Lawmatch is honored to post our first guest blog from our new friend and soon to be one heck of a lawyer… Jack Whittington. We met Jack, as he explains on Twitter- where he spoke his mind and sparked some good conversation on something that all professionals, educators, and students in the legal field should talk more about:
World Wide Whit's Jack Whittington
First, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Lawmatch.com for inviting me to write this guest post. Lawmatch.com and I came into contact under interesting circumstances. It is no big secret that I am not a fan of the cynics in the online legal community. Lawmatch.com had retweeted a story on Twitter from the infamous Elie Mystal of Above the Law fame about “stupid law school students” and the amount of debt they incur to go to law school. Feeling a bit surly on this particular day I fired back at Lawmatch.com and asked why they felt the need RT his stories. They said they didn’t mean any harm, but just wanted to talk about law school student debt. Let me point out to you as I did with the fine folks at Lawmatch.com that if you want to have honest and open dialogue with law school students, it’s not a great idea to ridicule and belittle them in the process.
Yes, I think there needs to be an open dialogue between the legal community and law school students about the difficulties facing our profession, but the cynics should not run the conversation. So here I propose that calm and rational heads prevail. Realistic Optimists must be the ones who are heading these debates and conversations. We must be realistic in our expectations for ourselves and our profession but we should approach the conversation with a positive outlook. With that let us turn the conversation the issue of student loans, networking, and the current economy.
In a ten year span from 1998 to 2008 the average cost of law school tuition had risen 74%. Currently the average law school student graduates with $150,000 of personal debt due to the costs of attending law school. There is also a large gap between the average costs of attending public universities versus private. Many of those in the legal field say that the level of debt one sinks into attending law school is not worth it. However, recent legislation and the overhaul of the student loan industry may provide a better outlook for law school students facing high levels of debt upon graduation. Also students now have the opportunity to take jobs in government and non-profit organizations that will allow their loans to be forgiven after a period of ten years (provided they’ve worked in the public sector continuously and consistently made their loan payments).
Many in the legal community look at their current plight and try to warn law school students from entering into the field. The hours, stress, and emotional toll is not worth it- many of them cry. Yet students keep entering law school in droves. Regardless of the stress that comes with the legal profession, too many it still represents at a chance to achieve a better quality of life than most other professions could afford them. You’d be hard pressed to argue to the general public that lawyers on average don’t do that well for themselves. So to many, a JD is a key to financial success. The reality of it is that in a weak job market many students are forced to take jobs paying well below the figures they had in mind and in some cases students are unable to find jobs period. Law school students need to realize that a JD no longer equals a job. So the emphasis must be placed on networking while you are in law school to position yourself to where you can get a job as soon as you graduate. This requires a fair amount of diligent effort on top of keeping up with your studies. I am reminded of the story of the adjunct professor I had during my first year of law school. She wasn’t much older than me and had just graduated from law school two years ago. She explained to our class the most important aspect of law school was networking. She had graduated number four in her class, but never took the time to network; the end result was it took her eighteen months to finally secure a full-time job in the legal field.
Law school students should be made aware of the potential pitfalls of the profession. Taking out a vast amount of debt to secure a JD is a gamble. In the current economy we are no longer guaranteed high salaried jobs as the graduating classes of yesteryear were. Law school students are bombarded from the minute they step foot in law school with people (particularly those in the legal field already) telling them what a terrible choice they made and how we’re going to be racked with debt for the rest of our lives, and there are no jobs to be had and on and on and on it goes. Many of us already know this. We did our homework, weighed the pros and cons of debt and decided to take the gamble anyway. For some getting a JD is more about the money rather than the job. Others truly want to make a difference in some fashion and they see the legal field as the way of carrying out their goals. No one should be deterred from legitimately wanting to make a difference in the world. We know the challenges that lie ahead, we have accepted that challenge and we aim to overcome it. However, we know we cannot do it alone either.
The Baby Boomer Generation is reaching retirement at an alarming pace as Generation Y comes into the job market. Someone is going to have the fill those shoes. I stress to the older generations the need to work together with the young up and comers to correct the problems or else we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. No nonsense, no sarcasm, no belittling – just give us the facts and help us to fix the problems, we’ll all get a whole lot further that way.
Follow Jack where we met him, on Twitter- @j2_Whittington
Make sure you check out Jack’s blog for some more “Gen Y blawg about Law, Law School, Pop Culture, Social Media, and Sports, coming from the “Sunshine Kid” and self proclaimed Champion of Realistic Optimism.” You’ll be glad you did.