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1. Posted by Marina Aronchik - 3 months, 3 days, 14 hours, 15 minutes ago

   What a great revelation—to try to avoid debt. I am sure that hasn’t occurred to any of the current law students.  How about suggesting that law school admission offices are more forthcoming with employment opportunities and better scholarship opportunities?

2. Posted by Ubu Walker - 3 months, 2 days, 22 hours, 40 minutes ago

   @Marina Aronchik
   What a close minded idea—avoiding debt and not becoming a lawyer.  Taking on debt to go to law school is a difficult decision, but it is usually worth it, since it is an investment.  Would you criticize a small business owner who got a loan to start a business?

3. Posted by Bob - 3 months, 2 days, 3 hours, 53 minutes ago

   I don’t think Marina was suggesting you don’t go to law school to avoid debt.  The idea is that you should choose a law school where you will be in the upper part of the class so that you can get scholarships, thereby less debt.  I paid only 50% of tuition all three years at a private school because I did just this.  I could have gone to a “better” school, but there I would have been in the bottom half of the class and would have paid full tuition, and probably would have still ended up in the same job.

4. Posted by BC - 3 months, 2 days, 3 hours, 24 minutes ago

   In the last few weeks there have been numerous articles about lawyers debt load coming out of law school and the extremely tough job market.  This article, to me, touches on the problem with law schools these days - they are admitting way too many law students.  I understand that law schools are gold mines for universities, but at what cost?  Graduating 200 plus law students a year into a field that does not have the capability to sustain that number of new professionals is somewhat unethical, especially when the students are leaving school with debt loads in excess of $100,000 from both federal and private loans.  I think the best solution would be to cut law school admissions and give the students a fighting chance to get a job and pay off their debt.

5. Posted by BU - 3 months, 2 days, 2 hours, 58 minutes ago

   I got a $15k/year scholarship to my law school and still graduated with over $85k in debt. I was receiving offers from small firms to start at $30k/year. Thank god I was able to find a non-attorney position with the government for twice that. And thank god I went to law school to get a job I could have done straight out of high school.

6. Posted by IP guy - 3 months, 2 days, 2 hours, 43 minutes ago

   Right on, Bob!  Here’s to two lawyers taking steps against law school prejudice.  I went to a fourth tier school but had an LSAT in the 99th percentile and got a full scholarship.  My cost for law school was textbooks and time.  By graduating at the top (and having been on law review, trial team, etc...), I was hired by a big firm with a great salary and no student debt.  Is there prejudice against me by the “well-educated” lawyers who attended the top 10 schools?  You betcha, but it only takes a short time before partners see who is capable of doing good, thoughtful work and look past the school name on my diploma.  Also, I laugh every month when I don’t have to cut a $1,000+ student loan check.

7. Posted by STL - 3 months, 2 days, 2 hours, 32 minutes ago

   I agree with BC.  I go to a school that has been steadily increasing its enrollment numbers (with plans to expand the building to three times its normal size), which has unsurprisingly led to a plummetting USN&WR ranking.  To be brutally honest, each of the classes (1L, 2L, 3L) could be trimmed by at least 1/3 (if not 1/2).  Rather than limiting law school to those who would be (or stand a decent chance of being) good lawyers, law schools seem all too happy to admit anyone willing to pay for it, becoming in essence a lawyer factory.  The effect:  people who picked that school because of the sizeable scholarship (me included) get dragged down with the school’s ranking, and the legal profession gets saturated with people who had no business being in it in the first place.

8. Posted by Bill Dugan - 3 months, 2 days, 2 hours, 27 minutes ago

   I went to law school when it only cost $5000 per year.  I graduated with a little debt at the bottom of my class. I still got a job, and have a good marriage to a nice woman who preferred washing my shirts to being a lawyer.  She is the smartest woman I ever met.  I have no complaints.

