CHAPTER 1: SHOULD YOU GO TO LAW SCHOOL?
Last updated
Last updated
Let’s face it: choosing to attend law school is a big life decision. The Juris Doctor (JD) degree is expensive, time consuming, and rigorous, but paired with your military background it can be a powerful tool in today’s world. The JD is a professional degree and prepares you for a specific occupation, but within the legal field you will have the flexibility to move from one job to another, and from one sector to the other. Lawyers who have equipped themselves with the right training and credentials, and built a robust professional network, can access an incredibly wide range of public and private sector opportunities. In the public sector, you can work as a public defender, prosecutor, judge, Foreign Service Officer, CIA analyst, human rights advocate, DoD lawyer, congressional staffer, etc. On the private side, you can represent clients in any number of transactional or litigation specialties or serve as in-house counsel for businesses, financial firms, start-ups, charitable foundations, sports teams, and countless other entities.
But law school can also be an expensive and time-consuming detour for those who have not fully considered the nature of the profession or the range of employment outcomes. Even after completing most of your law school curriculum, it can be hard to gauge if you will enjoy the legal world until you start practicing, so you should do what you can now to talk to lawyers, research practice areas, and figure out what it is you want to do with the degree. Find people who practice the kind of law you think you’re interested in, and figure out how they got from A to B to C in their careers.
Later in this introduction we will address some of the reasons NOT to go to law school. Our goal is not to dissuade you from attending law school; rather it is to help you make a decision that you will not come to regret several years and $100,000+ too late.
We don’t mean to insult your intelligence. Everyone knows what law school is at a basic level: a place where you study the law. In the United States, law schools are institutions that provide a professional education in the law. Programs are typically three years in length and issue a JD degree, a professional doctorate, upon graduation. Many people who have gone through law school say that it provides a skill-set (thinking and reading critically, writing and speaking clearly and persuasively, etc.) that is valuable no matter what profession you ultimately choose. Others, however, say that you should only go to law school if you want to be a lawyer. Regardless, before you make the significant investment of time and money, it is important that you have a clear idea of what you hope to get out of your legal education.
The vast majority of law schools are “brick and mortar” institutions that are part of larger universities. Every year, US News and World Report ranks law schools (see the rankings), though there is wide disagreement over the value and scoring rubrics of the rankings. In the 2023 rankings released in March 2023, there were 196 schools ranked – schools listed 1 through 148 are ranked in order, while the rest (bottom 25 percent) are simply listed in alphabetical order as a 148-194 category, with a final 4 in a “Rank Not Published” group. The ranks are broken into a Tier System – schools ranked 1-50 are Tier 1; schools 51-100 are Tier 2; and so on. We’ll cover some more rankings in Chapter 2, but the US News rankings are a good starting point to get a general sense of where different law schools fit into the prestige universe and the scope of the opportunities provided by their respective degrees.
Generally speaking, the “Top 14” (or T14) are considered truly national law schools (). In most cases, a degree from one of these schools will make you a competitive candidate for good legal jobs in any part of the country and in a variety of law-related career paths. For the T14, the geographic location of your law school does not limit where you can expect to be hired, and large law firms from around the nation hire a large percentage of their new lawyers through on-campus interviews conducted at these schools. Outside the T14, law schools become increasingly regional and you should expect the location of the law school to determine where your JD has the most currency on the job market.
Several law schools offer part-time degree programs, which are a great option for someone looking to obtain a JD while continuing a day job. For a listing of part-time programs, see .
Law school years of study are often classified as 1Ls, 2Ls, and 3Ls, designations which correspond to their 1st, 2nd and 3rd years of study, respectively. Though there is no standard curriculum for all law schools, most have students take courses in the following subjects: Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law, Property, Torts, and Legal Writing. These courses are meant to provide an overview of legal studies and are usually taken 1L year as a set curriculum. Law students are generally able to select their courses during 2L and 3L years, which allows them to study different fields of the law, such as corporate, international, advanced litigation, or tax law.
In order to teach the law, most law school professors use the “Socratic method,” the goal of which is to train students in the legal reasoning necessary to properly interpret theories, statutes, and precedents. The method involves the professor calling on a student at random and asking him about the argument made in a specific legal case, then following up with a series of questions to challenge the student’s argument and assumptions. The professors pull the questions and debates from select court cases, which are compiled into “casebooks” for each course. This format allows students to learn by listening to and participating in in-depth exchanges with the professor, rather than by just receiving one-way lectures day in and day out. While some professors do still lecture, the majority of classes are taught using casebooks and the Socratic method. The requisite reading for law school classes will generally dwarf the quantity of reading assigned for undergraduate classes.
In addition to academic courses, many law schools offer “legal clinics” as part of their curriculum, which give students practical experience with the law while generally providing pro bono (free) representation to non-profit groups or underserved populations (low-income defendants and juveniles, immigrants and refugees, death row inmates, etc.). The other major opportunity for students to obtain legal experience is through summer internships. You’ll have opportunities to pursue those after your first year and again after your second year in law school.
Finally, some schools in recent years have begun offering accelerated JD programs, which are either stand- alone JDs or part of joint degree programs with another type of degree, such as an MBA. These typically have fixed programs of study and may include summer courses in order to squeeze in all graduation requirements on the accelerated or joint timeline. Although the majority of T14 schools require separate applications to both the business and law school for JD/MBA candidates, UPenn, UChicago, and Northwestern all offer integrated applications for a 3-year accelerated JD/MBA program.
