At some point in their life, everyone thinks they should go to law school. You may in fact think you want to go to law school now.
You're wrong.
I don't know you, I have no idea what the facts of your life are, but that doesn't matter, you aren't the exception. For the overwhelming majority of people (>99.9 percent), law school is the wrong choice.
How can I know this? Because I've been you -- I went to law school for the same reasons you think you should go -- and I was wrong. I should never have gone to law school, and you shouldn't either.
If you're not thinking about going to law school, you can skip this whole post, or just send it to your friends who are thinking about going and thank your god that you're not them. But if you are one of the many thinking about law school, start by asking yourself one simple question:
"Why do I want to go to law school?"
Yes, it's an obvious question, but almost everyone in your position either overlooks it or avoids it with rationalizations. So answer it, right now, to yourself. You want an easy way to stay in school, you want to be guaranteed a good high-paying job -- whatever reason(s) you think you want to go to law school, spell them out and make them explicit to yourself.
I have heard every single answer to this question there is. These are the 6 wrong reasons I hear most often (see if your answer is in this list):
The 6 Wrong Reasons to Go to Law School
1. "I like arguing and everyone says I'm good at it."
Of all reasons to go to law school, this is the worst by a large margin. Know who else likes arguing? Sports talk radio hosts, cable news talking heads and teenagers -- i.e., idiots. If you like to argue just for the sake of being contentious, you shouldn't pick a job based on this unresolved emotional issue of yours, you should get counseling for it.
If you like arguing for the intellectual challenges it can present, that's an understandable and reasonable position. Everyone likes a healthy, intelligent debate right? Well, understand that being a lawyer has almost nothing to do with arguing in the conventional sense, and very few lawyers ever engage in anything resembling "arguments" in their commonly understood form. You aren't going to be sitting around a fine mahogany desk sipping scotch with your colleagues discussing the finer points of the First Amendment; you're going to be crammed in a lifeless cubicle forced to crank out last-minute memos about the tax implications for a non-profit organization trying to lease office space to a for-profit organization (if this gets your juices flowing, maybe the law is for you after all).
You won't even be having fun discussions in law school. In law school, the people who want to "argue" a lot are called "gunners" and are reviled by everyone, even the professors. Make no mistake about it: Law school is not a bastion of intellectual discourse. It is a fukking TRADE SCHOOL. You are all there to be trained to think and act exactly the same way as everyone else in the profession, so you can then be a drone in the legal system. No one is interested in your opinion. The only one of those that matters is the one expressed, with a capital "O", by the judge(s) in whatever case you are currently reading.
Beyond that, to be genuinely good at legal "arguing," you must be dispassionate, reasonable and smart. I have never met a person who was any of those things who also said they were going to law school because other people told them they were good at arguing. It indicates only the shallowest understanding of the law and pathetically sloppy critical-thinking skills. If arguing is really why you want to go to law school, save your money and start a blog about American politics where you can shout into the echo chamber of imbeciles all you want without bothering anyone smart who has things to do.
2. "I want to be like Jack McCoy from Law & Order [or insert your favorite legal TV show character]."
I have little sympathy for this perspective. It is 2012, if you still allow yourself to be misled by the bullshyt on TV, it means you are either very naive or an unrecoverable moron, and you should immediately drown yourself in the nearest toilet to save the world the frustration of having to deal with you and your stupidity. Let me be VERY clear about this for you:
The actual job of being a lawyer is NOTHING AT ALL like what you see on TV.
It is possibly less like the real thing than any other profession depicted on television. Every doctor I've ever talked to scoffs at shows like ER and House, but they all say that at least the diagnoses are connected to the physical symptoms we see and are treated with the proper kinds of drugs. In legal dramas, the exact opposite is the case. Don't think so? The next time you get a DUI (if you're going to law school to be like Jack McCoy this WILL happen), represent yourself and try to give a speech while questioning the arresting officer. You won't make it longer than 30 seconds before you're held in contempt and locked up for wasting everyone's time. Is that a little harsh? Maybe. Welcome to the grown-up world.
There is NO lawyer/law procedural that even remotely shows what it's like to be a lawyer. You know why? Because being a lawyer is not only soul-crushing, it's REALLY BORING, and that doesn't make for good TV. If you want to know what it's like to be a lawyer, go work in a law office for a summer. Or shadow a lawyer for a day or two. There's nothing like a day with a lawyer to disabuse you of the notion that anything in the legal profession is like TV.
3. "It's the only way I can use my humanities degree."
Having a soft major is nowhere near the career death sentence that so many make it out to be. The world is changing, and the U.S. economy with it. Our economy is shifting to a service and information based economy, and soft majors are already becoming more and more valuable.
Why? Because a services and information-based economy needs what the Humanities creates: literate, intelligent, well-read people who can write and communicate ideas effectively. The demand for these people is not going to flutter out. In fact, it will only grow stronger as the economy continues to shift and the supply of qualified candidates remains insufficient. Do not make the mistake of thinking law school is your only option. That is simply not true. In plain English: A humanities major now has many, many options they didn't have in the pre-Internet era.
Beyond that, this reason belies an assumption: That you have to get a job. When you finish school, everyone knows about the two most obvious options: 1. Get a job working for someone else or 2. Get more schooling. But there is a third option: Carve your own path in the world. This can take many different forms, like starting a company [for example see Paul Graham's piece]. Or it could take the form of many other sorts of lifehacking activities [for example, see Tim Ferriss' muse concept, or Chris Guilliebeau's $100 start-up concept].
