I hope u all know this.

The system is rigged and doesnt work anymore.

WE HAVE BEEN BETRAYED BY OUR POLITICIANS IN CONGRESS AND THE SENATE.

Anyone who bought into the work hard and you will prosper myth of America has been duped.

Its been this way since I graduated in 2001 and the job situation still sucks for law school grads.

People need to buy gold to protect themselves for what is coming.

ITS GOING TO LEAD TO A REVOLUTION PEOPLE!!!

I predict the FED will be abolished when this is all over,...

and all your student loan debt will be wiped out.

FINDCJ <--------Defender of the Constitution

I WILL PASSS THE BAR AND I WILL GET A JOB

I'm so happy that you wrote this.  So many people (including myself) believed that hard work would pay off and that I would be successful just because I did what I was supposed to do.  It wasn't until I graduated that I found out that most attorneys really don't make that much money and that most law firms require years and years of experience.  How are you supposed to get experience if no one will hire you and allow you to get the experience?  There are so many other lucrative professions out there. The legal profession is not what it's hyped up to be.  Why go through all the stress and accumlate all the debt when it's not going to pay off?

I also want to add that having a law degree limits your career prospects.  I was always told that with a law degree, I could do anything and that I wouldn't be limited to just practicing law.  The truth is that most people don't understand the skills that come with having a law degree.  If you interview for non-legal jobs, most places won't hire you because they assume that you will leave to work at a firm.  Even if you explain that you won't leave to work for a firm, they still will not be willing to take a chance on you.  They think that you're a quitter on indecisive because "Why would someone go law school to not practice law?" You can take the law degree off your resume but then you will have a huge gap in your employment since most law schools don't allow you to work while in school.  I regret going to law school so bad.  It was probably one of the worse mistakes I have ever made in my life.

Guys, nothings gonna change until you take a step.  Things are not easy, but not as bad either.  Every profession has its ups and downs, the question is (your satisfaction/job satisfaction) whether you are satisfied in what you are doing (no matter it pays some what less than you expected; thing is you are doing what you wanted to and thats what matters)

I know the suffix "esq" will give me the lead..; and so will it to all of us. 
Cheers n the very best..
AJ.....

90% OF LAW GRADUATES CANNOT MAKE A LIVING AS A LAWYER.

YEAH,..MONEY ISNT EVERYTHING BUT,....YOU NEED TO EAT AND YOU NEED TO PROVIDE SHELTER,..AND YOU NEED TO CLOTHE YOURSELF.

THEY SHOULD HAVE YOU SIGN A DISCLOSURE BEFORE YOU GO TO LAW SCHOOL - "YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER A SWEEPSTAKES WHERE ONLY THE TOP 10% WILL GET GOOD JOBS,...EVERYONE ELSE IS TAKING A CHANCE ON FUTURE EMPLOYMENT VIABILITY.  PLEASE RECOGNIZE YOU ARE PURCHASING A LEGAL EDUCATION NOT A MEANS BY WHICH TO BECOME EMPLOYED.  PLEASE ALSO RECOGNZIE THAT THE EMPLOYMENT STATISTICS OF THE CAREER SERVICE CENTER IN YOUR SCHOOL IS LIKELY NOT ACCURATE OF REAL WORLD REALITIES".

-fcj

WHINER!

Do you have a roof over your head, food on the table, and you're in good health?
Did you pass the Bar?
Quit Whining. Quit acting like a pussy.

There are people struggling to make ends meet. People who have a mortgage to pay & children to feed/educate.

Invest in Gold? You have money to invest in gold & you're whining?
Please. You're as bad as my co-worker. He complains all day about losing thousands in the stock market. I nicknamed him the "pussy" hee hee
If you can't handle the pressure...get out of the stock market.

Times will get better. Think positive or jump off the next bridge.

lmao.

Sure,..Im a whiner.

Lets just ignore that the stats the schools put out about salaries for graduating students are accurate.

Lets ignore the unemployment numbers today which show a 16% unemployed populace [U-6]...when the workforce is only 150 Million because they presume the other 150 Million dont want to work.

Lets ignore the out-sourcing of the legal profession jobs to India and abroad in a race to the bottom for MNC's.

Lets ignore the fact that the lobbyists in DC are gaming the system for their benefit at the expense of the people of this country. [let more minorities in they work cheap and Americans wont do the type of work they do].

