Lawyers who graduated from elite law schools are only slightly happier about their career choice than their counterparts from lesser-ranked schools, according to a study of law grads who began their careers in 2000.
Legal education critics have advanced the idea that students attend non-elite law schools because of optimism bias—they think they will get high-paying jobs to pay off their education loans, according to a summary of the findings at SSRN. When their optimism proves unjustified, the theory goes, they feel buyers’ remorse.
But the theory is wrong, according to data from the American Bar Foundation’s After the JD study, which follows more than 4,500 law grads who began their careers in 2000. Grads of lesser-ranked schools surveyed in 2007, before the economic downturn, were only slightly less likely to feel they made a mistake.
