New Villain in Law School Debt Tragedy
The Government Accountability Office has released a new report on the rising cost of legal education. Who is to blame? Not the ABA. Not university presidents using their law schools as cash cows.
According to the GAO, the U.S. News law school rankings put law school deans in a “resource intensive” competition to rise up the U.S. News list. The two key slides from the 44-page GAO report (PDF) are below:
The GAO makes a provocative argument. Let’s discuss it after the jump.
Now, I love rankings as much as the next guy. But this seems like an appropriate time to point out that the U.S. News list is just, you know, a list. It is not the most important component of one’s legal education. It is not the final and all-encompassing measure of educational quality. It does not transubstantiate into the body of Christ. It is not a God.
Essentially, the GAO is arguing that the industry-wide obsession with law school rank makes the education itself more expensive. Law students are literally paying for prestige — as defined by a magazine — even if they don’t go to a particularly prestigious school. It’s kind of like the price of a Honda going up because Car and Driver tells people to buy a Mercedes.
And to take the discussion to a whole different level of absurdity, students at public law schools have been shouldering a disproportionate burden of the tuition hikes as state budgets dry up (click on the slide to enlarge):
There seem to be two options if one wants to reverse this trend: make prospective law students less obsessed with the U.S. News rankings, or change the U.S. News methodology for ranking law schools. The first option seems impossible absent some kind of state sponsored mind control program that forces prospective law students to rationally consider all options and exercise common sense. That’s probably unconstitutional.
But there is no objective reason why U.S. News couldn’t change its methodology. Check out the magazine’s methodology here. You’ll notice that there is no input for “excessive cost most of the school’s graduates will have to spend a lifetime paying off.” Oh, but they still consider the amount of books available in a law school’s library — maybe they’re still waiting to see if this whole Lexis / Westlaw fad takes hold.
I don’t know how you’d do it, but there has to be some way of comparing law schools that takes into account value or “bang for the buck.” For example, the rankings could include a ratio comparing salary five to ten years after graduation with tuition cost.
If law school deans really are slavishly following the U.S. News rankings, it would seem like the rankings themselves are the first, best way to get the deans concerned about the runaway cost of legal education.
Maybe the U.S. News list is a God after all.
GAO Puts Blame on US News Rankings for High Law School Tuition [ABA Journal]
GAO: U.S. News Rankings, Not Accreditation, Key Driver of Law School Tuition [Tax Prof Blog]
(98) Comments
Comments
FIRST - SUCK IT ATL.
A load of BS!
1stish!
i'm really nervous about the debt that i'm racking up. i now have 20k in debt. i hope my firm job this summer turns into a full time offer, then i'll be making serious cash-money and i can finally buy my dream house and a sweet car.
-nervous T-10 2L
4 = Mangina
US News rankings? Shouldn't law school deans be more focused on Cooley's rankings?
I would happily pay for prestige. Those 12 spots ahead of Brooklyn make all the difference.
-Cardozo 2L
Oh God, Nervous is back. I'm not coming to this site anymore.
Hey Ellie. Why don't you spend an afternoon applying a new time-to-repay metric to the USNWR rankings?
This is self-evident.
A "tragedy" occurs when a baby drowns or a kid is hit by a car. A dumbass CHOOSING to go to law school and deeply into debt is not a tragedy.
4, $20K in debt is effectively zero in debt. You could pay that off working at a car wash. I maxed out Stafford only and that's got me 88K or so in the hole (I went 4 years and worked during the day). I have lots of classmates that are $150K+ in debt with ZERO job prospects. I have one friend seriously thinking about just moving to Costa Rica and working on a fishing boat.
According to that third graphic, the average cost of law school is in the low 70's right now? On which planet? It's closer to $70/ year.
By far the biggest factor in spiraling tuition costs is the federal subsidy for and east access student loans. It's a tuition bubble, just like the housing bubble. If easy financing were to ever dry up, tuition levels would plummet at the lesser schools.
easy access
Okay, let me get this straight. The cost of law school is increasing because U.S. News is forcing them to become better. TRAGIC!
i'm a paralegal at a biglaw firm and make $95k a year, and i don't do anything. i thought it was funny when a bunch of associates my age who had taken 3 years off to get $150k in debt also got fired. even in law, everyone hates overachievers. i think another 2 years of this and i'll quit law and do something enjoyable for a living. being a paralegal is like being a lawyer, except you don't have to go to school, you don't have to work hard, and if you're smart, you can quit law with a large bank account in under 5 years. you'd have to be a real dumb shit to go to law school.
