I am a recent college grad who wants to go into law school. I have reached out to many lawyers looking for a mentor but I haven’t received any responses. I have experience as an intern at my local DA office but why doesn’t any lawyers want to mentor a young aspiring lawyer?? I need answers

The most important test of any lawyer’s life is actually the LSAT. Keep your law school aspirations to yourself for now. Study up and IF you can get a 170+, THEN contemplate whether you should go, seek mentorship, etc.

No college grad likes hearing that advice, but I don’t know many practicing lawyers who disagree with it.

The truth is, literally anyone can get into law school. The trick is to graduate without a mountain of debt, from a prestigious enough school that you’re highly employable, and likely to pass the bar exam. But a degree from a no-name school is worthless, you probably won’t pass the bar, and it somehow will have cost you as much as attending Harvard.

Reach out to current law students, either local to you or at a school you’re considering applying to. Also check the language you’re using when reaching out to folks: I might not respond to a cold email that asks me to be a mentor, bc tbh that’s a big ask from someone I don’t know. I’d be more inclined to respond to someone who asks for a 15 min coffee chat, which, if you stay in touch, could grow into the same type of longterm mentorship that it sounds like you’re looking for.

I’m sorry to hear that. I had a number of attorney mentors early on…I found them through church, my neighborhood, friends of my parents, parents friends, etc. You may have already done this, but professors can be great resources for making connections. So can college alumni…check with your school’s career or alumni office and see if they’re willing to connect you to someone. If you’re cold emailing folks, have a specific ask or try to personalize the email a bit more, I think that makes folks more likely to respond.

For what it’s worth I went to a little known law school, did decently well but wasn’t first in my class. Still ended up working for a prestigious US Senate Committee and then at a large national firm. Even the kid who graduated last in my class and failed the bar ended up with a decent job, got married, and bought a big house in the woods. Happy to take questions via DM here if I can be of any help.

Unless you have a way to pay for law school out of pocket and not take out loans, do not go to law school. The pay you make is not commiserate with what you will pay off in loans.
I would strongly encourage another career path.

First, if and when you go to law school, you will have many networking opportunities. Lawyers are busy. They network with law students, not aspiring law students.

But -- why haven't you reached out to the DA office where you interned? That's a great resource and you already know them. I also suggest reaching out to your local public defenders and free legal clinics.

I'm 56, and beginning to wind down. However, I have some comments of some of the other comments.

For perspective, I believed (and still do believe) that the practice of law is a very special calling. Like preachers, teachers and doctors. There is a very high standard of trust you should be expected to assume. It's not just a job.

If that is where your heart is, go for it. You will be proud of yourself and never ashamed when friends ask what you do for a living... Try to help people navigate various things life throws at them.

If you want to be on a billboard, you might consider something else. There is a difference (and delicate blend) of practicing law and "marketing" for business. I have clients I've helped or had referrals for 25 years +. Nope, never made a gajillion verdict to post. But I have had people call on me for meaningful help.

LSAT advice is spot on. I tried taking practice exams and was coming in at about 80%. I took a prep course and ended up at 92%. I was in college, and you are not, but I considered it a job. Holed up in library three nights a week and took a "timed" LSAT. The day of the exam, I streamed through it.

"Just about anyone can get in to law school" comment I disagree with. I've practiced against lawyers who went to lower tier schools and there is a noticeable difference. They don't teach you how to practice law in law school, they teach you how to think in a different way. The smarter set of folks you are around trying to learn that, then the better off you are.

I'm in Atlanta. Happy to meet up for coffee or lunch if convenient for you.

My best advice…….DON’T GO TO LAW SCHOOL! I went back to school and got my undergrad starting at 38, went to law school at 42 graduated at 45. My student loan debt was right at $300,000 between the two. I worked as a lawyer in the public sector to get my student loans forgiven in ten years.

