The author of Thursday's cautionary rant about law school writes to respond to the discussion his thoughts provoked:

Having looked over some of the criticisms of my post, I would note that my comments were intended primarily for arts undergrads who are considering law school and the teachers (and bloggers) who are recommending that they do so. For them at least, I don't think my comments went too much over the top (I stand by every fact and figure, at least for my jurisdiction; yours may be different), and my main points are, in any event, unassailable:

1. Never, EVER, casually recommend that someone go to law school. You are being totally irresponsible if you do.

2. Do some real research about the profession, high and low end, before you go to law school, and have something real to fall back on. It CAN happen to you. (Please also note: I did go to one of Canada's better law schools.)

Second, many of the commenters from the upper echelons of the legal profession seem like really, really nice people. Unfortunately, they don't really seem to have a clue as to what it is really like to work in the lower half. Kind of like the tenured prof from Harvard or NYU preaching to the adjunct at State college.

Finally. QUESTION: Does a desire for $30,000.00 a year, a 45 hour work week, and a chance to get off your ulcer medication make you a self pitying "Princess"? I don't know. I certainly don't blame anyone else for my fall from grace: I made a major life decision without adequate research and reflection, and I am pretty much getting what I deserve. Still, fatuous moralizing of the "Its not the job, its you" type is just that, and certainly won't help anyone make a good decision about whether law school is right for them. Think of those poor kids; they deserve to be told about the realities first. Whatever else you may say about me and my moral character, at least my post does that.

Recommended Readings for would be lawyers (and anyone else interested):

Deborah Arron, What Can You Do With a Law Degree? 5th ed. (Seattle: Decision Books, 2004).

Debora Arron, Running From the Law. (Seattle: Decision Books).

Forthcoming from the same series: Deborah Schneider & Gary Belsky, Should You Really Become a Lawyer? (Seattle: Decision Books, 2004).

Balzac. Knows a lot more about the profession than Dickens ever did. I'd start with Old Goriot (Burton Raffel, trans.) and A Harlot High and Low.

Fun to read, but would you want to live it?

So, given that, how can college seniors tip the decision-making odds in their favor? And what are the obligations of college advisors, professors, and recommenders to ensure that Student A is actually making an informed choice when he says he wants to get either a Ph.D. in English or a law degree? When students approach me about going to grad school, I am straight with them about the state of the academic humanities, and I refer them to various sources--the Invisible Adjunct's numerous posts on the grad school question (see sidebar), Thomas Hart Benton's Chronicle of Higher Educationpieces on same, Timothy Burke's essay on why you should probably not go to cotillion for eggheads grad school. I won't write a letter of recommendation until I am satisfied that the individual knows something about what he or she is getting into, and I regard that as an ethical obligation on my part.

I confess I have always been much more casual about students who approach me about getting a recommendation for law school. I assume they know what they are getting into (many have parents who are lawyers, many work in law offices during summers), I assume that a law degree is a highly marketable degree that gives the holder a number of professional choices, and I don't look much deeper than that. I do wonder now whether that hasn't been a mistake on part, and I wonder, too, whether that mistake isn't one that is made quite often by college teachers. I also wonder just how much a college teacher can finally do to ensure that expensive, time-consuming career mistakes don't get made by the students in their charge. As Tim Burke wrote on Frogs and Ravens earlier this week, "are people persuadable about experiences they haven't had yet?"

I do increasingly feel that the current expectation in our culture--that properly motivated, disciplined, mature young adults will not miss a beat between college and profession, and that therefore it's not only reasonable but smart to go straight from college on to graduate or professional school--needs to be rethought. Lack of experience combined with the desire to "stay on track" simply sets people up for hugely costly wrong decisions like the one described above. I can't count the number of people I know who flew through college, flew straight on to grad or professional school, got stellar marks all the way, and then crashed very hard around the age of thirty.