There is a simple solution to this problem. Just end the U.S. News rankings at 11. Any school after that is not worthy of being ranked.
So they're saying that as minority enrollment went up, so did tuition?
Now I have ANOTHER argument against affirmative action!
16 --
That sounds great an all... except the part about being a PARALEGAL.
Nervous 2L please go away. I hate you so so so much.
Suck my ass, Mystal, you obese children devouring race bating WALRUS!!
As above commenters have correctly noted, the real problem in law school tuition is easy financing for worthless/overpriced degrees.
If the government wants to do something, it should tie Stafford availability to the school's bar passage rate or some other metric reflective of a graduate's ability to get a job that can pay off the tuition debt. Uncle Sam might also consider making student loan debt partially dischargeable in bankruptcy, to drive down private lending to the worst/riskiest law students.
My guess is the whiz kids in DC will instead decide to levy a new "rankings tax" on US News to fix the problem.
Nervous 2L is so hateable because he is "nervous" about having everything go right. 20k in debt? Go to hell you piece of shit bastard
Maybe lenders should factor a school's ranking into their credit decision. The lower a school's rank, the more difficult it is to obtain private financing (grad plus loans, etc).
Of course, this creates a host of other problems. But it's an idea...
IS everyone BLIND?
Increase tuition --> Increase scholarships --> Increase LSAT/GPA medians --> Increase position in US News --> Increase in applicants and prestige. Repeat.
All driven by a ridiculous magazine ranking, driven primarily by peer reviews, where "peers" down rank competitors to stay on top. Great system, really.
The most ironic thing about it all is that students rely so heavily upon the rankings, and keep driving the magazine towards success (and emptying their pockets down the road).
16 -- "'m a paralegal at a biglaw firm and make $95k a year, and i don't do anything"
Gosh that sounds so intellectually and personally fulfilling.
To simplify: I get to argue in court. You don't. If you don't think there is a serious difference between being a paralegal and being an attorney, you are not as smart as you think you are.
Meh. Everyone knows that even the previous registered nervous shtick wasn't the marginally entertaining actual nervous t-10 1L.
12,
I think a plan to just say 'f**k it' and leave the country is becoming quite common among hung out to dry law students/grads. A few friends and I are looking into disappearing to SE Asia after graduation if a job doesn't come through.
Why stay in the U.S., work some dead end job you're over-qualified for, if you can get one, just to have all your income go to paying down your debt? Especially when a better life for less stress is available just a flight away?
I am nervous about a giant Mystical Walrus chasing me down the sidewalk.
Law school value rankings
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/cypress/nationaljurist0909/#/26
16
First - You dont make 90k, unless you have 10+ years experience as a paralegal. Second - You will never make more than 90k (with the exception of increases for inflation). Third - I have a huge penis.
Good Day
T-Bone
The only reason the U.S. News rankings matter to students is because they matter to employers. Law is the only profession where they actively list "Top 25" as a condition of employment. The perceived prestige of the "Top 25" degree and exclusion of those without it provides external validation to big law lawyers who have realized that others with less opportunity and "weaker" degrees can actually hand it to them in court.
The solution is to cut government subsidized loans, so schools cannot increase tuitions.
I also think the schools should be expected to make full and fair disclosure about their graduates' employment rates and incomes.
US News should be ranking these school on employment prospects only. Everything else is horse-shit.
32,
Really?!
30--That methodology is only slightly more credible than the Cooley rankings...
How about making educational debt dischargeable in bankruptcy, and lower the percentage backed by the fed? Then lenders would actually have some skin in the game, which would result in the availability and cost of educational loans coming into line with their value.
34,
32 is a bit extreme. But firms hire deeper into classes at higher ranked schools, and this year there are firms who have no offered summers, only to post job listings for 3Ls at schools they typically would not expect to get much traction at.
Relax, 26. No paralegal honestly believes her job is the equivalent of an attorney's. BigLaw paralegals make pretty decent money for doing the crap work that legal secretaries don't want to bother with. You know it, they know it, we all know it.
I think slide 37 is pretty interesting too - in 1994 a whopping 80%(!!) of private law school students could afford tuition with a low interest Stafford loan - now that number is down to 10%!
