An Open Letter to Potential Law Students: The Truth is not the Truth

Hold yer nose and check this presumptuousness:

If you’re in it for the money, the truth is that very few lawyers will see those highly coveted and published $190,000 salaries as first-year associates.

This is just one of many, many quasi-truths in a piece full of them.  Have these cretins learned nothing from our current administration?  Truth is not always truth, bub.

For this particular passage, the twist rests in the initial dependent clause - if you're in it for the money.  Newsflash, here, but no one is in the legal industry for the money.  Truth.  Some of us signed up to carry justice on our backs.  Others were more interested in defending liberty.  Still more wanted to change the world.  But money?  Bitch, please, if we wanted money, we would've gone to MBA school.

Of course, had we gone to MBA school, we wouldn't make nearly as much money as we would going to an ABA-accredited law school, which provides a $2 million premium over homelessness.  And those 190k jobs are easy to nab for the true hustlers.  But no one goes to law school for the money.  We have higher purposes and if the train's voyage involves a few old fashioneds and oral gratification from 8s and 9s here and there, so be it.

The entire "open letter" has this sheen of collected rationality that is grossly undercut by true truth.  For example, the following things are totally false even though they look true:

"[L]awyers suffer from high rates of depression, substance abuse and suicide."
"Technology continues to supplant and replace much of the legal work traditionally performed by newly hired associates."

Yawn.  The world needs good lawyers, and good lawyers don't get no mental illness. Technology can't replace a good legal mind. They'll just replace the lowest quality legal jobs, the ones that lead mediocre lawyers to alcoholism and shooting people.  Yada yada yada.

But, to be fair, the article offers some dead-on accurate statements, some true truths:

"[B]eing a lawyer is still a noble profession"
"Consider night school or a lower-tier law school that offers scholarship options so that you can pay for law school as you go and avoid debt."
"Realize that the decision to attend law school is not a choice between right and wrong: It is a choice between right and right."

God, that feels nice.  I'm going to read it again, do some blow, and give my mistress a call to discuss when the truth is the truth or not.  You? You should go to law school.  I'm drinking at home on a Friday night and you can, too!