Yuh,..Im a whiner because the game is rigged and anyone who swallowed the pablum that America is a land of opportunity and all you have to do is work hard for a reward has been duped.

Whatever biatch!

*  PS - ABOLISH THE FEDERAL RESERVE !!!!!  THATS THE PROBLEM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  TO MANY DOLLARS STIMULATED TOO MANY SECTORS BEYOND THE NEED FOR 'SAID SERVICES'. [LEGAL, RETAIL,..ETC...].  THIS HAS LED TO MASSIVE MALINVESTMENT AND MADE THE ECONOMY UNPRODUCTIVE!!!!!!  CAPITAL IS WASTED LEFT AND RIGHT INSTEAD OF BEING PUT TO GOOD USE.

*  PPS - BUY GOLD

You are right on target...hard work is not necessarily rewarded and passing the bar doesn't =a job. It's really WHO u know & how u network-13 yrs out and still the case.

On the upside...Sure would like the wiping out of my remaining student loan
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

-----Original Message-----
From:

"Anyone who bought into the work hard and you will prosper myth of America has been duped.

Its been this way since I graduated in 2001 and the job situation still sucks for law school grads."

Absolutely. When I first got this post in my e-mail, I clicked the thread link thinking a bunch of people would either respond that you're a psycho or come back with the "Well, I graduated from Podunk Law in the bottom 50% and I make $500000 a year, so what you're saying couldn't possibly be true. You're just a whining, lazy @ss" argument, as someone always does.

The truth is most people go to law school primarily wanting to make money, and they figure that all they have to do is go through 3 years of law school, pass the bar and then they will have made it. For some people, it really does work out this way. For a lot of people, it doesn't. I think it worked for most people from my school, since it's a top 10 school, but there have definitely been others besides myself from that school who have struggled. That doesn't always mean something is wrong with the people for whom it hasn't worked out as planned. There are just too many people trying to be lawyers because 1) they thought it would lead to money and/or 2) they didn't know what else to do/didn't feel smart enough for other "prestigious" fields. Of course there aren't jobs for all of us, and it's time the truth is out there. Some of us went to law school for the wrong reasons and it backfired.

Frankly, not to worry those of you who just took the bar--I failed the bar when I took it (didn't want to take it in the first place, just felt like I was "supposed" to even though I knew I didn't want to be a lawyer). And I thought about it and thought about the difficulties I experienced trying to find work in the legal profession ever since I entered law school, thought about hating law school and being bored by the work I did during the summers, thought about how most legal employers who don't hire students after 2L summer (I worked at places that don't hire people straight from law school during the summers) generally want years of work experience just as someone else pointed out, and thought about ALL the people who just pour out of law school each year...

I decided not to take the bar exam again. For what? I absolutely agree that for most people it doesn't mean you will end up employed, at least not anytime soon, especially in this economy and with all the competition you have for scarce entry level law jobs. As someone who doesn't want to be a lawyer, paying bar fees again and re-preparing for a bar exam is not worth it to me. If it's worth it to you, that's for you to decide.

And again, I agree with the person who was talking about what it's like trying to get hired outside of the legal profession. I've just accepted that this is $150000+ that I will owe the government and Citibank for absolutely no reason, have thought long and hard about what it is I'd be happiest doing and will now pursue a career in IT. That means more time and money training for another field, and more interviews that involve the question "Why our field? You spent allllll this money on law school." Right now, I don't think there are that many fields that are lucrative or sureshots unless you know the right people. But at least if I end up having a hard time getting employed in IT, it will be worth the struggle in the end, unlike law.

In truth, I really don't know if I'll get a good job. What I do know is this: I've always wanted to be a lawyer, and no one and no thing is going to get in the way of that. To hell with money, finances, debt, and fear. After I pass the bar I'll be an attorney, and for that reason if for none other, I will die a success because I made something impressive of myself. I did what I set out to do.

And you are a pussy...

I went to law school because I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer.
I never went to law school to make a lot of money.
I really believe that you have to love your "job" or you will never be happy or satisfied.

I really like to surround myself with positive people. You're depressing.
I graduated from the Univ of Chicago

Hey guys. I have been working in law firms (as a paralegal, than as a law clerk) for more than 5 years. I only make right now $50K in the expensive NJ state. At the beginning, I though that I should make 120K once I get the experience. Not very true.

 

Good luck

Where did FindCJ go?