17 FTW!
32 -- Lawyers generally know how schools stack up based on experience and they don't need U.S. News to tell them. Students on the other hand don't know very much and they're suckers to buy a magazine and perhaps to go to law school. Doesn't USNWR still publish that "average starting salary" figure that is basically an out-and-out lie? They sure did when I entered law school.
15 -- You are ignoring the fact that U.S. News ranks a school higher if it *spends* more money per student. I haven't heard a rational argument for that metric. Someone please lay it out for me. No one judges a car on how much it costs the manufacturer to produce one. By judging schools on that metric the schools are encouraged to spend more per student, drive up costs and pass them on to the starry-eyed students. The students believe that "average starting salary" lie printed in USNWR and they think that law school is a ticket to a better life. Not reported are the true average starting salary and the average debt incurred.
Hey GAO, listen to this:
1)Government makes more laws
2) Law School need to hire more professors in new, cool, specialist areas, raising expenses
3) Law Schools raise tuition
GAO recommendation: vote Ron Paul for President. Government will be slashed, laws will be taken off the books, less law to teach, tuition goes down. QED
Two ways to reduce the costs of something:
1. Increase supply of law schools.
2. Reduce demand of law schools. Get rid of the cheap money of federally subsidized student loans and you'll see demand plummet. But we can't do that since a Stafford-financed Cooley law school degree is apparently a fundamental human right.
So hey, let's provide more student loans and increase the demand for law schools even more. That will surely reduce tuition. Change we can believe in.
29,
I love sidewalk fare.
I also love wealth redistribution as a mechanism for liberating those oppressed with law school debt.
36 has a great point! The lenders have absolutely no reason to deny a loan to a prospective law student (or any student). What if lenders had risk- i.e. if they made their 5,000th loan to a California law student that same year and decided, "you know what, we're not making any more loans to law students because there aren't that many jobs out there and we're not going to get our money back when this guy declares bankruptcy." True capitalism. W and Co. signing a ton of legislation protecting lenders is not true capitalism because it takes risk away. Good job, 36.
"My school was ranked higher by USNWR!"
"Oh yeah, well I got a higher LSAT score!"
"Yeah, well, my dick is bigger than yours!"
"So? My dad can beat up your dad!"
--Two ATL commenters, attempting to relate to each other
17 is right, kinda. They should just rank the top 10, since that is really the prestige employers seek.
Also, by way of analogy - they only rank the top 25 teams in college football. Why? Because that is all that really matters. But I think most NFL scouts will tell you that there are plenty of good players coming out of unranked teams. And there are plenty of of players currently in the league that come out of no-name schools. Basically - cream rises to the top.
44 - the proposed bankruptcy rules changes are a prospective change, not retrospective. Nobody is arguing that existing student loan debt should be excused, only that loans made in the future should not be so easily had (or that tuition might actually have to come down to remove the need for loans). Might save a few tax dollars limiting Stafford loans anyway.
12,
You might actually try looking at the cost. (Hint, it's right on the USN rankings).
I went to the public law school in my home state, (that is also in the T30). I had a full scholarship, but even if I had been paying full price in-state tuition (and you can get in state after your first year if you make the effort to do so) I would have paid less than $50k in tuition for three years of law school. Scanning through the list I see a dozen other schools that would run you less than $60k tuition for three years in the T50. Living expenses obviously add to that, but moreso than tuition those are in your own hands.
I graduated with about $25k in debt (all from living expenses and incidental stuff), and I started out earnign $95k in one of the larger firms in my medium small market. I'm two years out now and my loans are already gone. I think I made my last payment in may, about a year after I graduated.
I got accepted to at least two T14 schools and decided they weren't for me because of the massive amount of debt I would incur. I never bought the "average salary is $140k BS they put out anyway and at the time couldn't imagine being $160k in debt from three years of school.
I can see how someone slightly less risk averse might make the decision that I didn't. But the people that really get screwed are those that get suckered into paying T14 costs for a school that's not even T50 or first Tier.
The explosion in university tuition began when government decided to make higher education available to all with the Higher Education Act of 1965 (precursor of Stafford).
In 1963 doctors made house calls for $20 and most people had no need for health insurance. Then government decided to make health care more affordable and more available with the Medicare/Medicaid Acts of 1964-65.
Every government program achieves the opposite of its intended effect.
