At Inside the Law School Scam, Colorado Lawprof Paul Campos posts about a letter he received from a 2010 law grad. According to the letter, he was an Ivy League undergrad, a top five law school graduate, and is now a fixture in his mother’s basement.
Since graduating in 2010, I’ve lived with my parents. I have about as much debt as you’d expect. I really want to be able to move on with my life, live like a grown-up, not be broke, and be able to be proud of my career. I’m just not sure how.
The question posed was whether it would be a smart move to get an MBA.
I recently ordered test prep books for the GMAT, so that I can apply to full-time MBA programs. I’m great at standardized tests, so even though business school admission isn’t as numbers-based as law school (I wish), I think I might have a good chance of getting into a top MBA program.
For someone who has played by the rules and done well enough to have the proper pedigree, this must be incredibly discouraging. Isn’t this what we’ve told young people to do, work hard in school, get the best education possible, and the success will just happen?
The writer makes the curious choice of asking a law professor for advice is somewhat telling. Who could be further reality than an academic, but since Campos has put on the mantle of honest broker amongst the unemployed and disaffected young lawyers, it’s understandable. To his credit, he admits he has no advice to offer, and throws the question out there for the plethora of similarly unemployed and disaffected young lawyers. Why people who suffer from the circumstances would have useful advice to offer is a mystery.
What makes this question, whether getting yet another degree is a cure for having an expensive degree that has gotten the writer a permanent seat on the couch in mommy’s basement, worth noting here is the vision the writer has of his options.
Aside from business school, I don’t have many other good ideas. I’ve thought about starting my own firm- probably mostly criminal defense, but I’d take whatever work I could get. But the problems with that are: 1) I’m unsure whether I’m qualified, at least by my own standards; and 2) I know many small firms struggle to bring in enough business. Since my biggest priorities are 1.) not be poor; 2.) move out of bedroom; and 3.) end unemployment deferment of loans, struggling to start a firm with the hope that if I’m successful I might clear $40k after a year doesn’t seem like a very good option.
When there are no options left in the law, become a criminal defense lawyer? Ouch. This says a lot about the perception of criminal defense within the legal community, or at least in the eyes of young lawyers. We’re the gym teachers of the law.
To the writer’s credit, he recognizes that he may not be qualified, though he qualifies that by saying at least by his own standards. Apparently, being unqualified by, say, objective standards, based on having taken a couple of classes in generic criminal law and procedure and being utterly without experience, isn’t considered a general bar to being responsible for people’s lives.
But the second stumbling block is that he fears that as a criminal defense lawyer, he won’t make enough money to survive anyway. Presumably, if the money was better, his lack of qualifications wouldn’t have stopped him. He would suffer his incompetence if it paid better.
I recently wrote about the situation for many criminal defense lawyers, the ones who actually chose to engage in this area of practice, are experienced, give a damn. They are struggling, and one of the factors that’s dragging down their ability to maintain a viable practice is the influx of new lawyers who see criminal defense as the path of last resort, their final hope to be a lawyer when all else fails.
During my phone call, we spoke of the baby lawyers hanging out in the hallways trying to catch the attention of a defendant’s mother with $100 in her pocket. We spoke of n00bs, barely competent if at all, taking felonies for $1500 total. He didn’t blame them, knowing they had loans to pay.
Criminal defense must be perceived as either incredibly easy to do, or so pointless that anyone could grab a quick buck and screw it up as badly as the next guy. This isn’t the only time in the past couple of weeks that a new lawyer figured he could make a quick buck off criminal defense.
Carolyn Elefant wrote of a would-be solo (who didn’t make it) who similarly figured easy money from criminal defense would tide him over so he could practice real law.
I planned to practice criminal defense, immigration, civil rights (police and corrections misconduct), and consumer law (debt defense and FDCPA). My essential plan was to finance contingency civil rights work with revenue from flat-fee criminal, immigration, and consumer work and contingency FDCPA work.
That it was a stupid plan isn’t the point. That he thought people charged with crimes existed so he could grab some quick money to finance his true legal love is why this is included here. I didn’t think much of the idea at the time, and it’s no better now.
While the young lawyer who sought Campos’ counsel saw an MBA as an alternative to slumming the hallways of criminal court, the comments to the post were replete with the advice that it was idiotic. Loading a worthless second degree on top of a worthless first degree is like doubling down in blackjack on a pair of eights. But if not an MBA, then what?
If this young lawyer dreamed of doing criminal defense from the day he filled out his law school application, then I would warmly encourage him to toss caution to the wind and make it happen. But it strikes me as pretty clear that he wanted a Biglaw gig, plopping his top five law school butt in a library chair and cashing checks that would make a federal judge jealous. He never wanted to touch the hands of defendants. He would probably have a big bottle of disinfectant so he wouldn’t catch anything from them.
There is strong possibility that the many of the incoming crew of young criminal defense lawyers, particularly the solos who were no-offered, will wind up walking the hallways of criminal courthouses because they reject the MBA option. There is a strong possibility that these poseurs, concerned only with their own need to make some easy money until a real law job comes along, will do so at the expense of those who truly want to defend the accused, are capable of doing so, and need to earn a living from criminal defense so they can continue to provide zealous representation and feed their families.
I have some advice for Campos’ writer. Get your MBA. Get a Ph.D. Do anything you can other than be a criminal defense lawyer. Anything. It doesn’t really matter what choice you make, because your hand is going to bust anyway. Just don’t screw it up for anyone else.
