Have any Veeky Forumserati gone the law school route after university...

yes
ahahahahaha

whatever makes you feel better, bud!, lmao

haha

I was accepted to all of YHS and currently go to one of them
personally, I like law school more than undergrad (I went to a non-ivy top private university). my classmates are, for the most part, very intellectual, hard-working people. I find the culture to be very academic. I spend the majority of my time in class, clinic, or the library.

idk what else you want to know.

Why do so many people go into law? Can someone who goes to a no name law school make 130k+? If not, why would so many people go into it? There must be some pot at the end of the rainbow if everyone goes into law - even low IQ plebs who couldn't tell you who Socrates or Aristotle are. Can all and any lawyers make 6 figures as base or is that only T5?

I think it was perhaps true in the past that going to law school was a guaranteed ticket to an upper-middle class life, but that's definitely not true anymore. However, I think people still think it's true and go to law school based on that. I also think people who didn't major in an immediately profitable field (I'm one to talk, I was a history major) think law school is a solution.

I don't really know if someone from a no name law school can make $130k+. I think it's infinitely more difficult if you don't already have connections (I have zero). I also think the only way you might be able to get away with going to a "no-name" school is if it's powerful in its specific regional area, but then you're limited to that area. Being honest though, I don't know a ton about one's prospects from a non-T14 because they were never on my radar.

That being said, I think the general advice nowadays is: don't go unless you get into a T-14. Don't pay sticker price at anywhere besides YHS (that is, get a scholarship that at least covers some of it. All of YHS give financial aid, idk about other schools). Even going to a T-14 isn't guaranteed employment, and can be specific to your planned practice field/area.

I don't think any and all lawyers can make 6 figures and I wouldn't bet on it. YHS average starting salaries are, last I checked, $160k (although i don't know if that's taking into account the rise in big law associate salaries, which is currently $180k). But it drops off pretty steeply as you go down the rankings from there.

If you're thinking about applying, take a good hard look at your grades and LSAT because that's pretty much all that matters outside of Yale and Stanford (which are more of a crapshoot black box, because they can afford to be picky). You can predict your chances pretty well literally everywhere else. If you don't have the numbers to make a T-14, and you don't already have a spot at a firm lined up through connections or a full scholarship at maybe the outside T-20, T-25, I'd say just don't even bother. It's not worth the debt and the work.

>resenting people for enjoying life more than you
>using this as an excuse not to join them

You don’t have to go to a top tier school IF you’re willing to go to a good regional school. For example, the University of Alabama has an excellent law school, but 99% if its graduates go to work in the state of Alabama afterward. This is true of most good regional law schools. The students can still “make six figures” but they are limited to the area surrounding the school. In comparison, students at Chicago, Duke, or Vanderbilt wouldn’t be limited to working in Illinois, North Carolina, or Tennessee.

All that aside, no one should go to law school with the expectation of “making six figures.” Unless you are in the T14, you’ll have to be in the top 15-20% of your law school’s class to be competitive for a big law position. While you’re probably pretty smart, the problem with law school is that you begin competing with people who were all “pretty smart” for most of their lives, and they all want the same “six figures” job as you.

That said, I think the pessimism around law school is greatly overstated currently. Now that the economy has picked up we will probably have another 3-5 years of solid job market for law grads so now could be a good time to get in.

tl;dr: don't go to law school.

I will speak from my own experience: two years of law school before dropping out, including an internship with a US Attorney's Office and working in my school's criminal defense clinic.

Law school is, in general, a poor decision for most anons on Veeky Forums. It's a high pressure situation that amplifies any personality defects with which you may suffer (in my case a certain existential malaise, i.e. depression and anxiety). The most successful people in law tend to be either sociopaths or of average (to below average) intelligence, or both. Connections and political clout, of course, count more than anything.

The dirty little secret of the legal profession is that intelligence is not particularly useful; you're going to be doing boring repetitive shit day in and day out. Same contracts, same motions, same indictments, same crosses, whatever. You end up in a niche and grind at it until you're dead. New ideas or approaches are not welcome in the legal field. Arguing in front of a judge is like search engine optimization: he is expecting the right keywords in the right order and anything that deviates from that will not convince him but rather confuse and annoy.

And God help you if you have an analytical nature or background (in my case, a BA in Philosophy). Stare decisis is one big fallacious fuck you to Reason.

So if my friends are all in T5 Ivies for law, do they even have stress? Aka does it even matter or because they got in they are going to ball out once they graduate?

You sound like a Stanford boy