Drugs were a marginal activity prior to the War on Drugs. Now it is one of the world's largest industries and has spawned much violence and crime.
The list is nearly endless.
50 = hardcore, rightwing lunatic.
51 can't refute 50's facts.
You're telling me that Above the Law, prestige-obsessed ranking whore that it is, is now deigning to tell us that the U.S. News ranking is just a list? That's rich.
I agree with 50. Before NASA and the moon race, the moon barely existed. It was no more than ten miles in circumfrance. You'd see it as a speck in the sky on a very clear night maybe two days a year. There were no such things as "tides." But now that government-sponsored goons are tromping all over the lunar surface, scientists agree (and I exclude from the term "scientist" hacks controlled by the liberal media) that we will all be killed by a giant tsumami within the next several weeks.
I'm developing the QB Rating for law schools. It takes into account efficiency. It will take into account expenditures per pupil, tuition per pupil, average debt per student and bar passage rates. That way it will push schools to spend less and still force them to focus on high passage rates. It will also lead to the elimination of the 3rd year.
50 is exactly right - when government tries to subsidize something, it actually makes it more expensive because subsidies increase demand (as well as fraud).
"Drugs were a marginal activity prior to the War on Drugs." Seriously, 50? Drugs have been a zillion-dollar business since the Opium War back in the 1840's (drug smuggling provided the foundation for more than a few old-money Boston and New York fortunes). It was only when a few South American countries started dabbling in communism that Republican administrations decided that drugs were a threat, what with the infallible logic of the domino theory and the Monroe Doctrine and all that. Trying reading a book or two before making blanket statements.
32, institutional banks, consulting firms, hedge funds, private equity firms, and pretty much every Fortune 500 company have "top tier" educational requirements for undergrad and/or MBA programs.
If everyone could afford housecalls in 1964, why did at least 51 senators vote in the medicare act? How come no true conservative is now speaking to end medicare so we can get back to $20 housecalls? Maybe health insurance companies' antitrust exemption has something to do with it?
I'm sure when you get your facts and figures from Glenn Beck and Hannity, simple logic escapes you, #50.
LOL @ 20 dollar housecalls. Even if that were a true statistic, that's $274 in today's dollars using the GDP per capita measure.
Also, in 1964 when you got cancer, they put a chunk of radium under your skin so you could get 8 other kinds of cancer. I don't think a $20 housecall fixed that. Someone build a time machine so #50 can go back to 1951 and live out his dreams.
To 57:
"institutional banks, consulting firms, hedge funds, private equity firms, and pretty much every Fortune 500 company have "top tier" educational requirements for undergrad and/or MBA programs."
This is why upward social mobility has become a joke in this country. The elite-educated bourgeois management class only wants to hire those who they feel are like them: the privileged (usually white, usually male) children who went to the "right" schools. Usually, that excludes all but a few state schools. It's narcissism in the extreme.
Thank goodness I am enrolled at Cooley, which is ranked No. 12. They dont increase their tuition because of some desire to please the admittedly arbitrary and capricious US News rankings. Rather, they increase their tuition because they want us to have smaller classes.
I certainly feel like in an effort to keep expenditures per pupil high my school spends money unnecessarily which is reflected in our tuition. Just to name a few, is it really so hard to plug the laptop into the media port that the school needs a dedicated staff to do that? And why can't the person who sets up the laptop also be the person who erases the chalkboard?
As long as USNWR law school rank is the most important qualification when applying for a job, students are going to attend the highest-ranked school they can regardless of cost, and schools are going to do anything necessary to increase their ranking so they can squeeze said students for more money.
When the legal industry brings its hiring practices into line with reality, everything else will eventually fall into place.
#59 is currently applying for a Czar position in the Obama administration. Dude, your proletariat belif system and bourgeois envy/aspiratuions are showing.
#59 is currently applying for a Czar position in the Obama administration. Dude, your proletariat belif system and bourgeois envy/aspiratuions are showing.
63/64: At least I can spell "aspirations" and "belief", you retard.
The power of USN&WR rankings, or at least the way that they propagate a presumption about prestige (and alleged "quality" of the students at a school) amongst lawyers who make hiring decisions is very real.
I got my SA position while languishing in the bottom half of my T25 class at a medium sized regional firm while the other SA's from Tier 3/4 schools were top 10% and #2 or 3 in their classes. This was the first time I really experienced the way our profession places so much emphasis on rankings.
