Students Are Finally Realizing Law School Might Be A Terrible Idea

[bayareamike]

11. I agree with basically everything you said

in theory. The issue for me personally is that even for PI jobs things are ridiculously competitive these days. A PI job will net you, on average, 45,000 dollars before taxes. Making 45k a year when you have 100k in student loans to pay back is not a recipe for success.

If someone can self-finance law school (even the affordable ones can cost around 100k total plus interest; nearly 80% of law students take out loans so it is a rarity to self-finance these days) or has the means to simply gain knowledge for their own business that's great for them. But for the scores of twenty-somethings who are fooled into believing that ANY law school will grant them a six figure income, or even a decent wage that will allow them to repay their loans (the average debt after law school is around 120k) the system doesn't work.

My point, I suppose, can be demonstrated like this:

The government regulates all sorts of things to protect consumers. Our food, for example, is regulated in order to ensure that people don't get sick or die from it. The law school system, however, is not regulated. You can get federal loans to go to any of the countless schools out there, regardless of whether or not you can actually get a job when you graduate. Moreover, taxpayers are forced to subsidize this broken system.

I was very impressed recently when Sen. Barbara Boxer publicly called out the ABA on this system.