San Diego Housing Market News and Analysis

I am taking a stab at this but no... I don't think it is a joke.

I am envisioning some kind of immigration situation here. Gil & O'by are looking to hire an indentured servant from oversea for the price of a Green Card but to first prove to the state department that they cannot find "good american help". They are advertising the position under the scenario described above to dissuade any applicants.

Or they are looking for a Law Grad with a rich family to supplement thier staffing and payroll.

CE

P.S.

Could be part time work... 2088 Hours in a billable year. At 10K for 2088 hours it works out to 4.79 an hour... Below minimum wage...

Notva joke. It's on www.abajournal.com w lots of reader comments.

Market forces.

Expect turnover. Training oppty?

No one can pay loans on it.

This is almost as insulting as I can recall when I attended an entrepreneur convention in S.D. in which you had project managers/etc trying to tell enginerds to work for them for free or less than minimum wage, saying the could outsource the work overseas.

Some folks contacted me and tried to tell me "work for a free at a startup and gain experience". My response was "I have the experience, you don't....You need me more than I need you. Try again."

I hate firms that try to exploit other people like this...Really shitty. As much as I make jokes about lawyers, there's something to be said with someone that commited to that higher education and knowledge... Meanwhile, you got people in government that work less than a full weeks of work and retire with a generous pension. Go figure.

There is currently a big glut of lawyers in the market. It is especially tough for recent grads with huge student loan debts. There were too many people entering the profession and simple supply and demand is driving the market. In addition there has been big advances in discovery Software and other tools that make first year associates even less valuable.

The profession is no longer a surefire way to get rich.

Do the profession if you want to help people (or causes), don't do it to get rich. I have the highest respect for Public Defenders and Prosecutors. I just saw the old movie To Kill a Mockingbird, wow what a classic.

There is currently a big glut of lawyers in the market. It is especially tough for recent grads with huge student loan debts. There were too many people entering the profession and simple supply and demand is driving the market. In addition there has been big advances in discovery Software and other tools that make first year associates even less valuable.

The profession is no longer a surefire way to get rich.

Do the profession if you want to help people (or causes), don't do it to get rich. I have the highest respect for Public Defenders and Prosecutors. I just saw the old movie To Kill a Mockingbird, wow what a classic.

I can't find the Yahoo link for this but I saw it on friday and Yahoo was reporting that 32 people had already applied for the job...

Poor applicants.

CE

Here's a side note that seems grotesquely unfair. There's something called moral fitness and character application u need to pass to get licensed to be an atty. in Ohio a student failed that test because his job plan didn't involve making enough money to service his huge debt.

As if he had turned down the big bucks job for the low paying one!!!

link;

http://studentpwns.com/2011/01/20/too-mu...

the debt loads are truly staggering. i know young people carrying in excess of a 200k in student loan debt. who may have a hard time finding a 50,000/yr job.

keep in mind that this debt is NONDISCHARGEABLE in bankruptcy. it is there forever, till you die.

any kid who applies to law school and pays sticker price (around 50,000/yr at many schools) and borrows to live is truly not thinking about the reality of it all.

on the other hand, i can remember borrowing a big chunk of change and being told i was an idiot.

it's wrong to lend young people this much money,s since they are thinking, hell, they wouldn't lend it to me if things generally don't work out for people...

and I have nothing now anyway, so what the hell!

it truly creeps me out.

just checked; tuition at my school is 3x what it was when i started. golly.

but if you go to this inexpensive school

http://www.cslawschool.com/financial-inf...

live at home, and work, you'd be outh there debt free easily...

that's what I'd want my kids to do if they were so inclined...

On the bright side, there is some on the job training, health insurance and a clothing allowance.
A clothing allowance!! What else could a new lawyer ask for?

You guys are making too much out of this. Whine if somebody offers a low cost opportunity to network & gain experience while still in school or Whine if the same job is outsourced to China.
Whining itself is becoming so popular these days that it is in the danger of being outsourced itself. What are you going to do then?

I can see this college lending bubble is going to end badly, very badly.

Good post, scaredy. I feel bad for these kids, also, but realize they put themselves there by borrowing for exorbitant tuition and sometimes borrowing enough for living expenses while a student. That is folly, IMHO, especially in this economy.

As a certified paralegal who charges "piecework" prices and flat fees for particular jobs, I KNOW I likely have a higher net income than some of these new attorneys simply working from my home in my shorts. (Yes, I DO dress to the go the office :))

The problem is that for this exorbitant tuition, they only teach "theory" in law schools. This does NOT prepare the graduate to work in any state. The reality is that each state has their own "Rules of Court." In CA, each county within the state has its own "Local Rules" and each judge has it's own "courtroom rules" and "trial rules."