July 2, 2009
Aspiring Lawyer Finds Debt Is Bigger Hurdle Than Bar Exam
By JONATHAN D. GLATER
The New York Times

All his life, Robert Bowman wanted to be a lawyer. He overcame a troubled childhood, a tragic accident that nearly cost him a leg and a debilitating Jet Ski collision.

He put himself through community college, worked and borrowed heavily to help pay for college, graduate school and even law school. He took the New York bar examination not once, not twice, not three times, but four, passing it last year. Finally, he seemed to be on his way.

In January, the committee of New York lawyers that reviews applications for admission to the bar interviewed Mr. Bowman, studied his history and the debt he had amassed, and called his persistence remarkable. It recommended his approval.

But a group of five state appellate judges decided this spring that his student loans were too big and his efforts to repay them too meager for him to be a lawyer.

“Applicant has not made any substantial payments on the loans,” the judges wrote in a terse decision and an unusual rejection of the committee’s recommendation. “Applicant has not presently established the character and general fitness requisite for an attorney and counselor-at-law.”

Mr. Bowman, 47, appears to have crossed some unspoken line with his $400,000 in student debt and penalties, accumulated over many years.

New York’s courts have overlooked misconduct like lawyers’ solicitation of minors for sex, efforts to deceive judges and possession of cocaine. Those instances have led merely to temporary suspensions from practice.

“It usually takes a pretty significant record of some underlying misconduct to keep you out permanently,” said Deborah L. Rhode, a law professor at Stanford who has studied bar admissions across the states. Excluding someone for having too much debt was odd, she said; the hard questions about loans usually involve applicants who have used bankruptcy to try to escape loans, she said, and Mr. Bowman has not.

Mr. Bowman concedes that he has never made a payment on his loans, partly because of medical and other deferrals and problems with his lender. But he says he intends to make good, adding that his only hope is to begin practicing law — which means overturning the judges’ decision.

While thousands of indebted students have complained about their treatment by lenders, Mr. Bowman has documented his personal debt crisis with remarkable, obsessive intensity.

He claims Sallie Mae overcharged him, imposing hefty and unjustified fees; did not allow him to defer payments when he was entitled to do so and improperly accounted for periods when he did defer.

According to his detailed records, a Sallie Mae representative even threatened him. “If you default, your license will be taken from you,” the representative said. “Do you understand that?”

When Mr. Bowman said that he did not yet have a law license, the representative responded that the company would prevent him from getting one.

Martha Holler, a Sallie Mae spokeswoman, said that such threats would violate the company’s rules.

“The size of this account is extremely unusual, but not surprising given that the customer took out 32 loans to pursue undergraduate, law and masters of law studies and has not made a single monthly payment over his 26-year student loan history,” Ms. Holler said. “We are performing an extensive review of his extraordinary case, and if we identify any errors we will quickly rectify them.”

Mr. Bowman has not had an easy time of it. He was shuffled through foster care and various legal proceedings as a child. He was impressed by the lawyers who represented his interests and saw a possible life’s work.

Getting a college degree took 10 years because he had spent nearly six in rehabilitation, relearning how to walk after an all-terrain vehicle hit him while he was stopped on his motorcycle. The accident nearly cost him his left leg; he graduated from the State University of New York in Albany in 1995.

He enrolled at the University of California Hastings College of Law in San Francisco in 2000.

After his third year, he began a masters of law program in London, where he lived with a girlfriend. He graduated in December 2004 with about $230,000 in student loan debt, and she helped support him while he studied, and studied again and again, for the bar exam.

In 2007, Mr. Bowman asked for an accounting of his loans, the payment deferrals he had used and his repayment options. He said he did not receive that information for nearly two years — a point disputed by Sallie Mae, which said it tried to reach Mr. Bowman several times in 2007.

Mr. Bowman passed the New York bar in February 2008. Soon after, while living with his once-estranged mother in Miramar, Fla., he was swimming at a beach when a Jet Ski lost control and slammed into him, breaking his good leg in four places.

“My luck on these things,” Mr. Bowman said. “So I contacted Sallie Mae and I’m like, I need a medical deferment and advice. Their response is, none available.”

Sallie Mae transferred Mr. Bowman’s private student loans, the ones not guaranteed by the federal government, to a collection agency, which tacked on a 25 percent fee. That agency transferred the loan again, and he said the next collection agency tacked on another 25 percent fee. Sallie Mae denied this, saying he was charged the fee only once. But suddenly, Mr. Bowman found that he owed more than $400,000.

