Law School in 2026 and the Future of Law

So Mallory, when I went to law school, tuition at my school was about $8,000 a year. That was 30 years ago. Today, the sticker price at your alma mater, Stanford, is over $75,000 a year, significantly more. And that's what we're talking about today. Should you still go to law school in 2026? Is the JD still worth it? And what does the future of this profession actually look like? And there's a couple of different perspectives. But even within our firm, there's four or five people who are preparing to take the LSAT or have already taken the LSAT and are trying to get into different schools. And then for the future generation, for example, my kids' generation, they're looking to go into law school. In fact, I think applications to go into law school have gone significantly up in the last couple of years. Even when I was applying to law school, applications were way up from previous years. That was seven years ago now. Yeah. So welcome back to the show. I'm Rick Park. I'm a founding attorney here at Park Chenar Injury Lawyers here in Washington State. And I've been practicing for over 26 years. And I'm Mallory. I graduated from Stanford Law School just a few years ago, back in 2021. And I work here at the firm. So Rick and I are coming at this from very different perspectives. Yeah, very different, a whole generation apart, different schools, different price tags, different job markets. And honestly, I think it'll be good to hear from both of our perspectives. What law school actually teaches you. So let's start here because I think that nobody tells the perspective from the student, law school does not teach you how to practice law, for sure. I don't even think it's designed to. What law school does teach you is to think like a lawyer, but not necessarily to act like one. You never learned how to interview a client or to file an actual complaint or to talk to an adjuster. You get thrown in the deep end the first year out of law school and you don't know how to practice at that time. Yeah. And I think this does depend on the school that you choose. Different schools focus on practical applications more than others. I know Stanford did put a big emphasis on clinical experience and doing externships. I was able to get class credit for doing an externship my last year of law school where I was actually working with actual attorneys. But even then, it's very different than actually practicing. You can learn these things in law school. I did the criminal defense clinic at Stanford, and we did learn here's what to do when you interview a client. We did interview clients, but we were being supervised the whole time. And it's very different when it's your responsibility. You are the lead attorney and you're the one making all of the decisions with no supervision. It's a completely different ballgame. Yeah. And from my perspective as somebody who hires and has hired a lot of attorneys in the past, when we see attorneys coming out of law school, we recognize that they have no practical experience in practicing law. In fact, our preference is to hire somebody who already has a couple of years experience because we know those first two years, even with a law degree, you don't really know how to practice law. Yeah. And this is one of the things I think that's important to consider for those who want to go to law school. It impacts the school that you go to because like I said, different schools have different opportunities for practical experience while you're in law school. Obviously, Stanford is a private school. Not everyone can afford that or make that happen. But going to a school that has opportunities to practice with practicing attorneys in law school, I was able to get a fellowship right after law school at the organization that I was externing at my third year of law school. Thinking about those things, thinking about networking, where you want to work, and actually getting to talk to those lawyers and even work with them is really important. Like you said, Rick, it's hard to do because law school is not geared towards that generally, but there are schools that are making those shifts. So finding that in a law school, asking those questions before you decide where to go, what classes to take, really important. Yeah. And I would also say from a hiring perspective, again, you went to Stanford Law School. That's a top three law school in the nation. We know how difficult it is to get into that law school and how hard it is to get through and graduate from Stanford. You're competing against some of the smartest, hardest working people in the nation. So when we see that on a resume, we immediately think, okay, this is somebody of interest. We will never not look at somebody who's graduated from Stanford Law School. Beyond that, we are looking at the career performance. So if you just got out of Stanford Law School, then you're somebody with potential. But if you graduated from Stanford Law School and you've been in practice for 10 years, then no longer is that as important. Okay, you graduated Stanford Law School, so we know you're smart. We know you can work hard. But what have you done in the last 10 years? Do you win? And that's by far more important after you've started your career. Absolutely. And like you said, so much learning happens on the job. And what you're actually doing on the job, the attorneys that you're working with in those early years can really shape what your career looks like. So to your point, hiring someone straight out of law school, you have the opportunity to shape them into someone who's going to be good for your firm, whereas someone who's been out for a few years, you have to see how is their practice looking now, it does really change after you leave law school. We've seen people who graduated Gonzaga Law School, which is a good law school, but it's an easier law school to get in and become great trial lawyers. And then we've had actually somebody in the past who graduated from Stanford as well, a great lawyer, but didn't really like to go in the courtroom. So in practice, it's a little bit different. And although law schools matter if you're trying to go into big firms, but it matters a little bit less as time goes on. Yeah, for sure. And what you do in law school matters