With graduation just around the corner the thoughts of life after law school (and having no job prospects) has gotten me to thinking. I'm currently playing a very high stakes game of poker.

You see, law school is a lot like playing a game of poker - only the payoff sucks as compared to what you put in.

Just put your money down on the table (around 300k or so) and play two hands. Don't have the money to play? No problem. The casino will give you a loan - with a very high interest rate. The first hand is all about how good you are at poker as compared to the other players at the table. If you can beat them then you win that hand. But that doesn't mean you win the game. You only win a note telling you to head over to another table. So, you take that note over there and present it thinking you just won. The dealer laughs at you and tells you that there's one more hand to be played. But to stay in the game you need to put in another 10k or so. You're already 300k in the hole so you figure what the hell. The payoff should be great, right? Wrong. Even if you win this second hand chances are you'll only get about 40k back a year. Over time you'll get that money you put into the game back, but it will take around 8 years to do so. You play the second hand knowing you're trapped and can't leave the game now. The odds are against you in that hand and you have less than a 50% chance of winning. Everything rests on that one hand. The hand before doesn't matter and the piece of paper you got on your first hand is worthless unless you win that second hand. Winning the second hand is done with being better than the other players, having a lot of skill, a little luck, and hoping that the dealers want to have a lot of people win. Everything rides on this hand. What do you do if you lose?

That's law school in a nutshell. You pay around 300k for 3 years worth of schooling (tuition, books, living expenses, etc.) and pray to make it through. Once you graduate you have your JD, but that really doesn't do anything for you because now you have to take the bar. And you need to put in about 10k for that (bar review, bar fees, etc.). If you pass the bar you get to become an attorney, but if you don't that JD is worthless. There's not much you can do with it if you can't practice law. And even if you do pass the bar, you won't be making much more money than people who didn't go to law school. So everything you have done for the past three years rides on the bar. One test determines your future. One slip up and the last three years of your life are wasted.

Now do you understand why I'm always stressed and begging for people to shoot me?

Don't go to law school. It's just not worth it in the end. Granted, I love it (if I didn't I couldn't go through this torture), but loving it doesn't matter. Sure, I'll be graduating in May - but that means nothing. The one thing that will determine if I can use this degree is the bar. And Pepperdine's passage rate was around 43% last year. That's not too encouraging.

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