Barrister on a Budget (eBook)

Investing in Law School...Without Breaking the Bank

Jenny L. Maxey (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2014 | 1. Auflage
230 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-63192-351-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Is law school a good investment? For some it is a bad investment. For the others, you just have to be more strategic and financially responsible than those who came before you. By reading Barrister on a Budget, you're well on your way! You will now have the right questions to ask regarding your investment; learn inexpensive steps to use when making career decisions; and realize potential financial consequences in order to prevent budget-breaking surprises. All of the costs you should be aware of upfront in order to create a thorough budget are laid out, curtailing loan obligations and expenses before graduation. Barrister on a Budget is the key to helping you graduate with minimal debt and maximum opportunities!

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Nearly half of 2013's law graduates were unemployed or underemployed, and, as 80% of students attending law school rely on student loans to finance their education, students are graduating with massive amounts of debt. This rising problem has caused prelaw students to question: Is law school a good investment? Barrister on a Budget explains to the reader that for some it is a bad investment. For the others, they just have to be more strategic and financially responsible than those who came before them, while providing them with the tools to do so. A potential law student will now have the right questions to ask regarding their investment; inexpensive steps to use when making career decisions; and realize potential financial consequences in order to prevent budget-breaking surprises. All of the costs a student should be aware of upfront in order to create a thorough budget are laid out, curtailing loan obligations and expenses before graduation. Barrister on a Budget is the key to helping law students graduate with minimal debt and maximum opportunities!

Textauszug

OPENING STATEMENT

While the economy continues its anemic “growth,” and masses of American graduates search for employment prior to their student loan deferments ending, assumptions about higher education providing for better and more stable financial futures seems something of a bad joke. Whether you are a recent college graduate unsure what to do next, are finding it difficult to obtain employment in your field (or anywhere else), or are employed but looking for a better future, you should consider several factors before deciding that law school is the right choice for you.

Yes, numerous resources provide official and quasi-official help to determine if you have what it takes to go to law school, or what to expect during law school. Much of this, however, doesn’t truly address points you should consider. After all, it’s your career and your life, and no one should place too much emphasis on statistics or advice (including this advice). There is, moreover, an element we are all aware of that should cause every student to pause: the economy. In addition to choosing a career and a discipline, if you go to law school you will be making a financial investment and, unless you are brimming with family trust funds, undertaking a considerable level of student debt.

Most of us remember September of 2008, when the economy began a seeming freefall into the Great Recession. At the time, I was beginning my second year of law school. I hadn’t started to worry about my future employment prospects or about the tower of debt I would be facing once I graduated. As with most of my classmates, I was caught up in a whirlwind of reading, outlining, and preparing for the Socratic Method—where students are “asked” to explain a case and defend various sides of an issue. The professor, the Devil’s Advocate, interjects a new fact or defense, thus posing a new circumstance to address. Getting through the semester was as far as most law school minds ventured, and most expected that “dream job” to, well, just be there as a reward for the long hours and exhaustion from casebook captivity.

It wasn’t until a few months later in the spring of 2009, that the effects of the market crash began rippling into the legal world and students started to look around. The New York Times ran an article that heightened awareness,1 but even then the full impact hadn’t quite yet hit. In that article, a major law firm had offered roughly 1,300 associates worldwide a third of their pay not to work until the firm could bring them back full-time. For these associates, that put them at around $80,000 to take a year off from work. Not too shabby, right?

For others, the odds for that kind of deal—or for any deal—were bleak. Nearly every practice area was affected and new hires most of all. There were even reports on declining divorce rates…because it is cheaper to stay married. In the minds of disputing spouses, divorce meant attorney fees, child support, alimony, and two households to maintain. Although an arguable win for the institution of marriage, it was a strike against legal practitioners, this time family law attorneys.

Another group of lawyers to see a decline in business were in property law.2 Several factors contributed to the recession, of course. One was the action of mortgage lenders. Borrowers were taking out mortgages for homes beyond their means, using second or third loans (or other tricks) to cover high monthly mortgage payments. Once the merry-go-round of ever-higher house prices began to reverse, the calculations that made this painless resulted in very different results, and lenders grew wary of borrowers and approved far fewer customers for loans. Aside from closing the proverbial barn door after the livestock had escaped, this pushed housing markets into steep declines. Sellers dropped property prices, which often still wouldn’t be enough to help a sale. Clearly, any chance to reduce costs with the few remaining deals became critical, and attorneys suffered along with everyone else. It used to be custom (and a wise custom) for both buyer and seller to have legal representation during this exchange; with the Great Recession, however, for attorneys this became an increasingly rare task.