a lot too. Like you said, this is where you're learning how to think like a lawyer. And that experience after law school is going to be super important. And so a big name law school can get your foot in the door if you have a particular organization or field that you want to get into where that's going to be important. For me, I really wanted to be a public defender and I really wanted to work at one of these big name public defenders offices. I ended up doing a fellowship at the public defense office in San Francisco, which is very hard to get a job at. And so I knew I wanted to do that. And so the name mattered to me at the time. What matters most is that experience and making sure you're making the most of whatever law school you do go to. Yeah. And the other part is, yeah, the name matters because nobody can ever take that away from you as well. That's an amazing accomplishment. The other thing I wanted to talk about just real quick before we go on to the other subjects is if you're thinking about taking the LSAT, what do you think somebody should do in terms of prepping for that? How should they prepare themselves? Yeah, I think this is really important, especially if you're wanting to get into a big name law school, any law school, either LSAT score really matters in terms of making your application more appealing. We talked about how applications are up right now. Making yourself stand out is really important. I remember the advice that I got going into law school was do it without any practice, see what your base score is. It's important to diversify the studying that you're doing. So I tried multiple different study materials before I found one that worked for me, especially for certain aspects of the LSAT. You'll learn as you go and you can slowly learn things, but some things just click and it depends on how you're being taught them. So doing a course can help. I didn't actually take a course though. I just tried a bunch of different study materials that were at my own pace until I found one that helped it click for me. So finding what works for you is really important because it will at some point just click. If you're doing it right, you'll study and you'll learn it and just do as much studying as possible. I treated it like a full-time job when I was studying for the LSAT. So if you have the means to, obviously it's a I was able to live with my parents and not pay rent and treat it like a job for the months leading up to me taking it. But if you have the ability to do that, treating it like a full-time job, that's what's going to maximize your LSAT score. Do you remember, did you increase your score from your first practice score to your final score? Oh, absolutely. I actually remember my first practice score was 163 and my final one was 172. So yeah, you can increase it quite a bit. That level, the higher, the harder it is to increase your score. So if you start at a 145, it's pretty easy to pop on 10 points at 155. But starting at 163, going up to 172, that's a significant increase when you're at the top level because what 180 is maximum. Yeah. Yeah. So that's impressive because one of the things is you can't really learn how to improve your reading comprehension in a month. I mean, that's over the course of your last 15 years that you've been working on reading comprehension. So it's not so much you can study for the test like that and all of a sudden, your readings just, you could read faster, comprehend better in that little month of studying while you're working on the other skills like the logic and the analysis and everything else. The class that I took, the professor said, you're not really going to increase your score much. So you've proven that wrong because obviously from 163 to 172 is significant. But for me, I ended up with similar scores from what I originally took. So it didn't help me a ton. But I think that what the classes do show is these are the type of questions that you're going to have. If you're not able to finish all the questions in a section, then you can just CCCC down if it's still multiple choice. And then the logic games, they've removed those. I was going to say, I think there's different sections and I think it's easier to improve your score on certain sections than others. Like you said, reading comprehension, really hard to improve your score. I think my score on reading comprehension did stay pretty similar throughout and that was probably my lowest section score because it's just really tough. And for me, reading comprehension has always been my weakest part. But logic games actually is an example of one where I had a very low score because those are really tough. And that's one where I was able to review different resources. And at some point it clicked and that ended up being my highest score. So sometimes you'll find something that will help you see what's happening. And a lot of it is like you were saying, just test taking strategies that you need to learn. So for people who aren't as good at taking tests, you can increase your score a lot just by learning some test taking strategies. If you don't finish, put an answer down because you don't get docked for wrong answers. So put an answer somewhere, even if you don't finish the section. Do you remember any of the lessons or courses or names that you studied? I don't remember. I know that for me, I was in a financial crunch and my parents weren't helping me pay for this. And I was using secondhand materials. And that's why I think having a diverse amount of materials and even using secondhand materials, you can make a big difference in your score. If you're just using stuff that you know is going work for you and finding the things that work. I think I tried multiple different brands. And when I found one that worked for me, I did that entire booklet. Sort of trial and error. And then once you find what works, go hard on that. Good advice. Okay. I want to talk now about debt in law school and whether or not it's really worth it, because let's do the math on this just a little bit. So the average law school debt in 2026 is about $165,000 when you get out of law school. And if it's a private school, it's upwards of 250,000. Now our starting salary in most of the different areas is in between the 75 to 90,000 without any experience. If