A reader writes:
Your post hits close to home for me, a 2010 graduate of a top-five law school. When I enrolled in the heady economic days of 2007, a high paying job at a big law firm in New York was virtually guaranteed for someone like me. By the time I graduated, I'd secured one of those big law jobs, but it wasn't that simple. My law firm, like many other big firms, deferred its entire incoming class for about 18 months. That means that I'm employed by the firm at half salary but I don't actually work there. Instead, I work in a non-profit organization that the firm set me up with for free. So technically I count in those NALP numbers that Paul Campos mentioned, but, like he said, the numbers don't tell the whole story.
The trickle down effects of this are enormous.
First, people like me who thought they could pay back their loans on big firm salaries are paying them back slower. Second, my friends who entered law school knowing they wanted to do public interest work can't find jobs, even at non-profits that pay much lower salaries than firms pay, because people like me are taking all those positions for free.
Do I hate myself a little for stealing his job, when he's the one with altruistic intentions and I'm just in it for the money? Yea, I do. But I did it anyway, because my law school debt is enormous, and the only way to deal with it is to get in with a big law firm so I can pay it off.
But my part of the story isn't the worst part, not by far. I have a friend who is currently applying to law school. She has been offered a nearly-full scholarship from a school ranked around 70 or 75, and also been accepted at a school ranked around 50, with no scholarship. She's going to choose the latter, which is a horrible mistake. She's a smart girl, but her job prospects at high-paying firms coming out of either school are, to be frank, virtually non-existent. If she goes to school for free, she can do whatever she wants after graduating. If she goes to the slightly better school and takes out $100K in loans, she's going to be shackled to them for the rest of her life, since she'll never get a job that allows her to pay it off quick. But the prestige and the fact that she tells herself "I'm different, I'll be top of my class, I'll get hired" is too much for rationality to overcome.
How the hell are we ever going to pay for our kids to go to college, when we'll still be paying off our own educations? If you don't think people my age (I'm 27) are worried about that kind of thing, then you haven't talked to them recently. I think this tension between the idea that "I'm different, I'm better!" and the grim economic realities we're facing is going to be the defining crisis of my generation.
The Dish 