Declines in legal work became the new normal in all areas of business. Budget-conscious consumers forced businesses to be budget hypersensitive. Rising healthcare costs, new taxes, and other new regulations added to the expenses of operation. Some businesses couldn’t handle the strain and closed or migrated to online business models. Others looked to cut overhead, which meant, at a start, eliminating non-essential legal services. Simpler tasks such as business formation and trademark filings were something a business owner could try (and do). A surge of online databases like LegalZoom.com appeared, providing affordable boilerplate contracts for nearly every conceivable need. A combination of do-it-yourselfers, declining businesses, and a dearth of start-ups equaled less work for transactional attorneys.

Amidst these waning practices, one particular practice area grew by leaps and bounds: bankruptcy. Unfortunately, expedited filings were required to benefit the client, which left little time for a newly minted attorney to learn. Thus, as a rule, available bankruptcy law positions necessitated the skills and experience of a seasoned attorney. Some mid-level associates were able to make lateral transitions, but few recent graduates were able to break in to this area.

The Class of 2009 thus saw the immediate impact of the Great Recession as a wide chasm. Few had employment secured upon graduation, and fewer still had secured an all-important summer associate position. In a study by the NALP, or National Association of Law Placement, out of the 44,000 law graduates in 2009, only 45% were hired into permanent attorney positions. What’s worse, some of these were part-time positions, which itself is historically an astonishing development.

As time to my own graduation neared, the market shrank further. Job searches became the overwhelming focus of our attention, and anxiety was thick in the hallways. Most of us were already locked down in a location due to bar applications, thus preventing us from taking an open position where we could find one (if we could). Others started looking into advanced degrees, solo practices, and employment outside of the law. On short notice, I had to move for my husband’s job to an area with two law schools. I was unable to spend previous summers at this new location, and I did not have an established network available. (I will cover each of these crucial points later in this book.) With much of my plan askew, I was forced to develop a new way to go about getting a job and surviving this drastic (and depressing) new reality. This book, in many ways, is a result of my research and efforts.

The Class of 2010 fared even worse, passing record lows for job placement. NALP reported percentages lower than ever before for those graduates having a job for which bar passage was a requirement. Further, NALP had to research back to the 1970s to find equally low stats to match the percentage of 2010 graduates employed in private practice.

Fortunately, the market is resilient, and the economy is beginning to recover. Practices once in a steep decline are showing signs of life. For instance, although the overall employment rate was low, the Class of 2013 found a 4.4% increase from 2011 in the amount of “Biglaw” (firms employing 500 or more attorneys) jobs. An increase in attorney jobs will be seen again. But these jobs are not likely to reappear in exactly the same form. Firms and clients had to adapt with the market, and many of these changes are more permanent than graduates might hope. For example, firms saved money by outsourcing “document review,” a dreadfully tedious and odious task, to private service-providers sprouting up all over urban areas. Doc-review offices are little more than white-collar sweatshops, with staff little more than low-wage temp worker-slaves.

Even in a prestigious law office, technology has changed much of what used to be normal for junior-associate-level work. Now, clients scrutinize bills closely and demand flat rates and other concessions—and get them. With no billable-hour monkeys on their backs, new associates realize that this long-hated tradition was also a form of job insurance: their hours are now even more closely scrutinized. Firms are able to get high-quality attorneys for more modest salaries, but in reality, are simply not hiring in any real numbers.

Worse still, students are surging into law schools to avoid a sour job market and in the hopes of landing that dream law job. This makes the current supply even more lopsidedly high than the still-depressed demand. And, as if that’s not enough, the “old” supply of the past few years’ graduates serves to clog the arteries of the profession to unhealthy levels. Finally, much higher tuition costs, and unsustainably high levels of student debt, make this situation dire for many graduates.

It is an achievable goal to become a practicing attorney. At a minimum, however, you must be more strategic and financially responsible than those who came before you. In this book, I will provide you with the tactics of someone who survived the worst legal job market to date. You will learn what an “ideal” (i.e., employable) graduate will look like, but you will also find ways to save as much money as possible. While human nature will of course intervene with this “ideal,” do not fret. By following these tips,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.11.2014
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern
• ISBN-10: 1-63192-351-X / 163192351X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-63192-351-7 / 9781631923517