OK OK so we know this is a bschool blahg — but we stumbled across this awhile back and couldn’t resist posting it for you:
As a law school professor, I can’t stress enough how time-consuming and stressful law school is. You will not get to spend any time with your child for those three years, beyond one hour a night. You will be in $100,000 of debt. Unless you go to a top five or so (seriously — not a “top 25”) law school, expect to spend the next 20 years with LESS disposable income than you have now. And you might not have a job at all, with no ability to free yourself of those loans through bankruptcy. Unless it has always been your dream to be a lawyer, DO NOT GO.
It’s from an advice column that was, uh, sent to us. It was written in response to an EQ-lacking question from someone who’s itching to go to law school.
If you need more convincing that law school is a Very. Bad. Idea. for most people, then check out an entire book that’s been written on the subject – again, by a law school prof. That book review we just pointed to has a snapshot explanation for why law school tuitions have risen so astronomically in the past decade or so — all of those factors coming into play at bschools too.
The WSJ did a related article about a month ago that contained this scary stat: “The percentage of law school grads who found full-time jobs shrank to 62% this year, down from 85% in 2011.”
We’ve been mentioning since forever on the blahg – like here and here — how getting an MBA is an expensive proposition. You’re going to be awash in debt when you graduate. You MUST go into this business school thing with a workable plan for your future career. Employment stats for freshly-minted MBAs have recovered since the ’08 crisis, though just lately there’s been word that many banks on the Street are pulling back in hiring — the scandals at Barclays and at Nomura in Japan haven’t helped much. Even with all that, there’s some pretty good odds that you’ll be able to find SOMETHING to do with your MBA when you get spit out the other end of this process.
Law school is a different matter entirely. If you happened to wander in here with some interest in law school instead of bschool, then we encourage you to STOP and make sure you know what you’re getting into.
Even a JD/MBA is less valuable today than it was a mere three years or so ago. If that’s the direction you’re headed in, it’s surely more flexible than a straight-up law degree – but it might also be LESS flexible than just the MBA, as it could pigeonhole you in a particular way, and you may find that it’s tough to redefine yourself outside the “JD” part.
We’re no experts in these matters but we thought we’d pass along that advice we came across from someone who is.
Tell us what you think.