9. Posted by BU - 3 months, 2 days, 2 hours, 9 minutes ago

   This nearly got to an interesting story: If you are in the top 1/3 of your class in law schools ranked 15-50, you are more likely to get a job. It is easier to get into school number 50 than number 15, and an average student at school 15 will likley excel at school 50. If the top 1/3 of students at both schools are equally likely to get a big firm job (within perhaps $10-15K starting salary of each other), the smart-but-not-stellar student would be far wiser to attend school 50 where he or she is more likely to actually make it into the top third.

   And another news flash: smart students go to lower-ranked schools because those schools pay them to. Another debt-reducing solution.

10. Posted by Bill - 3 months, 2 days, 2 hours ago

    IP Guy - my experience was a lot like yours.  I was a “non-traditional” law student, having 14 years of real-world experience after college before changing careers and hitting law school.  My life experience got me a scholarship that paid 1/2 of the tuition.  My motivation not to fail (having quit a job that was paying more than most of my law school classmates are making right now) and work habits developed in the real world translated into success in law school.  It was a tier II school (towards the bottom of tier II), but I graduated #1 in the class, on the law review editorial board, etc., which got the attention of the big firms.  I managed to graduate with zero debt and land a job paying the top associate salaries in town.  I fully understand where the article is going though - this is not my dream job, although the pay can’t be beat.  So keep your options open - including a non-law job, which probably is where I’ll ultimately end up.

11. Posted by 1 L - 3 months, 2 days, 1 hour, 17 minutes ago

    Why keep saying “coveted” biglaw jobs?

    I do not want, seek, nor desire a coveted job.

    There is an element of snake oil to law school, but I will only allude to that.

12. Posted by Bill - 3 months, 2 days, 1 hour, 11 minutes ago

    Shhhhh.... it’s a secret!

13. Posted by adults - 3 months, 2 days, 1 hour, 10 minutes ago

    People who attend law schools are adults.  They should be able to decide for themselves whether to attend graduate school, how much debt they can take on, and what school to attend.  It’s not the schools’ job to make sure adults don’t get in over their heads or make poor life choices.

14. Posted by Law Student in Madison - 3 months, 2 days, 59 minutes ago

    Adults:

    Thank you!  Finally someone with a rational post. 

    Look folks, I came to law school (away from my home state of Texas, where I had a full ride) fully aware of the possibility of getting a low wage job.  I am borrowing more money than I ever thought I would.  However, my hard work has paid off (at least so far). 

    I think most law students fool themselves into believing that they will have a great paying job, even if they only put in half the effort.  Well, at graduation, reality strikes and they end up second guessing their decision to come to law school.  What they should be second guessing is the effort they put in over the past three years!

15. Posted by Tier 2 Law Student - 3 months, 2 days, 57 minutes ago

    This article assumes that entrants with higher LSAT and GPA will also be at the top of their class on the way out. I scored a 166 on the LSAT and had a 3.78 coming out of undergrad, which was in the 75-80th percentile of my Tier 2 aw school class. Right now, as a 2L, I’m in the 25th percentile of my law school class.

16. Posted by Q97 - 3 months, 2 days, 56 minutes ago

    Re: Adults - The problem is that most students DON’T think as themselves as adults.  if more potential law school attendees thought more like adults and less like college students, they would be more inclined to view law school as a business decision.  Everyone knows that the nicest house in a bad neighborhood is a bad investment, but no one realizes that graduating last in your class from a top tier school with $150K in debt is an even worse plan.  I used the leverage of my high LSAT and GPA to actually negotiate with the admissions office of my 4th tier law school.  I received a full scholarship, made law review, and probably received a better education because of the respect my professors had for me.  Oh, and I wound up with the clerkship and the big firm salary - just like the associates around me, except that my loans are only $300/month.

17. Posted by Bill - 3 months, 2 days, 46 minutes ago

    Bingo, #13. I had a similar story, and the vast majority of the top students in my school had rather low LSATs but came from a family of lawyers, or otherwise had some acquaintance coaching them on how to ace law school (ie, teach yourself through commercial outlines, don’t waste your time preparing for class). It certainly wasn’t based on the sheer amount of work put in, as many of the self-congratulatory success stories around here like to assert.

