story in any number of mainline publications discussing the number of unemployed law graduates?
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• If not, do feel any culpability for leaving a generation of law graduates indebted and unemployed?
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• How do you sleep at night?

Taking the JD Off Your Resume - An Update

I recently saw a post on JD Underground recommending that applicants remove the J.D. from their resumes in order to try to land a non-legal job. I have a few things to say about this matter, so I thought it would make a nice segue into what I guess has become my annual update.

I can certainly empathize with this sentiment. The JD pretty much guarantees that you'll hear the inquiry "Why aren't you practicing law?" during every job interview you'll have from now until eternity.

The problem, of course, is that if you simply take your law degree off your resume, you'll have to come up with a method for explaining the three year gap. For the most part, however, the only "method" you'll have available to you is to lie through your teeth. I don't recommend this for a number of reasons. If you go down this route, it will definitely have to be some amazing fib (remember, you're covering up a THREE year gap) and it will have to be unverifiable (think background checks for new hires).

If you're not prepared and not unethical enough to claim you were independently building shelters for displaced tribes in Africa, you've got little choice but to leave your JD on the resume.

Here are a few tactics to handle this handicap:

1) Provide a brief summary of your background on your resume to tackle the subject head on. In your summary, include a sentence that reads something like "Recently obtained a J.D. for purposes of improving analysis and writing skill sets for application in a corporate role."

2) If you do land an interview, and the subject comes up (and it will), make a similar statement about wanting to go to law school because of the benefits it offers aside from practicing law. Also, mention the number of people who go to law school but don't end up working as attorneys - it was about 20% at my school PRE-recession. You can also note that law school doesn't really teach you to practice law; instead it helps you develop critical thinking skills. Not only is this persuasive, it's also for the most part, true.

3) On your resume, under education, don't put down "State University Law School, Juris Doctorate, May 2009"; put down "State University, J.D., May 2009). You'll be amazed at the number of people who have no idea what a J.D. is. Many will just assume it's a masters degree. Plenty will also be too embarrassed to ask what a J.D. is. It won't always work particularly if you're looking for work right out of school, but it can prevent a red flag from going up immediately in the minds of HR screeners, hiring managers, and recruiters.

Will these tactics always work? No, but they give you a better chance of slipping by the gatekeepers. Once you explain the potential benefits of a law degree, some hiring managers may even see it as a slight benefit.

Once you land a job and have some significant post-law school work experience, the J.D. will become less of a focus because your potential employer will a) be convinced that you're actually not interested in practicing law b) be more concerned about your recent work experience than your education.

In the interviews I have gone through since landing my first permanent post-law school job, the law degree has become more of a curiosity than anything else. Occasionally, the issue hasn't even been raised; if it has, I've had little trouble dismissing it as a detour on my path as a corporate prol.

I could probably get away with dropping it off of my resume given that most interviewers are usually too lazy to actually do the math and uncover the gap in my work history. I, however, have refused to do so.

Perhaps I'm violating my own words of caution regarding the sunk cost fallacy, but after wasting so much time in law school and going into considerable debt, I'm simply unwilling not to try to extract at least some value out of my J.D.

Now I'm not backing away from my long standing contention that a law degree doesn't qualify you for any position other than being an attorney - and it barely serves that function. I'm certainly not suggesting anyone should go to law school with the intent of going into a non-legal industry. That's just throwing money away.

Nevertheless, the J.D. is a graduate degree, and it's one that many people still believe is an indication of one's intelligence and academic prowess - rather than one's ability to sign a promissory note.

You're not going to get a financial analyst job - at least one that requires experience because a hiring manager thinks, "Gee, this guy doesn't know anything about finance and can barely open an Excel document, but he is well educated. I'm going to hire him over the other candidates with multiple years of Bloomberg experience."

If you are, however, a financial analyst with experience, and you also bring a law degree to the table, many employers will then be willing to give you some credit for your degree in the hiring process - at least if you can give an acceptable explanation for having the degree.

For example, I interviewed for a position a couple months ago where I think the hiring manager just interviewed me because she was thoroughly confused by the trajectory of my education. I think I offered a good explanation, and I ended up one of two finalist candidates for the role. I didn't get the job because the other candidate had a little more of the experience for which they were looking, but my J.D. didn't hurt me and may have helped a bit. (It was, of course, no substitute for the relevant experience they wanted.)

On a more positive note, I recently did take a new position where my J.D. may have actually helped. It's a more senior role with better compensation. While I had most of the skills and background for which they were looking, the job description said the company wanted someone with about a decade of experience and a masters degree. I haven't even been out college for 10 years. The hiring manager said I beat out a bunch of other strong candidates, and I have to believe that the J.D. did help cover some of the missing work experience and substituted for the masters degree.

Now before any LS apologists start whooping it up that the J.D. did turn out to be useful, let's get a few things straight. It's true they wanted someone with more experience and a graduate degree, but if I didn't go to law school, I could have easily gotten the experience (and if necessary a cheaper and more useful masters degree) in the same time it took me to get the law degree. I also would have done so without incurring the debt and other opportunity costs.

Furthermore, while it's a big increase in pay for me, I'm pretty sure I'm making less than they originally envisioned paying for this role - so the J.D. wasn't exactly a perfect substitute for the work experience.

So where do I stand? I will be in a senior, non-managerial position with a large corporation. I will make in the mid $60K's plus an annual bonus and benefits. This is roughly the equivalent of what an I.D. attorney would have made at a mid-sized firm pre-recession. It's probably on the lower end of what I would have reasonably been making right now had I not gone to law school, so it looks like I'm starting to right this craft.

I've also been able to knock out about $20k of loans since graduating - though there's plenty more to go, and I'm finally able to move out of my parents house - albeit with roommates.

I am very grateful that I seem to be in a much better position than many other recent graduates, and perhaps even a large swath of the population as a whole. Nevertheless, it definitely bothers me that I'll be paying for years for a degree I don't really need and that my career has been set back at least a few paces.

I was glad to see that TJ Law lawsuit is being allowed to proceed, and I'm sorry that the NYLS case was thrown out. It's definitely heartening to see that the mainline press and individuals across the political spectrum have acknowledged (and even protested) the scam. In the end, I really don't see how it can be sustained. When tuition hits $70k a year at private schools and graduates struggle to land $40k a year entry level jobs, you have to think somebody's going to blow the whistle and bring this game to a close - particularly now that the taxpayers are on the hook for any unpaid loans.

I wish everyone else the best on finding gainful employment and trying to rebuild their post LS lives. I've always been happy to provide advice via e-mail, and I've answered a number of inquiries since I stopped regularly posting. Feel free to reach out if I can assist you at all.

I'm also thinking of starting a new blog dedicated to the providing advice about the non-legal job search tailored to those with J.D.'s. I'll keep you posted. (Positive feedback for this idea will likely encourage me to move ahead.)

Thanks for reading - E.N.