For those who haven't already done so, try explaining this to non-lawyers, especially those who haven't been to graduate school. They think we're nuts.
I remember trying to convince a girl to go to the highest ranked medical school possible because I was so indoctrinated by how rankings work for lawyers.
I think the solution is to tie accreditation to bar passage rates with a requirement that it must be at least 70% for a school to be accredited.
Additionally, there should be a maximum lawyer per 100k citizens ratio in each state such that the ABA won't accredit a new law school unless the ratio is low enough to support the job market.
Finally, if the ABA allows outsourcing of legal work to other countries all work must be performed by attorneys who have passed a US bar exam. No exceptions.
The failure to require this is the single greatest reason I think the ABA fails to actually represent the interests of most people in our profession and only cares about political issues and the welfare of biglaw.
Ok.....I'll get off my soapbox now and STFU
Hey 63/64:
Just so you know, I don't envy the bourgeois. I would never want to be the type of horrible asshole who is the typical ATL commenter. I do, however, think that the USA would be better off if the middle and working classes really ran things.
--59
Mystal is the WALRUS!
What about the QE rankings methodology. 4 factors:
1. % of students obsessively checking blackberry, iPhone, etc. (at least hourly);
2. % students that were in a frat or sorority at an ivy undergrad;
3. % that smoke up at least 3x per week;
4. % of students that refresh ATL throughout class.
There has been a sort of arms race betwen the law schools for professors, facilities, etc, and they have fueled a good part of it with tuition. Students have a limited conception of what they are getting themselves into, though they aren't completely ignorant. The problem is that the "promise" of $160k even for students with degrees from stankhole schools who ended working in Atlanta seemed to many to justify the cost. Now that $160k won't be part of the planning process for many, there will hopefully we downward pressure on tuition, notwithstanding idiotic institutions like Hastings that somehow things it can milk folks for $50k in tuition per year.
16 -
I laughed out loud, so thanks for the laugh.
Wait, I don't get it. I went to the most expensive non-Ivy law school in New England: Northeastern (I know, I know). The student budget went from $51k to $65k during my time there, and yet the school dropped from 77th to 94th, and is just one tie away from dropping into the third tier. They say that 5x more of their graduates enter into public interest than the national average, and yet the median salary is somehow still about $90k. And yet, just about no one from '09 has a job, most of '08 is unemployed, and some royally fucked '07 folk are still scrambling to waitress at Legal Sea Foods. So, have they just not been raising tuition enough? Maybe if they raised it to $80,000 next year, it will get back to mid-second tier??
THIS IS SUCH BULLSHIT. GAO is full of shit.
66,
That conceals a very interesting post about medical schools.
By and large, MD Salaries are much more evenly distributed geographically than lawyer salaries. There's still a substantial disparity between GP's/family practitioners and specialists, but a cardiologist or internist or other specialist in a smaller city will earn much closer to his collegues in a big city than is true with lawyers. (where truly high salaries only really exist in large cities, NY, DC, Chicago, LA, Dallas, Houston etc)
The result is among a very substantial number of med students, there's really no pressure to go to the highest ranked school. In most areas of the country there's only one or two medical schools and people don't really know the rankings. People who expressly try to go to Stanford or Harvard or JH, etc are the ones who want to be research doctors one day.
Now when I came out, I told you it was just about Latham.
Then everybody had to open their mouth with a mother fucking layoff
Well this is how we gonna' do this:
fuck Milbank,
fuck Squire Sanders,
fuck Paul Hastings as a staff, record label, and as a mother fucking crew.
And if you want to be down with GAO,
Then fuck you too.
Cadwalader, fuck you too.
All you mother fuckers,
fuckers you too.
(lose money, lose money)
All of y'all mother fuckers,
fuck you,
My low rates make sure all your PPP don't grow
54 FTW
Here is what is funny, it is a vicious circle when we think about it. Law schools increase class size for numerous reasons (admitting more AA students to increase "diversity",to bring in more capital without raising tuition, or any other reason).. As such more people apply to the law school (since admission rates go up and they think they have a better chance of getting in) Then since more people are applying the schools realize demand is increasing. Since demand increases, we can increase tuition since people will still pay it. Tuition goes up, and then they have to start all over again to bring in more money. YAY
77 - I dont find that funny.
