Craigslist and Monster give a very accurate impression of the legal employment market for clients who are so catastrophically incompetent that they would source legal representation from Craigslist or Monster. Similar to programming.

I don't really have a dog in the fight of "Production of legal talent adequately meeting market demands for legal talent: yay or nay", but it is an observable fact that a particular type of student has a very achievable career trajectory into being a BigLaw associate at a six figure salary in their first job. You can plot out that career trajectory, to the month, the day you receive an offer of admission to one of several undergraduate institutions.

If you go to Yale Law you're OK. Maybe even top 3. If you "only" go top a top 14 law school, you need to beat a lot of your classmates, there are quite large numbers of losers. If you do not go to a top 14 law school, it gets a lot worse, fast. And there's 200 law schools...

People assume it works less strictly than that, but the legal job market recently changed so just doing well at a top school isn't enough anymore.

In other words, the "particular type" of student is a narrower category than people think.

I did the traditional path -- Ivy League undergrad, Top 10 law school -- with the expectation of the traditional big firm job outcome. Got shut out from the big firm jobs due to a below median 1L year performance (I put in lots of effort, but it wasn't good enough). Just graduated. Hugely massive debt.

Grades improved second and third years but only first year grades seem to matter very much.

Law school was an epic mistake. It's also a very tracked profession -- once you're not on the BigLaw track its very difficult to ever get back on.

Now the likely best-case for me in terms of my legal career is that after 10 years of working 40k-a-year public interest, i'll no longer have six figures in debt. So after 7 years of very "prestigious", expensive, and time-consuming education, and 10 years of hard work, I'll have finally broken even, and be looking forward to a flat and low income potential.

That sure wasn't in the brochure.

I'd love to go to Asia, and I'm footloose and fancy free -- nothing tying me to the States. Maybe you know something I don't -- did you have a particular market or type of position in mind? Lemme know.

And if I, say, decided I wanted to go to school, then, knowing what I know now, I could major in something serious like computer science or one of the engineering disciplines.

I'm too lazy to look for a cite, but I think Peter Thiel has commented on part of the problem of the legal market being the "prestige" that is associated with being a lawyer vs other jobs, and how people are willing to make flawed financial decisions in part due to this perceived prestige.

The problem is not an oversupply of lawyers; there are just about enough lawyers to satisfactorily satisfy the legal needs of the market (taking attrition into account).

The problem is that most lawyers are unwilling to do the solo/small-practice gig like doctors and dentists do, and consequently chase the firm and government jobs. The number of new firm and government jobs has dropped by more than half in the last 3 years, leaving a glut of "unemployed" lawyers.

But that's the thing about lawyers--they're not supposed to be employed. They're "professionals", so they're supposed to be their own bosses. I wish lawyers would at least try setting up their own shingles. Most of my graduating law school class did (at least, the ones without massive loan debt), and they've all got respectable, self-supporting practices. They won't make filthy money, but they will definitely be comfortable supporting a family within the next few years.

Are you reading what you're writing?

Courtroom appearances was a distant second. For about $100-$200 a day (depending on the court and number of cases), I would appear in court on behalf of other lawyers to file various motions and paperwork.

There are some weird market dynamics in the legal field. Law firms create an artificial shortage of lawyers, and thus a corresponding explosion in associate salaries, because they refuse to hire substantial amounts outside the top 15 schools or so. They'll hire anyone at Stanford and most people at Duke, but only the very top of the class at say U Washington.

He said that it's not because a Berkeley or Texas grad isn't just as good it's because they have a certain culture and in case one of the new hires messes up a case no one wants to be the partner who gave that "public school kid" a chance and lost the firm a lot of money and prestige.

It's all very strange. In most fields such blatant regionalistic favoritism isn't so encouraged.

Worse (well, not from my perspective), I work fewer hours than any lawyer I know but make more than all of them except for the ones working for BigLaw (i.e., the "premier") law firms.