18. Posted by Tier 2 Law School Graduate - 3 months, 1 day, 23 hours, 57 minutes ago

    Bingo to #14 too.  Most kids going straight from college to law school are constantly assaulted with the idea that they have to go to a Big Name school so they can get a Big Firm job or they will be a Huge Failure who might as well live in A Box On The Street.  They don’t yet have enough perspective to know any differently.  No one talks about OTHER areas of law they could go into with a law degree… Non-profit?  Government?  Boutique firm, in-house counsel, advocacy, public services… anyone??  Similarly, no one talks about the value of things that the rankings don’t include… Cost?  Location?  Professor Accessibility?  Specialties?  Clinics?  Externship Opportunities?

    I went to a very affordable, very well-respected second tier law school because I knew I wanted to go into non-profit work and would need to be able to afford it.  I had the choice to go to a top tier law school and didn’t, and guess what?  I got a great fellowship in Washington, D.C. for the same type of job I would have wanted anyway, for the cost of $3,000 a semester.  I can’t tell you how many acquaintances I have who are stuck in firm jobs, like it or not, because they can’t afford to do anything else with the massive amount of loans they acquired by going to a Big Name school that turned out to not be worth The Name.  I think it’s pathetic and sad that they didn’t know - and no one bothered to tell them - that there are other options out there.

19. Posted by Bill is Right - 3 months, 1 day, 23 hours, 55 minutes ago

    I think Bill is right.

    One, the casebook method is a flawed method of instruction for many and varied reasons.

    Two, when I ask my professors how they did well in law school, they mentioned commercial outlines and some reading of hornbooks.

    Three, the “hardest” workers probably do the least well because they have their nose stuck in a case book and trying to extract rules, reasoning, and logic from poor and disorganized prose written by judges for their peers.

    Finally, law school tuition is a serious problem that has indirect, perhaps direct, consequences of limiting access to the bar.  In other words, people cannot afford, or refuse to pay, to attend law school for THREE years.
    Solution:
    Limit law school to two years.  If people insist, or feel they need three, let them to earn an LLM.

20. Posted by P.S. - 3 months, 1 day, 23 hours, 52 minutes ago

    Right on, 1L (#9)!  Stick with it and godspeed.  I wish I had known more people like you when I was in law school and struggling against the attitude that I was just young and idealistic, and would sell out soon enough…

21. Posted by Matt - 3 months, 1 day, 23 hours, 43 minutes ago

    I agree with the premise that part of the problem with modern law schools are that they admit far more students than the market can handle, but in a sense they are just continuing a trend set in undergrad and high school.  When I was in college, I decided to study computer engineering, in part, because it was a marketable skill that I could make a living with.  Yet, many of my classmates selected “pre-law” courses like History, English, Sociology, Poli-Sci, etc. because they didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives, or maybe wanted to go to law school but were not set on it.  Well, 4 years later, many of them graduated with these largely-useless degrees but were still unsure about their futures, so they took the LSAT and went to law school because, in many of their eyes, they really didn’t have any other choice.  And that sense of uncertainty, of going to college and studying what you “like” without an eye on how you’ll use those skills in the future, that leads to the glut of law school applications and, with it, a glut of lawyers.

22. Posted by Legal Education by Statistics - 3 months, 1 day, 22 hours, 32 minutes ago

    Well #13, it has been statistically demonstrated that 9 out of 10 law graduates WILL graduate BELOW the top 10% of their law class.  Entering the legal profession has its risks, like any other business or profession.  Law students may be investing more than they can justify.  People who qualify to get into law school should have the intelligence to perform a realistic cost/benefit analysis.  Sadly, the recent line of ABA articles seems to indicate that many poor, ignert--ignorant--law degree candidates feel “duped” by law schools.  This probably isn’t very good for their self esteem, but maybe, just maybe, if they can bring themselves to deal with the fact that they chose to go to law school and no one else forced them to do so, they will finally take their first big step toward reality.

