Dead on…

I received a fascinating email from a reader - we’ll call him “Ford” - a 2008 law school grad, in response to my Counterintuitivosity post, here’s the gist of it:

As a recent graduate I find that a number of my colleagues and former classmates would actually still encourage law school for three reasons:
1. They believe it when people tell them that law school (or other
higher education debt) is good debt (positively impacts credit score
rather than negatively impacts).
2. They have been sold on the idea (as I was when I attended school) that a law degree will increase earning potential even in fields where you’re not practicing law, simply because it’s a higher degree.
3. College students and other potential applicants have repeatedly
told me they expect the legal service field to “bounce back” in 2011.
I’m hearing that same year from a lot of people and I don’t know why, but I’m hearing it from friends in California, Michigan, and New York. Some even believe that if it doesn’t, the ABA’s encouragement/support of debt mitigating policies will allow them to get a degree at a deep discount or free.

Let’s go through those points one at a time.  First of all, I don’t believe there is any such thing as “good debt” - debt is debt no matter how you slice it, and if you can’t pay it down and eventually pay it off, if it follows you around for years and diminishes your quality of life in so many ways you can’t even imagine. 

Second, I, like Ford, was sold on the idea that law school is a good choice even if you aren’t necessarily going to practice law: you can do anything with a law degree!  While that might be true for a small group of people - I’ve never met one - most of us take the first job we can find in the law and not only are we unable to ever break free of a career in the law, we are still practicing in the same practice area 20 years after taking that first job, like it or not: the law is very nichey. 

As for the idea that the legal services industry will bounce back by 2011, I tend to agree, although I think it will be a significantly smaller business than it was three or four years ago, and will be decentralized, i.e. many more lawyers than ever before will be practicing in small firms or on their own. 

But, as Ford points out, the law schools won’t suffer for any of this:

There have also been studies pertaining to gambling behaviors in
Americans.  People are more willing to gamble (in this case, apply to
and attend law school) when presented with a potentially huge payout, even if it’s stated clearly and plainly that they have a minimal chance to win.

The great irony?  The ”payout” isn’t anything great anymore in most instances.  When you add up the hours and the stress and the terrible commutes, put them in the adding machine with the diminished salaries and bonuses and most of us make about $11 an hour.

Welcome to the machine grads, have fun.  

(Thanks to Ford, may all of my readers be as thoughtful.)