The Positive – Lower Interest Rate:

One of the biggest problems with student loans is the interest rate at which they are offered. It’s ironic, actually. The same individuals who developed student loans to provide more people with access to education apparently didn’t think about the other side of the equation: what happens once they are disbursed. It is insufficient to provide someone with a loan to help them with their education when the interest rate ensures that loan will snowball. As they currently exist, Stafford and Grad PLUS loans are disbursed with an interest rate between 5-8%. This means that for every $1,000, they accrue an additional $50-80 a year. Doesn’t sound that terrible until you’re sitting with a $100,000 balance, as many law graduates do. Although it is true that student loans are unsecured and relative to the private market these interest rates are technically generous, if we’re pulling for people to receive an education because we want educated masses it would probably serve us best to provide these student loans at a much lower interest rate. Fortunately, this is where re-financing comes into play. There are certain private lenders out there that have decided to shave the government’s profits off the top. For those most qualified (posing the least default risk), certain private lenders will offer a much lower interest rate by paying down their student loan in full and re-issuing it to them at their own lower rate. Why? Well, these private lenders feel the same way about these usurious federal interest rates and want to step in to give hard working graduates a helping hand. It is possible there are other reasons: they’ve identified a gap between what the government charges and what they could charge while still turning a profit, or the fact that the federal rates are so low these student loans are actually worthy investments in this current environment. But, the intentions are irrelevant. What matters is certain graduates can take advantage of this current climate and cut their interest rates significantly. A lower interest rate will not only mean lower payments, but more of your money hitting principal. This means the loans are paid down faster as there’s less interest accruing and blocking your way. For example, substituting $25-40 for $50-80 on each $1,000 doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

The Negative – Loss of Federal Protections:

Cutting the interest rate on your student loans by re-financing sounds appealing, but it does not come without drawbacks. Private lenders, unlike the federal government, are typically not as gracious about potential hiccups in your life that affect your ability to service your student loans. With the government, there are two important protections that exist: deferment and forbearance. Deferment refers to the ability to temporarily freeze making your monthly student loan payments in certain situations. Most often, this occurs if you re-enroll in school or face unemployment. During deferment, certain types of students loans (ex. subsidized loans) are eligible for a government subsidy where the government pays the interest that accrues during this time period. If you’re coming out of a graduate program, however, the amount of your student loans that will be subsidized will be minimal. Only a portion of Stafford loans are subsidized and Grad PLUS loans are not. However, deferment is a powerful safeguard in an otherwise unpredictable job market.

In addition, federal student loans are also eligible for forbearance. If you can’t make your scheduled loan payments, but don’t qualify for a deferment, your student loan servicer may be able to grant you a forbearance. With forbearance, you may be able to stop making payments or reduce your monthly payments for up to a year. There is a mandatory and discretionary forbearance option available. Discretionary forbearance leaves the decision to your student loan servicer, but often may be granted due to financial hardship or illness. Mandatory forbearance requires a specific event described on the StudentAid website. The problem with forbearance, however, is that the interest will continue to accrue. At the percentages discussed above, this can become a problem when you leave forbearance and that amount capitalizes. This means it gets added to your principal. For example, if you owed $1,000 and accrued $50 in interest in forbearance, once you leave forbearance you may now be accruing interest on $1,050 rather than $1000. This means that’s 5% coming off an additional $50. As a result, these safeguards can be valuable, but they make matters worse if your goal is complete student loan repayment as the interest continues to balloon the balance. Some private lenders who handle student loan re-finance have started to offer versions of these federal safeguards, particularly for those suffering economic hardship, but they are usually shorter-term and in the lender’s discretion. Remember, a private lender wants to get paid. As a result, these safeguards exist on the private side only to the extent necessary to compete with other lenders handling student loan re-finance. The lenders aren’t usually going to compete with the federal government in this category.

Perhaps the biggest problem with re-financing is that it disqualifies you from taking advantage of the various income-based repayment programs (IBR/PAYE). These programs have largely made deferment and forbearance unnecessary, as enrollment ties your monthly payments to a percentage of your discretionary income (income above the federal poverty level).  This way, how much you pay ultimately rests with how much you make. The problem, of course, is that many people on these programs aren’t hitting much of the principal. In many cases, particularly where law school graduate debt levels are involved, these programs merely offer the comfort of avoiding default, not the prospect of actually paying down the student loans. For more information, visit our IBR/PAYE FAQ.

General Factors to Consider:

1. Employment – the legal field has not been kind to law school graduates. Even where jobs are available, the legal field’s bimodal salary scale often makes student loan repayment a problem. Whether re-financing your student loans is a smart decision will almost certainly rest with your particular employment situation. Those in big law making the best salaries out of law school are in a much easier position to deal with their student loans. However, even there the answer is not so simple. Your overall student loan balance still reigns supreme. There are often law school graduates with $200,000 or more in student loans heading into big law to make $160,000 a year. Considering the former is an after-tax amount and the latter is a pre-tax salary, those numbers don’t look as close as they may first appear. With these salaries often limited to high cost of living areas and big law certainly not qualifying for the job stability award, the answer isn’t very simple. Of course, if you’re in a position where you’re on a big law salary and your debt levels are manageable (south of $100,000), depending on your near-term goals re-financing may be obvious. The same can be said for a law school graduate in a smaller law firm making $60,000 with $30,000 in student loans. This brings up the next point.

2. Financial Goals – outside of measuring your employment against your student loan balance, it is important to consider both your short-term and long-term financial objectives. Someone who is planning on buying a house a couple of years after graduation may not want to re-finance and lose the federal protections available with federal student loans. Someone else may not want to tackle student loan repayment and may prefer to simply factor in the monthly payments into their long-term outlook, exchanging faster loan repayment for other necessities. This choice ultimately rests with you. If you want to be student loan free within five years of graduation and your circumstances allow for a planned attack to pay down this debt, the choice to re-finance may be simple compared to the person in the same financial shoes but with other major obligations that preclude making student loans the focus. At the end of the day, this is a financial trade-off. Inherently, the choice is simple: pay more later or pay less now. Deal with student loans far into the future, or eliminate them as fast as possible. Since life variety ultimately dictates, the choice rests with you. With that said, this doesn’t mean that re-financing is foreclosed to those who wish to draw out student loan repayment. If you feel your employment and financial prospects are solid such that you’re willing to give up federal protections for a lower long-term interest rate, re-financing may be beneficial to save money over the long term.

3. Public Interest Work – the decision to re-finance your student loans changes drastically if you’re in a public interest position that qualifies for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and you’re planning on sticking around for 10 years to take advantage of the program. Although the first graduates eligible to successfully qualify for loan forgiveness after 120 payments have not yet triggered PSLF, many believe the rug won’t be pulled from under the program when the first graduates do qualify. If you fall into this area, re-financing shouldn’t be your goal unless your loan amount is manageable and you’re unsure about PSLF.

General Tip:

Whether you are going to re-finance or keep your federal student loans, there is no reason why you shouldn’t immediately enroll in an income-based repayment program. There is no harm in overpaying what you owe under such a program on a monthly basis if your plan is to knock them out as fast as possible, but each month you spend on the program will help you get credit for the unicorn tax-forgiveness “concept” that no one will test for quite some time. Unless your plan is to re-finance immediately after starting your job, enrolling in an income-based repayment program is a smart move.