you get into a big law firm, it could be as much as 225,000. Those big law firms, they really work you to the bone. It is a high stress, high performance type of job. You're putting in 50, 60 hours a week. And there's a lot of pressure on you because you're getting paid very well coming out of law school. So with that type of debt, $165,000 to 250,000, what do you think? What do you recommend to people who are thinking about going into law school? Yeah, it's a really tough question. I think it's a very individualized analysis. So for me, debt was something that I considered, but it wasn't something that I... Looking back, I probably could have been a little bit more serious about making sure I was minimizing my debt and I did not do that. But for me, I just factored what I knew my debt payments were going to be into all of my decisions. And I knew that I did not want to go into big law. Like you said, it's really grueling. I have so much respect for people who do that and just pay off their debts really quickly, but I knew that wasn't going to be me. And so I knew that regardless of what I did, I was going to be paying these debts for a while. I felt okay accepting I'm going to have a high debt payment for a while, but it's something I want to do. And I'll just factor that into my budgeting in the future. And some people, that will be difficult. And if you do get a job that pays a lot more, actually your payment's going to be a lot higher if you're on an income-driven plan. And so that's something to keep in mind. But yeah, really my advice would be to read all of the documents related to the loans that you're taking out. Make sure you know what you're borrowing, what that payment is going to look like later on in advance. Because you don't want to be surprised with a huge payment that you didn't expect on your loans. Because even if you're going to big law and you're making all this money, you're going to have a high debt payment. And that can surprise people. You think you're going to big law, you're going to be making all this money. And you do make a lot of money, but that is something to think about. If that's something that's going to stress you out, then maybe think about going to a school where you're going to get better scholarships and minimize that debt. If you know that you're willing to pay that and you'll be okay and you know how to budget. For me, I know how to budget. I've been doing it my whole life. It was not a concern for me. Also, I was planning to go into public service. So I knew that the public service loan forgiveness would have been available to me. I ended up shifting gears. That was something I was okay with. And so know yourself, know what you're willing to deal with and act accordingly. But that is definitely something I think you should be thinking about when you're going to law school because it's gotten pretty crazy. Yeah. And with interest and everything else, sometimes it takes 10, 15 years before you end up paying it off. So it's a significant decision that you should think about before you go in. So what about the different types of law that you can practice in? You were saying there's the public sector, but then there's also personal injury like we're in now, but then there's criminal law and there's divorce, family law, bankruptcy, there's consumer law, you could be a trial lawyer versus a contracts reviewer, you can get into real estate. Is there any area that is maybe in high demand right now or that you think is a good area? I remember when I was going to law school, environmental law was the new thing and people were saying, hey, go into this. Do you have any thoughts on that? I don't know if I have a sense of what's in high demand. I think when I was in law school, I was very much engulfed in the public interest world, which you'll learn at law school, at least at Stanford. I think this is true at other law schools. There's a big divide between public interest and corporate law. And I think it's interesting because personal injury sometimes falls somewhere in the middle, right? Because we are doing a public service in some ways. It's not considered public service work, but you're helping people. So I did have a lot of friends who were in both public interest world and the personal injury world, but things like contracts law, business law, any kind of like big law, that was a very different world from public interest. So I don't necessarily have a sense for the big law world of what's hot right now, but I know in public interest, immigration is big right now. Obviously with the political climate, there's a big need for immigration lawyers right now, environmental lawyers. I think there's a high need for that. I don't know what the employment opportunities actually look like. You don't even need to go into law with a law degree. I mean, with a law degree, politics is one of the places that you can go. It is helpful in business, having a law degree. It's helpful just in getting any other job because a law degree says that you're hardworking and you're somewhat intelligent. So I think it helps in a lot of other ways, but with the cost and the time associated with it, if you're going into law school and you're not intending to be a lawyer, you should probably have some specific focus that you're intending to use the law degree for. Yeah, absolutely. I think in general, if you're going to law school, you should have some idea of what you want to do with it. And I think that's also just because law school is hard. Practicing as an attorney or doing anything in the legal field can be really challenging. This is a very complex field, and I do not regret going to law school. I don't practice as an attorney now. I work at our law firm doing intakes, and I love that. And I think if I could go back, I might not take on so much debt. I might choose a different route, but I do love what I learned in law school. I think I'm a new person because of it. There are things you learn in law school that you will not learn anywhere else. And so I do think it's a really great opportunity. Like you said, even if you don't want to be a lawyer or a practicing attorney, there's a lot you can learn in law school about the way our country works, about the way the law works, and it impacts every area of life in ways that