Energetic, smart, ambitious, and talented people almost always succeed if they’re in the right place at the right time. Matriculated or not.

Get a damn degree, or not, and create your own success. You don’t like the way things are run, go change it. What was ‘big law’ before it was ‘big law?’

Go create your own industry and get rich. Not talented enough? So sorry. Join the rest of us.

I could not agree with this comment more. And it doesn’t even have to be a P.I. case. I used to slog at an insurance defense firm where the boss had 3 million dollar homes while I could barely pay my bills. One day, someone referred a case to me where an insurance company denied a defense. I filed a dec action and bad faith claims, worked my ass off (no different than what I did for the insurance defense firm), won on the dec action, and settled the same day as the court ruling, Now, I laugh at BigLaw, whose turn their noses up at me despite working 6 and 7 days a week while I took 10 weeks worth of vacations and time off in 2009. (not to mention I am spending 10 minutes reading this post and commenting rather than worrying about who I can bill .2 of an hour to).

The real problem with law schools are both the schools and the students. Way too many of them think they get the degree, the money rolls in, and you only have to work a few hours a day. Then they find out it can be worse than being a landscaper,and can’t handle it. The sense of entitlement is laughable.

, anyone who is NOT certain to be eligible to the big law market as laid out above (and note, as you move through the ways in, the greater the risk that you won’t make the cut) is INSANITY

1. the big law market which is limited to those who (i) graduate from the top 5 schools (ii) graduate in the top half at a top 6-10 schools, (iii) graduate in the top 20% and/or on flagship law review from a top 11-15 school, or (iv) in the top 10 (absolute number) from the best local law schools with ties to the top area firms.

2. everybody else.

To incur any debt, let alone significant debt, to attend law school, anyone who is certain to be eligible to the big law market as laid out above (and note, as you move through the ways in, the greater the risk that you won’t make the cut) is INSANITY. Or, to be kind, business judgment so terrible, you shouldn’t be making that kind of a decision.

No one who cannot get into a top 15 law school has any business taking on any significant debt given the risk that you won’t be in that very top of the class it takes to get a good job, even in good times.

Also, look at ABA “Ethics” Opinion 08-451, which allows U.S. law firms to send American legal work to foreign lawyers and non-lawyers. The reality is that law is a dying industry. Thank you for publishing this article. Prospective law students NEED to see the truth about the oversaturated lawyer market.

Law school is a terrible investment for most.

(1) This is not the first recession: many big firm associates lost their jobs in the early ’90s, and Baker even closed their L.A. office, if I recall correctly; and after the dot-com bust, senior counsel and even some “service” partners were on the chopping block. It won’t be the last.

(2) In-house is great — even essential experience, in my view, if you want to be a transactional lawyer — but there you’re subject to the vicissitudes of the particular industry and company, not just the economy as a whole. One of my former big companies had, and continues to have, booms and busts in hiring due to industry effects, and lawyers have gotten cut (e.g., during the 1998 Asian Crisis). Another company where I worked had a cataclysmic earnings report one quarter, and many professional jobs were shed.

(3) Lawyers can be attractive hires for some non-law jobs in business, such as business development, but woe be to you if you don’t then stay in the management rat race in perpetuity. If you ever step off the track, then once you get to be near or past 50, you’ll find your opportunities sorely lacking. There are very few openings available for attorneys with 10 years of experience — unless you’re currently employed in a position comparable to the one you’re hoping to move to, or have a $$multi-million portable book of business. Opportunities for those with 20 years’ or so are almost non-existent. Having had a fancy title at a well-known company can hurt your chances of getting re-hired, especially past a certain age (you’re assumed to be too expensive). And the age prejudice against people 50 or over was pretty ubiquitous in the US job market anyway, even before this crisis; Fortune magazine had a cover story about it in 2005 or 2006.

(4) Bottom line is, you should not enter the law profession unless (i) you’re pretty certain you can become a tenured law professor or a judge with a life appointment, (ii) you’re pretty certain you can build a 7-figure book of portable business, or (ii) you’re prepared to go into solo/micro practice from time to time. I’m solo currently, practicing outside the US now, which has its own challenges and opportunities. But this isn’t the first time: I also had to go solo for two other periods between permanent employment, when I was younger and less experienced. While the second one was relatively short, the first lasted almost 3 years, and was pretty arduous (though I got a great job at the end of it).

That said, being a lawyer has opened many doors for me in my life, and provided many adventures and opportunities, if not always the stability I had sought when I chose to go to school. (One is that I’ve also been writing professionally for the past five years or six years or so.) The most important part of being happy with your chosen career is to choose something that can build toward a relatively “dream” job, where the dream is based not on money, but on what you’re interested in. If you think law is that, then you should keep your mind open to nomadic or indirect career paths from the get-go.