Law Life: Is law school worth it in 2018?

By Nicole Black
BridgeTower Media Newswires

I recently received an email from someone who was a few years out of college and was considering attending law school. He asked me if I would go to law school again and indicated that he’d received “mixed signals” from other lawyers to whom he’d asked this same question.

Mixed signals, indeed. This is a loaded question these days, and when you ask lawyers whether law school was worth it, you’ll often receive a rather impassioned response, regardless of which side they’re on. This is because lawyers take their jobs seriously, practicing law is stressful (there’s a reason our profession has such high rates of depression, addiction and suicide) and, on top of all that, most lawyers aren’t making nearly as much money as they’d expected.

I explained to the young man who’d emailed me that there are many reasons for the lack of enthusiasm that he encountered, and that I, too, could only offer him, at best, a rather muted recommendation. This was my response to his email:

“I wish I had better news, but prospects for new lawyers aren’t great. There are a lot of factors changing the legal market, ranging from economic factors (which began with the economic downturn in 2008), to technological change, along with increased competition from multiple sources. All of these forces contribute to the declining legal job market and are causing increased stress and lack of job satisfaction for current lawyers. Also problematic is that recent graduates tend to emerge from law school deep in debt with no light at the end of the tunnel given the depressed market. And to make matters worse, most law schools aren’t doing a great job educating students to succeed in the face of all the changes.

“That being said, if you go in with your eyes open and lay the right groundwork, you’ll have a better chance at having a satisfying legal career. The key is to have a full understanding of all the changes occurring and how they’re affecting the delivery of legal services, and then position yourself to take advantage of the changes once you graduate. Also, I would highly recommend that you read the book ‘Tomorrow’s Lawyers’ by Richard Susskind from cover to cover prior to committing to law school.”

I also checked in with my online community and asked my Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter connections whether they would recommend that a recent college graduate attend law school. In less than an hour, I received 30+ replies. Many of my colleagues offered a variation of the stereotypical lawyer response: it depends. Notably, very few offered favorable views about the value of attending law school in 2018.

Common themes emerged in the replies. Many discussed economic factors, opining that if the inquirer expected to emerge with significant law school debt — something that’s all too common these days — he should reconsider and choose a different path.

Others suggested that he should only attend law school if his primary goal is to practice law, and that if he was planning to attend law school simply for the experience or because he didn’t know what else to do, then he was going for the wrong reason. However, others disagreed — some of whom are currently practicing law and others who aren’t — and said that their legal education has proven to be invaluable and provides them with the foundation they’ve needed to succeed, whether in the practice of law or elsewhere.

Finally, many of those responding alluded to the increased competition and lack of jobs available for new lawyers, with one lawyer sharing that she had a number of lawyers and/or individuals with JDs applying for an administrative position that was currently open at her firm.

In other words, the responses from my colleagues were just as mixed as the ones received by the young man who emailed me. The bottom line: there’s no easy answer. But if you do choose to attend law school in 2018, make sure it’s an informed, educated decision, lest you regret it in the long run.
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Nicole Black is a director at MyCase.com, a cloud-based law practice management platform. She speaks regularly at conferences regarding the intersection of law and technology. She publishes three legal blogs and can be reached at niki@mycase.com.