16 = partner laughing at gullible associates and law students responding to his post
If that was really the case, then lower ranked schools would have much lower tuitions. However, this is not true for the most part.
I think the CBO is putting too much trust in the words of deans that are merely trying to make up excuses. The answer is that law schools charge high tuitions mostly because they can. They can because (a) everyone believes law to be a very prestigious profession and 90% of rich kids go into law school, so the law schools really want to capture that money; (b) there is the belief that lawyers make a lot of money (a belief mostly perpetuated by TV), (c) everyone thinks they are special so that they will be the one to land that biglaw job even if they go to a shitty school where maybe one student of each class will get a biglaw job, (d) anyone can take one look at sociaty and see that 80% of the elites whether in politics or business are lawyers, few people go the extra step to notice they are all lawyers from a very limited set of schools, etc.
So it is simple market economics. Law schools charge a lot of money because they can. They can charge a lot of money because due to certain cultural norms in the US, they have a very easy marketing pitch.
66 makes a good point.
If you tried to explain the type of prestige-whoring that goes on in law, most people simply wouldn’t get it. This is true even in competitive professions like medicine. In medicine, people don’t care as much about what school you went to or what grades you got. Once you get your first job, nobody even cares where you did your residency (although it might be nice for bragging rights). Certainly nobody cares whether you were Alpha Omega Alpha or not (an honor society similar to Order of the Coif).
There are a couple of things that might be frowned upon, e.g., a specialty in family medicine, a DO degree. But even these things matter far less than, for example, a state trial judge clerkship versus a federal appellate clerkship. On average, doctors are far less prestige- and rankings-conscious than lawyers.
50 - $20 was a ton of money back then, you imbecile.
81--it is largely a product of ignorance on the part of clients, and greed on the part of law firm partners
#16=liar
I looked into becoming a paralegal before I decided to come to law school. It's a hard slog to get in, and I'm sure that goes double for the firms that pay those big salaries. An experienced paralegal at a lower level firm is pulling in something like that, but that doesn't mean much to people starting out--I worked for a small Plaintiff's firm, and one contract paralegal we hired on had literally--literally--been living under a bridge between jobs. There's no golden goose anywhere, other than "marry someone rick who hasn't heard of a pre-nup"
16,
You became a paralegal because you thought it would be a nice thing to do before you went to law school. You couldn't get in to a law school worth attending. Then you probably looked around for a different job for a few months, didn't find anything, and figured you could stay a paralegal for a little longer. 8 years later, you're still a paralegal who gets bossed around and yelled at by people 5 years younger than you. So, to justify your position in life, you make an anonymous comment on a blog about how funny it is that people who tried to do something with their life have been laid off.
Good luck securing your dream job when your resume lists "paralegal" as relevant work experience. Perhaps your cover letter can detail how much you learned copying documents and making sure packages went to the right location. Or perhaps you will continue to sit in your windowless office being a bitter, wanna be attorney.
-Former V50 paralegal, T6 student, taking on a lot of debt
80 - I think that you are right, that the increase in the cost of law school is driven more by a view that law students are a potential resource that can be exploited for tuition rather than an actual increase in the services provided in law school. Personally, I see the big increases in law school tuition as a result of 3 factors:
1) Increased advertising by law schools
2) Increased Professor salaries
3) one other factor that I discuss in this article
http://thelegaldollar.blogspot.com/2009/10/gao-report-on-increased-cost-of-law.html
17 makes the best point of all. there are a few top schools with brand names and networks that will open up the national market to any and all of their students who choose to go down that route.
after that, i think it's all about achievements and ability. the hiring decision between two applicants from schools ranked in the 20-80 range is not coming down to prestige of the school. as much as people who go to GW might wish it were true, no partner believes that GW students are smarter than x-state university law grad.
if i had to do it all over again, i would look at two stats: percentage of 2L's with summer associate positions as of March 1 and, of the above number, percentage placed through oci.
i think the people that really get ripped off are the ones who go to the almost-there, almost-prestigious jd mills. there's no reason to slog it out for 3 years in new york or washington w/ a ridiculous cost of living unless you got in at columbia, nyu or georgetown. otherwise, better to stay at home, hit the books hard, and crack into the big firm by being better, not by trying to pass yourself off as elite while other people mock you.
85 - That seems to have been YOUR story after having been a paralegal for merely a year or two. It's not everyone's story.
