Reply To: Am I Smart Enough for Law School?

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#984521

Jewish feminist, I don’t want to rain on your parade, and I wish your husband the best of luck. But it’s not true that “f you go to a halfway decent law school and get halfway decent grades… you can easily get a job in public interest.”

Unless you define a halfway decent law school as Columbia-Georgetown (following the US News rankings), and even from those schools, it is very difficult to find a job these days. Furthermore, even if it’s true that you could find public interest jobs, a frum family is unlikely to subsist on a public interest salary. Local clerkships are not much better. What opportunities are there for people finishing up local clerkships? It seems to me that other than federal and state supreme court clerkships, they just buy you time to find a random low level job while still collecting (some sort of) paycheck.

Complicating matters further, Biglaw jobs are only viable for a few years because most firms practice some version of “up or out”. The better exit options are in corporate law, at which frum people supposedly have a disadvantage because of shabbos.

Undoubtedly, frum law students can achieve good, even amazing outcomes by going to law school. But equally certain is the massive risk that law school entails for most frum students. Two people with identical abilities, resumes and LSAT scores can work equally hard, get equal grades, and have an equal number of interviews. But because of factors completely outside their control or knowledge, like a firm going under, or an interviewer having already called back two students with yarmulkas, one can be well-to-do and the other begging after five years. This is not a doomsday scenario – it happens all the time.

I have immediate experience in this realm and if your husband wants to contact me he can get my info from Popa Bar Abba.