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“Criminal defense must be perceived as either incredibly easy to do, or so pointless that anyone could grab a quick buck and screw it up as badly as the next guy. “
It’s perceived as one of the few areas in which an inexperienced lawyer can successfully market themselves, given the sheer volume of criminal proceedings, the fact that payment is usually made prior to representation, and obvious ways to get started like the court-appointed lists.
If you assume everyone is guilty it is pretty simple.
Or if you just don’t care, as long as you got a few wrinkled bills in your pocket.
Ah, the young snobby wannabe lawyer gambit. My favorite. All the kiddies who went to law school because the practice was going to be so cool — filled with cocktails, suits, expensive cars, and working in a downtown skyscraper.
Then they find out that lifestyle only applies to less than 5% of the profession (and it’s not even a reality for most biglaw partners, either). Their expectations so ruthlessly shattered, reluctantly, they will now do the profession a favor and do “trench law.” Surely, their fancy credentials and big LSAT scores will make them superior lawyers to the trench lawyers, most of whom probably attended a TTTT law school!
“Sigh, if I have to, I guess I will reluctantly suck it up and represent real clients until I find a job in biglaw, though the thought of making $40k a year is so horrible. Hopefully I can plead all of these stupid DUIs out and settle the personal injury cases quickly.”
Their clients have real interests at stake, like their house or their freedom, but who really cares about that? This is about the individual.
“I was entitled to a prestigious, high paying job in a downtown office. I did everything right! The profession let me down, why should I give a shit about the profession?”
I love how “trench law” is the reluctant last resort for the damned.
So yeah dude, get the MBA, go work for a bank, or do anything else that isn’t representing clients.
My, aren’t you feisty this morning. Eggs for breakfast?
I think the “can I really handle this?” analysis comes later. We’re talking about why unemployed and inexperienced lawyers seem to gravitate towards criminal defense. I gave a couple reasons relating to the perceived ease of beginning the practice of criminal defense in terms of marketing and obtaining clients. To the extent simplicity of the work itself enters that equation, the lawyers are probably thinking that a fair amount of criminal defense work is comparatively simple, and that they will start with that work and build their way up to more serious work.
Sure, we all know examples of inexperienced lawyers foolishly taking on major drug or homicide cases, but I think the majority of new lawyers don’t see themselves as handling those right out the gate. In practice most of them, if they get one of those, will either bring on more experienced counsel or simply refer the matter to them. I of course have no empirical data to back this up, but it matches the anecdotal evidence I’ve witnessed. I know a couple young lawyers who have been building criminal defense practices and each has told me of examples where they knew a case was too big for them and so sent it to their mentor instead.
Ah, Max. There you go pissing me off again. The “little” cases, as you generously perceive them, are only little to smarmy little lawyers. True, they may not result in life sentences, but they matter a whole lot the the nice people who are accused. They may preclude them from every getting a job, or working in their license profession. They may mean that their children go hungry, at least for a while. But they’re not “serious” cases, at least as far as an outsider is concerned.
It’s good to know that getting a criminal record, losing a job, maybe even making it onto the sex offender registry for peeing on a shrub, is so utterly meaningless as to be unworthy of competent counsel. Got it. No reason why new lawyers with no competence shouldn’t cut their teeth on such puny concerns.
Indeed! With bacon.
Admittedly, I read Bennett’s article and was jealous that he turned my crappy post into a good one.
Learn from Bennett, grasshopper. And bacon is good.
It seems you were chomping at the bit so hard to inveigh against me that you skipped right over what I actually wrote.
I said nothing of the sort you accuse: I wrote about “the perceived ease” of certain criminal defense cases and about what “the lawyers are probably thinking,” not my own thoughts on the complexity or importance of them.
There’s a difference between describing something and approving of it, you know.
Whoever smelt it, dealt it. I read you tacitly applaud those who sent off the serious cases to competent “mentors.” I read nothing about your condemnation of keeping they piddling cases. I must have missed that part.
You know, the problem of this young lawyer in spes is that there really is no way out for him. Let’s be honest: he is a person with a load of non-dischargable debt. He has no prospect of paying even the interest. He is never going to get a job that would pay the debt off. Essentially, it doesn’t matter whether he works as a paralegal, a low-rate criminal defense lawyer, or a janitor. He will be paying the income-based payments for the next 25 years and private student loads even thereafter.
If I were in the same situation (I’m not. I’m a Ph.D with a steady job and with no educational debt at all, thanks to Finnish education system.), I would start thinking radically different alternatives. First, what has this guy got? An American passport and an education. His health.
First move should be moving somewhere where the creditor is not going to find you. Means South America, Eastern Europe or Asia. Then starting some kind of activity there, whatever brings in the buck. If all else fails, the French Foreign Legion gives you a French citizenship and a new name after five years’ good service. That might be an excellent idea for starting a new life.
I thought everybody in the French Foreign Legion was named Beau Geste, no? Seriously, you may have a good point.
This is a very tredious post. May I bookmark it for further reading?
I don’t see how you could avoid it.
The biggest irony is that those BIGLAW jobs they aspire to are pure iron pyrite. Most of the attorneys where i worked – even some big shot partners – were drowning in debt and absolutely hated their jobs and lives but were stuck. BIGLAW is basically Gilded debt peonage where your labours serve only to make other people rich.
It doesn’t sound like nearly as much fun when you put it that way.
No, the French Foreign Legion stopped giving out new identities a few years ago. You still get a new name when you are in the Legion, but its not a legal name that can be used afterwards like it used to be. This was a recent change, like 2010 I believe.
Chances are slim anyone will come here to ascertain the new name benefits of the French Foreign Legion, so if there are some details in question, no big deal.