I never would have understood before I went to law school. So I am a big advocate for what you can learn in law school. But yeah, if you're not going to practice as an attorney, have a plan and maybe think more about keeping that debt down, because what kind of jobs you'll be able to get afterwards should be something that's on your mind before you go. Yeah. And the topic that I'm really excited to talk about is the future of law, especially because of artificial intelligence. And in the practice of law, we can see it affecting our practice. On a month-to-month basis, something new comes out that will affect the way that we are practicing law. And so by the time somebody gets into law school, finishes their law degree, starts getting some experience, we're talking about five years down the road now, what is law going to look like at that point? Because there's certain areas of that pretty much are going to be eliminated somewhat. For example, drafting a real estate contract, already that's been replaced by kind of standard forms, the limited practicing forms or forms that are by some organization. Those have already been eliminated in some degree. But lots of contracts that are pretty standard, like leases, landlord-tenant stuff, all of that's going to be automated. Maybe wills, the standard wills, that's going to be so easy for AI to be able to do proficiently. So we can see there's certain areas that are going to be replaced. What about just law in general? What does it look like five years from now, and maybe 15, 20 years from now? Because the people who are going to law school now, what's it going to look like in 10 years from now? Yeah, it's definitely something to think about because if there's something that you want to do, and it's something that an AI can do, it's definitely at risk. You want to think about what you can do that an AI can't do. There is, I think, a lot of human elements in law that cannot be replaced by AI, and that's the part that matters that I think is important to keep in mind when you're thinking about why you want a law degree, what you want to do with it. Yeah, human players are necessary, but definitely something to think about in terms of how you can use AI and also how that's going to impact what your job is going to look like. That's also something to think about when you're talking to other attorneys who are practicing now. Technology changes so quickly, and one of the biggest pieces of advice I tell people when they're going to law school is talk to practicing attorneys, see what their day-to-day looks like, but also understand that could change a lot in five to 10 years. Yeah, and one of the words that I think of is agency, which is a popular word in the last couple of years, which is just the ability to have a growth mindset, to be able to pivot quickly. For example, if your job was writing demands and now the AI is capable of writing demands as good as you were, you could just review and make sure that the AI included everything that it should, so now your job is all of a sudden no longer necessary, then your ability to pivot quickly and then to still provide value in some other way that's related to law is going to become more important, in my opinion. Agreed, yeah, and I think that creativity of being able to pivot and also think of ways that you can continue to add value is going to be really important, which there's jokes about how lawyers have struggled with creativity, but I think being a lawyer requires so much creativity, and it's going to require even more the more that AI is taking over these tasks that are more tedious and require less creativity. We're going to be needing to use that even more. Yeah, and I think one of the portions of the law that's not going away anytime soon is trial work. It's going to be a while before robots are given closing arguments. I think to your point earlier, you don't learn in law school how to talk to clients necessarily, but that's also a super important piece. Your clients are where you get your business from, and being able to maintain good relationships with your clients is a super important skill that you don't necessarily learn in law school unless you seek out opportunities to learn that. Yeah, and lawyers are notorious for talking. The skill of listening is a huge practice of law because if you're not truly zoned in and actually really trying to hear what your client's saying, you miss a ton of stuff. Yeah, listening, and I think with the eruption of AI, reviewing and editing is going to become very important, right, because AI is great for generating a lot of material, but you're still as a lawyer responsible for that. I anticipate that we will start seeing more and more. Already when I was in law school, we were seeing more and more errors lawyers were making in not looking closely enough. AI wasn't super big when I was in law school, but the one thing that was happening was there's programs that will automatically generate through Westlaw and other programs citations, and they're not always accurate. Detail orientation is going to be really important, I think, because catching those little errors before they get sent off to a judge and it impacts your client is going to be really important. I think relying too much on AI and trusting it too much is going to be one of the dangers of this increased reliance on it, so finding that balance will be really important. Yeah, and when I first started my career, I had to be in a state of fighting often, which I didn't really like. So if you're not comfortable with being in a state of having to be argumentative, and you don't necessarily need to be argumentative. One of the best lawyers I know, Marv, he's not an argumentative guy, but still, you will get emails, and you will get motions, and you will get phone calls that are argumentative, and you got to deal with some nasty people on the other side, and that's just the truth of it. And if you can't handle that, or if you don't want to handle that, then maybe this is not the profession for you. Yeah, absolutely. I think some of the best lawyers are not very argumentative, and you can't really be reactive. Some lawyers are, and a lot of people go into law because they love to argue, but I think there's a balance there too, right? When someone comes at