Okay guys.
SHAN here. I haven't been able to contribute much to the game forum, but perhaps I can share my experience here and contribute to the forums.
I go to a Top 14 law school (It's an ivy that punches above its rank in terms of big law placement). I went to law school because i had a shitty liberal arts major in undergrad and basically felt it was the only way I could learn a decent skill that could lead to a high paying corporate job. Moreover, one of my main goals was to go to NYC, get some good corporate law experience, and then ------> asia.
Fast forward to today. I am in the midst of recruiting season. I didn't too horribly in my first year - about median/middle of the pack relative to my class. However, I've been completely shut out of NYC (and pretty much any major big city, for that matter). Granted, I've received multiple callbacks (for those who are contemplating law school - callbacks are basically second-round/finalist interviews), but they are all big law in shitty, shitty secondary markets (for example, who wants to work in Buffalo??). Getting shut out of NYC for this summer dramatically decreases my chances of going to NYC post-graduation, and failure to achieve that dramatically narrows my options for getting to Asia. I'm now looking at alternative careers (accounting, consulting, advisory, legal compliance), or at the very least, alternative career paths (for example, secondary market law firm ----> consulting ---> asia; or JD ---> MPA ----> consulting) - just trying to brainstorm and really think 10-year long-term. I've had to significantly expand my time frame for achieving my dream of working in asia. Granted, this setback may also be a blessing in disguise - I've always been ambivalent about being a lawyer (I wouldn't have gone to law school had my school been ranked lower).
The point of my message, though, is this:
Don't go to law school unless you really, really want to be a lawyer. That is, if you have no ulterior motive - no desire to "flip" your JD to some other career - and you don't care about money, then go for it. Do it only because you truly "love the law" (which, btw, is a fucking myth - how the hell do you know whether you love practicing if you've never done it? Not even law students know what practice really means). The legal industry post-crash is in a bad place. Granted, it's better than finance, but it's still not good. And on the ten-year horizon, law and invesmtent banking are probably going to contract rapidly, because corporate clients have figured out they don't need a bunch of kids to do document review or prepare excel spreadsheets for 500 dollars/hour.
Since this is also a travel-interested community, take my experience in mind. I took a gamble in going to law school - law is a geographically confined industry - and the payoff, so far, has been as disappointing as the facebook stock. I'll probably find a way to get to asia, but it will be much, much harder than I expected.
And I go to a good school that has good prospects for NYC big law. If you aren't going to a T-14, and you care about things like living in a cosmopolitan city, getting a big firm job, and having the opportunity to travel or lateral to other countries, then law school is not even a reasonable gamble to make.
SHAN here. I haven't been able to contribute much to the game forum, but perhaps I can share my experience here and contribute to the forums.
I go to a Top 14 law school (It's an ivy that punches above its rank in terms of big law placement). I went to law school because i had a shitty liberal arts major in undergrad and basically felt it was the only way I could learn a decent skill that could lead to a high paying corporate job. Moreover, one of my main goals was to go to NYC, get some good corporate law experience, and then ------> asia.
Fast forward to today. I am in the midst of recruiting season. I didn't too horribly in my first year - about median/middle of the pack relative to my class. However, I've been completely shut out of NYC (and pretty much any major big city, for that matter). Granted, I've received multiple callbacks (for those who are contemplating law school - callbacks are basically second-round/finalist interviews), but they are all big law in shitty, shitty secondary markets (for example, who wants to work in Buffalo??). Getting shut out of NYC for this summer dramatically decreases my chances of going to NYC post-graduation, and failure to achieve that dramatically narrows my options for getting to Asia. I'm now looking at alternative careers (accounting, consulting, advisory, legal compliance), or at the very least, alternative career paths (for example, secondary market law firm ----> consulting ---> asia; or JD ---> MPA ----> consulting) - just trying to brainstorm and really think 10-year long-term. I've had to significantly expand my time frame for achieving my dream of working in asia. Granted, this setback may also be a blessing in disguise - I've always been ambivalent about being a lawyer (I wouldn't have gone to law school had my school been ranked lower).
The point of my message, though, is this:
Don't go to law school unless you really, really want to be a lawyer. That is, if you have no ulterior motive - no desire to "flip" your JD to some other career - and you don't care about money, then go for it. Do it only because you truly "love the law" (which, btw, is a fucking myth - how the hell do you know whether you love practicing if you've never done it? Not even law students know what practice really means). The legal industry post-crash is in a bad place. Granted, it's better than finance, but it's still not good. And on the ten-year horizon, law and invesmtent banking are probably going to contract rapidly, because corporate clients have figured out they don't need a bunch of kids to do document review or prepare excel spreadsheets for 500 dollars/hour.
Since this is also a travel-interested community, take my experience in mind. I took a gamble in going to law school - law is a geographically confined industry - and the payoff, so far, has been as disappointing as the facebook stock. I'll probably find a way to get to asia, but it will be much, much harder than I expected.
And I go to a good school that has good prospects for NYC big law. If you aren't going to a T-14, and you care about things like living in a cosmopolitan city, getting a big firm job, and having the opportunity to travel or lateral to other countries, then law school is not even a reasonable gamble to make.