After graduation from law school, there is another hurdle new lawyers must overcome before they can begin to practice law in their chosen state: the bar exam. The bar exam is a test that is used to determine whether a candidate is sufficiently qualified to practice law in a specific jurisdiction; if you intend to (or at least want to be able to) practice law in multiple jurisdictions during your career, you will need to take multiple bar exams. In all states but California, to qualify to take the bar exam you must have graduated from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA). But ABA accreditation, while conferring legitimacy on law schools, does not necessarily signal effectiveness– many pump out graduates every year who can’t pass the bar exam and can’t find jobs.
We intentionally omitted online law degree programs from the discussion above and strongly recommend against pursuing a degree online. There is currently only one ABA-accredited hybrid (part in-person, part online) program in the country, and no accredited fully-online programs. In short, they are a waste of time, money, and effort, and will get you nowhere in the legal field.
Although salaries of more than $100,000 accounted for one-third of salaries reported, half of reported salaries were $70,000 or less. Outside of private practice, most salaries were $70,000 or less. The prevalence of high salaries in large firms, along with the relatively stable salaries among other employers, continues to result in a salary distribution with two peaks, as shown in the salary distribution curve: one in the $45,000 to $70,000 range and one at $180,000 to $190,000.
Because this data does not take into account salaries not reported, but does account for nearly all graduates working at large firms, both the median and mean salary for jobs as a whole, and in firms specifically, are biased upward. Although it is not possible to impute a salary figure to every full-time job for which a salary was not reported, it is possible to make a reasonable estimate of what an adjusted mean would be, using a procedure that takes into account the distribution of full-time jobs. For the Class of 2018, doing so results in an adjusted mean salary of about $91,833 compared with about $98,150 based on reported salaries alone. And these statistics only account for the 70% of graduates who find long-term, full-time employment. Nearly 10% find only short-term or part-time employment, and another 7.5% remain unemployed-but-seeking a year after graduation.
Don’t be fooled by the marketing pitches you’ll get from law schools. If you’re wondering who makes up that tall, skinny bump on the higher end of that salary curve, they tend to be the graduates of T14 schools working at so-called “BigLaw” firms (which mostly hire out of the T14). People not in this category generally earn much closer to– if not below– the mean. And for the nearly half of all graduates who fall in the $40,000 to $65,000 salary range, the debt load can turn out to be two to three times their starting salary, making the challenge of servicing loans quite daunting. With a 7% interest rate, a low-earning graduate's debt can quickly outgrow his or her ability to pay it down.
If you have access to the G.I. Bill or other educational funding, this may be less of an issue for you, but nevertheless it is something to seriously consider as you decide whether or not to attend law school, and if so, where.
Together, the numbers point to what ought to be a sobering conclusion– that a large number of graduates emerge from law school worse off than before. That in a nutshell is the primary argument against going to law school. On top of that, job satisfaction among lawyers is notoriously low. Practicing law can be very stressful for a variety of reasons and you may face long and unpredictable hours, a hyper-competitive work environment, missed family events and holidays, and mind-numbing amounts of tedious paperwork. So now, with your eyes fully open to the risks and drawbacks, do you still want to be a lawyer?
The best way forward begins with a careful weighing of the pros and cons of going to law school- consider the debt you may incur, the employment statistics for the schools you are considering, and the possibility that you might not enjoy being a lawyer. This mental accounting will be different for everyone. For example, if you have 100% Post-9/11 G.I. Bill eligibility or other funding that can minimize the debt you would incur by attending law school (see Appendix A), many of the arguments outlined in the previous section do not apply to you. Or maybe you have existing family or professional connections that reduce your uncertainty regarding employment after graduation. You should also consider that military veterans often enjoy an advantage in hiring processes, as employers are eager to bring in individuals with demonstrated leadership ability and teamwork skills. But this does not mean that you can ignore the facts above and expect to sail into a six-figure job or competitive clerkship. Make a realistic assessment of your financial situation and career prospects and adjust your decision-making calculus accordingly.
We cannot stress enough how critical it is that you take the time to think deeply about this decision before jumping head-first into the application process. For more information, see APPENDIX A: The Post 9/11-G.I. Bill, APPENDIX B: Financial Considerations, and APPENDIX C: Evaluating a Law School’s Employment Prospects.
Enough with the disclaimers– let’s look at the roadmap to help you gain admission to the best law school possible.
The argument against going to law school comes down to two things: cost and employment prospects. Over the past three decades, the cost of going to law school has . Since 1985, inflation has been a factor in rising law school prices, but legal education inflation far exceeds the inflation rate . In 1985, the average private school tuition was $7,526 (1985 dollars), which would now cost a student $18,060 (2019 dollars). Instead, the average tuition is $49,312 (2019 dollars). In other words, private law school is now over 2.6 times as expensive as it was in 1985 after adjusting for inflation. Public school (for residents) is now about 5.5 times as expensive. Why has it gone up so much? There are many competing answers to this question, but simply speaking, a proliferation of lending options and student willingness to assume educational debt have facilitated major increases in law school tuition independent of change in the actual value of the degree.
A rule-of-thumb recommended by financial advisors is that students should not borrow more than 1.5 times the annual salary they anticipate making in their first job after graduation, but adhering to this rule is increasingly difficult for law school students. The average educational debt for law school students is nearly $150,000 and rising (see for a breakdown of average debt by school), which would not be an issue if most graduates entered high-paying jobs. But for new lawyers vary tremendously. The mean, or average salary, for Class of 2018 graduates in long-term, full-time employment was about $98,150. For jobs in private practice, the average was well over $100,000 ($124,000). However, in small firms, which account for over half of the jobs taken in law firms, salaries of $60,000-80,000 were typical. Likewise, public service jobs— those in government, public interest organizations, and as judicial clerks— continued to offer relatively low starting salaries, with means of $60,000, $50,500, and $57,000, respectively.
