Thinking about Law School
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It's not the worst idea in the world. With a 170+, you can probably get into a good law school with scholarship $$. With your work experience, you'll probably do well at OCI and end up with a solid biglaw job.
The consideration here is whether you'll actually enjoy being a corporate lawyer. Especially at the junior levels it's a ton of drudgery (pulling together signature pages, reordering tables of contents, etc.) and honestly is probably even more boring than FP&A (but hey, you're getting paid $200k as a 1st year). I do think the work gets a lot more interesting at the partner level, but you can't count on that happening. Plus, the hours at top firms are hellish and, unlike banking, don't get much better as you rise up through the ranks. Note that I'm talking about corporate law; litigation may be different but I have no idea.
Have you thought about business school? Assuming you can get a ~720 on the GMAT, you probably have a good shot at a top 15ish school (maybe M7) where you can make a jump to IBD, consulting, marketing/brand management, etc., all of which are much more interesting than biglaw IMO.
With that lsat, getting a big law offer is not a concern so much as having minimal debt to enjoy the salary. The work will be duller.
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That is odd, the skills do not transfer. DAs hire right out of law school and if it is a sizable metro there are extensive training programs. You receive a large and varied caseload early on. It is more interesting than transactional law but not for everyone, it can be stomach churning. If you know you want to do it then law school makes sense, go in with a full scholarship (prosecution is not T13 or bust at all) and do not be tempted by big law at all.
Was going to post and say you should only go if interested in litigation. The work we send our corporate lawyers and the work i see my friends who are in big corp law do, at the hours they have to do it.. i'd end it all
How does one determine whether he will enjoy legal work?
For transactional, obtain a P&S agreement or a handful of extensive SEC filings in draft form from an attorney you know. Read them over twice. Edit them, fix the cross references, look at the brackets to be filled, become a Word monkey. Imagine doing this for eight hours, six days a week, for thirty years (partners often work as hard as associates, the responsibilities do not get much more interesting). Litigation is another story, and I am assuming you do not want kit.
Another question since you seem knowledgeable:
All the lawyers I do know advise against law school. Partners at good firms, and they say they would not do it again. Lawyers love to complain about being lawyers. I also know the legal industry has higher than average rates of suicide, divorce, substance abuse and depression. I know that the work can be boring and stressful, and I know about the billable hour. I know law school is very expensive, biglaw burnout is common, and partnership prospects are often poor.
In short, I know the reasons not to go.
But my question is -- when does it make sense to go to law school? For what type of person and under what circumstances? I know one common answer is to only go if you know wholeheartedly that you want to be a lawyer, but that doesn't seem helpful at all.
What are your thoughts?
Please PM me, I have posted extensively on law and exit ops as someone who has left the industry. With your resume, do not go. The MBA leads to better positions and is a better education (despite the claim of law school teaching you to “think”)
If you're looking for MORE boring work, you should DEFINITELY go into law. lol
Sue me ;)
You must know that this site generally has a strong bias against any career path other than "high finance" and maybe FAANG software engineering. That said, it's clear you could go to law school in a way that would make it "worth it" for most prospects interested in actually practicing law (never go at all as a default). Don't know what your gpa is, but sounds like you could get good money at a lower T14 and would probably have a great shot at T6.
In that situation, biglaw is all but a sure thing. Common comments like "you'll never make partner" and that the work is dull are only true in some cases and for a few years. Generally, entry level work kinda sucks in any field so keep this in mind. There is also a HUGE difference in lifestyle and partner prospects between firms. AM100 is not a monolith. Yes, Vault10 [for partnership prospects and work life balance] is a crap shoot, but I'd bet that most V50-100 shops in tier 2/3 markets are much better options.
As someone with crim law and finance interests, you might check out the white collar practice groups of biglaw firms. Might be best of both worlds and even give you access to doing "dirtier" criminal work later on!
I'd speak with current associates to get a sense of the trajectory in today's day and age.
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Dude, a 3.7 is great (and in physics, jesus) and won't hold you back from anywhere except Yale! If you can land a 172-174, you'd be a decent candidate for Harvard and Stanford.
My advice would be to stick with your current [cushy] role until you're consistently hitting 173-174 on 2010s- practice tests so that you can get serious money. You've only been practicing for a month, so why rush! T-14 with minimal debt sounds very doable for you. Good luck!!
This is correct regarding T14 and T6. Big law is all but a sure thing if you are a diligent worker 1L because interviews are softball questions and have exceptionally low thresholds for appearing normal.
Regarding the V100, this is not exactly true. Partnership at all of them is highly unlikely, as other commenters on similar threads have stated. It is akin to entering IB with the goal of being a principal at a mega fund. A firm at the lower end of the V100 may very well be a sweatshop compared to a V20, it is contingent on many factors including what group you are in, which partners you work with the most, and the state of the economy. The realistic outcome for any student entering the T14 is being forced out or burning out 2-6 years in and taking a large paycut to go in-house for a bit better lifestyle (it can still be a sweatshop; there are not many roles for litigators here). Contrary to how most industries are setup, the amount of interesting work and work-life balance do not necessarily increase at the senior associate and partner level. In fact, they often get worse with increased levels of stress (as a partner, you are still responsible for billables but this is coupled with having to be a salesman in a highly saturated field that is stagnant; the profession never recovered fully from 08, some argue from '01 when inflation and COL is factored in). What turns off many people who had real office jobs before law school off about the profession (including myself) is that it takes a long time to gain any real responsibility and those responsibilities are not interesting compared to F500 management, consulting, or finance (then again, most law students were never in the running for any of those jobs, most went to horrible undergraduate institutions where they studied the most marginal of humanities). Anyone considering transactional law should read this thread: https://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=261392
White collar is a niche that does not necessarily lead to the "dirtier" cases because the dirtier cases tend to pay less and are less prestigious (not many violent crime perps can pay the fees, many in the SEC's sights can pay the fees). White collar practices are at large firms and some boutiques, exit ops are more limited than corporate. If you want the "dirtier" criminal cases, you become a DA or PD and then setup your own practice or join another after putting in the time in the public sector.
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