Law Schools

Great Advice If You Have $200K To Blow

The rich are not like the rest of us.

By Kathryn Rubino on January 07, 2016 2:58 pm

money down toilet LFRich people, man. They aren’t at all like the regular schmoes out there.

In a little piece of journalistic puffery over at Slate, they ask Adam Epstein, the president and COO of the search advertising firm AdMarketplace for the best and worst advice he has ever received. It is part of a series wherein they ask successful business people to dole out advice to the proles, and Epstein, as an alumnus of the University of Michigan Law School, has words to share about that experience:

I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and my parents were attorneys. They said, “Go to law school, but don’t be a lawyer.”

Winkingly referred to as “unconventional advice,” at least Epstein recognizes that even though it was “great advice” for him personally, it isn’t for everyone:

Not being a lawyer is great advice. Don’t go into tremendous debt if that’s what it means for you to go to law school. But if you can go to law school and not take on debt—I have friends who got scholarships, or the family could afford it, or whatever the case may be—going to law school is an amazing education. It’s just if you have to pay for that education by spending the next 20 years of your life as an attorney, then it’s probably not a good deal.

So don’t hope to use law school as a step to a business career unless you’re already rich (or lucky enough to get the near-mythical full scholarships). Frankly, this isn’t as unique or cutting edge as the article would have you believe. For too long, law school was touted as a way to delay the real world or the easy way to a profession. Yet it isn’t, and too many esquires find themselves in jobs they hate, shackled there by huge debt.

But if you’re a reader of this website, you already know that.

My Best Advice [Slate]