Reddit reviews Planet Law School II: What You Need to Know (Before You Go), But Didn't Know to Ask... and No One Else Will Tell You, Second Edition
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Used Book in Good Condition
I'm going to copy an extensive post I wrote in r/lawschool a couple of weeks ago.
>Absolutely not option B [referring to the OP in that thread]. People are misunderstanding the way the legal job market works. If I am two years ahead of you when you start law school, we are almost never competing for the same job. Firms and corporate law departments hire associates at certain years and certain pay levels. If I'm trying to lateral out of a firm, the new firm is going to be looking for an established third-year associate, not a freshly-minted JD. Many judges look first to clerkship applicants coming straight out of law school. The fact is, until you're both established attorneys, your employment prospects are rigidly constrained by your exact number of years out of law school.
>The simplest reason not to go to law school is the expected value of your degree. EV is a statistical measure of the probability of a given outcome times the value of that outcome, and in this case minus the cost to get to that outcome.
>The law industry has a pretty hardcore bimodal salary distribution. See Ilya Somin, The Bimodal Distribution of Lawyer Pay. That means there are associate jobs at megafirms that pay $160k/yr for a first-year associate in the largest markets (New York, Chicago, Houston) and less in smaller markets ($90-100k in Kentucky, for example, which is equivalent to $160k in New York in terms of purchasing power parity). Everybody goes to law school to get these jobs, but the truth is, unless you go to a top school (top fourteen at least, top six in a bad year) you have about a 10% chance of landing that job. Law school is graded on a hard curve, which means only 10% of the class get As and A+s by design. To make things worse, law is a field for prestige whores. Most big law firms won't even give you an interview if your GPA isn't above their cutoff.
>The "bimodal" thing means that, if you weren't one of the insanely lucky ones who landed a cushy firm job, you're stuck in "shitlaw." Lawyers in legal aid, small firms, and solo practitioners might make $40-50k a year, and that's if they can find a job. But those jobs have become extraordinarily competitive in this economy. When the top 10% are going to firms, the 25% below them are snapping up what's left. If you're not in the top third of the class, even at a middle-of-the-road law school, you're very likely to be unemployed upon graduation.
>Meanwhile, law school costs a ton. The average debt of a private law school grad is $125,000. That debt is non-dischargeable even in bankruptcy, and carries interest rates between 6.8% and 7.9%. The painful truth is that you probably will not make over $50,000/year. That means you have, like, $500/mo to put towards student loans, if you're lucky. Student loans which total $125,000. And schools which offer "scholarships" have been getting flak for attaching stipulations, also called stips. They say you have to keep your grades above a certain level or you lose your lucrative scholarship. And remember, law school is graded on a hard curve. By design, the system weeds out at least a quarter of scholarship recipients over time--kids who end up either paying full tuition in the end or dropping out of law school.
>Telling you not to go to law school has nothing to do with job prospects. These people are being nice to you. Do not go to law school, unless you're in a top-ranked school with a national employment reach or you have an enormous scholarship without a stip. The biggest problem is that everyone who still goes to law school in the face of all the New York Times articles and scam blogs is a narcissist. You all believe that you're the special snowflake who will go to Thomas Cooley or Nova Southeastern or some other shit-tier law school and get a biglaw job. But no one actually does that. Law schools lie about their employment percentages and the median salaries of their graduates and 0Ls lap it up. But don't just take my word for it. Here's some necessary reading:
> David Segal - Is Law School a Losing Game? (New York Times)
> David Segal - Law School Economics: Ka-Ching! (New York Times)
>David Segal wrote an excellent series of New York Times articles about the realities of law school over the last year and a half. They do a great job of laying bare the numbers and the tactics that schools are employing to screw you over. Read these. Don't look away just because it doesn't comport with your worldview or how your mommy and daddy have been telling you for two decades what a great lawyer you'd make.
> Inside the Law School Scam, a blog by Paul Campos
>Paul Campos is a tenured law professor who wrote this blog to expose what's really going on with law schools and the admissions game. He's an insider who's been praised for using his inability to get fired to benefit thousands.
> The NLJ 250's "Go-To Law Schools" list
>These are the number of graduates from a given school who go to NLJ 250 firms (pretty much the ones that pay the big bucks). Do you see your prospective school on there? No? Then fat chance their number is anywhere north of 10%. It might even be zero.
> JD Underground
>This is a pretty helpful forum full of people who were beaten up and hung out to dry by the law school system. There are worse, more cynical forums (see, e.g., xoxohth/AutoAdmit). There are more starry-eyed and optimistic forums (see, e.g., Top-Law-Schools). But I think JD Underground provides the most realistic and helpful picture of what you'll really be doing with the rest of your life if you go to a mediocre law school and drop $150k.
> Planet Law School II
>This book takes a very cynical tack on law school and legal employment. It's a shade over 800 pages long, but you don't have to read the whole thing. And take it with a grain of salt, because the author is anonymous and comes off like a self-important asshole. But the information is good, and the numbers are solid.
I highly recommend spending $5 on a copy of Planet Law School. It will answer a lot of your questions.
Don't go to law school unless (1) it's free and (2) you get into a Top 14 school.