A lot of people become BigLaw paralegals solely for the money, both what it pays at the time and what it winds up paying in industries other than law. The only industry that regards paralegal experience with as much contempt as you seem to is the legal industry. All other industries, once informed of what the applicant actually did all the time, take the experience as quite advanced, especially in an applicant under 30. Not even I-banking regards the experience as poorly as you do.
As far as what being a BigLaw paralegal can wind up paying, few other jobs out of college come close to it. If you spend enough time in the firm, NO other job right of college comes close to it.
I didn't become a paralegal to become a lawyer. In fact, I hated law and wanted nothing to do with it as a career. I did it for the experience and exposure that allowed me to jump several career years in a DIFFERENT industry. I also did it for the money.
So sorry you knew better and STILL borrowed a crapload to attend a law school that may not get you a job as a lawyer. If being a paralegal taught you anything, it should have been first and foremost that a lawyer must buy PRESTIGE in order to land the big bucks jobs.
U.S. News & World Report?! Who cares what they think? One year they tried to use an ABA questionnaire to rank law schools, and not knowing exactly how the ABA computed its stats, U.S. News got it wrong so their big-time law school publication was completely wrong and they had to have a call-in show on the radio to try and explain themselves. Good grief.
88 (16),
"All other industries, once informed of what the applicant actually did all the time"
"i'm a paralegal at a biglaw firm..i don't do anything"
-85
85/90 - NOW you take his claim literally? Your first post was a way bitter rant against his supposedly menial tasks. If we're going by 16's hyperbole, then your insertion of "copying" and "sending packages to the right location" wouldn't apply either.
Which one is it?
-88
"For example, the rankings could include a ratio comparing salary five to ten years after graduation with tuition cost."
This idea assumes that salaries (or can be) will be accurately reported, and will not just be self-reported by those that choose to participate in the survey.
88/91,
I did not attack the truth of most of 16's comment. In fact, I specifically accepted some of the comment as true - hence why I attacked 16's position that it was fun to see people with significant debt be laid off. I also think 16 was correct in saying paralegals do nothing. My comment to you quoted this to show that even long-time paralegals don't believe they actually do anything.
There are no inconsistencies in my comments.
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Sorry, I forgot to add that 16's comment was obviously in reference to doing anything of value. I don't think any rational person would read it as meaning they literally do nothing. If 16 actually goes into the office and sits motionless in their for 8 hours, then I retract my comment.
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"in their chair".
It's been a long afternoon.
One wonders if law school tuition would continue to rise if government loan guarantees instantly disappeared. I'd bet you'd see immediate reduction in tuition as well as a reduction in the number of lower tier schools (which likely contribute to the oversupply of lawyers).
Law schools can only keep raising tuition so long as the loans continue.
85/90 and edits 91-93
Then, if taking it all to mean "nothing of value", I reiterate. MY comment. That may have been YOUR story. YOU did "nothing of value" - for what I suppose was 1 or 2 years. In another discussion thread, I'd be happy to share my opinion as to why that was entirely your fault and not an inherent quality of the job.
It isn't everyone's story. It certainly wasn't mine. Doing "nothing of value" most certainly didn't get me the phat offers I received in other industries.
I'm not sure what you consider to be a "long term paralegal". I got the impression that Commenter 16 had 3 years of experience, at best. (Therefore, I doubt the 95K claim unless he's "doing nothing" for 14 hours a day/7 days a week. )
I'm a young government attorney, and thankful for it.
At the time I enrolled at Cardozo, I was unable to articulate a "real" explanation for why I was going to law school. (Most people can't, unless they admit to being at least a little bit of a money-grubbing a**hole.)
Today, I am saddled with an enormous amount of law school debt. The one statistic that would have changed my mind about law school, or at least Cardozo, would have been this one:
Percentage of the average graduate's monthly post-tax salary allocated to monthly student loan obligations.
In case there are any curious, cautious law school applicants in the audience, here are those "statistics" from my first 3 jobs, after federal loan consolidation:
Job #1 - 43.1%
Job #2 - 30.1%
Job #3 - 25.6%
My budget ended "in the red" for every month I worked in Jobs #1 and #2. At times, my loans were in various states of deferment and forbearance, including for unemployment.
Given the current job market, I count myself as extremely fortunate to have landed Job #3. (And, I do happen to enjoy it immensely.)