The phenomenon of the individual who gets five, six, seven years into a Ph.D. program only to find that there are no jobs, or that the work is unappealing, is part of a much larger societal phenomenon affecting the hyper-professionalized youth that America is presently in the business of mass producing. Waking up at thirty to find that one's twenties have been wasted chasing professional pipedreams, or, conversely, ignoring one's dreams in order to climb a particular ladder associated with Success, is something that happens across the board--to lawyers, academics, businesspeople, doctors, and so on. If we concentrate solely on the microdynamics of what sort of graduate school humanities undergrads decide to attend, we miss the bigger picture. At the same time, we can't comprehend or change the bigger picture without concentrating hard on the details of individual decisions...

Further commentary is welcome.

The story of the ignorant youth who makes a bad career move after another only to crash at age 30 is, in my opinion, not as common as it is portrayed in this blog or in the comments. I think most people are at least dimly aware of the realities of the job market and of their abilities. They take chances (like the impressive Invisible Adjunct) and sometimes do not do as well as they expected. Colleges cannot be blamed for such failures - it is the individual's responsibility to match his potential with his/ her abilities. The misconception of the term "profession" is unfortunate in this context. Law is more a field than a profession, and I believe a resonable individual can find his way in one of the numerous jobs/ career paths that are available. If your first job isn't to your liking there is a fair chance that some other job in the field, or in another field where a law degree is an asset, could be appropriate. You make compromises and find your niche. That's how it is in IT which is my "profession". There are plenty of different things to do in IT or related occupations and usually one finds his way. In IT there are plenty of people who don't have an IT related degree - they drifted somehow and found a fulfilling way to make a living. "Professions" and formal training have little to do with the real life of most people, even those with graduate degree.

I considered law school (in Canada!) in the early '90s. Each school issued blunt warnings that there was no shortage of lawyers, and that chances are my life as a lawyer would not resemble television dramas. Most of these schools even required an essay along the lines of "what I want to do with my law degree", with the strong implication that "practice law" was not a good answer.

The problem is the mindset that if one trained in law, that's all one can do. Nonsense. Follow Kobi's advice, and within 5 years your life will not resemble life as you know it now.

"The problem is the mindset that if one trained in law, that's all one can do."

Not only is it good to point out that one can do other things than law as a primary career choice, one also should understand that law can be one of many things that a person does, and that one does not need to dedicate one's life to it. Our "family lawyer" (a good friend of my parents, and one who has not had to do more than give five-minute bits of advice) was a paperwork lawyer, specializing in amicable divorces, and did many other things with his life, such as setting up the church food kitchen. He did not do law to the exclusion of all else, and his reward? He's now a Superior Court judge for the state of California. He may have gotten there slower than the one who lived law, but I bet he's much happier...

Can't we all just grow up? Really. I think that it is absurd to blame college professors for the career choices of their students. I received my undergrad degree less than five years ago, and I did not believe that my advisor was there for any other purpose than to make sure I would have all the requirements necessary for my graduation. Advisors have far too many students to consider. Are they supposed to take us all out to dinner and really delve into our inner workings so they can help us make informed decisions about ourselves? Does the author really believe that what an adult says has that much of an impact on a still somewhat impulsive mind of a 21 year old?

The point is we all make mistakes, and yes, we all should always try to make informed decisions: whether it be law school or choosing dining room curtains. We cannot let our egos balloon to the point that we believe others should cater to us, or that others will hang on every jewel of advice we may give. I admire the author for being able to say that they made a mistake in their life journey, but it is unrealistic to expect college professors to take the fall. Perhaps if more felt like that there could be a class action suit against colleges across the nation. Think of the money to be made!

They may both be bad options for most people, but one relative advantage of grad school over law school is that law schools require tuition whereas grad schools often, but not always, waive tuition and give you a stipend, at least for a few years. That's not to say grad school doesn't involve opportunity costs, but unlike law school you can often leave grad school debt free.

As a holder of a Ph.D. in the humanities, a J.D., a non-tenture track teaching position at a state university, and as an academic advisor to over 300 students, I think I'm qualified to say that the most important question I ask in response to a student telling me his/her career plans is "why?". If they have thought about it, great; if not, I can get them to think about it. I'd call that my professional responsibility.

BTW, library science is a good career track for some humanities majors.

