What to Consider If You Are Thinking About Going to Law School
Posted on January 12, 2009
By Joe Miller |
The New York Times suggested grad school last week as a viable way to improve your skills during a recession. Here are a few ideas on what you should think about in considering whether to go to law school.
Why work hard for good grades, when you could go to Harvard, Stanford, Yale, or NYU and coast on inflated grades?
It’s true. The law schools at the top of U.S. News and World Report rankings are also uniformly the schools with the most grade inflation. See here and here.
In order to attract high performing students (ie. many of whom have arguably been banking on grade inflation, in high income school districts, since elementary school) these law schools use tactics, like granting close to 60% of the class a grade of B or better, or eliminating A through F grading entirely, while lower ranked schools typically grant 60% of their students a grade of B or lower–presumably because lower ranked schools have more to “prove.”
So why should you go to a lower ranked school, work hard, paying $100K+, just to make the school look good?
There are many, perfectly logical reasons not to enter the legal profession. For example, unless you obtain a scholarship, you’ll be on the hook for $100K or more. You would probably have to secure a $80,000 per year starting salary to keep up with student loan payments and enjoy some semblance of a comfortable lifestyle. Sound simple? Take a closer look: There are very few starting salaries between $60K and $100K. See e.g., here. While jobs at large law firms are high paying, they are emotionally draining and rarely substantive in nature. Is that a tradeoff you are willing to make?
Nevertheless, if you are determined to go to law school, the best piece of (albeit unsolicited) advice that I can give is to either 1) go to a law school in the “top ten,” or; 2) go to a good state law school in the state in which you are a resident.
U.S. News & World Report rankings should be held at arm’s length. You need to determine which schools you consider to be in the top 10, with grade inflation weighing heavily in your assessment. There are many law schools that are underrated, but lower ranked schools that don’t use creative ways to serve their students, and simply rely on grade deflation to make themselves look good, should not be considered.
Going to law school simply to make more money is a sure road to unhappiness. You should do a thorough personal assessment before you make the leap. I do public interest work because I enjoy it–not because I want to play dress up. I genuinely enjoy working with my colleagues and think that policy work is more stimulating than reviewing documents for hours on end and being abused by partners, with God complexes, who are still crusading against the more personable kids from their high school days.