You can't learn all this from law school or even paralegal school. The only way to learn it is by doing and being there ... repeatedly. A paralegal who has been "in the trenches" for decades has FAR more "experience" than a recent law school graduate but is not "licensed" to practice law. Even though I can argue a motion with my hands cuffed behind my back, unless I am representing myself I will never get the opportunity. Almost every motion I have written has been won by an attorney who did not make any changes to it before it was filed. Back in "my day," Cal Western SOL in SD charged less than $3K per semester (plus books). I did not have a bachelor's degree so could not apply. My ship sailed decades ago and I accepted this long ago :=]

Intelligence, skill and expertise has almost nothing to do with "educational level" attained, IMO.

It is unequivocally NOT WORTH IT to attend law school at the current prices, IMHO. I've posted here before that most of the attorneys I've done work for are PAST retirement age. They still work because their services are in demand and their expertise is sorely needed in "Of Counsel" positions in firms. Most attorneys work until they are near death or have their "hands in the pot" one way or another. Unlike an "employee," these attorneys are "business partners" and don't typically get downsized or riffed or given a "golden handshake." This phenomenon takes away thousands of openings for those new bar card recipients who can't afford malpractice insurance premiums on their own whilst paying on their student loans at the same time. This is a travesty but it is what it is.

Young people should look very carefully at the majors most likely to pay off in monetary rewards before spending thousands (and years of their lives) on college and graduate school. If none of these fields seem interesting to them, they should get ONLY an associate degree at a low-cost CC (to satisfy their GE credits) and keep their options open for enrolling in a university in the future. During CC and after, they should try to get a job in one of these "hot" fields that seem "boring" to them ... even part-time (example: accounting) to try it out and see if they like it before deciding not to major in it. Who knows? They might find it rewarding enough to work towards a bachelor degree in it!

It's not about whining at all. I've been the last to whine about outsourcing. But still it's kinda sad...Because while I'm not worried about myself, if this is what is to come for folks younger than me, I really feel sorry for them. Global competition...Sorry, a lot of american kids won't be able to handle it I think...

Suddenly, I don't feel so bad being a techie anymore with some side gigs and some side assets (albeit small)...Now time to stockpile more...

It already is starting to cook...Read about them in the news. They're talking about it all over...

Maybe in some sense investing in a professional degree is an inflation hedge like housing. A degree from 15 y ago costs 3 times as much to buy today.

Not sure the analogy holds up.

The asset dies with you.

Maybe a liquor license would've been better.

It's going to difficult to burst the education bubble because the GOV is gonna keep lending and the kids are gonna keep lining up to take the money..

There's going to have to be more stories of long term impoverishment to get students to think twice. And there will always be a dumber student waiting to take the smarter guys loan and seat!

Not sure how it ends.

It's so wrong to be signing up 18 year olds fOr this type of debt. The draft is relatively humane in some ways.

My goal in life is to pass on an inheritable business to my kid and significant other..The problem with what I do. It doesn't lend itself to do that....Sometimes, traditional brick and mortar biz is the way to go imho...

Maybe a gas station or pharmacy or liquor store...Just saying....

Unfortunately, it isn't fair to bail out student-loan debtors with public and private university degrees and even graduate degrees. There are many, MANY students (past and present) who elected NOT to pursue college past the certificate or associate degree level (public CC or "jr college" in other states) due to cost and not wanting to be a burden on their middle-aged parents with few assets. This DOESN'T MEAN these students who DID NOT elect to take debt out were not accepted into a university or were otherwise unqualified to be admitted. It means they didn't go due to cost alone. Many went directly to work FT in a "family biz" upon HS or CC graduation.

Former students need to take responsibility for their choices. If a student borrowed enough for living expenses over and above tuition, fees and books, this is akin to a home-debtor taking "cash out" of their properties to purchase whatever they wanted with it. A young person of the same age who didn't take out student loans did not have this cash to spend during those years.

I've also seen a lot of whining on the internet from middle-aged people who have elected to take out student loans to "retrain" at $1K+ per month institutions such as Nat'l University and Univ of Phoenix and now want Congress to forgive all or most of it. I don't feel sorry for them at all. Those that owned property should have borrowed from it (like all the other FB's did who bought vehicles/vacations, etc), used the funds to pay for their educations and then defaulted on their "secured" loan. It's the American way. Why someone 50+ years of age or even 45+ years of age would borrow $100K+ or even $65K to obtain an advanced degree or credential from a private institution is absolutely beyond my comprehension! Practically speaking, they won't be able to be employed long enough to pay it back (that is, if they actually get hired for the professional positions they trained for), let alone live long enough to pay all of it back.

These foolish individuals will undoubtedly take their student debt to their graves and it probably won't come close to ever being satisfied.

The government guarantee thru Sallie Mae should be done away with and tuition and fees at both public and private universities would immediately begin reducing in price, accordingly. If this causes the "lofty and exalted professors, department heads and deans" to take huge cuts in pay (for working 18-32 hrs per week, nine months a year), so be it.