In response to Amish, no I don't expect to constantly follow the life choices of all my students, but Michael is right, we as professors have a professional responsibility to at least ask "why?" Our job is to get students to think about many things and if we fail to get them to think about what they are going to do after graduation then we have not completed our job. I've said this before, but a year or more off between undergrad and grad school is often the best way for students to figure out their priorities, at least in terms of the near future. There is no need to rush right to grad school or law school; they will always be there and can be taken up at a point in life when one is certain of the choice.

The best advice I ever got at my Ivy League school was to fiddle around for a few years after undergrad. I did, worked a bunch of strange and not-so-odd jobs, found a good career, and have enjoyed it ever since. If I'd been encouraged to go to law school or grad. school, I'm sure I would have done so and ruined so many, many lives.

Many humanities majors seem to feel that their only choices are academia, law, or Starbucks. This is far from true. There are lots of alternatives..to mention only one:

Business-to-business sales..there are lots of interesting and well-compensated B-to-B sales positions out there, involving the sale of everything from software to buildings to locomotives. These positions often have excellent prospects for promotion: many CEOs and other senior executives have "sales" as an early item on their resumes.

Of course, you have to have the personality for it, but the set of personality types that can succeed in sales is considerably more diverse than the stereotype. And complex, big-ticket sales require a whole range of intellectual and personal skills.

David Foster stole my thunder.

B-to-B sales is a big opportunity for liberal arts grads and others to make six figures before 30. It's hard work, and sales only becomes easier after you've built up your own personal clientele, usually through years of ... well, hard work in your 20s and 30s. At the same time, getting new business is something you have to do every year (at the very least to replace the percentage you lose every year) and that part really doesn't get much easier, even at 60.

One thing I think that turns off lit types from sales is the literature is focused on failure: Death of a Salesman, Glengarry Glen Ross and such paint a bleak picture of sales. It ain't like that. Loads of people make boatloads of money doing it. It's not a question of being "well liked".

I think that "Death of a Salesman," regardless of its merits as drama, has done some real harm, and have been meaning to write a post on this. There's one especially interesting passage in which someone says "for a salesman there's no rock bottom to life" (quoting from memory here) and contrasts that with the down-to-earth job experiences of an assembly line worker and...a lawyer! The idea that a lawyer is somehow closer to the "rock bottom" of life than a salesman seems to me to be extremely classist.

There is another alternative... learn about technology. The notion that the humanities and technology exist on different planets obviously continues to plague English departments.

The opportunities in technological fields are limitless, and language skills is in fact what these technological fields demand.

I won't outline them, but if you want to take a look, peruse the offerings in the New York University School of Continuing Education site. The offerings in multimedia, digital video, animation, etc. have quadrupled in less than a decade.

A solid grounding in the classic literature is a great preparation for a career in technology, particularly in the phenomenally expanded arenas that combine the arts and technology.

I think that English grads are often afraid to enter these fields for a variety of reasons. First among these is the necessity to engage in rote learning.

Forget your fears. A person who graduates with a good degree in the humanities can tackle the tech fields. It's really just a matters of wanting to do it and working hard.

College seniors may not be persuadable about experiences they haven't had yet. And ultimately, a college advisor cannot (and SHOULD not) be blamed for future pains and dissatisfactions that their advisees meet on the professional road.

However, I'm one of those fools who just drifted into PhD studies, as if by default. School was always what I was best at, and so it just seemed inevitable that I stay in school for the rest of my life---first as a grad student, then as a professor. And I'm one of those who ended up spending my early 30's miserably trying to find direction and purpose, knowing all the time that "most people" go through those growing pains in their early 20's, so there I was a decade behind the ball....

I made my own mistakes, and I'm the one who bears the responsibility for them. And I've found a career that suits me well, so count me as another Humanities ex-scholar who's found options outside of the adjunct/tenure double-bind.

But as grateful as I am to have Erin as a mentor in the here-and-now, I do wonder if I might even have been better served by her kind of advising when I was a senior at MHC. No one asked me "why?" in the way Michael and BeckyJ describe above. If I'd been challenged to think through my reasons, would I have chosen differently? Dunno. But I wish I'd been encouraged to think things through more clearly than I did.

