Law Schools

Don't Let The Trauma Of Being A Law Student During The Great Recession Bias Your Perceptions About Law School

The reality is that the legal profession is in much better shape now than it was during the Great Recession.

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I recently had lunch with a bunch of attorneys who are around the same age as me.  Eventually, the attorneys I was with ended up discussing student loans and law school.  One of the attorneys at lunch who is a new parent related that he would tell his kid to never go to law school.  This lawyer conveyed that individuals need to borrow too much debt to attend law school, and employment prospects are simply not good enough to justify this investment of time and money.

I hear this kind of talk all the time, and many of the attorneys I speak with say that they will never tell their kids to go to law school.  Granted, law school does require a big investment of time and money, and of course someone could make a decent amount of cash, and find fulfilment, by not attending law school.  However, I think the bias against attending law school that many attorneys my age have is based on outdated information and the trauma of attending law school at a time when the legal profession was in much worse shape than it is right now.

Many attorneys who are around my age went to law school during a very difficult period.  Indeed, individuals who attended law school around 10 years or so ago pursued their legal studies during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  Some individuals who enrolled in law school in 2006 and 2007 didn’t even know that they would be entering the workforce during a period with slim employment prospects and financial insecurity.  And even individuals like me who entered law school in 2009 or so during the height of the Great Recession did not fully know how difficult it would be to find a job, or how burdensome it would be to manage student debt.

Law students in this generation read a number of scary headlines each day and heard many stories of people struggling with student loans.  Around the turn of the last decade, numerous law firms conducted layoffs, and a large percentage of the jobs in Biglaw disappeared.  In addition, many people who were offered summer associate positions had their offers revoked because of the difficult economic climate.

This was also the time when news outlets published numerous stories of recent law school graduates working as baristas and in other non-legal jobs.  As many might remember, Above the Law first rose to prominence covering the issues unfolding in the legal profession, and every attorney and law student during this period knew someone who was a victim of the financial crisis.

If you attended law school or began your legal career during this period, it is easy to be turned off about entering the legal profession.  Frankly, hearing all of the negative stories in the press and not knowing if you would have a job was extremely traumatizing to law students and young lawyers of this era.  It is easy to let this background influence your sentiments about law school and becoming a lawyer.

However, the reality is that the legal profession is in much better shape now than it was during the Great Recession.  It is true that Biglaw firms are likely not hiring at the same levels as they were in the height of the aughts, but large law firms have higher headcounts now than during the Great Recession.  Indeed, many Biglaw firms recently raised first-year salaries which will make it easier for associates who work at these firms to pay off their student loans.  Furthermore, as I can attest to from personal experience, many other firms and other employers throughout the legal profession have added jobs and increased salaries.

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A less-advertised improvement in the legal profession is that law schools are currently a lot more transparent with their employment outcomes.  As a result, law students today know full well what they are getting into by enrolling in law school.  The American Bar Association and other institutions have stepped up in recent years and have policed law schools who advertise deceptive employment statistics.  In addition, the “invisible hand” of market pressures has compelled some of the most predatory law schools to go out of business.  There is also simply more awareness about the perils of attending law school such that fewer individuals are borrowing insane sums of money to pursue a six-figure dream that will never be realized.

In the end, the trauma of the Great Recession has impacted many attorneys so that they might never suggest that someone attend law school.  I completely understand this sentiment, since I lived through the perils and heartbreak that was law school during the Great Recession.  However, conditions have changed and prospects are much better for law students today than they were 10 years ago.  Of course, there are many reasons not to attend law school, and the value proposition of a law degree has been discussed at length on these pages and elsewhere.  However, there is no need to have a knee-jerk reaction against law school because of the trauma endured by earning a law degree during the Great Recession.

Jordan Rothman is the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a personal finance website discussing how he paid off all $197,890.20 of his college and law school student loans over 46 months of his late 20s. You can reach him at Jordan@studentdebtdiaries.com.

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