Knowing it would be difficult to explain his debt to New York’s Committee on Character and Fitness, which reviews applications for admission to the bar, Mr. Bowman gathered correspondence with Sallie Mae, loan statements, even the emergency room report on the Jet Ski incident.

The three lawyers who interviewed him in Albany in January found Mr. Bowman’s “determination to pursue a postsecondary education remarkable,” according to the written evaluation. As for the loans, they continued, “it appears unconscionable that a student loan indebtedness could go from $270,000 to $435,000 in four years.”

Two of the committee members did not return calls seeking comment; the third could not be reached.

In April the judges rejected the committee’s recommendation and ruled Mr. Bowman could not be a lawyer. Michael J. Novack, the clerk of the court that handled Mr. Bowman’s application, declined to comment specifically on his case.

“Generally speaking, if the committee on character and fitness recommends admission of an applicant, the court approves of it,” Mr. Novack said. “But not always.”

Along with asking the court to reverse its decision, Mr. Bowman has consulted lawyers and is preparing a lawsuit against Sallie Mae. One way or another, he vows, he will make the switch from client to lawyer.

Sure,..Im a whiner.

Lets just ignore that the stats the schools put out about salaries for graduating students are accurate.

Lets ignore the unemployment numbers today which show a 16% unemployed populace [U-6]...when the workforce is only 150 Million because they presume the other 150 Million dont want to work.

Whatever biatch!

CAPITAL IS WASTED LEFT AND RIGHT INSTEAD OF BEING PUT TO GOOD USE.

*  PPS - BUY GOLD

Im sorry but i cant help myself in responding to all the "stupid" things you said in a single post... i just quotes a part of it... to... mm Make it easier for you.. coz' u clearly dont use your head that much...

Unemployment is 9.2.. to an expected 16%.. so.. read the whole paper before complaining... Thats the unemployment in the US (im from argentina myself).. The Capitalist system REQUIRES 4 o 4% of the pop to be unemployed... just study it.. so guys like you can complain, get indebted, and BUY GOLD????

haha... 150 millon don't want to work? have you got any idea what you are talking about... 300 MM in the US... IN WORK AGE about 150....the others are kids and eldery pple.. or maybe you'd like to see a 4 year old working in the streets...

You talk about capital being wasted and then talk about buying commodities? Why dont you invest in bringing jobs? ... what a winner...

Latin america has the biggest financial problems ever... and we still make it... you complain about a loan? Try and get a loan for a house in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, chile...

You talk about the "american way" being duped... you are the one duped my friend... Just get you fat ass out of the chair.. and WORK HARD... BUT! work hard is not just going to your office 12 hours a day.. any moron can do that... you have to MAKE something of yourself and be GOOD at what you do..then.. you'll get a lawyer job... bet your ass on iT....

I agree with the post directly above that working hard is not spending 12 hours in the office. That is working like dumb donkey.

The key is to work creatively. You know, most lawyers could earn $100k by working an average of 20 hours a week (assuming they charge $200/hour and work 50 weeks a year and have $100k in expenses). The real difficulty is getting experience and getting clients who will pay you. That is why so many lawyers work for other people and make crap money and are miserable.

Check out the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris for some great inspiration and ideas. In fact, if you read it, you may rethink a career/business model that relies so heavily on a personal service. It is much easier to make a living selling information or products.

I wonder if FindCJ has a job himself, or is one of those 150million that isn't working and collecting unemployment? Circular arguments are fun, aren't they?
Going to school in ANY field is not a guarantee for a job if you don't get your a$$ in gear to look for work to get INTO the field. That's like a baby going from being born to running a marathon. Tiny steps will get anyone anywhere.

Darn it, I was hoping that a ninja would come out of no where and hand me a job if I passed the bar....thank you for killing my dream. btw - for those of you worried about not being able to find a job after passing the bar...you will, just keep looking/trying/networking/asking/begging..whatever it takes; and don't let guys like "you know who" make you think otherwise.

I knew when I went to law school I never wanted to work in a big firm or be someone's 60 hour a week slave. I plan of doing what several that were ahead of me have done and open a sliding scale practice for people that fall through that crack of making too much for Legal Services, but cannot pay $300 an hour. Do pro bono through Legal Services for the experience, volunteer to do pro bono at women's shelters, find a mentor and offer to work for free for the experience. That's how people will refer clients to you.

Quit whining, hang out your own shingle and be your own boss, that's the beauty of a law license, you can.

very good point!