Student Loan Re-Finance Lenders:

Here are some of the most popular lenders specializing in student loan re-finance, particularly due to their low interest rates. After all, that’s the point of re-financing. They are in alphabetical order:

1) Citizen’s Bank

2) Common Bond

3) Darien Rowayton Bank (DRB)

4) Earnest

5) First Republic

6) LendKey

7) SOFI

Incoming search terms:

• jdemployed

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1. Law School Employment Statistics

According to The National Association for Law Placement (NALP), a little more than half of the nation’s 2015 law school graduates found a job in private practice. Yes, you read that correctly. To quote NALP:

“Just over 51% of employed graduates obtained a job in private practice, a figure that has fluctuated only between 50.7% and 51.3% since 2012. Though well above the trough of 2011 when the measured rate was only 49.5%, these figures are nonetheless below the prevailing levels of 55-64% of jobs for the 25 years prior to 2010.”

Although this statistic refers to private practice only, private practice is the meat and potatoes of the legal field. Opportunities in private practice make up the vast majority of available entry-level positions in the legal market each year. But, you may ask, can’t law graduates work for the government or do public interest if a job at a law firm can’t be obtained? It cannot possibly be the case that only half of law graduates find employment after graduation. You’re right, some law graduates do wind up obtaining government or public interest positions. The problem is that these law graduates are a small minority. So small, in fact, that they shouldn’t be considered an alternative like was perhaps the case a few decades ago. Indeed, according to NALP’s statistics, only 66.6% of 2015 law graduates obtained a job for which bar passage was required. That’s an increase of a little over 15% over the private practice total. What about the remaining 33%+? Who knows. The worst part about these statistics is that they only factor in the law graduates that actually responded to the survey after graduation. Although an optimist might conclude that’s a positive fact because this might not account for all the law graduates that were able to obtain post-graduate legal employment, think about this for a second. Do you think the law graduates that have obtained legal employment after graduation or the law graduates that have not obtained such employment are more likely to make this fact known? At best, these statistics can be taken at face value. At worst, they’re skewed in favor of successful law graduates with the motivation to share their success by responding. Either way, these are some sobering statistics. After 7 years of higher education, as much as 4 out of every 10 law school graduates across the entire nation graduate empty-handed. That’s a success rate that is a little too close to a 50/50 roll of the dice, especially when the jobs that are being reported by law schools as full-time legal jobs within that 66% figure have included jobs that do not actually fit that criteria. Common examples include temporary positions such as doc review that graduates happen to hold at the time the surveys are completed, non-salaried volunteer work in state government, or jobs temporarily provided for graduates by their own law schools for a period of time after graduation.

To make things worse, the Department of Labor forecasts the legal field’s growth from 2014-2024 will trend at average speed and provide for about 44,000 job openings. This means, on average, there will be around 4,400 additional jobs opening every year up until 2024. Even if no current legal jobs are cut back over this entire time period, imagine the saturation present in the legal field when the size of the graduating Class of 2015 was around 40,000. After several years of extensive overproduction of law graduates, the cherry on top to consider is that each year law graduates are not only competing for legal positions with their class peers, but with all those law graduates from previous years who have not yet found legal employment. These law graduates do not just disappear.

Finally, NALP points out that the amount of jobs found by Class of 2015 law graduates actually decreased in comparison to the Class of 2014. However, since the 2015 graduating class was smaller than the 2014 class, the employment rate stayed consistent. That’s not exactly comforting news:

“Moreover, the number of jobs found by graduates was down by more than 3,000 compared with 2014. However, since the number of graduates was also down according to the ABA, the employment rate remained steady even as the number of jobs declined.”

2. Law School Rankings

US News publishes a law school rankings list of the Top 100 or so law schools in the country. Law schools have obsessed over these rankings ever since the rankings came into existence, but that’s because prospective law students place so much weight on them as well. Unfounded weight. What you don’t know about these rankings is that they have very little to do with a law school’s worth because they factor in a multitude of things nobody cares about and ignore factors at the heart of a decision to enroll. Some of these pointless factors include how the faculty “rate” a school’s strength in a particular area of the law (yes, let’s ask the people whose paycheck relies on the law school market’s continued success how they feel about its features), expenditures per student, and acceptance rate (which surely can’t be rigged by providing waivers to students who have no shot of being accepted but can apply just to get rejected). Regardless of the weight some of these factors may be awarded, none of them matters. What matters is whether you can get a job after 3 years of sitting through law school. The obsession with rankings is understandable. It’s not unreasonable to assume the average student does not decide to enroll in any given school out of pure enjoyment but because he or she is looking to begin a particular career track. To establish a path that is least resistant to success, it becomes natural to try and rank schools and enroll in the highest ranked school to which the student is accepted. After all, the higher the school’s ranking, the better are the prospects, right?

For purposes of law school, US News is largely meaningless outside of indicating what law schools occupy the very top. There is a recognized “Top 14″ list of law schools that stands tall above all others, but outside of that category, US News creates more danger than opportunity. Relying heavily on US News rankings may fool you into a trap that may very well lead to a very undesirable result. For example, looking at the US News rankings and determining that it’s better to go to a law school ranked in the 40s over a law school ranked in the 80s because of the mere fact that one is ranked in the 40s is pure ignorance. The discrepancy in legal employment opportunities between the Top 14 and any school outside of this category is so severe that all that is necessary to evaluate the decision to go to law school is generally the following:

1. Will I be in severe debt due to my attendance? (more than 50-60K)

2. Will I have a guaranteed job upon graduation? (unless you can answer this question with a yes, refer to question 1)

Remember, unless you are the rare and special unicorn that decides to enroll in law school out of pure boredom or as a way to enhance an already established career in another field, your ultimate goal is presumably to be employed in the legal field after graduation. Rankings of law schools do not matter, your chance of employment after graduating from law school is all that matters. For this, you need employment statistics, real employment statistics (not the ones on a school’s website). For the closest gem available, visit Law School Transparency. US News is not your answer.

3. Law Salaries and Debt After Law School

A. Salaries

Imagine you’re getting ready to apply to school to enter a specific field and most of the schools you visit proclaim in their brochures that the most common outcome for the school’s graduates is a six-figure salary upon graduation. If you’re told nothing else, there’s a good chance you’ll excitedly launch some applications with the hope of enrolling and contributing to that statistic. This is the way it’s supposed to work, after all. Pursue education and come out on the other side with the type of jobs that those without that education don’t have the opportunity to get. Sounds like a winning scenario. Great enough, in fact, to take out the equivalent of this salary amount in student loans. Except once you attend school and unveil the curtains, you suddenly find out that that most common salary is not actually all that common. You find out that what most of your peers wind up earning upon graduation, if they are even able to obtain employment in the field, is a salary much lower than what you were led to believe is a common occurrence. You’d feel a bit disappointed and misled, no? Welcome to the law school market, one of the premier safe houses for misleading advertising.

Through a combination of shady tactics and misleading survey interpretations, a great deal of law schools tout employment rates for their graduates that float between 80-90% 9 months after graduation. In addition, many law schools report median salaries that approach or exceed six-figures for their law graduates. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case based on law school employment data discussed above. Without diving too hard into the details, it is now known that as recently as a few years ago certain law schools were providing misleading employment data for their graduates. Although there has been a cleanup effort over the past few years, the way the reporting is done still leaves much to be desired. Because of this, when viewing law school employment data straight from a law school’s website, do not believe everything that you see. Refer back to Law School Transparency.