I suspect that the chances of a liberal arts major's chances of ending up as a tenured, or tenure-tracked professor at a top university is not signficiantly different than the chances of an inner-city youth making it to the NBA. Many caution our youths and advise them to learn something else, not to place all ones hopes on their hoop dreams because the odds are astronomicla. I suspect that to be wise advice. Kids need to be given a reality check - even if they are not prepared to listen to it.
How much different is it with our liberal arts majors and their (my) own version of a hoop dream?
Some parents push their kids into taking accounting, or business in some such on the theory that college should be a time for career training.

I tend to disagree with that approach, probably because my father took a middle path. He told me, quite frankly, that there was little chance I would end up with a career in liberal arts academia. But, rather than push me into business school, etc. he told me - go ahead - take your liberal arts major. You will manage to find job opptunities your whole life - but you might never have the another opportunity to read Pushkin, Proust, Marx/Engels, Hobbes, Rousseau, or Kant. [cue to Monthy Python's Philosopers Song].

It was good advice. (And do not assume from this that I came from wealth or comfort. You can assume, that my father - who was a violinist - saw the non-monetary benefit of liberal arts major and thought that should be enough, standing alone to justify the experience.) This early reality check combined with support for my chosen major - made my early career disappointments (night manager at a Burger King on 7th Avenue, messenger boy and clerk in lower Manhattan, etc) less suprising -and hence - easier to deal with and overcome.

Last, I thank the original poster for his thoughtful response. I believe the advice he/she gave is valuable. My only quibble (and it is a small one) is the assumption that lawyers who have worked into the upper echelons of their profession must not have a clue as to how the other half lives. I am sure the point is correct up to a point - - - particularly for some whose path takes them from prep school to the Ivy leagues to a white shoe firm - - - but as to me I have walked and lived and worked on both sides of the tracks (career and otherwise) and the fact that my 'despairing days' were those in which I worked in another profession does not necessarily deprive me of a broad perspective on career related depression. As I said, it is a minor quibble - I did both enjoy and appreicate the original comments and the reply.

I am a college professor at a small school, and being an advisor is an important part of the job for me (in fact, it is one of my favorite parts of the job). I do see it as my job to do more than push paperwork for my advisees -- in fact, the paperwork is diminishing somewhat -- and do what I can to help thinking about career possibilities. As has been stated earlier, one important question to ask is "why" (and another might be "why not" -- but that is perhaps another topic).

Certainly, some students are focused, motivated, and in other ways completely prepared for whatever their post-college plans are. But I think too many students just make a decision by default without thinking it through. More and more I am advocating a little breather between college and graduate school (for those inclined). I talk with them about many of the issues raised here, such as starting down a path toward specialization they may need to reverse later. Delaying the choice to go to graduate school gives many the time to better research a profession or program, to think about their goals in a non-school setting, and will hopefully allow them to make more informed decisions, and actually achieve their goals earlier, esp. if they don't have to reverse course after making a decision that's not right for them.

"...but you might never have the another opportunity to read Pushkin, Proust, Marx/Engels, Hobbes, Rousseau, or Kant."

Actually, you can always read all those things, although you might have to shop around for commentaries and such if you need help understanding them. My child wants to be a pharmacist, and she's looking at St. Louis College of Pharmacy, among other things. There are some attractive things about that program, but I don't like the fact that basically it's a trade school. She would have her DPharm but not really a university education. But she reads extensively and is interested in everything, so maybe she's enough of an autodidact not to suffer too much.

I have an interest in this from two directions. I went to an Ivy League law school from being out of ideas what else to do (after an MA); and 15 years later -- reasonable success and intense discontent -- moved into personal coaching.

I believe there are a number of things that can improve one's choices for spending their lives in a certain field--the MBTI plus the Language and Behavior plus the Kolby Conative plus an intuitive and critical listener. For me, looking back, the "P" in the Myers-Briggs would have been a giveaway, makes the filekeeping and repetition in law a matter of time until implosion, boredom + anxiety are fatal. The modular details of preferred activities and perceptual styles are decisive, and it's possible to determine this prospectively.

