just let the debt pile up man.


throw another 10 g's on there for your summers too.


hopefully you'll pay it all back one day. it's an investment, so expect for it not to pay off for a long while.

5/7/2007 11:46:28 PM

one more year left....I feel I am on easy street at the moment.....at Internship for the summer...bring on the challenges...


III

5/8/2007 11:09:00 AM

So accruing $120K isn't out of the ordinary for law students? And, realistically, how much could a first year criminal lawyer expect make? And would it be enough to live on and make loan payments?

Reason I'm asking is because I have been accepted at numerous private schools, but no public schools and will have to borrow the bulk of my costs. My dad doesn't think that it will be worth it and doesn't think that I will be able to survive the first 5-10 years I'm working. I'm looking at doing criminal law, but nothing is set in stone. Being a lawyer is what I want to do with my life, and would pay anything for it, but he doesn't seem to understand this. I was hoping for some perspective contrary to his.

[Edited on May 8, 2007 at 3:13 PM. Reason : 500th post!]

5/8/2007 3:12:45 PM

^^awesome, man!

Congrats

5/8/2007 6:17:46 PM

^^That is not unusual. Average debt for a law school student is now in excess of $90,000. But you should be weary of taking out that much debt unless you go to a top school where you are assured of making a salary coming out that can cover the loan payments.

With a six-figure debt you should expect a monthly loan payment in excess of $1000 (probably closer to $1200).

[Edited on May 8, 2007 at 6:20 PM. Reason : ^]

5/8/2007 6:20:31 PM

(wary)

5/8/2007 7:55:34 PM

Its easy to get around $100k in a private school, especially when most schools are having to use scholarship money to up diversity. As of Monday, Campbell Law has no black students. I have been very cheap and had help from my parents for living expenses (for tax purposes). My debt is not too bad and I lost ten pounds.

If you start off at a small crim law firm, you won't bring in more than $50k, with 50k being a very high estimate. You will spend your days waiting around the court house in case someone needs to be appointed an attorney and will join every list to get appointed work. I believe the state rate is around $65 an hour.

Not trying to be negative nancy, but law school is murder and it sucks. Your idealized dream of the legal system and what it means to be a lawyer will be crushed. Honestly, a lot of people have those same feelings about being a lawyer and $30k later discover they hate the law, cases and the system. However, even though its been hell, I like what i do at the end of the day.

If you want to go to law school, do the math and figure out where and what kind of work you want. Your job outlook really depends on where you are going to school and if you do well there. Everyone on here can tell you salary horror stories from the various schools.

[Edited on May 9, 2007 at 12:57 PM. Reason : k]

5/9/2007 12:56:21 PM

^^^ Yeah, my brother is a banker and basically gave me the approximate monthly loan payment amount (as you said, approximately $1000-1200), and we figured that on my income alone I would have to make at least $50K to survive. However, if my current relationship works out, that's another income to work under.

^ Yeah, I work for a civil defense law firm now, and I have had an internship with a DA's office, so I know what the legal system is all about. And even after learning the 'ins and outs' that I have, I still want to become a lawyer. I guess I'll just have to bust my ass at law school and hope good grades will equate to a good job.

[Edited on May 9, 2007 at 4:05 PM. Reason : thanks for the help though]

5/9/2007 4:05:14 PM

That's the spirit! ^

5/10/2007 9:30:21 AM

Last summer and this summer I have worked for a small law office. I have been doing criminal lit and civil lit. When I came to law school I wanted to go into Sports & Ent. Law (I will still do that on the side though). No the money does not start off GREAT as has been stated, and the system is criminal system, court system is pretty whack and hella frustrating. However, I find that I enjoyed my days and time doing criminal matters.

The debt of 100K+ is excessive but normal for a private school. If you can make it through the 3 year sramble/fight/hell in a classroom at a private school one should be able to land a decent job. But there are so many ways to bring in income with a law degree (real estate closings, traffic violations, making contracts, etc... however you do have to have the clientele for that)

Don't be discouraged too much, b/c law school will do that for you well enough. The law is nothing of what I thought it would be, and alot more of what I never expected it to be.


III

5/10/2007 11:38:47 AM

Yeah, I have come to the conclusion that I am still going to go. Now, its just a matter of making the grades and getting the job come 3 years from now.

5/10/2007 1:00:45 PM

Finished business school last May and owed $124K, my monthly payments total $960. Citibank has a lien on my brain....