These incomplete employment statistics promulgated by law schools to prospective law students are compounded by the unique and harsh reality of the legal market itself. Unlike many other fields, there is a sharp divide between salary outcomes after graduation. This sharp divide is known as bimodal distribution. Upon graduation, law graduates are separated into two distinctly separate salary groups, with little opportunity in between. These two salary groups are the following:

1. Big Firm Salaries (100K+)

2. Small Firm Salaries/Public Interest/Government (30-60K)

It is quite rare for a law graduate to land a position somewhere in the middle of those salary figures. Most often, it is either one or the other. Counting on landing at a job with a salary that is in the middle between these two salary groups is just unlikely. This doesn’t seem bad though, right? Looks like a solid 50/50 chance. Not happening. According to NALP, the chance of striking it big at a firm that pays over 100K is very low. For example, examining firms with 500+ lawyers, the firms that account for at least 90% of such opportunities in the legal field, shows the following for the Class of 2015:

“…the number of jobs taken at the largest firms — those with more than 500 lawyers — increased modestly to push their share of law firm jobs up by two percentage points, from 21.3% of law firm jobs to 23.3%…”

This translates to 4,007 jobs per this chart. That might sound promising, but only if you don’t factor in the fact that there were about 40,000 law school graduates in the Class of 2015. To be as positive as possible, let’s use the 5,100 job figure from 2009 to do some basic calculations. If we were to use this 2009 figure to calculate the probability of any one law graduate landing a six-figure salary after law school, a mere 12.8% of law school graduates would have this opportunity upon graduation. To be even more positive, let’s add an additional 10% to the 5,100 figure to cover the firms under 500 lawyers that may pay six-figures as well. With this addition, the total jumps to around 14%. This means that after adding an additional 10% to the most recent peak in 2009, a law graduate has a probability of about 14% of landing a six-figure salary after graduating from law school. Except, of course, not all law schools are created equal. These opportunities are heavily skewed towards the Top 14, with slim pickings getting slimmer the lower down the rankings you travel. And, to repeat, these statistics are inflated based on the 2009 peak.

After adjusting for the 1-3,000 magical in between jobs that may be available at medium salaries of 70-90K after graduation, the probability of obtaining a starting legal position near or above six-figures rises to an overly optimistic total of about 21.5%. Guess the salary of the other 78.5% of law school graduates? It’s either in the small firm category, which can range anywhere from 30-60K, or even less if the graduate is unemployed or underemployed. This includes law graduates attempting to strike out on their own after graduation by going solo. Therefore, on average, not only does a prospective law student have around a 66% chance of finding any legal employment post-graduation, but within that 66%, only about 14% of those available legal jobs pay handsome salaries that justify the extra 3 years of education and potential debt. Someone can make the claim that these are just the starting salaries, but the harsh reality is that the legal profession very rarely allows for large upward climbs in salary over time. Sometimes some (have you taken the LSAT?) can wind up making partner at a big firm, or wind up a lucrative partner at a small firm, but these are the winners. Everybody else toils around for years within a certain salary range, and that’s if they choose to stick around in the legal field. There is no guarantee that your salary will continue to increase over time, otherwise the mean employment salaries for lawyers would bear this out. Instead, it’s a battle between the few top tier salaries and the mediocre remainders, and the gap is so large that the average actually looks good and provides for great marketing. For a great article discussing the bimodal salary in the legal field and some important employment and salary statistics from recent years, check out The Toppling of Top-Tier Lawyer Jobs from the New York Times.

B. Debt

The average law school student attending a private law school has a debt total around $125,000 upon graduation (not including any undergraduate debt). What do you think happens to individuals that decide on going to law school, accrue six-figure debt in the process, and graduate unable to secure employment in that top 14% salary range (a salary that can handle those debt totals)? Unlike other types of debt, educational debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Those payments follow you forever. Although there are now ways to minimize the student loan payments by enrolling in safety net repayment plans such as IBR and PAYE, qualification for these services requires proving a partial financial hardship. How many prospective law students enroll in law school with the goal of graduating with a financial hardship? This reversal for many law students, six-figure debt and small salaries instead of the often anticipated six-figure salary and minimal or manageable debt, is the little secret the law schools don’t disclose to prospective law students. If you’re going to finance law school with student loans, you must understand the potential consequences.

In the end, this is not meant to discourage you from going to law school. These are just 3 very important points you need to understand about the law school process and the legal market. Understanding them will enable you to make a much more informed decision about attending and allow you to research each law school on your acceptance list more efficiently before deciding on enrollment. If you are heading to Harvard, Yale, or Stanford, you are likely to escape these dire statistics. However, any other law school has its potential risks. Risks that all too often many law graduates find out about too late in the process. Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of these statistics. Because you cannot roll back time, you must understand these risks ahead of time. They are too grave to ignore. Do your research, understand how student debt can change your entire life, evaluate your options, and come to a reasoned decision. That is the only way you should approach thinking about law school. For another important discussion, visit the Pre-Law Questionnaire article.

Incoming search terms:

• LawSchoolAttendance:DoYourResearch|GeneralLawSchoolOverview

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To understand this entire concept, you must first understand the inherent worth of the JD degree on its own. Law school, to the extent it is even capable of accomplishing this, only prepares law students for the practice of law. This means law students, most importantly, learn how to apply the law to the facts and how to interpret legal rules. Although it is true that law school also helps develop and enhance some inherently valuable skills, such as critical thinking, logical analysis, and clear and concise communication skills, these skills alone are not so valuable and non-existent outside the legal field that the mere obtainment of a JD degree has employers calling. This means that the skills gained in law school are almost entirely a field-specific skill set applicable to the legal field only, with one exception. There is a small niche of jobs out there that may be coined “JD-Advantaged” positions. These positions are rare, but are the few positions outside the legal field where the legal skills learned in law school are beneficial for the employer. The most common example of this is a compliance position with a company in a highly-regulated industry, where compliance employees must ensure the company follows particular guidelines and is in compliance with all regulations. The problem with these positions, however, is two-fold. First, although a JD degree is beneficial for these types of positions, it almost never is required. This means one can obtain this position without having to go to law school. In fact, most of the individuals in these positions do not have JDs, often obtaining such employment through the combination of a relevant bachelor’s degree and relevant prior work experience/connections. Second, it very rarely is the case within this already rare non-legal employment niche for law graduates that it is the standalone JD that results in a hire. Most often, it is the law graduate with the right undergraduate major or relevant prior work experience that gets the nod over the freshly-minted K-JD student. In this scenario, the JD is more of a bonus on top of an already solid resume for the position. It is almost never the standalone JD that creates the edge even in this favorable, albeit limited, context. As a bonus, ask yourself a simple question: why would someone go to law school to voluntarily apply to the very few openings favorable to JDs outside the legal field? Yet, this is not the biggest problem.

