In each university there is a professional orientation center. And in each orientation center there is usually a stack of white notebooks with laminated sheets showing a list of occupations. Each occupation will include the average salary, education requirements, a brief job description, average hours worked per week, etc. In my personal experience, the information contained in those books is not even close to the truth. And when it comes to the legal profession, they are dead wrong!
Imagine if you went to your counselor on your college campus and asked about a promising career teaching high school algebra. His career counselor pulls out one of those thick white folders and explains that to become a California high school algebra teacher he will need a doctoral degree which will require an additional 3 years of study after his college degree. On top of that, he accurately explains that to go to one of these universities you will have to take a rigorous entrance exam and you will accumulate more than $100,000 in student loans. And after graduation, you’ll have to take a rigorous three-day “teacher bar exam” before you can start submitting your resumes. And by the way, once you’re an officially licensed California teacher, you’re also bound by strict rules about how you teach. If you lie on a resume, cheat on your taxes, ruin a student’s grade, or upset a parent, you will be immediately suspended for six to twelve months and face possible lifetime disbarment. And during this period of time, you will not be able to accept a job as a teacher in any California high school.
Yes, you know it’s going to be a tough road, but you ask your career counselor, “How much does the average California lawyer make?” His answer: about $30,000 per year minus student loan payments. But what about all those lawyers I see on TV driving BMWs? Well, unfortunately, Hollywood exaggerates. What about your next-door neighbor who practices wills and trusts? His house is in foreclosure and he lives off his credit cards and pity money from his wife’s parents. What about that article he saw in Time magazine that listed the average lawyer’s salary at $125,000 per year? Trust me, we don’t know where they get those numbers from either. (We suspect that law schools deliberately feed those numbers to unsuspecting journalists to increase demand for law school applications.)
California lawyers are not rich. They are poor. They are ruined. Many have recently filed for bankruptcy. Some have had their homes repossessed (see the GQ magazine article entitled “The New Economy. What Happened to the Neighbors” by Charles Bowden). Some lawyers in California are now delivering pizzas for Domino’s. Many lawyers in California live on food stamps. And in some cases, some lawyers in California are homeless and living out of their cars.
How is this possible? Aside from the bad economy, the biggest reason is three letters: UPL (Unlicensed Practice of Law). Technically, it is illegal to practice law without a license. However, the reality is that the law is never enforced. It’s a myth that you need to be a lawyer to practice law these days. You do not believe me? Find a local phone book and search for the term “Immigration Consultants.” I guarantee you that each and every one of those people you see there are practicing law without a license. It is not uncommon these days for paralegals to appear in court for their clients. Insurance agents write purchase-sale contracts for their clients. Large corporations practice law without a license with impunity. We’ve also noticed that in various phone directories, many non-lawyers who haven’t even set foot in a law school classroom are now listing themselves as “Attorneys.” They do it with such brazenness that their brazen actions seem to indicate that they have guarantees that they will never be prosecuted.
Although no official statistics exist, it is safe to say that in the State of California at least 60% of all legal services are provided illegally by unlicensed individuals who have never set foot on a law school campus. Some have never even set foot on a college campus. Keep this fact in mind and you can quickly see why there is simply no money for lawyers in California. Do you want to practice law without going through the hassle of a worthless $100,000 education? Just skip law school altogether, take out an ad in your local phone book, and hang out. It is illegal? Yes, but you’ll be in good company.
And what are the benefits of practicing law without a license? Well, for starters, you won’t have to worry about getting suspended or disbarred for “lying” on your resume. No, that’s not an exaggeration. In the summer of 2009, the California State Bar Association suspended an attorney for lying on his resume for 6 to 12 months. You can literally lie about being a lawyer, and the California State Bar Association won’t do anything about it because it’s outside of their jurisdiction.
So, to sum it up, if you’re looking for an exciting career as a lawyer and you don’t mind making less than a high school teacher, you don’t mind facing impending and impending suspensions and debarments, you don’t mind a $100,000 student loan, and no no If you care about working 80 hour weeks in a career with the highest rate of depression, drug and alcohol abuse, then law school is for you. However, if you’re sane like the rest of society, then a job flipping burgers at McDonald’s makes more sense. At least you’ll get some much-needed sleep at night.