you with a very confrontational email, and the judge has cc'd on that, sometimes responding with calm is the way to get the judge's favor, right? It's not always the most fiery response that's going to be the winner. Yeah, yeah. So controlling your emotions can be very important. Sometimes if you have trouble doing that, it makes it, it could ruin your day. And I've seen it do that to a lot of people who are really smart and intelligent. When they get emotionally flustered, they can't think. Emotional regulation is something that I think everyone should at least explore and try to have some grasp on before you go to law school as well, because even before you start practicing, law school is tough, and it will challenge you emotionally, mentally, and in every way. I learned so much about myself in law school, and I honestly wish I had more emotional regulation skills before I went, but I definitely learned them out of necessity during and after, yeah. So if there's any tips that you would recommend somebody who's going into law school, what would that be? One of the biggest tips, I think, just based on my experience, is to be flexible. I went in, and I think a lot of people who want to be lawyers do this, where I had a goal of what I wanted to do, and I made that my identity. Like, I really wanted to be a public defender. That's all I wanted to do, and I made that happen. I was really good at it. I did all of the criminal defense classes. I made sure that my law school career was geared towards this goal that I had set for myself. But I think, like I said, I learned a lot about myself in law school. You will learn a lot about yourself doing this very challenging educational experience, and my advice would be to listen to your body. Listen to what you're learning about yourself, and allow that to influence you. I think my life is wonderful. I have no regrets, but I can see how my career might have been a lot different if I had listened to my body more about how it was feeling, taking certain classes, doing certain clinics, and if I had maybe ventured out of that pinhole identity I had created for myself, I might have learned a little something about myself and what I might like to do that might have looked a little bit different and did a better fit for me before I went through the whole process and started practicing. It took me a year of practice to realize, oh, actually, this is not a good fit for me. So be flexible, and that's true. I think that's helpful, I think, for picking a career as you're going through law school. Like I said, have something in mind, right? You don't want to go in blind, but also be willing to take new information and change your mind about it, and I think that's helpful advice just for when you start practicing, too. Like you said, with AI taking over now, being flexible and being able to shift gears is a really important skill in general. Yeah, and how important do you think grades are? I think it depends on where you want to work and what you want to do. I know that certain organizations that if you want to work for them, they will not look at your application if you have grades that are below a certain level. If you want to go work for the ACLU or some of these big places, they're going to look at your grades pretty closely. But also, like you said, I think experience and the kind of attorney that you are and the outcomes you get in your first few years of practice say way more about your ability. And I think that grades are important to the extent that you are demonstrating that you're learning and applying that knowledge in your practice during your internships and externships in law school and afterwards in the first few years after law school, and your ability to adapt is way more important than grades. There might be a threshold of grades that's important for you to get a certain type of job, but after that, I think it really is how you sell yourself based on the outcomes you're getting by applying that knowledge that you're getting. Yeah. And one of the things that grades cannot measure is personal connection. There's no test that they give in law school that measures what type of personal connection that you can have with another person. And that's such a key element to being a good lawyer. When you can connect with your client, you can connect with the jury, you can connect with the judge, you can connect with your coworkers. That skill is super important and is going to be even more important when AI learns to automate certain parts of the lawyer profession. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a good question about how important grades are because there's a huge emphasis at some law schools, many law schools on what your ranking is. And I remember one of the things that attracted me to Stanford, some people might not know this, but Stanford doesn't have traditional grades. You have three levels of grades that you get for each class. It's pass, fail, or a high pass or something. And so I think that's a great example of how Stanford is saying, we're going to show basically where you're at in your average or above average. But at the end of the day, what matters is how you perform. Grades don't exist in the real world. And so don't stress too much about grades, even if you're at a school where that is being pushed. I think what matters really is how you apply what you're learning. Yeah. And law school is cutthroat. People will take you out at the knees if they have to get a better grade. It is a competitive environment. Yeah. I think some of the advice that I got from people who went other places is that it's very easy to get caught up in that race to get a Yeah, I agree. Okay. My advice to people going into law school would be to continue utilizing AI and actually learn how to integrate that into your learning, into your research, into your writing, into your analysis, into your practice. Obviously, relying on it 100% is not the The skill is how you utilize it as a colleague, how you would utilize that as a study partner or even a professor, but really understanding how to leverage that. When you come out of law school, if you already have that skill, that's very attractive for an employer. That would be my recommendation. Okay, thank you. And we will see you next week. Thanks, Rick.