5/10/2007 9:58:18 PM

yeah, you'll owe a lot of money when you get out but you'll be able to pay it off eventually. and it is true, you don't make much money when you start working. i just finished my first year of law school and am working at a small criminal law firm where i make less than what i did when i worked for the state. but so what? i hated that job with the state like you wouldn't believe, but i absolutely love what i am doing now. i would rather work for peanuts for the rest of my life and continue what i am doing now than work another job as unfulfilling as the one i had before. in the end, you just need to find a career that makes you happy

5/10/2007 10:50:52 PM

I've been out of lawschool for almost 4 years now... my job still sucks, the pay is not rewarding and neither is the experience.

I hope you know what you're getting into (in terms of debt). I had a half scholly, so I only racked up half the debt and I still maintain it's the worst decision I have ever made.

To each their own--- oh, and if you go out of state for law school, don't expect to be able to find anything in the triangle. I'm more qualified than half the campbell or central graduates, but can't find a "good" legal job in the triangle or the asheville area for shit.

5/13/2007 6:02:55 PM

^ where did you go to school?

5/13/2007 8:59:13 PM

^^ it's just a matter of time before you get your break, lawd. keep on pushin'.

5/13/2007 11:30:42 PM

Holy crap that was a tough year. I lost ~20 lbs. I now weigh less (140 w/o the clothes) than I did when I graduated from high school 7 years ago. those 3 weeks that exams were spaced out across were brutal. I was in the library every day for a minimum of 8 hours when there was 4 days before a test, but there were at least 5 16+ hr days there.... All I gotta say is... I can't remember the last time:

-...I put in so much effort into a semester to feel like I knew nothing by the time classes wrapped up
-...I used so many class supplements (using the textbook and your notes will be enough if you're the smartypants of your class and you've decided you'd like to make law school unnecessarily painful and you managed to brief almost every case... but I don't know that guy)
-...I was able to feel like I got so little done in a month of studying and then be happy with barely moving for 2-3 days afterward. Engineering was tough, but studying it made it would make you want to something interesting. I mean, you study enough tables of something and it makes you want to build something, like a better air conditioning system for Broughton Hall, for example....

[Edited on May 18, 2007 at 8:12 AM. Reason : man thats a lot of grammar errs... I'm goin back to bed]

5/18/2007 8:10:29 AM

^Ha...You are lucky, I gained 30 pounds this year sitting on my ass reading all day every day. The goal this summer is to run it off...or just get fatter. I am not sure which yet.

Congrats 2L.

5/18/2007 8:41:23 AM

^ I also gained from not being able to work out or just randomly go out and walk around. Eating to stay awake and to keep going....this summer my goal is to get back to Undergrad Weight....so that come the first weekend in May I will be in shape to walk across that stage and get my JD


III

5/18/2007 4:18:19 PM

i hate playing the waiting game for grades. mainly because it never took this long until i got into law school

5/21/2007 3:58:16 PM

I have all but one grade.

Its strange, all the grades I have received are within two points of each other and are above median. Its strange, the less I do for a class, the better my grade is, especially compared to my classmates that still read.



[Edited on May 23, 2007 at 1:06 PM. Reason : k]

5/23/2007 1:05:07 PM

we finished finals on may 3rd and i've only gotten 1 of 6 back. and we finished our legal writing class back on april 20th and i have yet to hear anything

5/23/2007 1:34:53 PM

WOW one grade? I think our 1Ls finished at the same time and got four grades on Monday.

5/24/2007 9:09:45 AM

4/5 in

unless i failed miserably in contracts, i raised my gpa, and i actually did pretty well

5/24/2007 11:29:28 PM

I finished May 3rd and have 2/6 back. The life of a 1L sucks. But...I'm studying abroad in Florence, Italy at the moment - so I could give two shits about when I get my grades back!

5/26/2007 12:09:47 PM

i can't believe i still only have one of my six grades back. i was hoping some would come in today given the long weekend. i'm starting to think the registrar that posts are grades is on vacation or something

5/29/2007 2:14:15 PM

^101 has two grades back.

They must be turned into the registrar by June 4 from the profs, so probably within a few days of that you will have them all.

5/29/2007 5:43:52 PM

^Pretty much how it goes for 1L's....sucks to be the bottom of the barrel at NCCU.

Yeah baby, I am a 3L, barring some major catastrophe (sp?) with my last grade yet to come in, and that grade is Sports in the Law


III

6/1/2007 9:42:41 AM

got my second grade back today. it's weird how i can be so dissatisfied with both of them even though they aren't bad grades and are actually better than my midterm grades for those classes. i guess i set the bar a little high sometimes; maybe not such a bad thing in this business

^^ thanks for the info!

