About quitting

[viscousmemories]

I would've been voted "Most Likely to be in Prison by 25" in high school if I hadn't dropped out after the first semester, but now I have a fair number of college credits, a house, a car, and great job that pays well. However I still feel like a miserable failure whenever I stop to think about it because I could have accomplished all this and more 15 years ago if I had just stuck with anything. Instead, I am an accomplished quitter. I quit more (schools, jobs, relationships) before I was 25 than most people do their entire lives. Enough that I don't remember "If I quit I'll kick myself" ever making it to one of my pro/con lists. Unfortunately I never built up an immunity to the guilt and shame, it just didn't deter me from quitting. If you have an opportunity to avoid building that particular callous I recommend you do it.

[wildernesse]

FYI, if you pass the bar, there are several requirements that you have to meet each year and they are not inexpensive. You have state (and in NC, local judicial district) dues, and you must pay for your continuing education if your license is active. If you're employed, then your employer pays most of this for you. If you aren't employed because the job market sucks/etc., then you pay them. First years get a break, but my dues this year were $375 and I paid about $800 for my continuing education classes. Because I live out of state, I don't have to pay the local bar dues.

So, it's not like other degrees where you get your piece of paper and you can go out and get a job off and on with your piece of paper. More than half of the value of your law degree is probably missing if you aren't licensed, when it comes to job availability. You have to maintain your license, although you can petition to be declared inactive--but then you can't pick up jobs where you need to be licensed, if you find one that works for you.

So, yeah, you have your piece of paper forever and no one can take it away from you, but if you don't have another piece of paper allowing you to use the full potential of your degree it is not much better than having any other fluffy graduate degree. And, if you get that other piece of paper (which CAN be taken away from you), you have a series of additional obligations.

This sounds like it is in the downer column, but I don't mean it to be. I just don't think the "it shows discipline" and "it's an accomplishment" arguments are very strong in and of themselves when it comes to law and a poor economy.

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by wildernesse

I just don't think the "it shows discipline" and "it's an accomplishment" arguments are very strong in and of themselves when it comes to law and a poor economy.

In their defense, though, I think neither argument was presented as bearing on the specific pursuit of a law career as a member of the bar.

[slimshady2357]

1A finding a law job will be hard
1B my degree won’t help with 1A, will make it even harder
1C debt will increase (as well as lost cash from starting work later) and might be no benefit –See 1A and 1B
1D it’s going to stay hard to get a law job

All the cons boil down to 2 things really:

i)You’re going to have trouble finding a decent job when you’re finished.
ii)You’re going to have more debt than if you left now.

From what you’ve said about finding a job without a law degree, you have problem i) anyway, don’t you? Seriously, think about it, don’t you have the same basic problem as i) with without a law degree?

So as I see it, really you only have one question to ask yourself, is the extra debt worth what the positives give you? It doesn’t seem like you actually care too much about the extra debt, which leads me to believe that you should stay.

I know it’s been said and it’s a cliché, but you are less likely to regret something you made an effort to achieve than something you gave up on. I really believe you will regret it. And you cannot be sure that it won’t help having a law degree when looking later for any job. I don’t think it will ever hurt you anyway

But if you do continue, give it your best!

[wildernesse]

Originally Posted by Clutch Munny

In their defense, though, I think neither argument was presented as bearing on the specific pursuit of a law career as a member of the bar.

True, but Chuck already has one fluffy graduate degree not helping him get a job too much. I don't think the argument improves because he would have two, if he didn't take the bar.

[ChuckF]

This is extremely helpful, guys. I'm not going to go back and reply to individual comments right now, but you are making me think. One of the issues here is that I can't really judge how rational or irrational I am being. Observations from relatively disinterested observers help me get a better grasp on it. Also, wildy, I had not thought about the CLE consequences of taking the bar. Good point.

[wildernesse]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

Also, wildy, I had not thought about the CLE consequences of taking the bar. Good point.

No one likes to tell people about the fact that you have to keep paying for stuff even after you pass the bar. However. The first year, you don't have any CLE requirements so you have that buffer to get employed in a job, any job. And if you come across free CLE's in that year and take them, then that rolls over to your first year that you need it. Free CLE usually = service requirement, but that also increases your experience. (Look up all the details, obviously, as I'm sure it varies by jxn.)

I would like to note that because I am a loser and waited until the last minute (and didn't understand the out of state CLE approval requirements), I probably paid more than necessary. But not by that much. If I were in NC, I could also have cobbled together some free CLE credits.

And, while it seems (and it is in some ways) to be a huge negative, having a license--even with these additional costs--opens more job doors at higher pay. Most have-a-license law jobs that I took paid $20-25/hr for temp or contract or part-time work. My firm job worked out to be about $18/hour + mileage + some benefits, and I would consider that training pay for my first year, with plenty of potential to increase. I have otherwise fluffy undergraduate and graduate degrees, and I'm not looking at jobs that pay that rate outside my legal experience.

