Legal News

Survey Says: Promise of Money Drives People to Law School

By Dan Slater

A recent Kaplan survey asked 2,000 potential law school applicants why they want to be lawyers. The conclusion: financial gain and political ambition. (Find the survey and related articles at the Tax Prof Blog.)

“Seventy-three percent of those students who responded to our survey indicated that the high income potential was one of the reasons that they selected the legal profession,” said Glen Stohr, director of Kaplan’s pre-law programs, to the Crimson White. “Others wanted the ability to use a law degree to spring themselves into politics.” Among the students polled, according to Stohr, 42% said they would “definitely” or “probably” run for political office sometime in the future. Of that 42%, 52% were male and 42% were female. (The Law Blog can’t figure out where the other 6% went, and wonders if Kaplan intends one of those dreaded LSAT logic puzzles.)

The fact that earning power drives people to law school isn’t news to the Law Blog. In our first-year torts class we sat next to a classmate who was obsessed with cataloging the things he was going to buy once he landed at a big firm. Instead of doing the negligence analysis he would write a dollar-figure next to each fact pattern, approximating how much he could extract from the defendant.

But the politics angle is surprising. Although we met many students in law school who would make fine politicians, we don’t remember 40% of classmates having politics as their goal.

Have things changed? We’re amid a heated race between two lawyers for the Democratic presidential nominee. Does that make politics the dream du jour for incoming 1L’s? LB’ers, the floor is yours.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 25, 2008 (boomark / email).