6/1/2007 1:21:24 PM

I need to stop reading this thread. I've got a boatload of professional experience to know I want to be a lawyer... but I don't have the scholastic work ethic yet to match some of y'all ...

6/2/2007 2:02:46 AM

its about finding your own ryhtmn and going off that. If you try to define your study on what others are doing you end up wasting time and always worrying. Even though my grades are by most accounts trash I did manage to learn this truth in law school. But as for studying for the bar, you do have to go above and beyond as I am learning.

6/4/2007 1:55:15 PM

^^ Somewhat in the same boat, but looking forward to August

6/4/2007 4:25:32 PM

^^Is Correct


III

6/7/2007 11:45:57 AM

Work ethic can be created by taking Ritalin. Pretty much half the class has a prescription for some kind of ADHD medicine or they are looking to score it from other people.

6/7/2007 1:42:02 PM

ritalin

alcohol

cocaine

unwind with pot



shortening the life expectancy, but DAMN those kids land great jobs!

just do your thing, keep true to yourself, don't forget who you are, and stay positive. survive and advance.

6/7/2007 1:57:08 PM

last of the grades are in.

now, onto PR, ConLaw, FamLaw, and Evidence for next semester...

i just read through this thread starting on page 1. its like looking at an old yearbook and laughing at how much things have changed since then. it'll be neat to review this thread when i graduate in 09.

[Edited on June 8, 2007 at 5:23 PM. Reason : kd]

6/8/2007 5:09:45 PM

^ nice, got the rest of my grades in earlier this week. next for me are Con Law, Evidence, Decedents Estates, Crim Pro and Workers Comp

6/8/2007 5:38:11 PM

Since I will be a 1L next year, I found it fitting to read "One L" this past week while at the beach with my family. Were your experiences during your first year similiar to that of Scott Turow's? Worse? Better? Harder? Easier? And, which school do you go to?

6/25/2007 1:20:33 PM

^Law school is nothing like One L. That book is overly dramatic. Where are you heading this fall?

6/25/2007 1:42:08 PM

We were assigned 1L for a perspectives course. I did not read it, but half the class thought it related somewhat to their experience and half thought it did not.

6/28/2007 10:48:09 AM

^^ Appalachian School of Law

I'm not really expecting it to be like the book, because the book was written 30 years ago and it's Harvard. But I just wanted to see how it compared to your experiences.

6/29/2007 4:00:11 PM

^ are they even ABA accredited yet?

7/1/2007 11:31:51 PM

Yes, they are fully accredited

http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchResults/ShowAllSchools.aspx

7/3/2007 4:02:20 PM

This question is for the ladies in law school. More often than not, through my experience, I have seen females go to law school, start a family, and then not practice law afterwards. Some occasions I've seen them as professors, one I've seen to go on and become a judge, but most I've seen become full time mothers with a "wasted" degree and debt.

Feelings on that? Have you seen differently? I'm sure it's not the norm and there are plenty of successful female attorneys still experiencing the joy of motherhood to the fullest (which I want to do)...so proving me wrong would be great. This just seems to be the norm that I have seen growing up around lawyers.

example: http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/05/02/many_female_lawyers_dropping_off_path_to_partnership/

[Edited on August 1, 2007 at 1:01 PM. Reason : ]

8/1/2007 12:52:46 PM

bttt for my question

8/6/2007 8:55:53 AM

I have not seen any women turn their JD into a Mrs. Degree. Seriously, its way too much torture to obtain the degree and not use it.

It is common to take a JD and go work in a bank/corporation and not practice. Both industries love JDs

8/6/2007 12:24:12 PM

I am not a lady, but i work with an attorney who has kids and only practices part time and does quite well.

You will have many options.

8/6/2007 5:22:27 PM

fuuuuccckkk less than two weeks til I start classes again

8/6/2007 11:29:13 PM

i'm excited

aug 22 can't get here soon enough

8/7/2007 12:26:48 AM

At my old job, one of my bosses was a female attorney. Her position was a planning and review manager for state health planning. She only worked 30 hours a week, because she wanted more time with her children. I think it paid like, 60,000. Her previous job was working part time with the state attorney general's office part time, for less money. Now, she is a judge, working less than 30 hours a week. Back before she had children, she worked at a law firm, but she told me she wasn't willing to put in those type of hours anymore with her family.

8/7/2007 10:55:51 AM