Hacker News Reader

Comment by rmorrison | Hacker News Reader

There's a similar problem with law.

While there are attorneys who get jobs at big law and make $150k+ starting, a significant percentage of students entering law school this year will not get a positive return on investment over the course of their career.

{The cost of the law degree} + {The opportunity cost of not working for three years} > {the increased salary that they'll make over the remainder of their career}

EDIT: There were a bunch of articles floating around about this over the past year, here's one: http://www.abanet.org/lsd/legaled/value.pdf, or more recently http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?src=bu...

View on HN

I would expect that an oversupply of lawyers would make them cheaper to hire and nicer to deal with. If we instead have a small group of lawyers that are expensive and unpleasant, while a lot of younger graduates cannot find jobs, I'd expect there must be some powerful artificial barriers of entry created by the group of insiders, though I have no idea what they could be...

I'm guessing it's because when you are hiring a lawyer it often means that at best millions of dollars or your entire livelihood is at stake and, at worst, your freedom or literally your life is at stake. In those situations most people aren't in a mood to bargain-hunt or take a risk with an unknown and untested product, if they have an option.

To put it in perspective, there is now a line out the door of experienced lawyers for public defenders jobs.

A friend of mine is in the top 20% of a top 20 law school and is hoping to hear back from American Samoa and rural Georgia districts. No one in his third year classes have jobs. Law school is a horrifying investment if you're not in the top 30% or so at a top 5 school.

Non-dischargeable student debt is a nightmare.

Top 20 Law School is not a real category, in much the same way that top 5 CS grad school is not a real category. In both cases there is a sub group that may change their internal rankings but which are reliably above the others. In CS the top 4 are CMU, MIT, Berekeley and Stanford. The second tier are not playing in the same league.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_rankings_in_the_Unit...

This surprises me. Citation needed?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com