Here's the second bit of ugliness: Most law schools charge exorbitant tuitions, and tuition has risen relative to starting salaries. It's one thing to borrow or spend $80,000 if you're likely to get a job with a starting salary of $120,000. It's another thing to borrow or spend $125,000 or more if you're likely to get a job that pays $40,000. We call the first expenditure an investment. We call the second an act of near-suicidal folly.
There are only two things that might possibly justify such apparent folly: a) you're rich (or your parents are rich and will happily pay your debts for the rest of your life); or b) your school has an excellent loan forgiveness program. Most of the top-tier law schools do have such programs, and they have enabled many young lawyers to take low-paying public interest jobs. But read the fine print: Does a school guarantee the availability of the loan forgiveness program? If the program contracts, will you be grandfathered in? Does the loan forgiveness program restrict your career choices in a way that may cause problems for you later? (This should be a particular concern for those interested in policy and advocacy jobs: Some schools with generous loan forgiveness programs restrict them to graduates working in jobs that require a J.D.)
Also consider your likelihood of actually graduating. Law school is three long years, and not everyone finishes. Do you want to spend three semesters in law school and leave with three semesters of debt but no degree?
Third bit of ugliness: There are too many lawyers, and not as many legal jobs as there used to be. Worse, conditions and pay in many of the remaining jobs have deteriorated. Here again, think hard about yourself and your skills and qualifications. Do you expect to end up in the top half of your class at a decent law school? If so, you'll probably get a decent job. But if you know in your heart that you're not much of a student, think twice and then think ten more times about whether law school is right for you. At all but the top-tier schools (and even at some of them) students in the lowest quarter of the class will struggle to find work.
There are exceptions, of course. Grades aren't everything. Some students go to law school, get the specific skills they want, and start their own businesses or non-profits. If you're smart and entrepreneurial (or just rich, or just super lucky), mediocre grades won't necessarily hold you back. But this applies to a tiny minority of law school graduates, so think hard about whether you're likely to be one of them.
That was the ugly. How about the merely bad?
If the ugly news is that you might end up unable to find a job, the bad news is that you might actually end up becoming a lawyer. (Second prize: two weeks in Philadelphia!)
But wait, you say -- isn't that the point? Don't I want to become a lawyer?
I don't know. Do you?
There are happy lawyers in this world -- I know many -- but, statistically, lawyers are a pretty miserable lot. Not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of them -- particularly associates in large, lucrative firms -- hate their jobs. In a 2013 survey, Forbes found that there are plenty of happy workers out there in the United States. Network engineers like their jobs. Real estate agents like their jobs. Salesmen like their jobs. But law firm associates? They were the least happy workers of all, ranking their job satisfaction only 2.89 on a scale of 1-5. And please don't imagine that this is a temporary state of affairs, a product, perhaps, of the pressures on young law firm associates during a period of economic recession. Law firm associates have been miserable since the dawn of time.
Here's what this means for you. Let's say you've been admitted to a top-50 law school. You're a strong, highly motivated student, too, with grades and test scores at or above your law school's medians, so you can reasonably expect to graduate in the top half of your class. If you're counting on a lucrative job as an associate in a big law firm to pay off those staggering tuition debts, you may well get that lucrative job. But is it worth it?
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