[ceptimus]

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

[Sock Puppet]

Just stringing together responses to a few things that leaped out at me. If what I say sounds lame, you oughta get a load of the crap I deleted before I hit the submit button.

Originally Posted by ChuckF

This is more about me writing stuff down than getting advice, because internet people do not get to decide things

Tough shit. I'll tell you what I told your mom: You'll do what we tell you and you'll like it.

An odd thing happened last semester: I started to enjoy law school, or at least the substantive part of it.

This has been mentioned already, but just in case you missed it: this is huge. I can't back this up with anything but the half-assed opinion I pull out of my ass, but law school probably has the highest concentration of students who hate what they're doing than any other segment of higher learning.

I have no confidence that law school will help me find a job.

Last summer, I found work only through a personal connection. I no longer have any such informal networks upon which I may rely for employment. I am at a distinct disadvantage when competing against those who do.

Easier said than done, but frankly, you need to start building a new network. Also, look into volunteer work outside what might come up in a legal search. My wife did stints for support networks for battered women, getting restraining orders and such.

I am a mediocre law student at a mediocre law school. While my institution is reasonably well-regarded, it is not one of the golden handful of schools that effectively dominate the marketplace.

Do the golden law schools dominate the entire marketplace, or just the market for the highest payers? My wife went to a bottom-tier law school, mostly because her English skills weren't good enough to get her a decent LSAT score. The school wasn't even ABA accredited. While that has caused some problems, she has still been more or less steadily employed since passing the Bar. She worked for two firms in California and then went self-employed when our daughter was born. A major hiccup happened when we moved to Texas due to the ABA accreditation problem, but she now has a decently paying job and is poised to go self-employed again, this time out of clear choice. However, my wife has a talent for turning shit cases into wins, so YMMV.

Originally Posted by ChuckF

I went as far in the selection process as one can go without being hired. I am presently going through the process again. I dare not rely on succeeding this time, having previously failed.

With how shitty the job market is, this is actually a promising result. Not as promising as getting an actual fucking job, obviously, but if you can get that far in the selection process, you've beat out a ton of other candidates. The trick is to choke down the frustration and go through it all over again. Also: "rely on succeeding"? Of course not.

Also, I don't know about your state, but most Bar dues can be reduced for hardship, unemployment, etc. And CLE credits are reported in California every 5 years, so there's some wiggle room there when you have a bad year.

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

Do the golden law schools dominate the entire marketplace, or just the market for the highest payers?

Just to hit this one point really quickly: it used to be that the big 14 just took the rly rly yuge firm jobs and fancy government posts and left plenty of room for everybody else. Then suddenly there was no more money and most of those positions stopped being filled/created. They still take the top jobs, but now we at the less-than-golden law schools have to compete with them for everything else as well. (There's also a matter of institutional support: recently, due to the poor job market, those schools that can afford to do it offer every student a substantial grant for unpaid public service work in the summer, pushing students who would usually focus on traditional firm-type summer jobs into the volunteer summer job field.)

[wei yau]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

However, my wife has a talent for turning shit cases into wins

DAWWWW!

[wildernesse]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

Also, I don't know about your state, but most Bar dues can be reduced for hardship, unemployment, etc. And CLE credits are reported in California every 5 years, so there's some wiggle room there when you have a bad year.

In NC, you report CLE every year and I have not found that you can reduce your annual state bar dues while keeping an active license. You can petition for a CLE exemption based on hardship, but that does not relieve your burden for annual state bar (or local judicial district bar, if applicable) dues.

[erimir]

Just so that the quitting side at least has some nominal support, I will mention that both of my parents went to law school and got degrees. After working a year or two in the law field, they both quit because they didn't like it.

Of course, they had undergraduate degrees in German, which seems like not the most lucrative undergrad degree. My dad went to get a PhD in Linguistics but quit because he didn't think he could make a living with it, and then after quitting law he got an MBA. So he wasn't the most decisive.

However, he was getting the law degree for money reasons, and I'm not sure how much he actually enjoyed law school.

And now he works in real estate, and his legal training is actually helpful to him in some ways (real estate agents deal with a lot of contracts, and he gets to put JD next to his name in advertisements - which another agent actually complained was unfair!).

So, uh... I'm not really sure what the lesson is here. I dunno if my dad would say he ultimately regretted getting a law degree. And his law school was less respected than yours.

[Kyuss Apollo]

Originally Posted by Watser?

Twas the Butthole Surfers who said that about it being better to regret things you have done. But I guess it is true though.