23. Posted by Law Student in Madison - 3 months, 1 day, 22 hours, 5 minutes ago

    Sour Bill, #15,

    If you think that all students who do well in law school do so because of commercial outlines and “coaching,” I think you are terribly wrong.  Further, even if that is the case (which I doubt), going over hornbooks and commercial outlines is still work!

    Yes, paying for tuition is a problem for many.  However, we all go to law school voluntarily.  There is no reason to blame school counselors, peers, family, or anyone else for our own bad choices.  At some point, all disappointed graduates have to realize that they made their life what it is.

24. Posted by Nick Cassidy - 3 months, 1 day, 22 hours, 3 minutes ago

    When I found a fourth tier school that offered a full tuition scholarship to students who scored over a 160 on their LSATs, I stopped looking.  I got the score, went to the school, kept my grades up, and graduated without ever paying a dime in tuition.  Of course, I still had to take out a pretty penny in loans just to live - even the best students at fourth tier schools do not have the same opportunities that students at first and second tier students have.  Not a single “big firm” did on-campus interviewing at my school.  It’s a trade-off.  I applaud ABA Journal for pointing out the possibility of getting scholarships for being above the median, but as others have said, students still need to go in with their eyes open to what may happen if they desire working for a big firm but take the plunge with a lower-tier school.

25. Posted by mvc - 3 months, 1 day, 21 hours, 41 minutes ago

    How interesting that the discussion is:  $$, loans, $$, Big Law Firm, $$, billable hours, $$ ... and very little about love of the law, service to our community and our clients, and the intellectual challenges that being a lawyer brings to life.  Perhaps this too is a consequence of the way law is taught in America today.  Perhaps also taking on law as a second career, knowing what I was in for after 15+ years of working in law firms on the other side of the desk, and having family, faith, friends, and perspective, makes a difference also.

26. Posted by Liz - 3 months, 1 day, 21 hours, 34 minutes ago

    When I applied to law school, I applied to four schools.  My GPA/LSATs were well above the 25/75% number for the first school, just above for the second, at 70% for the third and 50% at the last school.  I got into three, waitlisted at one, and significant money at two.  I chose the school that gave me 15,000 and an invitation to be a summer associate at one of the school’s centers.  Yes, I go to a third tier school.  However, I got wonderful experience, worked with professors who knew lots of attorneys and yes I have a job secured for next fall.  (And yes I will be make much more than 30K).

27. Posted by Yes - 3 months, 1 day, 21 hours, 26 minutes ago

    How to Do Well in Law School?
    It is probably a combination of outlines, audio tapes, hornbooks, some exam practice, and meeting with professors.  Notice how the words casebook and socratic method are not mentioned above.

    Why the BIGLAW Obsession?
    I did not have prior to law school, and I do not have it now.  I have visited a few big law firms, and they were very gracious and welcoming.  Nevertheless, my motive to attend law school did not include BIGLAW.

    Is Law School a Money Pit?
    Investment Banking would have been a better option for many, and you would not have to worry about a bar exam.  You would actually get the nice suits and crazy hours, but you would make more money (and spend LESS time in school and no bar exam).

    Why Go?
    Your analytical, decision-making, organizational, planning, and indeed “thinking” skills will all improve.

28. Posted by Experienced Bill - 3 months, 1 day, 20 hours, 7 minutes ago

    Dear Law Student:

    Please talk to me once you’ve graduated (assuming you do). Util then, you’re not really qualified to enter into this conversation, are you?

29. Posted by 2L - 3 months, 1 day, 15 hours, 5 minutes ago

    I agree with 13 and 15.  I made a 176 on the LSAT.  I go to a Top-Tier, but not Top 10 school on a full scholarship and I am not in the top half of the class.  LSAT performance does not guarantee good grades.

30. Posted by American 3L - 3 months, 1 day, 14 hours, 1 minute ago

    I am graduating next month from American (WCL) where 3L’s have been reduced to taking out “will work for food” ads.