The greater and more rarely discussed problem involves law graduates being entirely shut out from non-legal employment opportunities solely due to the fact they obtained a JD degree. Yes, the double whammy. Not only may the JD not open the non-legal doors you may have imagined, but it is very likely to completely shut whatever chance you may have had prior to law school of obtaining that employment. The problem is simple and discussed more in-depth in the JD versatility article. However, it is necessary to touch upon the basics here as well. Everybody on the outside believes what the prospective law student is told to believe prior to enrolling: lawyers make bank. Why would anybody want to hire a law graduate for non-legal employment when they will flee as soon as their road to riches lawyer gig appears? JD degree holders are viewed as a short-term hire, they may even be considered rejected on the spot on the mere rationalization that there must be something wrong with them if this is the job they are applying for when they could be a rich lawyer. In addition, the JD degree brings no inherent value to the position in a non-legal context, but it is unlikely the law graduate will be happy with a bachelor’s degree salary. The icing on the cake is the belief that hiring a lawyer will not only jump start the manager’s worry over his own position, whether accurate or not, but also the fear the law graduate will act like a lawyer. For example, poking around in places outside of his or her position and giving unsolicited advice. As a non-legal employer, why deal with any of this?

With the legal market completely out of whack in relation to the amount of law graduates graduating each and every year out of law school, law graduates have begun to swarm non-legal positions in hopes of gaining credible employment. It has gotten so bad that there are now positions out there that actually list in the job opening that “No J.D.s” need apply. Presumably, outside of the above assumptions, these positions have been swarmed with law graduate applications to the point where it is necessary to preemptively strike them from the applicant pool. What does this say about the value of a JD degree? Truly, the JD disadvantage. This has become so common that a blog was created to track the positions specifically excluding JD degree holders from applying: JD-Disadvantaged. Those law graduates that suffer the most from this treatment are the K-JD students with no prior work experience or competitive undergraduate major. The “No J.D.s” prerequisite really refers to those applicants with nothing more of value than the standalone JD degree (No-Only J.D.s). Again, for those with relevant prior work experience or a competitive/relevant undergraduate degree, there may be room to ignore the JD outright and still obtain the position in a non-JD-Advantaged job. However, this begs the question: what was the point of law school? For the rest without connections, relevant work experience or a solid undergraduate degree, outside the legal profession the JD degree may as well be considered an anchor holding you back rather than a standout credential that makes the law graduate competitive in other industries.

This entire JD disadvantage problem is compounded within the legal field itself. The logical person would think that the least a JD degree would be useful for as a last resort is a paralegal or legal secretary position. It may cause you to start on the bottom, but you can work your way up. Unfortunately, yet again the legal field does not follow the logic. The situation for the unemployed law graduate is a trap: you cannot be hired for non-associate positions because you have a JD degree, but you can’t be hired for associate positions because you have no experience and nobody took a chance on you during law school so you did not obtain graduate employment before graduation. For low-level positions in a law office, such as a paralegal or legal secretary, the common thinking is again two-fold. First, what lawyer wants a paralegal with a law degree providing unsolicited substantive advice on work product and inquiring about what they should do to move up or get a raise? Again, the law graduate is viewed as a short-term hire, ready to flee at a moment’s notice if a lawyer gig opens up. Paralegals and legal secretaries are individuals with a lower associate’s degree or individuals with a bachelor’s looking to stay for a few years before moving on to bigger things. The point, largely, is that they have no power in the employment hierarchy in relation to the lawyer. Law graduates in these positions disrupt this order of power. This brings up the second point: lawyers don’t want the law graduate paralegal watching their every move, learning along the way, and then jumping ship to open up their own shop, competing with their former boss for clients. Even worse, taking some with them! Interestingly, this is not exactly a new phenomenon.

The reality of the JD degree is very basic to understand. There is a specific period of time during law school where law students have the greatest chance of obtaining legal employment. This is known as 2L OCI. Past that phase, they must gain as much legal experience through internships and law clerk positions as they can to be competitive for the remaining positions snatched up during 3L year or immediately post-bar. The rest will most often be out of luck, facing both the obstacle of trying to find legal employment and the JD disadvantage if they venture outside of the legal field. For most, this will be worsened by many orders of magnitude because of the large amount of student loans awaiting repayment. It is not a pretty picture. Whether law school is a good idea for any one individual depends on his or her particular circumstances, but the least every prospective law student can do is be informed about law school. A great place to start is to answer the pre-law questionnaire, not immediately after college but after at least a year or two of solid work experience that may prove ever so crucial if you wind up enrolling in law school and things don’t go as planned.

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Although successful networking is a long-term process that you should be engaged in as early as possible, this is something that anyone can do immediately prior to OCI. The method is very simple. After you create your firm bid list and submit it to your law school, it won’t take long before you receive the results with your interview schedule. Once you have your schedule in front of you, you should immediately go to the website of every firm on your interview list and find several alumni from your law school (if there are none, look at undergrad alumni or just email anybody). Contact them by email and ask if it is possible to schedule an informational phone interview with them to get some more substantive information about the firm. More specifically, your email should be short but should indicate that you are a law student at X law school, you are heading into OCI, you are very excited about your interview with the firm, and you wish to learn a little bit more about the firm in order to better understand whether it may be the right fit for you. A sample email may be something along the following lines:

Dear X,

I am an incoming 2L at X law school. I am very interested in your firm and have been fortunate enough to receive an interview during 2L OCI. If you have some free time, I would be very grateful if we could arrange a short phone call that would allow me to learn more about the firm and your particular experience. Please let me know if that would be possible.

Thank you.

This is just a sample, but anything along these lines will work. The key is to keep it simple and indicate you have already been chosen by the firm for an interview, as this increases the chance the person will actually respond to you. You should be focusing on associates, they are the most likely to respond and have the time to speak with you. However, if you can throw in a partner and get lucky, even better. What’s most important is that you hold this informational interview with at least one person at the firm before your OCI interview. This gives you two distinct advantages over your peers. One, you will know much more about the firm than the students parroting lines from the firm’s website. This will automatically make the interview flow smoother. Two, you will convince the interviewer you are legitimately interested in the firm. The extent and validity of your interest will be clear when you can more confidently discuss the firm and talk about your phone call with X lawyer. Bonus points if the interviewer is a friend of the person you spoke with over the phone. In an ocean of classmates without this added advantage, this simple method will allow you to increase your odds of receiving a callback. With that said, make sure you target your emails. Do not send out emails to tons of lawyers at once. Send out an email to a few, and see if they respond. If they do not respond over the course of a couple of days, send out another few to a few other lawyers at the firm. You have to remember, you’re sending emails to busy lawyers and you don’t want to wind up looking foolish by emailing too many of them. If you get to speak to more than one person, that’s a bonus.

The informational phone interview should be treated just like any other informational interview. Make sure you’ve researched everything you can about the firm from its website and other sources prior to the call, and simply hold a conversation with the lawyer. Ask about the different practice area strengths, what a day in the life is like, and ask questions about the lawyer’s own career. Anything goes. You can also use this phone call as interview practice, especially by asking the same types of questions you will ask the interviewer at the actual interview. The key is to get some more substantive knowledge thanks to your phone conversation, and display this knowledge at the actual interview. By the way, to the extent you name drop, you need to do so discreetly when you’re on the subject of something like “Why this firm?” The person you spoke with is not your gateway to success, it’s all about the ammunition you gain from the phone conversation.