It was in a Butthole Surfers song, Sweat Loaf, that that was said, but if you listen carefully it is definitely Jello Biafra who actually says it.

Sweat Loaf

[Janet]

This has been mentioned already, but just in case you missed it: this is huge. I can't back this up with anything but the half-assed opinion I pull out of my ass, but law school probably has the highest concentration of students who hate what they're doing than any other segment of higher learning.

I'm not so sure about that. Getting a Master's in Library Science sucks unbelievable and is nothing like the actual job. Frankly, if I hadn't been told several times by working librarians that the job was nothing like the degree I never would have finished. Mindless busywork the lot of it.

[freemonkey]

Originally Posted by Kyuss Apollo

For what it's worth, I have found as I've that as life goes on this adage I heard when I was much younger grows peculiarly more and more apt:

...it's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done.

ain't that the fucking truth. The older I get the more I regret not having gone to college or art school.

I second the idea of talking to people in the field your dream jobs are in, but also those just outside it. You might find yourself considering new ideas. For instance, it only recently occurred to me that talking to art historians (for instance) could have directed me to art restoration, which could have sent me around the world. Maybe.

[Gonzo]

I like the string of questioning user titles:

Happy now, Mussolini?

Cookie?

Custom User Title?

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by Janet

Getting a Master's in Library Science sucks unbelievable and is nothing like the actual job. Frankly, if I hadn't been told several times by working librarians that the job was nothing like the degree I never would have finished. Mindless busywork the lot of it.

Just to derail this a bit: Professional (and quasi-professional) Masters degrees are the crack cocaine of modern universities. They're addicted to the high-tuition cash, but rotting from within under the weight of fake units, practices and policies that shore up the illusion of actual academic content. Librarian/conservancy is just one example of a hard job requiring lots of specialist knowledge, but not one requiring a Master's degree, of all things, to do well. Tell me if you think I'm wrong, but I'd say the way to train librarians is via a short course of instruction with a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than an MLS, followed by an apprenticeship as a working librarian under experienced mentors. The problem with this idea, of course, is that apprentices get paid, whereas MLS students pay you.

I think of how much my father had to know in order to be an excellent welder, and I wonder how he managed it on a professional certificate rather than a M.Sthg.

[livius drusus]

Which reminds me, I am aware this is a crazy idea for many reasons, but I'ma throw it out there just because. There are still a few states that haven't been cowed by the ABA into making a law degree a requirement for sitting the bar. You could apply for apprenticeships in California and New York right now and then study on your own for the next three years. It's a tough route -- one stat I saw was that 20% of California Law Office Study bar candidates pass, as opposed to 50% of law students -- but it's working now (pretty much as a paralegal) while working towards the same goal.

I know, I know... The jobs are few and far between. You'd still have half a degree which would suck. You'd still have the debt and you'd be living in the most expensive states in the Union. So yeah, probably not a great idea for you. Still throwing it out there because there are a lot of paths in life and whatnot.

Lawyer Apprenticeship Program - Apprentices Take Law Into Their Own Hands - Los Angeles Times

[Sock Puppet]

Law school alone won't prepare you properly for the Bar anyway. If you do consider taking the California Bar Exam, let me know. I know a bar prep course that beats the hell out of Barbri and the rest of those charlatans.

[slimshady2357]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

Law school alone won't prepare you properly for the Bar anyway. If you do consider taking the California Bar Exam, let me know. I know a bar prep course that beats the hell out of Barbri and the rest of those charlatans.

[Janet]

I definitely agree, Clutch. Not only was my degree mindless busywork, but it was easier than my B.A. I never, honestly never, needed to read a singly textbook to pass my master's courses with As and Bs. The culminating class was research methods and we had to write a research proposal in order to pass. To get my Honors Psych degree I had to pass a much harder research methods course and carry out actually research.

The biggest thing that irritated me at library school was that not only did they make no effort to teach students the customer service skills they would need every damn day of the job, they never even warned them that those skills would be needed. I mentioned that to one of my library directors and she said if they warned them people might not get the degrees and the schools wanted the money. Which pretty much sums it up. The customer service skills I gained working door to door sales, retail, telemarketing and as a bank teller have been more use to me in this job than just about anything I learned getting my degree.

I say teach people how to search, professional ethics and then have them job shadow. They'd probably do just as well without the student loans. Really, when I think about why professionals are paid more than library assistants these days the only good reason I can think of is we have student loans to pay off.

[ChuckF]

Inertia is a very powerful force. And the refund sucks. Thus came another B+ law student to clog up the job market.

[Naru]

[Janet]

You support my general theory of life, Chuck. Until changing becomes less of a pain in the ass than staying in the situation, people will not change. As you say, inertia is very powerful.