While I do spend some time in front of the flight simulator eating Andorian Worm-crisps, it's not like I do it from my mom's couch all day. I've worked hard and I am a successful X-Wing pilot, thank you very much. Now, nothing can go wrong...!
Kid, I've flown from one side of the galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful "Pilot School Scam" controlling everything. There's no employment stats or economic data that controls my destiny. - Han "Solo"
As has been seen here on OTLSS, as well as in other locations, one belief-battle that continues to come up is the pro-solo vs. anti-solo crowd. The pro-solo crowd (which includes the Law Schools, in principle) says that there is plenty of opportunity to make a living as a lawyer, but you have to go out there and grab it, no one is going to give it to you. They claim to have directly experienced the reward that comes from making it happen.
The anti-solo crowd (which includes the Scamblogs, in principle) says that the market is glutted, that actual paying clients are few and far between, so by extension you are engaging in magical thinking that you, an army of one, will beat the odds, despite what the Law Schools say. They have directly experienced the difficulty of pounding the pavement and drumming up paying work.
This debate, while important, has confounded the overall Scamblog debate. It is important to remember this and not get off track into arguing whose philosophy is better while multiple-thousands of new 0Ls continue to apply.
I don't have an opinion as to whether someone should go solo or not. Some people want to, some people don't want to. I do, however, care very much about the arguments Law Schools advance in support of enticing people to get that shiny JD as well as the broader economic data that's out there. In the interest of full disclosure, I myself went to law school for "all the wrong reasons," as they say, so I am biased towards those who feel the wool was pulled over their eyes.
The availability of clients are the bread-and-butter of solo legal practice, and by most measurements John Q. Public seems to be hurting, according to the sobering data in the link:
Like any good entrepreneur researching the market before taking the plunge, what this data says to me is that the 90s onward were "less advantageous" times to be a lawyer (which, considering that Boomer ScamDeans and LawProfs tend to remember happier economic times when pontificating, should surprise no one*). For decades prior, the Average-Joe’s wages were high, people were working a lot of hours, manufacturing was on the rise, unemployement was low, and there were lots of small businesses out there. The hallmarks of a thriving economy. This of course says nothing about the overproduction of JDs overall, nor the outpacing-inflation nature of tuition and resulting average debt load, during later time periods – but that specific data has already been picked over by other commenters in multiple forums.
According to the data in the last chart, self-employment is now at an all-time low. I don’t know what percentage of this self-employment data constitutes solo practitioners from the 1950s onward. But amongst the thousands and thousands of people which include failed general contractors, store owners, and insurance agents to name a few, there are at least, I don’t know, one or two solos. At least. And the remaining number of attorneys hanging a shingle make up an ever-increasing percentage of this continually-lowering statistic.
"Who cares?" I hear some of the pro-solos say. "Get out there, and make it happen! You miss 100% of the swings you never take! Just make sure you are in the winner’s circle, instead of the other guy! You just have to want it bad enough! You can’t accomplish anything sitting at home in your mom’s basement, eating cheesy poofs and posting on blogs like a bunch of L00z3r whiners!"
No doubt this advice is true on a very pragmatic level. Yes, doing nothing is a recipe for obtaining nothing. Yet, the time and energy to be spent has to be invested well. This chart indicates to me that many, many others took the "do something" self-employment advice to heart as well, in a variety of fields, yet many ended up moving on for some reason.
One could just hand-waive all this economic data away and say, "well, they just didn’t want it bad enough to work hard enough, that’s why." Perhaps "they" didn't...but I don't think lumping thousands upon thousands of people into one generalized "all fail, all the time" category does the underlying argument justice. It’s not surprising, then, that many are reluctant to dive in head-first into the self-employed solo market, especially with significant student loan debt helping them sink to the bottom all the faster.