In short, yes, there are ways to find out, but most "career counselling" doesn't have a clue.

Four rules for going to law school:

Rule 1: It is generally a mistake to go to law school unless you really want to be a lawyer. It may be that law school helps some with other things, but not that much. The focus is narrow, the financial and opportunity costs high.

Rule 2. Get some solid idea before going to law school of what lawyers really do. Working in a law office is one sensible way to do that. Observing or talking with a relative or friend who is a lawyer may be another. Make sure that you like doing the kinds of things that lawyers do.

Rule 3. Be realistic about what kind of lawyer you can expect to be: don't assume you will get the fanciest or more prestigious or most well paid job. If you are not able to get into a strong law school, you probably won't get an opportunity to work in a high-powered corporate law firm or U.S. Attorney's office. Whatever law school you do get into, remember that the expected performance of the average student is right in the middle of the class. And very few lawyers, however gifted, from any school, however highly ranked, get to specialize in international human rights law.

From these two rules, it follows that the optimal situation is to go into law school excited about the specific kinds of jobs that are open to the average graduate of the school you are going to. Then if something better emerges it is gravy.

Rule 4: Don't be surprised if your views change during the time you are in law school or the first few years of practice. Your choice to go to law school was just your best guess, not an infallible prophecy. If it doesn't feel right, don't let sunk costs tie you into a career choice that doesn't make sense given your skills, values and needs.

Stephen Bundy

No-one should do a professional degree of any kind without working, full time, for a couple of years. This eliminates the 'I'll never get a job' terror, it encourages the candiate to think of the program as professional training for a job, and it gives the candidate a perspective on their own interests and abilities. And it lets them earn some money, move out of their folks' basement, learn how to live on their own and be an adult -- all of which is absolutely necessary to grad school, law school and probably business programs as well.

I'd insist that all applicants to any post-secondary degree program be at least 26 years old.

jo.

As a recent law school grad, I have a few tidbits to add.

First, go to law school if you want to practice law when you're done. If you really aren't interested in the law, you'll probably have to spend a few years practicing it because of the debt before you can take the job you really want. Which means, in addition to spending three years studying something you don't like, you'll have to spend a few more years practicing something you don't like.

Second, you will be in debt. If you're fortunate enough to have family that can pay your way through law school, then kudos to you. However, 25% of law students now leave school with over $100,000 in debt. Now, you might think that that debt can go away if you get in to a top firm. But, even coming from an Ivy League school, you're not guaranteed that job (and may not want it). You may be selling your soul away just to go, and not even know if before stepping foot in your first class.

Third, realize how important choosing that school is. Where you go to school determines where you will practice law (with some exceptions). So, if you go to school in Chicago, there's a strong chance you're going to end up working in Chicago. If you go to school in the New York region, enjoy working in the city (and the stresses thereof). Now, sometimes you can leave a law school's region--but, usually, that requires some connection to the region. After all, if a firm is going to bring you in, lose money on your incompetence for the first few years, and then find out that you want to leave because not only is the work too much (as it will be anywhere you go), but because you have no family there and are miserable, why would they take that risk on you in the first place?

Also, related to the importance of the school is that you go to a school that fits you. Take a look at where the students come from, their backgrounds, and what the school's philosophy is. The school work is hard enough... you might as well at least respect, if not like, the people you're going to study with.

Fourth, I believe that over 50% of all law students suffer from some sort of depression. Now, that statistic (if accurate) may just reflect correlation and not causation, but be warned.

Ultimately, unless you can say why you really want to practice law (and changing the world is a terrible reason--there are other fields you can do that in!), DON'T GO.

P.S. Just so you don't get the impression that I hate everything law related, I know that coming out of school, I am really lucky. I'll be working at a great office in a great firm, in an area where I will be happy, and with people I enjoy. And, I really love the law. But, to get to that point, I had to endure the purgatory of law school.