Ed Coleman figured that working with lawyers couldn't be worse than working with zombies.

Coleman wasn't working with metaphorical zombies – the dead-eyed cubicle dwellers that drag their legs dispiritedly around modern offices. He was working with actual zombies, earning money as a freelance video editor on just one too many movies about the undead.

"After my fifth zombie trailer, I wanted a new challenge," Coleman, 34, told the Guardian, "and decided to make an investment in my future by going to law school."

Lessons in low demand

Coleman earned his law degree from Rutgers School of Law in Newark, New Jersey in 2009. It was the same year that the aftermath of the recession gave a record number of Americans the idea to wait out bad job prospects with a stint in law school. That school year, 171,514 people took the Law School Admissions Test; it was an all-time high. By 2012, that number would plummet 34% to 112,515. Something else declined: the median starting salary, from $72,000 in 2009 to $60,000 in 2012.

In 2009, as a record number of hopefuls were trying to get in, Coleman and others graduates stepped out to find the outside world still offering the low-paying – and scarce – jobs they'd tried to avoid.

"From what I understand, starting a career in a downturn can mean I might never make the kind of money I might have made had the economy been better," Coleman said. He is currently making $70,000 as an attorney in Manhattan. According to US News and World Report, the average debt amount from Rutgers-Newark is $87,272. Coleman estimates that about $70,000 of his $110,000 student debt bill was accrued in law school. The thought of paying it all off makes him feel like a zombie.

The law profession is facing a crisis, and a juris doctor is no longer a generalist's degree; it's not all courtrooms and arguing any more. Computers can do much of the same work as a law clerk, and schools are having to adjust. A survey by the education group Kaplan Test Prep found that more than half of US law schools were adapting to the smaller pool of applicants by offering smaller classes, mostly because of an anemic job market. About 47% said they planned on bolstering aid packages for prospective students.

There is less focus on how the change in the legal profession will affect students. Law schools are adapting, but graduates don't have it so easy. Many feel locked into legal careers because of the crushing debt they have accumulated; fewer people are running to law school hoping it will save them from the economy. Applications to law school have dropped by 20% compared with those posted by this time in 2012, according to a March report from the Law School Admissions Council.

"There's really nothing much to say about it," Wendy Margolis of LSAC told the Guardian. "Applicants and applications are down, and we assume it is because potential applicants are concerned about the cost and getting into debt, with the job market not what it used to be. But we have no way of knowing for sure why fewer people are applying."

Jobs that don't match debt

For many legal graduates, the law is now a freelance profession. Tammi Gaw graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 2007 with $185,000 in student debt. Gaw currently works as a contract attorney in Washington, DC and says her story is common. She makes about $65,000 per year. Her loan payments are $1,500 per month.

"It could end at any time, which is a reality of these contract jobs," Gaw, 38, told the Guardian. "Some people find themselves looking for a new contract every two to three weeks."

Permanent jobs with high-paying salaries are a thing of the past for many graduates, and a handful of attorneys are suing against what they feel were misleading job success rates posted by their law schools. The Los Angeles Times reported Monday that 18 law schools around the country are being sued by graduates who claim they choose their schools because of high graduate placement, a figure commonly used to rank the quality of the school. At least five of those lawsuits were filed in California.

"Some law schools are better than others at educating their students and graduates on networking and functioning post-graduation," Gaw said, "but others just leave their alums to drift in the wind."

Married to the law



Massive debt and fewer prospects mean the era of law degrees as a route into the job market could be coming to an end. Law schools are meeting lower demand for graduates with generalist degrees by shifting law school curriculums into more specialized areas.

"Private sector demand for smart but financially illiterate law graduates with a general professional degree and no particular industry expertise is, to say the least, dwindling," Victor Fleischer wrote in the New York Times last October.

But it's too little too late for some.

"I never really thought about whether I would actually like being a lawyer, which seems absurd to me now," Manhattan-based lawyer Emily, 28, told the Guardian, "but is extremely common among young people applying to law school."

Emily's debt after graduating with a degree from Fordham Law is $139,000 – average Fordham debt: $134,319 – and though her salary of $170,000 at a Manhattan law firm is enough to pay off the bill in 10 years, she's locked into a career she doesn't enjoy at least until then. Her loan payment: $1,700 per month.

"I haven't enjoyed my career so far, and I honestly don't think I will," Emily said. "I am tied to working at a big law firm if I want any chance at repaying my loans in a reasonable time and it is not a good job. And I'm one of the lucky ones because I'm employed!"

Advice for applicants

As thousands of students apply for law school this spring – less than before, but still thousands – they're inevitably asking themselves: is the debt worth it?

For Paul, a Las Vegas-based attorney, the money he owes is worth it for the professional satisfaction. A graduate of William S Boyd School of Law in Las Vegas, he's paying off $127,000 in debt on a salary of $75,000 per year. He considers himself well off compared to other graduates.

His advice for applicants is to be realistic about how much borrowing it will take to get the degree.

"I didn't really put as much emphasis on that in my own life when I was applying to schools because I figured crushing debt still had to beat waiting tables and being flat skint every month."

In Manhattan, Emily warns against the generalist approach.

"I hear so many people who say, 'It's a diverse degree! There are so many things you can do with a JD!'" she said. "It's just not true directly out of law school."

Coleman, the former film editor, calls his situation a Catch-22: he likes his job, but the debt is too much. If he could do it all over again, he'd stick to the zombies.

"I'd keep editing," Coleman said, "or I'd actually go learn to to something else."

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