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Lee responds to my career advice
Here is his view, he may study law, feel free to tell him more in MR comments...
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 18, 2006 at 12:59 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
Well, here is the question? If being an economist is only worth it if you are in a top ten graduate program, then what do all the other schmucks with worthless PhDs do?
I am currently earning my way into the reject pile of all those wonderful adcoms. I guess Poli Sci will be my future or something like that. Dreams sure do die hard.
Posted by: RWP at Jul 18, 2006 3:55:56 AM
Wouldn't it be more satisfying to do something useful with your life, Lee?
Posted by: Evan at Jul 18, 2006 8:31:04 AM
I would encourage Lee to closely examine Leiter's recent report on where tenure-track legal academics went to school and to inspect the faculty lists of a few law schools -- count the Harvard/Yale and the non-Harvard/Yale professors. I'm not sure that breaking into the world of legal academia is that much easier than any other.
Posted by: ted at Jul 18, 2006 9:36:05 AM
Although I agree with you that going to law school can be a rewarding way to get exposed to concepts and ideas with a practical slant in a similar vein to economics in a way that other graduate programs do not share, I think it is a bit cavalier to advise someone to pursue being a "legal academic" when they are concerned about making the cut as a top economics academic.
First, I have no doubt that to be a top-econ academic school matters, but but it appears to matter even moreso for law school. Not only that, but as one of my law professors who "made-it" through the typical route told me (UChicago, Supreme Court clerk, etc), he noted that he had many classmates at Chicago with aspirations of being a law professor who could not because their grades were "merely very good, not great" (think top 5-10% vs. 15-20%). If one must be top 10% at a top 3 or 4 law school--which receive a staggering number of applications every year--to even be on the proper track (notwithstanding those handful of Supreme Court clerkships), one must bear in mind that this this path is maybe even more difficult than being an economics professor.
Further, many of these law professors with the top 5 rank at Yale and Supreme Court clerkships on their resumes end up staffing law schools you've never heard of.
All of this is highly selective. Being a top academic in law, economics, or any other field requires outstanding achievement and ability in the in very narrow academic field you plan to pursue. For law, not only must you get into those top law schools but you must beat 90-95% of your classmates who also have never experienced anything but academic success, and then get lucky.
The advantage of law school is that one can still get a very intersting and well paying job (and one that uses a much wider variety of skills than does being an academic) without having to be top 5% at Harvard or Yale. But if that is one's only hope I fear that he will wake up very unhappy after one short-semester if he happens to get a couple B's in law school.
Posted by: CDBB at Jul 18, 2006 11:11:47 AM
Law school is a very bad idea unless he goes to a top 14 school, he needs to read my blog post Law school, the big lie.
Posted by: Half Sigma at Jul 18, 2006 11:23:50 AM
I would suggest working hard to avoid lots of law-school loans (apply for wacky scholarships and the like) so that you don't feel compelled to take a high-paying but soul-sucking law firm job at any point in the career path. Legal academic is tough to get in to, but if you carefully avoid law firms, you can get all sorts of good other jobs.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw at Jul 18, 2006 12:24:12 PM
$100,000 in law school expenditures (before opportunity costs) in the hopes of being a legal academic without a strong interest in the law seems like an extraordinarily poor investment. A white male without a Ph.D. needs top grades at a top-six school to have a real hope at legal academia. Tyler's advice about taking the legal academic route rather than the economic academic route was no doubt aimed at economics Ph.D.s.
Posted by: Ted at Jul 18, 2006 7:56:56 PM
though the expected payoff from academia is substantially less than industry (say the little detour for candidates from economics grad school to quant finance) it is still far more of a tournament game. it doesn't make sense.
Posted by: quitacet at Jul 19, 2006 12:00:05 AM
Thanks for the comments. My post was probably a bit cavalier about the difficulty of become a legal academic. One interesting comment on the advice post was that I'd be better off making decisions "on the margin," i.e., continuing education as long as I enjoy it.
Others thinking about law school might be interested in the book "Law School Confidential," which I've found to be very helpful. Law school has been my tentative plan for a year or so, but I was tempted to do economics instead. I now think I should resist this temptation.
Yes, the debt of law school is an important consideration. And I don't care enough about money to sit through a soul-sucking job for the first eight years. So my thinking is that I should try my best at the LSAT, aim for a good public law school like UT Austin, and if I get in, do a good job. If I have an extraordinary, heretofore unknown talent for law, then maybe I'll do the academic thing. Otherwise, I'll try to avoid the rat race and get a legal job where I sit at a desk and deal with books rather than make speeches.
Posted by: Lee Beck at Jul 19, 2006 4:06:43 AM
As someone who’s currently in the process of breaking into legal academia, and who’s reading this blog as part of a procrastination break while working on a law review article, I’m shocked that no one has mentioned the joint JD/PHD or joint JD/MA route. The career prospects for JD/PHDs in law and economics are quite good. The PHD need not be from a top ten program either, although it certainly helps. Most everyone I saw on the market this past year who had solid empirical training and displayed a real interest in applying that training to real legal questions ended up with good jobs. The market for theorists is somewhat harder than the market for empiricists, but I suspect it’s still much better than the pure economics market.
While it’s certainly true that it’s important – and arguably essential – for one’s JD to be from a top school, keep in mind that it’s much easier to get into a top law school than into a top econ program. Yale admits 200 students each year and Harvard around 500. I believe that’s more students than all of the top twenty econ programs put together.
Posted by: David at Jul 19, 2006 9:56:44 PM
David is making the best point that I've read on this track. Some of the best economics IS in the Law&Econ area. Why? Because this area puts a premium on operational matters (as opposed to existence proofs). Another area where one finds lots of applied work is in the area of Economic History. Who wouldn't rather take an issue of the Journal of Economic History (or the Journal of Law and Economics) along to read on a cross country flight than the Journal of Economic Theory?
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