If the workfield for law is that bad, what other fields can I look into?
I'm a smart person, straight up. I don't want to do anything in the medical field or engineering field, so I'm sure If I wanted to, I would be able to. I live in Canada and nor do I plan on moving to the US. My province has about 1 million people and our top Univeristy has a quota for Law students of only 101 (though last year they took about 200 out of over 900). I want to do Law but I don't like the idea of lowering myself down to jobs below me and getting nowhere in my future if I got a law degree and the idea of being like a billion in debt isn't that great either. Are there are other fields similar enough to Law that do have job markets? Where I live, the jobs in demand are nurses but considering that many of the immigrants here are doing nursing courses, that'll likely be a overloaded workfield soon enough too (plus,I dont even want to be a nurse). I'm good at writing. Also, I love physics but I don't care enough to persue a career in it. There's just a billion people writing/ranting about how the job market is terrible and that it'll be hard finding job since some people refer to the internet not lawyers.
Law & Legal - 4 Answers
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1 :
I'm not sure I understand your reasoning for concluding that law is not a viable career in your area. Have you compared the number of vacancies in the legal sector compared to the number of graduates who may or may not successfully complete their degree in the next 3 years or so? Have you looked at the destinations of law graduates in the last 3-5 years ( many unis provide this information) Have you looked at the different types of legal sector specialities you could pursue, and the availability of jobs in these areas? Might be an idea to be more specific about what jobs would be 'below ' you- do you mean jobs you don't want ( like medical/nursing), jobs you believe to be not worthwhile either socially or financially, or jobs that fail to recognise and reward your extensive skills, knowledge and experience? You sound as though you haven't done enough serious research here, but based your decisions on a number of assumptions drawn from minimal information- not a good sign for someone who wants a career in law.
2 :
You have to make up your own mind......doesn't really appear to me that you don't want to do anything that's really in demand.......sorry.
3 :
You're smart about law. I agree with what you said there. I would suggest leaning about business and how to start one. The whole employment model is that you put in your time and you get a check. But by the time you get it, the government and boss take most of it. In a business, you put in money to free up more time for yourself. That time is used for you to learn about other businesses to buy and soon other investments.
4 :
Ignore the people talking about how the job market is terrible for lawyers. They are referring to the U.S. job market for lawyers, which is unique and very different from the Canadian job market for lawyers. Some of them just mindlessly post about the U.S. job market for any question about lawyers even when it is not relevant because the questions are about lawyers in the UK, Canada, Asia etc. and they are totally ignorant about how the legal profession and law schools function outside the U.S. The U.S. is fairly unique because it has neither quality nor quantity control over the number of law schools that may exist and the number of law school students they may enroll and graduate. The end result is an oversupply of poorly prepared entry level lawyers, and not nearly enough job/work availability in a healthy economy let alone one in recession. In contrast, here are the relevant facts you should be aware of with regards to law practice in Canada. The bar association in Canada tightly restricts the amount of schools and students and Canada graduates about 3% as many lawyers as the U.S. annually (about 30-35% per capita). In Canada, a year of articling is required after graduation, meaning that everyone must find an apprenticeship with a firm, government organization or solo practitioner before they can write the bar. Articling rates are above 95% at all schools and class sizes aren’t allowed to increase faster than new articling spots open up. Education in Canada is publically funded and law school tuitions are around 10-15K/year. This is misleading however as there are many generous provincial bursaries available and the average student there graduates around $50K in debt (mind you, you end up paying in the end in the form of higher taxes when you become a lawyer). In Canada, big law firms ("BigLaw") hire around 1/4 to 1/3 of the class from most schools and pays around $90K to start (BigLaw partners still make north of $500K). The distributions aren’t bimodal in Canada however and small firms pay $60-70K with government paying about the same. Basically everyone is guaranteed about $60K and will have a manageable debtload. One other major difference is that there are no easy law schools to get into in Canada. There may not be any as competitive as top American schools like Harvard and Yale but even Canada's “bad†schools have LSAT medians around 160. If you get under 158 on the LSAT in Canada, you really have no chance of getting into law school. This is much higher than the requirements to get into dozens of law schools in the United States where people with 155 LSAT scores and 3.3 GPA's are deluded into believing that they have a path to above average wealth through law school, when they are in fact, of very average (or below average) ability. That being said, if you are good at writing you could also look at careers in journalism. You also need not pursue one career to the exclusion of the other. There are former and practicing lawyers that are journalists and writers.
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