This method can be executed on a greater list of firms than those with which you have an actual interview, but how far you want to stretch this is on you. You may or may not receive interviews with other firms, so the cost/benefit analysis depends on your particular circumstances. For those firms with which you do have an interview, you should certainly take advantage of this. It is a short-term networking method that can pay dividends during OCI, and it is hassle free. When a simple phone call can increase your chances of OCI success, take advantage and run with it. What’s there to lose? This OCI process is a once in a lifetime opportunity, once it is gone it is not going to come back. You need to do whatever you can to make sure you succeed. Add this to your OCI arsenal, and let it help you achieve the results you need.

The post 2L OCI Success: Taking Advantage of Alumni Contacts appeared first on JDEmployed.

Before the list of factors and their respective weight percentages are listed, there is a need to examine what is instrumental to the decision to attend law school for the average prospective law student. Assuming the student is not going to law school just for kicks, it can safely be assumed that he or she is enrolling in law school to find not only stable legal employment (at the very least, any type of stable employment), but more importantly, the type of employment that enhances his or her earning power as a result of the degree. In other words, it is reasonable to presume that the average prospective law student decides to pursue another 3 years of higher education because he or she reasonably expects this extra education will provide salary opportunities upon graduation that will be greater than the salary opportunities available to him or her with no law degree. Unless the student fits a specific niche that does not prioritize greater salary opportunities, such as the students pursuing public-interest, the point of enrollment is to increase earning power quicker. However, this is not the end of the story. If law school loans are involved, ideally, there is an additional expectation of not only finding employment that provides greater salary and career growth than the non-JD options available pre-law school, but that is also able to accomplish this after subtracting the amounts required to service the student’s law school loan repayments after graduation. Considering most law students finance their legal education with some amount of student loans, achieving these objectives is instrumental. With this in mind, how do the US News law school rankings fare?

US News Factors (% weight out of 100%):

1. Peer [Dean, Faculty, Admin.] Assessment Score (25%)
2. Lawyer and Judge Assessment (15%)
3. Graduates Employed 9 Months After Graduation (14%)
4. Median LSAT Score (12.5%)
5. Median College GPA (10%)
6. Per-Student Expenditures (9.75%)
7. Students Employed at Graduation (4%)
8. Student-Faculty Ratio (3%)
9. Acceptance Rate (2.5%)
10. Bar Passage Rate (2%)
11. Financial Aid (1.5%)
12. Library Resources (.75%)

As you can see, this list of factors and their respective weight percentages are quite eye-opening. Let’s break them down, with the employment opportunity increase in mind:

1. Peer Assessment Score – One quarter of the weight that determines a law school’s rank is based on something as tenuous as the opinions of peer law school deans, faculty, and administrators about a particular law school. In what way do the opinions of individuals at other law schools impact the employment opportunities available to a law student? The even bigger problem here is that only 2/3 of those surveyed responded.
2. Lawyer and Judge Assessment – the views of employers about a particular law school are important to the employment opportunities available to the students at that particular law school. However, only about 1/3 of those surveyed responded, making this category largely ineffective. You can’t award 15% weight to a factor that has such a small response rate. In addition, this is not exactly the most reliable metric. Instead of surveying employers, it would be better to look at the percentage of a given law school’s students that are employed in state and federal clerkships, as well as medium-big firms (the employment opportunities with the greatest potential of servicing student loans). Let the actual hiring do the talking, not questionnaires.
3. Graduates Employed 9 Months After Graduation – the most important metric to the average prospective law student (including public interest students). This only receives an unbelievably low 14% weight. Why is it this low? It gets worse. Although US News gives more weight to full-time, long-term legal employment jobs, it does not assign different weights within this distinction. Big firms, government honors programs, and federal clerkships are more sought after employment opportunities than employment with a small firm or as a solo practitioner after graduation (chief among the distinguishing factors are the salary disparities and career growth opportunities).
4. Median LSAT Score/Median College GPA – this controls for the quality of the law school’s student body, an important factor indicating to employers where the best and the brightest enroll. Combined, these two factors total 22.5% weight. This is still below the almost meaningless Peer Assessment Score given 25% weight.
5. Per-Student Expenditures – the most egregious factor on the list, given almost 10% weight. Instead of providing schools with an incentive to limit costs for its students, this factor rewards schools that spend as much money as possible on students, hiking tuition in the process.
6. Students Employed at Graduation – the second most important factor on this list, given a mere 4% weight. Understandably, most law school students will not have a job at graduation unless they succeed at 2L OCI or receive an offer from a law clerk or other internship position prior to graduation. There is often a delay in employment because there is a need to pass a given state’s bar and be admitted to practice law. However, when compared to some of these other factors, a 4% weight is extremely questionable considering the factor’s importance. The more law students a school places in jobs at graduation, the better. This is compounded by the fact that most law students with jobs at graduation have also obtained the highest paying jobs (again, there is no differentiation between job type even if full-time, long-term employment receives more weight as a whole).
7. Student-Faculty Ratio – another egregious factor on the list. Outside of clinics, seminars or drafting classes, most law classes are lectures that function exactly the same whether there are 30 or 100 students. One on one discussions are saved for office hours. The importance of this factor is almost non-existent and incentivizes schools to hire more faculty at high salaries, again hiking tuition in the process.
8. Acceptance Rate – this factor is supposed to measure a school’s competitiveness. The more law students apply to a law school, the more weight the law school receives in this factor assuming it keeps its admitted class the same size or smaller. This is one of the most easily gamed factors on the list, as many law schools provide waivers to prospective law students for attendance applications even if their LSAT/GPA does not qualify them for admission. This is done just to lower the law school’s acceptance rate. If you want to measure competitiveness, the LSAT/GPA factors get the job done. There is very little need, if any at all, for this factor considering how easily it can be manipulated.
9. Bar Passage Rate – this is the only factor on this list that is arguably given the appropriate weight. Most ABA-approved law schools have sufficient bar passage rates that do not differ to a great degree. Although this factor matters for legal employment as you can’t practice without a law license, the fact most law students pass the bar at an ABA-approved law school gives this weight appropriately very little value.
10. Financial Aid – although this factor looks like a solid factor on its face, law schools often provide scholarships for the incoming 1Ls with the best GPA/LSAT numbers at the expense of students with the worst GPA/LSAT numbers. In other words, the 75%-ile students are often given scholarship awards subsidized by the 25%-ile students paying full tuition to attend. The biggest problem, however, is that simply allowing students to take out unlimited amounts in government loans counts as financial aid. Therefore, the higher the tuition, the better the score.
11. Library Resources – another egregious factor that incentivizes law schools to increase tuition to pay for vast physical libraries that simply have no place in today’s electronic world. This is arguably the worst factor considered on the list, as its value is the closest to an objective zero.

If you do not include the faulty and low-response rate surveys of potential legal employers, awarded 15% weight, the weight of the factors that actually play a role in securing employment for law students after graduation is an astoundingly low 45% of the US News ranking methodology [Median LSAT/GPA (22.5%), Employment 9 Months After Graduation (14%), Employment at Graduation (4%), Bar Passage Rate (2%), Acceptance Rate (2.5%)]. In fact, if the shaky Acceptance Rate metric is removed, the most relevant weight total drops to an even lower 42.5%. This low employment-factor weight should cast doubt on your potential reliance on the US News law school rankings. The ranking system simply isn’t designed with the average prospective law student’s interests at heart. Until the metrics change to reflect what truly matters, the measure of a law school’s ability to provide gainful employment opportunities to as many of its graduates as possible at the lowest cost possible, US News cannot serve as a very reliable indicator of a law school’s worth outside of the Top 14 law schools (for an explanation of this distinction, read the very relevant Top Law School Cliff article).

