Law Students

The Value of Law School

By Casebook Sherpa

There have been a good number of people who have hit our site searching the web for the phrase “is law school worth it.” It’s been a while since we really tackled that one. For those looking to answer that question, I highly recommend three of our earlier posts to help answer your question:

• Do the Math is Dr. Bombay’s excellent analysis of what type of salary he would need to be making to reach a break even point for law school, at least for the period during which he’s paying off loans.
• Is Law School Worth It? was a discussion of one law student’s grappling with debt.
• Top 25 Values in Law School is our crude way of assessing the immediate return on investment of law school. There’s some concern voiced in the comments about what, exactly, this ranking tells us. But it’s a decent assessment to compare average debt loads and salaries.

Ultimately it’s a question you need to answer for yourself based on what type of lifestyle you want and your career goals. A law degree isn’t necessarily a good fallback credential, but it is universally respected (even if lawyers aren’t). So a J.D. will give you a lot of options outside the law, though if you don’t think you want to be a lawyer you probably shouldn’t go to law school. Just our two cents.

Full post as published by Fight The Hypo on August 08, 2009 (boomark / email).