If you limit yourself to the choices presented to you by people who one did one of those two things -- get a job or go back to school -- then you obviously aren't going to understand that. There are other ways to make a living, and lots of people following those paths, you just have to go look for them.
4. "I want to change the world/help homeless people/rescue stray kittens/do something noble."
Wanting to help others is great, but if you are one of those rosy-eyed dipshyts who sign anti-sweatshop petitions while wearing Nikes (made in Vietnam by children) and listening to your iPod (made in China by Foxconn virtual slaves) you know what's going to happen when you finally go out into the world trying to change it equipped with just a law degree and a healthy dose of optimism? Life is going to kick you in the teeth. Repeatedly.
If you go to law school with just some vague notion of public service and no sense of real, directed purpose, you WILL regret your decision. My first day in law school, the entire class was gathered in a lecture hall and they asked everyone who wanted to be in public service to raise their hand. At least 100 people did. Do you know how many ended up in a public service job three years later? Three of them. The other 97+ didn't stop wanting to make the world a better place, they just didn't know what it actually MEANS to help poor people for $30,000 a year when they raised their hands three years earlier. They hadn't tested their moral resolve in the crucible of suffocating debt. A $140,000/year job at Skadden Arps is a hard thing to ignore when you're staring down the barrel of a $150,000+ debt burden and $1,700+ monthly loan payments that start real quick after graduation.
If you want to cultivate a life full of bitterness and resentment a good way to do it is go to law school thinking you're going to be a crusader for change, then end up having to become the very opposite -- a corporate lawyer drone -- to pay off your law school debt. This happens to pretty much everyone in law school. If you want to change the world, that's awesome -- go do it. Don't go to law school, having a law degree doesn't help you.
5. "I don't know what else to do."
If you are coming to the end of your schooling and don't know what to do, or just otherwise feel lost in life, you shouldn't feel bad. It's OK. You're not alone. At least you have an excuse: You're barely old enough to drink, you don't need to know what you're going to do with the rest of your life at this point.
If your parents and guidance counselors say that you should have already "picked a direction" or "figured out a plan for your future" by now, ignore them. The pressure and admonitions they are foisting upon you aren't about your happiness or your success; it's about theirs. It's about validating themselves as good parents and qualified counselors. If they see you go to law school, to them it means you a) got good grades, b) went to college, c) didn't drop out, d) didn't commit (m)any felonies, e) have ambition and f) will make six-figures. By every traditional measure, they have succeeded in their prescribed roles.
None of this, of course, has anything to do with whether you are happy or fulfilled or even like the law; which are the most important considerations when making a decision like this. So relax. If you need more time to find your calling, that's fine, take it. Try lots of things, see what you like. Try working in a law firm, you'll see REAL fast that you hate it (or you'll love it, and thus validate your law school choice).
6. "I want to make a lot of money."
If there's one thing you can't argue with, it's that lawyers make a lot of money, right? I mean, a corporate lawyer starts at something like $140k a year, that's huge, right?
Wrong. WRONG.
$140k+ to start sounds like a lot of money, until you break it down. Currently, most large corporate firms -- where you will find these six-figure starting salaries -- require somewhere between 1,900-2,000 billable hours from their associates. This is not the total number of hours you have to be in the office, this is the total number of hours of actual work you can bill directly to a client. For a smart attorney with a solid work ethic, it typically takes about 10 hours in the office to accrue 7 billable hours; tracked most often in 6 minute or 1/10th of an hour segments. If we take the lower end of the billable requirement threshold (1,900 hours), that means a typical attorney has to work about ~2,700 real hours in a year to meet their minimum billables. To put that in perspective, 2,700 hours is equal to working 7.5 hours a day EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR.
Using a $140,000 base salary, that's equivalent to making ~$50/hour [FYI -- here's a short list of other careers that pay $50/hour or more and do not require a) 3 years of post-graduate schooling and $150k in debt or b) you to work 365 days a year to get it].
This is what people mean when they talk about something that looks too good to be true. There is a reason so many lawyers leave the legal field: Being a lawyer -- especially a lawyer at the type of big corporate firm that seemingly pays so well -- SUCKS.
The American Bar Association has published several studies about the incredibly low job satisfaction of lawyers and in every survey they publish, most lawyers say they would NOT be a lawyer if they had it all to do over again.
Perhaps the most important thing for you to understand, there are NOT an unlimited number of jobs out there that start at $140,000/year. In fact, there aren't many at all, and pretty much ALL of them go to kids who come from the Top 15 law schools. Beyond that, the overall legal job market has dried up, even the low paying jobs. They aren't going to tell you any of this at law school recruitment receptions; in fact schools continue to tell prospective students the opposite, which is why more and more of them are being sued for fraud.
I cannot be any clearer about this: You are not guaranteed a job out of any law school, much less a job that pays six figures.
Tucker Max: Why You Should Not Go to Law School
) law school isn't a bad choice. If you are black or Latino you don't need crazy numbers to have decent options in terms of price and schools
The problem is the people who go this route typically got polisci philosophy liberal arts shyt degrees. They think theyre going to graduate college and advise the president or work for the UN or some shyt 
when they can't find that kind of work then law is the next step until you realize most of the decent paying jobs are corporate soul sucking jobs and the actual do gooder jobs people want are impossible to get except for the elite schools. 
so even learning about the job market statistically has no impact on them
do people really think its that easy to transfer? 
)
she wanted to know if she had a shot at the "top 20". that list went straight to the bushes and i told her to only apply to the top 10 and save on the app fees. 