Should, but...probably won't .

Doesn't seem right to never be able to discharge tuition loans.

Maybe if people forfeited the degree? No license?

I mean, why be able to discharge a quarter million borrowed to start a failed pet grooming biz, but not a quarter million borrowed for law school tuition? Assuming u forfeit the degree.

Stay on the hook for borrowed living expenses.

scaredy, I could see being ineligible for a state license if your loan to obtain that license was discharged. But a degree is part of the student. It stays with them and you can't take it away. In the case of an attorney, they HAVE that JD or LLM. You can't take it away. This advanced degree could and does qualify them for many professional positions even if they cannot "practice" law.

I'll use myself for an example here. In CA, JD's, LLM's and CPA's also get to use their advanced degrees (and licensing, if applicable) for perks such as taking the CA RE Brokers exam. Peons like me can "qualify" to take it by virtue of the requisite education and experience as a RE Salesperson but my experience as a "Salesperson" is not "consecutive." Thus, I don't qualify to take it based upon this technicality. I didn't have access to this "free" advanced education (by virtue of it being "discharged"). There are many THOUSANDS of people like me.

It's a very (unfair) slippery slope.

scaredy, you're probably aware that in a divorce proceeding, a degree conferred upon one of the parties or a personal injury award for injuries sustained by one of the parties is NOT dividable, by law. It belongs to the party who earned the degree or sustained the injury. As does the student-loan taken out by the party who received the education that it paid for.

These things are part of the person so affected. You can't take away the education from their minds or the injury from their bodies. It belongs to no one else but the affected persons.

But what if we changed the rules. As part of discharging the tuition loans u forfeit any right to claim the degree. You just flush the years down the toilet and they didn't happen. No advantage other than what you might have learned.

Why not allow a do over in life?

Well I know.

The govt funds a lavish educational bureaucracy while students try to grab the brass ring.

So we require human sacrifices to alert the market that school is for fools.

Somehow seems wrong all around.

Particularly given societal brainwashing from early on that schooling is the way to get ahead.

We don't want anyone chained for life to debt...other than people who tried and failed to get ahead thru schooling?

I think most people don't learn much in school.

What I learned; be very fast, be very thorough, be very paranoid you're missing something very important.

Maybe that was worth the tuition in a way...

I think there are huge numbers of people out there who'd gladly give up the degree and any benefit or priviliege appertaining thereto to discharge the debt. I mean jeez if someone's willing to admit they just wasted three or four years of their life, why not cut em some slack?

Eliminating govt guarantee of student loans is really a separate issue.

I understand what you're trying to say here, scaredy. But there are many options for post-secondary "schooling" that do NOT require taking out exorbitant student loans.

There is ROP thru the CC's (to learn to be a well-paid HVAC mechanic), for example; there is an Associate in Accounting which will allow one to be a well-paid payables/receivables or payroll specialist; there is a 9-18 month CC course (or <=$10K for a "private" school) to be a "medical assistant" or other medical or dental specialist; and, there is a bachelor degree at SDSU while living with parents to obtain a degree in various business fields while participating in a "work-study" program. The list is endless. Where I live, the most established realtors put their family members on staff whilst they simultaneously prepare them for state licensing. They work as receptionists, open-house sitters and even transaction coordinators for the successful agent/broker.

There are so many ways to make money in lieu of spending the better part of a decade in school FT incurring debt that will take a lifetime (or MORE, lol) to pay back.

Those students who elected to take on this exorbitant debt made poor choices when they had other, more feasible alternatives at their disposal. Sometimes a student needs to forego their pie-in-the-sky "dreams" of what they "think" they might want to do for a living and revise them to a more realistic and attainable goal. That's how life is. We all can't be celebrities.

scaredy, they CAN'T simply "give up" the degree. They EARNED it and the education they received is in their minds! We can't now take this away from the person for the same reason that we can't take away the past service of a (now "retired") govm't bureaucrat. They ALREADY EARNED their degrees/pensions! You can't fix this now. It is in their MINDS. The rest of us DIDN'T have to go thru what it took to EARN that degree or pension.

You are correct in that eliminating "Sallie Mae" is a separate issue.

But it's fair taxpayers should bailout public sector pension holders? I don't get it.

I agree.

delete

You can't take away the knowledge true. But you can take away the credential.

The law will be, on discharge of educational debt, the debtor shall be criminally prosecuted for fraud for claiming to possess the particular degree or to have attended law school for any purpose whatsoever (other than to explain a gap in time on a resume, and for that purpose there shall be a standardized form).

I doubt there is much useful in anyone's mind from the 3 years of law school. Just residual anxiety and fear.

True the student debtor was dumb. True they had other options. True they chased a career path that was financially suicidal.

Other than trying to squeeze out a few dimes for the taxpayer, why not let them have another shot?

I guess it just goes to show, for student debtors, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.