Professor Campos has delivered the most important book about legal education in the past twelve months, and probably the upcoming twelve months too. Legal education has become something of a fairytale over the past decade: promises of happy endings and frogs becoming princesses, golden geese and wealth beyond belief, none of which is true in reality. Most law grads don't end up as successful lawyers, nor do dummies who scraped through undergrad and managed a 140 on the LSAT end up magically turning into legal masterminds. The legal education forest floor is littered with law school preparation books, many recent titles of which are written by law professors, claiming to offer a harmless and helpful trail of candy to guide the law school applicant through the thickets of law school. Except these guides are not offering a harmless candy trail, but the sinister fairytale device used to lead youth into peril, into traps from which they cannot escape. And like real life candy, they are delicious and enjoyable until you get to the dentist or step on the scales after three years, only to realize the irreparable damage that you've just done to yourself. Or until you find yourself in a nightmarish witch's cage of student loan debt, fattened for the oven, unable to find your path home.
A dose of reality was needed. A wake-up call. And Campos' book, "Don't Go To Law School (Unless)" has provided that antibiotic. Continuing the fairytale theme, Campos has ventured into the forest with a bright torch, illuminating the better paths to follow, the ones that will minimize the likelihood of falling into the most common traps, the ones that aren't lined with deceptive candy. The ones that other professor-authors are deliberately hiding, for their livelihoods depend on it. After all, no new applicants means no overinflated salaries for many law professors, and they have a vested interest in encouraging bright college grads into their world.
The book collates much of the advice and insight from Campos' wonderful blog, "Inside the Law School Scam", a blog which took the "scamblog" movement out of the nursery and gave it some big boy pants to wear; a blog that took the movement literally out of the toilet where it spent its time seedily soliciting fellow graduates, and into a well-lit, safe place where we all could deal with the failings of our legal education system in a rational, mature manner. A place where people would actually take the movement seriously and not treat it like a joke or freak show. DGTLS(U) distills the valuable information contained his blog into easy-to-read, clear chapters, covering topics (or fairytales) such as the versatility of a law degree, how student loan debt is good debt, and employment statistics, all important topics that many law applicants still just can't fathom, as evidenced by the continuous inflow of students to low-tier law schools. And Campos writes in a way that can't be misunderstood, unlike most law school employment statistics. Campos' message is about as obvious as it comes. The question is, will self-absorbed law applicants bother listening to it? For their sake, I hope so!
Do I agree with everything in the book? Not everything, no, but certainly the overwhelming majority of it; I'm not a believer of the "scam" aspect of legal education, which I consider overreaching (and I believe Campos does too, as law school is an appropriate choice under certain circumstances, a fact he rightfully concedes, because like it or not, we do need some new lawyers each year, just not twice as many as the economy can absorb.) There are some great law schools at the top of the rankings, where one can still receive a world-class legal education and have a realistic shot at a worthwhile legal career, but there are many, many low-ranked law schools that rival online for-profit "colleges" for the title of World's Worst Education Decision Ever. But I do fully endorse the idea that legal education is so costly and so risky that one should approach it with extreme caution in these dark, uncertain economic times, especially as the government remains reluctant to deal with the issues surrounding student loan debt; a warning that I too addressed many months ago in a forty-page addition to my own book, "Later in Life Lawyers", cautioning readers to think long and hard about the debt they undertake and the diminished employment prospects in this dismal economy.
But compared to the contents of most of the recent professor-penned law school guides that promote going to law school as a smart option for recent or soon-to-be graduates, DGTLS(U) is incomparably truthful. And most of all, I agree with the fact that this book had to be written. Something had to strike the first blow against the legal education monster, perhaps not to slay the dragon, but to make it sit up and realize that it cannot continue to indiscriminately devour. And Campos was brave to wield that sword, especially when, as an insider, it would have been far easier for him to keep his opinions to himself.
So many law school guides, especially those written by law school professors, tend to be overly-optimistic, encouraging applicants to attend law school to partake in the fairytale job opportunities that they believe lie beyond graduation. To so many professors, the legal profession is like a magic porridge pot, overflowing with unlimited job opportunities for graduates, but the opposite is true; this golden goose stopped laying eggs at least a decade ago. Some professors understand this but stay silent out of cowardice or self-interest, and some professors just don't understand. Many professor-penned guides state categorically that if you believe in yourself and work hard, all your dreams will come true. Likewise, so many applicants themselves have been brought up with what Campos describes as "Special Snowflake Syndrome", where students think they will succeed if they just work hard enough, are smart enough, and believe in themselves; they believe that just clicking their ruby-clad heels together will whisk them away to the security of a well-paid legal position in a law firm. And when these two forces collide - professors claiming that law school offers opportunities for unlimited success, and students thinking that all they need to do is work hard to succeed - we have the perfect storm of failure; students willingly handing over hundreds of thousands of dollars of borrowed money to law schools, most of which offer minimal opportunities and which will gladly take that money and disavow all responsibility when its graduates cannot find suitable employment (i.e. employment that can cover the loan payments).
And this just has to stop! Campos is the unique professor who "gets it" and who is willing to speak out against it. Someone needed to stand up and call the majority of law schools out for what they are: overpriced, underperforming purveyors of law degrees. Scams? Nah, not in most cases (although for-profit law schools and some school languishing at the bottom of the rankings certainly fit that label), but dangerous places to be for the ill-informed? Absolutely. Very dangerous.
For anyone considering law school, and who may be paying upwards of $200,000 for that privilege, I strongly suggest investing a mere 0.0025% of their future tuition in this book. It may save them $199,995 and three years of their lives. And as such, this book represents the bargain of the century, and the best investment or insurance you could ever hope to buy.