For the average prospective law student, what ultimately matters is the price paid for law school in relation to the employment prospects that law school provides. When even the employment factors comprising the overall low-weight employment total have problems with how they are computed in the US News list of factors, it is hard to see how the ranking system can come close to achieving that goal. But the employment dilemma does not end the story. Cost, from the student’s perspective, is not even on the US News radar. In fact, the few factors that do relate to law school cost actually incentivize schools to increase expenses to improve their rankings. This has created a troublesome result: the ranking system may be good for law schools to market and compete over, but it is out of touch with respect to the goals of the prospective law student (the same individual the ranking system is meant to guide). Fortunately, the decision to enroll, and specifically where to enroll, ultimately lies with the student. By recognizing the system’s deficiencies, you will be able to value it accordingly when making an attendance decision. For a better ranking system with a much greater emphasis on employment outcomes, visit Law School Transparency.

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Communication

Effective communication is crucial in any workplace, but it forms the core of the associate-partner dynamic at a firm. As you may know, assignments to the juniors and summers are given out by the senior associates and partners in the practice groups to which the juniors and summers belong. Although there is an initial presumption of trust when you start at the firm, nothing can erode that trust faster than your inability to communicate about anything and everything at all times. Progress reports on assignments? Check. Deadline issues? Check. Work volume updates? Check. Anything you do, especially as a summer, should be communicated to keep those involved in the loop. For example, imagine a situation where you’ve been given an assignment with a deadline and you are having trouble finishing the assignment on time. Do you go into double overtime to try and hammer it out or do you tell the assigning attorney? Many summer associates choose the former, banking on themselves to finish without alerting the assigning attorney. Although the hard work you are willing to put in is admirable, here’s the problem: you cannot be certain your doubled efforts will save you from blowing the deadline.

When you work at a big firm, it is very unlikely you will be working on only one matter at a time. This means that you’ll have to be juggling several assignments at once, and you can’t control if you get another few between your decision to double your efforts and the deadline. Because of this, there is literally nothing to gain by keeping this to yourself unless you are 100% certain that you will be able to finish on time by grinding away extra hard. If that cannot be guaranteed, there’s 4 reasons why letting the assigning attorney know is essential. First, you’ll be doubling your efforts either way so simply doubling your efforts has no true benefit by itself. Second, it keeps the assigning attorney in the loop on your progress. Third, it allows him or her to either seek extra help if the deadline is firm or give you some extra time to complete the assignment. Finally, it will insulate you by acting as a buffer when receiving new assignments. To expand on the last point, if your assigning attorney knows you are running close to a deadline, it is much easier to let others know you can’t immediately get started on their assignments because you always have the attorney available to make a call on your behalf. Call this insurance, because it saves you from not only receiving conflicting assignment priorities but from the potential unintended negative consequences of rejecting assignments outright. As a junior or summer, you don’t want to be rejecting assignments. You’re building your individual brand and trying to absorb everything like a sponge. Rejecting an assignment just looks bad unless you have absolutely no other options. Effectively communicating this to the assigning attorney avoids any negative consequences because it allows you to use the assigning attorney to your advantage: the assigning attorney can reject another assignment on your behalf because he or she is monopolizing your time temporarily. As a result, you’re in the clear.

At the end of the day, you have to remember what is at stake when you do not effectively communicate. In the example above, you run the risk of potentially blowing the deadline. There is arguably nothing worse that a summer associate or junior can do on the job. The most precious asset of every attorney is time. Can you imagine what happens when an attorney has to waste time he or she could have spent billing new work to fix that type of mistake? Let’s just say you don’t want to imagine what happens. As a summer, you’re not going to be receiving ground-breaking legal work. If you cannot do the most fundamental thing expected of you, manage your time properly, things will go downhill for you very fast. Always communicate, you have too much to lose otherwise.

Positive Attitude

Failing to keep a positive attitude is something that is surprisingly common, yet s0 unquestionably basic that it is a head scratcher. When you enter as a summer, you have to keep a positive attitude at all times. Whenever you are at the firm or at a summer event, your face should be beaming. You should sound excited, curious, and ready to learn. You should be asking questions, constantly asking questions. You must have a hunger to absorb as much information as you can handle. Most importantly, however, you have to keep a positive attitude when receiving and submitting an assignment. There are countless stories of attorneys claiming on mid-summer and final reviews that certain summers were not very excited when receiving assignments. Even worse, looking like they were indifferent during the interaction. Worst of all, actively complaining about the assignments they received. Do not be this type of person. This is common sense 101. You should be all smiles at all times and ready to tackle any assignment you are given, regardless of how you feel about the assignment. Remember, this is an extended interview. Little things that you may not notice are being noticed by the attorneys you are coming to contact with on a daily basis. Something as simple as seeming grouchy when receiving an assignment is a red flag. You are there to work, and you are being paid a lot of money when you initially provide very little value. It is in your own best interest to do this not only so that you get a full-time offer but because you want to gain as much experience as possible. Experience is value.

There’s another important point that intertwines the positive attitude and communication prongs: don’t say no to assignments, even if you are busy. Rejecting assignments was mentioned above, but often times as a summer you will be tested on your ability to keep a positive attitude during busy spells. Even if you have several assignments, someone may call or email you asking you if you are busy in hopes of giving you another assignment. Do not make the mistake of saying you are, in fact, too busy for a new assignment. This is a big mistake. Your early value as an associate is in your ability to be a grinder, whether you like it or not. Again, unless you have something that has a strict deadline (at which point you should follow the procedure above), always welcome new assignments. Stay as late as you need to stay to get them done if there are deadlines that need to be met, but do not reject assignments as a summer. You are being tested on your ability to survive in big law. Surviving means being capable of handling long work weeks with a ton of legal work on your plate. This is not a 9-5. This is get everything you have been assigned and more done. If you keep a positive attitude at all times and you make sure you communicate whenever necessary with your superiors, you should be well on your way to a permanent offer after the summer ends.

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Although this equation applies universally, the most common examples include dating and finding a job. In dating, when a man or woman has certain expectations about a significant other but never seems to find that person, very rarely do they look to themselves to understand why. Yet, that’s precisely where they should look. Are their expectations justified in light of the value they would bring to this desired other? Very often you find people wishing they had a certain someone that fits a certain checklist, but they themselves do not meet similar criteria. In what way, then, can this wanted other be attracted enough to them for them to succeed in keeping this person if they do indeed find them? This is why an honest self-assessment is crucial to success. Without knowing and understanding your own value, you cannot realistically set proper goals. In turn, you may often find yourself wondering why you have not succeeded as you had planned. Obtaining employment in any given field and moving up the ladder going forward is another great example of this disconnect in action. When looking for a job, ask yourself one question: what do you bring to the table? What value or potential future value can you justify to any given employer in order for them to pick you as the right candidate for the job? Many people simply focus on the employer, and dream about how great it would be to work for them. Little or no time is spent, even during an interview, discussing how they bring the type of value the employer wants to add to the roster. The same can be said for promotions once already on the job. Many people simply do what they have to do, very rarely do they go above and beyond. After time passes, they’re left wondering why they are always stuck in the same place as others move up. The answer is simple: they are not increasing their value to the employer, so there is no justification for a change from their current position.

