[quote=squat250]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!!!
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.
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…[/quote]
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!
