It seems that 50% of those who earned the J.D. from 2008 forward are employed as temporary attorneys (h/t Stringer Bell). They do document review, sometimes on the graveyard shift in airless basements for $17 per hour, no benefits. This is with $150,000 in student loans to pay back.
It seems that there are some third and fourth tier schools which paint unrealistically rosy pictures about employment to prospective students. Then they have the tuition money, and the (unemployed) student owes on the loans.
Should the student have known not to attend these schools? Perhaps. Did they get the same kinds of warnings I did in school? Apparently not. Is it possible that some of the unemployed PhDs who really expected to get academic jobs, were willfully misled?
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Law school was often where the new Ph.D. grads turned because of the terrible job market in the humanities. It’s bad to hear that now they’re facing the same thing after the J.D., only with a lot more debt.
I think a not-insignificant fraction of students are aware of the dire situation but still apply to law school because of this irrational ‘this won’t happen to me’ sentiment. Choosing to take out a $200k loan is an optimist act by definition. Combine that with the devil-may-care attitude of youth and you have people who feel essentially immune from potential suffering that life has in store for them.
I had lunch today with someone who went to a 4th tier school. Liked it and everything — and you know, it is possible to be 4th tier and good — but had I been this person I would have realized from the get-go that it wasn’t going to get me a job. It would train you to pass the bar, yes, which ain’t nothing, but is only one of the things one needs from law school.
That having been said, I also have the “this won’t happen to me” sentiment — or would have if I got into a top 10 or top 15 school.
At my grad school, we were mislead into believing that a completely empty CV with nothing but an Ivy degree on it will get you employed in academia. As a result, in my year, the subsequent year and the previous one, only 3 people now have tenure-track positions. The rest are visiting, instructors, adjuncts, or unemployed.
Clarissa: That is exactly what happened to my son in law. He is a big guy, and as he wryly observes, he thought he was too big to fail. He’s doing OK but not PhD from Cornell OK.
I went to a public Ivy much earlier. They told us we wouldn’t get jobs at all. That was its own kind of problem since, had they really believed that and had they been saying it as actually responsible persons, they would have set up alternative career planning.
That we wouldn’t get jobs was also a lie — we got interviews and lots of them, almost automatically, on the strength of the institution name. If more of us had thought like people who were going to get somewhere rather than as condemned men, so to speak, more would have done better.
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For law, I am convinced that unless you have a job waiting for you, you have to be in a top program or, depending on what you want to do, 2d tier at least. AND you must have really good grades and be on law review AND do all the special clinics and the right internships and make the right connections.
Why first tier: the type and array of specialized semi extracurricular opportunities they have and that don’t exist at other places. And said other places aren’t cheaper unless they are public institutions and you are in state, and even then they’re not cheap. One does not necessarily save money by choosing less than the best one can get, and could actually lose money in the end by doing this.
So it is not not because of (superficial) prestige that I consider it foolhardy to aim low.