One could just hand-waive all this economic data away and say, "well, they just didn’t want it bad enough to work hard enough, that’s why." Perhaps "they" didn't...but I don't think lumping thousands upon thousands of people into one generalized "all fail, all the time" category does the underlying argument justice. It’s not surprising, then, that many are reluctant to dive in head-first into the self-employed solo market, especially with significant student loan debt helping them sink to the bottom all the faster.
Look, if you want to be an X-Wing pilot like me, you need to go out there and grab it! You have to shoot womp rats for a long time, network with the right people like old Jedi Masters, and get in front of "decision makers," like the Princess of the Rebel Alliance. Yes, she's my sister, what of it? And stop asking who my Daddy is...!
The truth is we all want validation of our personal choices. When JDs rage against the machine, there is sometimes an implicit denegration of those who chose to go solo as being dishonest or not fully forthcoming on the realities. It kicks in the fight-or-flight response, and the knee-jerk response is "Stop going on and on about how Law School is a terrible idea! Look at me and my models and bottles! Dude, get your butt off of mama's couch in the basement and stop whining!" When solos accuse JDs of crying to mama, the implicit denegration leads to the knee-jerk response of "OK, great for you, Tony Robbins turned Law-School-Quisling, but what about all the other people who tried and failed in an increasingly glutted market, or can’t scrape up the capital? Some of us have been on the chain gang for years, thank you, and we know what we're talking about."
All I know is that in my "JD-Advantage" office environment, I haved worked with fifteen other attorneys who turned away from the private practice world. My coworkers are not green by any means - we’re talking 10+ years of experience each, but they were either edged out, burned out, or just plain walked out of practice. Most are worker bees, but a few have risen to higher positions. A couple left my office to go into private practice, only to return a handful of years later. This year we’ve already had three attorneys in private practice ask about openings (one a partner[lolwut?!] at a decent firm related to the industry), because they want into a corporate environment and/or see the writing on the wall.
Why are these people here, or trying to be here? Because they are loser whiners? Because a desk jockey corporate job is clearly so awesome? Hardly. To hear tell, not only is the so-called "pay-cut" "worth it," it’s better than nothing at all. Yikes.
My point here is not to knock the balls-to-the-wall gunslinger lawyers. If you’ve made it and built up a steady, lucrative practice, then good on you. You’ve clearly beat the odds and managed to make something out of (presumably) nothing. You’ve earned your reward.
My point is to say that, to anyone who will listen, the warnings advanced by the Scambloggers are real. This is not about dismissing the hard-won achievements of others, nor white-washing all struggling practioners or graduates as lazy mor-ans. This is about Law Schools enticing students by painting rosy pictures for decades, in contravention of actual economic and graduate outcome-based data, and the picture being patently false. This is about transparency and truth in advertising.
For those of you who aren’t looking for the Wild West experience of solo-practice for whatever reason (and there are many), you can take it from me that you are by no means alone. I see these folks every day. By my view, for something that is allegedly so valuable, plenty of experienced attorneys are looking for a safe haven in the so-called "loser’s bracket." This is not what the Law Schools would have you to believe when they go on about all the opportunities in the glossy brochures.
Friends, do not go to law school unless you want, more than anything, ever, to be a solo practicioner. If so, go network with actual solos you can find and see what it is really all about. Talk to guys like Jordan Rushie about what day-to-day life is like, and the work it takes to build a book of business. See if the idea is fun and exciting for you, personally.
Even then, given our economic climate, decades of systemic overproduction of JDs by the Law Schools, and the outrageous costs to graduate, I would think twice before taking the plunge – not only will you be doing yourself a favor in considering a different line of work, you may be implicitly helping the market correct overall and preventing yet even more untrained competition for scarce work.
I can't say this enough: this is not about snake-oil-solos vs. whimpering-whiners, although many try to characterize it that way. This is about full disclosure and removal of information assymetry, the last thing any of the Law Schools actually want.
* for a data-driven argument about how Gen-X and Gen-Y didn't just "blow the money becuase they are all lazy L00z3r whiners," see http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-23/guest-post-generation-x-inconvenient-era
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