Well after working as a lawyer for two years, I realized two things. First, I wasn’t making the $150,000 a year plus salary I was making before going back to school, in fact I was making closer to $50,000 a year and the second thing was I HATED BEING A DAMN ATTORNEY! I was President of the union where I worked at Verizon for ten years. I was damn good at my job. I didn’t lose a grievance the last four years I held the position and that’s what made me want to go back to school to be a lawyer in the first place.

So I went back to school to be a criminal defense attorney which is basically what I was at Verizon. This part was true, the jobs were pretty similar. The major difference was the managers I worked with were far more willing to work out a compromise unlike the prosecutors I had to work with.

If it’s not a case that has a news crew in the court for it, they weren’t interested in it. So yes they always offered a plea agreement but the offers were often extremely harsh to my client for what they were being charged with.

I mean a person who got caught stealing something that cost $150 and you want to send them to county jail for six months? Are you kidding me? Have you lost your ever loving mind? Hell no! I’m not taking that offer!

Well I pissed off the prosecuting attorneys office because I started playing hardball and flat out told them “ I love being in court, I love doing trials, and if you keep giving me these bullshit plea agreement offers, I’ll take every damn one of these cases to trial!” They knew I was dead serious and they were livid!

Well, prosecutors only care about two things…..publicity and their win loss records, that’s it! Well they knew I was very damn good at my job and if I took all these cases to trial they were going to lose several of them. So their boss went to my boss and I got told I couldn’t take these cases to trial. I was like that’s fine, as long as they start giving me fair plea agreements I won’t want to take them to trial.

Well they did get a little better but not much. Not enough for me anyways, so I gave my boss an alternative if his own. You either let me take these cases to trial or I will quit and I’m your best attorney and you know it! He didn’t feel like he could ruin his working relationship with the prosecuting attorneys office, so he told me no I couldn’t take them to trial. I said “ok I wasn’t joking, I wasn’t bluffing, I quit!”

I left and the office fell apart and I couldn’t be happier to see it because they got exactly what they deserved! But after I quit, I realized the money sucked I was making three times as much before I went back to school and the politics in law was disgusting and if you’re not willing to play theur gages you stay miserable and you hate your job every single day!

So I decided to go on a completely different career path, fell back onto my Bachelors Degree in Criminal Justice and became a private investigator of all things. It was the best decision of my life!

Most people don’t realize how few professionally licensed through the state private investigators they really are. I started out charging $100/hr and I was slammed. So I raised it to $250/hr it didn’t help me one bit. So I doubled it to $500/hr I still had a waiting list almost two pages long. So I doubled it again and lost a few but not even enough to get it down to one page charging $1000/hr. But I said I’m not raising it anymore I’ll just keep a waiting list.

Well I absolutely LOVE my job! I get to have different and new and exciting cases every day. Plus because I charge so much I’m able to work on missing person and unsolved murder cases pro bono for families that can’t afford to pay and it’s definitely the most rewarding part of my job without question. I couldn’t do this is I still was charging $100/hr the way most PI firms do.

So that’s what I decided to do, change my business from a sole proprietorship to a private investigation firm where I could hire more people and get more of these cases covered.

Was I going to be able to charge these companies $1000/hr for giving them less experienced private investigators? Absolutely not, but I didn’t have to. I could get $250/hr because I did hire people that had at least ten years as an investigator in law enforcement so they had experience. So having five private investigators at $250/hr was actually making me $1250/hr between them or $250/hr more than I was making working alone, I wasn’t killing myself anymore with the hours I was having to work and I was able to catch my waiting list up.

So looking back I realize going back to school turned out to be the best decision I ever made in my life…..but just the undergraduate school, the law school wasn’t anything but a waste of three years of my life and a shit ton of money!

I have numerous friends that graduated with me from law school that have made the same career change I did. They all went into different fields but I only have seven friends out of twenty that are still lawyers today. All the rest of us have gone a different way because we all ended up hating the jobs we thought we would love.

Yes, I realize this was a very long response. But I have read SO MANY people give the exact same advice about law school I’m giving to you…..don’t do it! They learned the sane hard lessons k did and were both doing the same thing. Doing our best to make sure that the person is making the right decision in their life.