    To anyone thinking of attending:  re-take the LSAT and get into somewhere better.  American is an over-priced, overcrowded second-rate institution. 

    Over a quarter of the current 1Ls are trying to transfer out.  Many are willing to go to lower ranked school, just to get out.

    Seriously, wait a year and re-take the LSAT unless you are looking forward to working in Legal Aid for $ 35 k / year when you graduate.  (That will be if you get lucky, the bottom half of the class is completely unemployable.)

31. Posted by Athena - 3 months, 1 day, 11 hours, 45 minutes ago

    I’m tired of hearing the whole ‘the market is oversaturated’ complaints.  Your mission upon entering law school is to find yourself a niche in the legal profession, not vie for the same 500 jobs with ever other law school grad in the country.  The point in life isn’t winning some meaningless competition. 
    Do what you love, work with and for people you respect, and you’ll be at the top of your game.
    http://athenasmom.wordpress.com/

32. Posted by Grateful ... but! - 3 months, 1 day, 10 hours, 21 minutes ago

    I am grateful, very grateful, to attend law school.

    I do not attend a top ten school, but I did not apply to a top ten school.

    I might not get a “biglaw” job, but I do not want a biglaw job.

    I want to earn my J.D., pass the bar exam, and hopefully be able to pay off my MASSIVE loan debt and make a difference at the same time.

    I may be naive, optimistic, or perhaps delusional. But neither debt, nor anything else, will get in my way of my goals.

33. Posted by Loved Law School - 3 months, 23 hours, 11 minutes ago

    I decided to go into law later in life and so had no illusions about the amount of work it would take to get in and get out with a good job.  I think going to law school well after college has tremendous benefits.  I definitely was “an adult” and had made life decisions for a while at that point.  I had a fairly low LSAT being completely out of the mindset of standardized tests.  My undergraduate GPA reflected the party lifestyle of the 70s when I was in college.  Despite that, I managed to talk my way into a good law school that was willing to take a chance on me.

    There are no lawyers in my family (other than me, now), but I managed to figure out that commercial outlines and briefs were good study tools.  I didn’t read every case, just the ones my professors told me were really important.  No, they didn’t tell me these things in class - I found out by sitting down with them for a cup of coffee or at lunch.  I still keep in touch with a couple of them with the occasional lunch or drinks.

    I graduated in the top 10% of my class, was inducted into the Order of the Coif, and headed off to a great job that I really enjoy working in a pretty big firm and making pretty decent money (but less than what I was earning when I made the career change).

    Incidentally, after my first year, I proved that I had the goods (and that the partying of the 70s hadn’t depleted all of my brain cells), so I got close to a full ride for the second and third years.

    I’m posting this because I want law school applicants and current law students to know that it is possible to enjoy law school, get out without debt (I pay zero dollars in school loans) and find a job you love.  You just have to take a bit of time to figure out what jazzes you up about life.  If that means not taking off your cap and gown and sitting down in a law library carrel three months later, so be it.  Take some time and find out who you are and what you want to do with your life.  If you still want to go to law school, do it and have fun with it.

    #29, you’re not naive, optimistic or delusional.  Go for that dream!

34. Posted by American 3L Patent Law - 2 months, 4 weeks, 2 hours, 56 minutes ago

    Thank God for Patent Law!  I understand where American 3L is coming from, but haven’t quite had the same experience.  I am a rising 3L evening student currently working as a technical advisor for a boutique patent law firm in D.C. earning $60K.  American has a decent IP curriculum and overall is a good law school, allthough I do agree it is much too expensive.  Interestingly, my grades suck (GPA=2.8), but I have received good offers from patent prosecution firms (both large and small).  Go figure.