Fortunately, once you understand this equation, control of your circumstances is in your hands. If your value is not up to par with your expectations, you have two options. Either you lower your expectations, or you increase your value. Considering there’s no reason why you shouldn’t want to achieve what you’ve already wanted, increasing your value is your best bet. As an example, the legal job market currently cannot fit in anywhere close to the number of law graduates the law schools are producing. Unfortunately, only a little over half of law graduates have the potential of obtaining legal employment upon graduation. What does this mean? Because competition is intense, and the value necessary to obtain legal employment has risen, the only thing law students can do is grow their value to legal employers. This means they need to keep their grades high, they need to gain as much practical experience as possible during law school, and they need to network as much as possible to grow their opportunity base. The alternative, of course, is unemployment or underemployment. Law graduates that have already finished law school must do the same thing, at least with respect to gaining practical experience and networking. Soliciting part-time contract work is another opportunity. Either way, growing this value in order to be able to sell yourself is the key to landing on the right side of the law graduate fence. It certainly is no guarantee, but it increases your chances. And that is in your control. This same logic applies to any goal you’re looking to achieve. Remember, you must first understand your own value. Only then can you see what you need to do to make that disconnect disappear.

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Let’s start with the obvious: although your parents may not have told you this, life isn’t fair. Unlike those participation awards that make everybody feel all fuzzy and warm inside for no real reason at all, participating in life is not something that deserves praise. In fact, it is a struggle for anybody who is not well-connected. Your chances of failing at most things in life are much greater than your chances of succeeding. If they weren’t, whatever it is that is worthy of pursuit would lose its value because it would be immediately saturated. This naturally means that there are consequences to your actions because not everybody will achieve the desired result. Failing to account for the consequences of your actions will bring you back to where you started, at best, or even worse, place you in a much worse position. This is why it is an absolute necessity that you conduct two very important analysis before making any serious life decision: a self-perception assessment and a cost-benefit analysis.

Accurate Self-Perception

Before you decide on any important decision, you have to take a step back and try to assess yourself from an objective standpoint. In other words, try to honestly and accurately identify your strengths and weaknesses as an individual. This means taking a real good look at your current skill set, your motivation levels, your real work ethic, and your overall drive and determination to get something done. Now, be careful. Although past performance does not guarantee future results, you need to be honest with yourself and consider your past experiences as at least a solid indicator of your future performance. This means you cannot attribute to future self a skill set or level of work ethic that you have never before experienced. It is just unlikely for an extreme turnaround to occur. When conducting this self-assessment, you should have every incentive to be honest with yourself because achieving accuracy is the key to deciding what is right for you going forward. Do not kid yourself, inflate your own ego, or overestimate your abilities. This can only hurt you. For example, for those considering law school, understanding if you have the traits that are often found in successful lawyers is a good start. Some people are good writers, others have trouble forming proper sentences. There’s nothing wrong with admitting a weakness. You can always try and work on strengthening your weaknesses, but the important part is identifying them and understanding your true potential if you want to truly make the right decision. To some this may seem blasphemous, especially to the snowflakes. “Who are you to limit me and my dreams?” is a standard response. The reality is simple. Nobody is telling you that you cannot follow your dreams, instead, what you’re being told is that you need to take a real hard look at your own capabilities before you truly find the dream worth pursuing. You cannot understand how to succeed at something else without first succeeding at understanding yourself.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Once you have a relatively accurate understanding of your own capabilities, you need to engage in cost-benefit analysis before making your decision. There is nothing worse than simply downplaying or outright ignoring the consequences of any given action because you want to believe only the benefits will flow to you as a result of the undertaking. Almost every action has potential costs and benefits. You must understand these costs as well as you understand the benefits. Some may have heard of the popular phrase: “Hope for the best, Prepare for the worst.” Applying this maxim is bulletproof. However, you cannot apply it without first understanding both sides of the coin. Special snowflakes often discount the potential consequences of any given action, regardless of their statistical probability, simply because they believe they are so unique and special that they are destined for only the best scenario as long as they put their mind to the task. Even a cautious snowflaker, as rare as they may be, will still believe that in the off chance the best scenario is somehow not reached, the “bad result” is out of the realm of possibility because it is reserved for “those others.” You know, there’s always those. They know who they are, those people. The point is, snowflakes follow the “it can never be me” ideology. Do not fall into this line of thinking. It is reckless endangerment of your own future prospects.

The Law School Example

Applying to and attending law school is a great example of how Special Snowflake Syndrome may wind up causing severe problems. Each year, countless incoming 1Ls believe that they will academically rock law school. Having experienced nothing of the sort prior to their attendance, they somehow imagine that they will be at the top of their class when the grades are released. Ignoring how the law school curve works, many simply assume they will be Top 33% or Top 10% just because they had a solid GPA in college or because they will apply themselves extra hard for law school. Some, as outlandish as it sounds, actually attend lower ranked law schools because they hold the belief they will achieve the type of grades necessary to transfer after 1L to a much higher ranked law school. They believe this before even attending one day of law school. How can this type of unsubstantiated certainty even exist? As for employment opportunities, even if the law school has a 50/50 employment rate, it is quite obvious they will be in the right 50% with legal employment upon graduation because they know how to hustle. Even worse, if 5% of the law students receive big law offers, they often are willing to take out six-figure student loan amounts for the opportunity. They just know they will be in that top 5%. Here’s the problem:

First, no incoming 1L fully understands how law school exams work. They are nothing like undergrad exams. Even if you do extensive research on the subject ahead of enrollment, you still have to account for the chance that you will not do as well as you think you will come exam time. This brings up the second point: the 1L law school curve is a mandatory curve that pitches classmates against each other and leaves most law students in the middle of the class. This means that your exam is only great if it beats out the vast majority of your classmates. The problem with this is that unless you chose a lower ranked school due to a large scholarship, all of your classmates will have similar GPA and LSAT scores. Therefore, you cannot predict where you will wind up on the curve. Your best bet is to assume median wherever you wind up attending (even at the lower ranked school as LSAT performance is not exactly bulletproof evidence of law school success). As for legal employment, grades are only a part of the equation, even at grade-sensitive 2L OCI. Without a convincing story backed by past experience, great grades, a set of real career goals upon enrollment, and solid social skills, your chance of landing big law at any school outside of Harvard, Yale, or Stanford are far from certain. Even for all the other potential legal positions, there are too many factors at play, including many of the above listed factors, for you to blindly attend law school equipped with only your determination to succeed. This is compounded massively for those financing law school with student loans, those loans will need to be paid after graduation. Therefore, they are integral to a proper cost-benefit analysis if they are part of the equation. Failure to account for all of these risks places you at risk for a multitude of negative outcomes, one of which is unemployment and/or insurmountable student loan debt upon graduation. Although nothing is ever certain, you can limit the risk of a negative outcome with the proper cost-benefit analysis if you have decided on attending law school.