This is the truth about law school. If you can qualify to get into a T-14 school or get a full scholarship to a law school, and you want to attend? I say go for it! But if you can’t get into one of those those schools that does have a decent chance of paying you $250,000 a year or you’re not going to graduate without a massive amount of student loan debt, the statistics tell you law school just isn’t worth it.

The primary reason is the average salary for an attorney today is not $100,000 a year plus. It’s actually $58,00000 a year. That’s not very good money when you can get a job with any of the national utility companies and make right at $100,000 a year with nothing but a high school diploma. Trade school jobs today pay more than jobs that require a four year degree. That’s the kind of things you have to consider before making a huge decision that you truthfully could end up regretting the rest of your life.

I wish you nothing but the best and success in the future no matter what you decide to do. I just hope that this advice may help you make that decision a little bit easier. Good Luck!

My advice is don’t go to law school. My advice is spend your time learning a trade or go to a technical university to become engineer. After you pass bar the State will send you post card with phone hotline for drug and alcohol abuse as if to say, get ready because you’re going to need this soon. Otherwise make sure you’re at a top tier school and have no outside life for 3 years so you finish with high GPA and get job with billable hours meaning you owe 7-9 hours of billable work which means you better not day dream or take a personal call from momma or poppa because it’s not billable and if you bill a client for time you didn’t spend on their case GOD sees it all and liars and thieves all end up in the lake of fire. Find a nice honest profession working with your hands and minding your own business. Stay out of cesspool of being a lawyer.

Where are you located?

there's a Legal Mentor Network on LinkedIn

How about trying some legal divison inside companies? Maybe try insurance companies, Amazon, FedEx, UPS... Or, maybe even an HR Policy divison.

Where are you located?

Do what your heart calls you to do. I started solo for many years, went "big law" and now a boutique firm. Loans are a burden, but you can work out income-based payments. No, you don't need to have graduated from a "top tier" LS to practice law and earn a good salary. Big law comes with big billable requirements and 70 hours a week of work. I prefer working at a small firm. I am entering my 16th year of practicing law, criminal, immigration and now exclusively family. We lawyers get jaded over time. Do as your heart calls you to do. Don't listen to the grumpy lawyers. And no, "big law" is not hard to enter as "big law" has high turnover rates. As former "big law" I know, and I enjoy taking on "big law" in court.

I work with attorneys but am not one. I thought about it years ago. When I tell the attorneys this, they say, GOOD CALL! I will say it's long hours and you get to do most of the work as a young associate. You are the scapegoat. You must bill hours and account for what you do and how much time you spent on it. You must be available to do what they want when they want, and this includes all hours of day and night. I personally like leaving the job for the day and not doing anything until the next day. Life is short. Don't work yourself like crazy. Not saying don't become one....just know what you're getting into. Most places are worse than others. Associate attorneys are just pawns....a dime a dozen.

I went to a school near the top of T2/bottom of T1, back in the days when schools were still affordable by working in the summers, and I graduated without debt. I probably would have taken a different career path if I had needed to take on significant debt to get through.

Between ages 6 and 21, my son (who is about your age) wanted to be a patent attorney. I told him to go to engineering school, get at least two years of real-world experience, and then go to law school. Around age 21, he decided he liked engineering, and if he returns to school for an advanced degree, it likely will be for something other than law. Law school is a big commitment of time and money; if you do decide to go, it should be on more than a whim.

I think you may be a little early in your path to find a mentor. Don’t get discouraged. Most lawyers are busy, busy folks and if they are earning with a billable hour, giving up that time can be tough. If you go to law school, you’ll find a work colleague who can show you the ropes and teach you. thats likely the best way to get hooked up with a mentor. Good luck!

You don't need a mentor. Study for the LSAT. Take the LSAT. Rely on yourself.

Lawyers are also very busy. Being mentored is a unicorn dream.

Is there a law school admissions counselor at your university? You could direct your questions there for a start. My college had one and he also happened to be my philosophy of law professor.