35. Posted by duped - 2 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 5 hours, 56 minutes ago

    Dear Legal Education by Statistics, aka douchebag, the fact is, law schools DO DUPE THEIR PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS. Here’s how. See, for instance, the “profile of an entering class from a second tier law school:

    Career Placement Statistics
    Placement Rate: 93%
    Average Starting Salary: $78,488
    Average Starting Salary for Private Practice: $108,303

    Now the facts:
    Number 1: Fewer than half of graduates had jobs lined up upon graduation. So whatever “placement rate” refers to, it is not placement rate after law school. Also, I know for a fact that the office of career services has jack to do with actually “placing” anyone who went anywhere except BIGLAW. These people banged their heads against the wall and went to recruiters and job fairs, and otherwise begging for work in every other which way possible all by themselves. So, the for school to take credit for “placement” is total bull.

    Number 2: “starting salary” assumes you have a job with a salary. I again point out that half the graduates upon graduation – did not, so they are not part of this statistic. Now, take 15 of the class that went to BIGLAW and earned an average 145K, the other people with actual salaries graduation would be earning a whopping 49K a year to yield the average starting salary of 78K. That is, portraying AVERAGE salaries when the reality is that the market offers HIGH and LOW only, with very little in the middle, is highly misleading.

    Number 3: Average starting salary in private sector. Here again you have the high/low problem and the issue of who counts. If only 50 of the class has jobs upon graduation, and 15% of the class goes to BIGLAW, and you take out 10% of people who take government jobs, you have the average starting private, non-BIGLAW practice salary be a whopping 60K, not 108. Here again, portraying “averages” when it is a well known fact that the few top fish skew these numbers way out of control – is nothing short of fraudulent misrepresentation.

    The other question is, do contract workers count? Does placing somebody with a temp agency to do glorified paralegal work count as “legal employment raking you in up to, oh, I dunno, 80k a year, does that count?? You see, because so few people actually have jobs AT graduation (as opposed to 9 months later), those 80k/year contract attorneys are skewing the statistics further out of proportion.

    Bottom line is: when law schools advertise using these ridiculous and completely misleading statistics, without disclosing what and how they are measuring, and whom they count versus whom they leave out of their pretty statistics pool – every prospective student who falls for this crap and enrolls hoping that if they are merely average and go into private practice they could pull in 100K – is DUPED, DUPED, DUPED.

    So please, please don’t tell me about personal responsibility. I don’t lie to people, my law school admissions office did.

36. Posted by I love you guys - 2 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 5 hours, 51 minutes ago

    To Athena: Thank you for telling me what my mission in life is and what you think about the meaning of life.  You’re an idiot. 

    To mvc: this article is about $$$, not about love for the profession and friends. Ergo, these posts are about $$$ and not love or friends. Get it?

    To Grateful: thanks for sharing. Sally Mae will castrate you soon enough.

    To Loved Law School: Congratulations. Your advice to get “jazzed up” and be in the top 10% is very helpful and meaningful. 

    To Legal Education by Statistics - you are a tool, and a dull one. See previous post on “statistics,” brother.

37. Posted by duped - 2 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 2 hours, 35 minutes ago

    ok, may be a bit of an exaggeration, there. generally speaking, offices of career services do more than serve BIGLAW only, and I don’t attribute evil intent to them either.  It may well be that at 2T+ schools, there is just a lot of ignorance of the harm that is caused by skewing “average” graduates, and probably a desire to compete for a higher US News rankings. Still, in my opinion, second+tier law schools do misrepresent prospects for post-graduate employment by manipulating statistics regarding average salaries and career placement.  The post above is not based on any particular school, either, it’s an average 2T school. Get it? AVERAGE.

38. Posted by Duped - 2 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 23 hours, 32 minutes ago

    Clarification: when I say “AVERAGE” I mean it doesn’t exist.

39. Posted by PROPOSED REFORM - 2 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 23 hours, 3 minutes ago

    There is a simple solution to Duped’s problem, and the ABA can do something about it. Here it is:

    The ABA should implementmandatory disclosure requirements for how law schools advertise post-graduate prospects. (Kind of like requiring credit card companies are required to disclose APR and annual fee in clear, non-hidden terms.)

