Legal Marketing & PR

It's a Terrible Time to Go To Law School

By Larry Bodine

You have to be crazy to go to law school nowadays.  Consider these statistics:

• Number of law students who graduate annually: 45,000
• Decrease in the size of the legal profession since 2007:  7.8%
• Typical starting salary, if you can actually get a job at a law firm: $40,000+
• Average law school debt: $100,000
• Increase in the number of students taking the LSAT since 2007: 20.5%
• Increase in the number of law schools in the last ten years: 9%

Top 10 occupations where there are job openings now:

1. Medical, dental, and public health
2. Management, administration, clerical, and office services
3. Engineering and architecture
4. Trades and labor
5. Accounting budget and finance
6. Biological sciences
7. Procurement and purchasing agent
8. Social science, psychology, and welfare
9. Information technology
10. Safety, health, and physical and resource protection

Typical jobs that law grads wind up in:

• Legislative staffers
• Regulatory policy-makers
• Arbitrators
• Mediators
• Not-for-profit organizations
• Consulting firms
• Waiters and waitresses

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on February 24, 2011 (boomark / email).