The real takeaway here, for those contemplating law school or any other significant endeavor, is to drop the irrational optimism angle as soon as possible. Do not suffer from Special Snowflake Syndrome. You are not special, and you are not unique. You are simply you, with certain strengths and weaknesses that you need to identify through an honest self-perception assessment. Once you understand yourself, you can weigh the risks of undertaking any particular life decision with more confidence as you engage in the decision’s particular cost-benefit analysis. Life isn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean you can’t place yourself in a position to succeed. All it means is that you cannot blindly fill your heart with desires that have no basis in reality. To use careers as an example, not every field is meant for every person. Some people have the knack to become doctors, some people have the knack to become lawyers, and some have the knack to become teachers. Some simply don’t have the knack for academics, and are better served pursuing the trades. The quicker you become honest with yourself and accept and pursue your strengths while working on your weaknesses, the better off your future prospects will become. Do not get suckered into or remain in the snowflake lane. At some point, the bubble will burst for those resistant to change. When it does, you will not be one of the unlucky ones.

Incoming search terms:

• snowflake

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The first thing to keep in mind is that you’ve gone through 7 years of higher education, passed the bar exam, and successfully entered the legal field. If that entry is recent, you should congratulate yourself for somehow landing on the right side of the legal employment fence. The most important, yet rarely discussed, feature of the legal profession is the secret social club that exists: it is tough to get into the field, but once you’re in your chances of advancing and moving to greener pastures multiplies. Having accomplished that, even if it includes working for a struggling solo, you’re already ahead of many of your peers. Because law school does not teach much of anything about law practice, and barely any non-big law legal employers have the time and resources to train law graduates, the harsh reality is that legal experience is the real commodity in the legal field. For those without it, obtaining it from scratch after graduation isn’t easy. If you’ve got a legal job, you’re already halfway there even if the job itself is a real bummer. Keep that in mind. Through all the stress, focus on what you need to do to improve your situation. With legal experience the defining value component on the legal market, that means only one thing: focus on gathering more experience (expanding your network along the way should be a given).

Growing your legal experience may require that you simply deal with the bad boss, the high stress of work at your place of employment, and the general stressful nature of legal work long enough to become marketable. Once you become marketable, you can lateral somewhere else to knock off many of the stressful triggers at your particular place of legal employment. If you have the finances, you may even strike out on your own. The important thing is to always keep your eye on the prize: developing your growth and security in the legal field so you’re always advancing to better opportunities. Of course, regardless of the particular legal job, legal work will still have you serving clients and thinking about work as you fall asleep. Although you can’t change the nature of law practice, with growth in the field you will begin to develop the flexibility to at least start to pick and choose what you want and don’t want to handle as a lawyer. You’ll have the financial flexibility and the expertise to filter who you accept as a client and how much work you handle. The worst part of law practice, no doubt, comes at the associate level. If you can skip around early on until you find a place that has a decent work environment and develop your expertise along the way, things will get better.

The legal profession may have its share of high-stress triggers, but at the end of the day you must also keep in mind that you’re handling paper work in an office setting. There are certainly much worse work situations out there. Most, if not all, of your stress will be mental. Mental stress can be controlled, but it is up to you to control it. The bad boss, the low salary, the lack of training, these are features that you can proactively mitigate early by going to task and grinding away in hopes of developing your own marketability. As you gain experience, you can begin to control these factors by shifting around until you find a comfortable work environment. With this experience, naturally, will also come more flexibility in how you work as a lawyer. You’ll have a greater opportunity to mitigate the features of the legal profession itself, so that they fall more in line with what you are willing to put up with as you practice law. If you’re feeling the stress of the profession at work, take control and work towards your own legal self-improvement. Change your mentality, focus on grinding away towards a better future, and make the moves that will get you there. At the end of the day, this is just work. If clients stress you out, as often is the case, remember that you’re not operating on them in hopes of saving their lives. It’s simply not that serious. Do your job well enough and long enough to find greener pastures and let the rest of the stress fall by the wayside.

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Mental Attitude

You’ll never achieve anything if you don’t put your mind to it. You’ve heard this before, but hearing it and applying it are two different things. If you truly want to start working towards your own financial freedom, the first thing you need to do is adapt the proper mentality: you are the only person in control of your ultimate failure or success. Each and every one of your decisions either detracts from your goal or moves you towards it. The biggest example of this in this context is understanding the difference between your needs and your wants. Ask yourself a simple question each time you make a financial decision: once you account for all of your needs, how much of your wants are you willing to sacrifice to bring yourself closer to being financially free? The more wants you reject, the quicker you can bring yourself to your goal. Of course, the logical extreme of this implies you should lead a hermit life for the sake of a better tomorrow. This is not only unrealistic, but unsustainable. What matters for these purposes are level 2 wants. Things that are simply unnecessary given the particular circumstances because your goal is nothing more than trying to keep up appearances. For example, buying a new iPhone because the one you have is now a version behind and you need to show everybody how you’re up to date. Buying a bigger brand name car because it is cooler. Buying a bigger house because you want to replicate living in a mansion as close as possible to impress your friends. There is nothing wrong with doing any of this if you prefer living in the now, but if your goal is financial freedom you need to be giving priority to wise financial decisions over all other factors. Misguided intentions are your enemy.

Financial Approach

When you prioritize wise financial decisions in your decision-making, you not only save money but you have the opportunity to use that saved money to make more money. However, how to go about doing that is not a topic for this article. What matters above all is your ability to limit your financial obligations. This is not only about not buying everything up like demonstrated in the paragraph above. More importantly, it is about limiting how much of your money you have committed yourself to giving away each month. This is a materialistic world, it is not easy to resist the pressures of mass consumerism. However, you cannot get sucked into this whirlpool of monetary exploitation. For example, very often people are unable to control their spending. They rack up the nice car, the big house, the cool technological toys, and then they have to work their lives away to make sure they have enough money coming in to handle all of these financial obligations. They are not striving towards financial freedom, instead, they are on the unenviable opposite extreme: striving to stay financially viable. This makes them susceptible to financial failure because they do not have the financial flexibility to switch jobs if things turn bad or handle their financial obligations if they get laid-off. An unfortunate consequence of living close to or above their means. This is a self-created nightmare that you can avoid by simply making better financial decisions. Financial decisions that have your own future in mind. Figure out what you actually need, and take care of your basic wants. After that, your focus should be on maximizing your net profits: the money you hold in excess of your financial obligations. With the right approach, that money can be bring you more money and bring you closer to your ultimate goal. Do not to be a victim to the pressures of Keeping up with the Joneses.

You don’t want to be the person that can’t retire because they have lived paycheck to paycheck. You don’t want to be the person that has his or her house foreclosed because something turned financially sour along the way. You don’t want to be in these situations not because they are bad but because you have journeyed through life in a way that ensures you cannot fall victim to these types of circumstances. Place one of your greatest desires, financial freedom, ahead of many of your immediate desires and cut financial corners where you can to make that desire a reality. It’s all in your hands. You certainly don’t need to win the lottery to achieve it if you play it right along the way. Draw a reasonable conclusion about what financial freedom means given your circumstances, and execute a plan to make it happen. Your focus must be on you. Ignore everything that tries to take you away from providing a comfortable life for yourself or your family.

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