    For instance, if a law school talks about a “placement rate”, it should explain what it means by the term, specify the time frame, and specify the school’s actual role in said “placement”.  Further, the school should have to disclose whether placement was with a law firm, what kind, part or full time, yes/no re benefits, etc.

    Also, in addition to average salaries, law schools should be required to disclose the full range of salaries, from lowest to highest, and the percentage of graduating students earning along various points of the range. This would explain and clarify that although the average salary for people with actual jobs in private practice lined up at graduation is X, 10% of those students will make 130k+, 5% will make 100-130K; 15% will make 70-100K, 20% make 50-70K, and 10% will make under 50K.  The rest have no job at all at graduation.

    Yes, the unemployment at graduation figure must be disclosed to avoid deception and misunderstandings.

    To the law school’s credit, if its career services continue to work with graduates after graduation and the “at graduation” numbers change, the law school could have the option to update the range, but disclosing again earnings in tiers, and the total remaining unemployed. 

    Another figure that must be disclosed is percent of people doing non-legal work, or doing contract work (which cannot fairly be counted towards true employment in legal practice).

    If, and only if these numbers are known, can pre-law students truly and fairly make an informed decision regarding law school attendance.

    Furthermore, number of clerkships should be disclosed.  And, how salaries for clerking v. salaries for biglaw, (if clerks already have biglaw jobs lined up post-clerkship) - are counted - must be disclosed.

    THE ABA SHOULD MANDATE ALL LAW SCHOOLS TO DISCLOSE ALL OF THESE NUMBERS AT A MINIMUM, SO AS TO PREVENT MISLEADING AND POTENTIALLY FRAUDULENT FALSE ADVERTISING ABOUT CAREER AND FINANCIAL PROSPECTS OF LAW GRADUATES.

    THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO ALLOW PEOPLE CONSIDERING ATTENDING LAW SCHOOL TO MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS ABOUT WHETHER TO ATTEND, AND IMPORTANTLY, HOW MUCH TO BORROW TO ATTEND.  THESE ARE VERY SERIOUS DECISIONS, AND THE ABA MUST SEE TO IT THAT THEY ARE BASED ON TRUTHFUL AND COMPLETE INFORMATION PROVIDED BY LAW SCHOOLS TO POTENTIAL CANDIDATES.

    I hereby call on the ABA to stop misleading advertising by law schools, using selective statistics regarding post-employment prospects.

    By implementing this very simple requirement that all accredited law schools detail, in the manner set forth above, post-graduation statistics, the ABA will be making a huge step towards curbing “buyers remorse”, so to speak, by students whose expectations are sorely disappointed upon graduation, especially in the financial sense, through no real fault of their own.

    Implement these disclosure mandates. Make law schools tell the complete truth. It is the only way.

    Thank you.

40. Posted by Athena's Mom - 2 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 20 hours, 11 minutes ago

    I love you guys said: “Thank you for telling me what my mission in life is and what you think about the meaning of life.”

    Happy to serve!

    http://athenasmom.wordpress.com/

    Also, is basing all life decisions a set of statistical odds the best plan?  I mean, there are people who fall outside of statistics.

41. Posted by LSS - 2 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 19 hours, 9 minutes ago

    I was decently above the median at the school I ultimately chose, then watched its ranking plummet and only got 2 years partial scholarship out of it, where for higher ranked schools I would have had 3 years with more scholarship money each year, or with even lower schools even larger scholarships.

    With my numbers being ahead of most students, it would stand to reason i’d be at the top of the class right?  Well, not really.  Not enough anyway.  I finished okay the first year, then did terrible my second and third years.  Obviously the blame can be cast on me for being lazy and/or stupid, and I’m not trying to claim that isn’t the case.  But the reality is, outside of going to a top 14, nothing is guaranteed.  If I had to do it all over again, I’d have applied to every school from around rank 9 to 20, and just taken the highest rank regardless of cost.  Rather than what I did.