Live From Alabama

Don't go to law school without a business plan.

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Former U.S. Assistant Attorneys General Stephen Boyd and Jody Hunt, as well as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama Prim Escalona join Sarah Isgur for a live recording of Advisory Opinions at the University of Alabama.

The Agenda:
—An update on the Alabama IVF ruling
—To go to law school or not to go?
—Private practice vs public service
—Relationship and mom advice in high-stressed jobs
—Audience QA

Show Notes:
—Chevron Deference discussed on Advisory Opinions.

Today’s episode is supported by Burford Capital. Follow the link to learn more: http://burfordcapital.com/ao

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Comments (24)
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  1. Jpliving

    I realize that there is a large amount of conflict of interest for Sarah on this topic given her father's connection, but the Judge Jones scandal in Texas has quite significant implications for the practice of bankruptcy law, very plausibly removing Texas as a popular jurisdiction to file chapter 11's. There are also the lawsuits trying to claw back tens of millions in fees from firms implicated in the scandal. And of course, the underlying ethical issue of how attorneys should deal with a judge who is not following the MRPC and their own obligation to report such infractions.

    It would be interesting for some discussion on this between Sarah and David. And (as a law student studying bankruptcy law) I'd be interested in Sarah defending more fully her frequent assertions that bankruptcy courts are not Constitutional.

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    George.Skinner

    I'm not a lawyer, but I can speak more generally on the costs and benefits of a professional graduate degree. Most of these programs are pretty expensive, whether it's law, an MBA, or increasingly even engineering. In addition to the tuition, there's also the cost of investing years into acquiring the credential where you might otherwise be earning income, experience, and advancing your career.

    Getting an MBA was a hot ticket for a lot of ambitious engineers in the late '90s and early 2000s, and I saw a lot of colleagues invest a lot of time and money to get a credential that didn't actually help them much in the end. They were actually less likely to end up in management and leadership positions at our company than people who hadn't taken the time off to pursue the degree. I'm not sure they ended up landing positions in other companies that they couldn't have gotten with their existing credentials and some experience in more commercially-oriented roles obtained through engineering.

    If getting that credential is a key to doing what you want to do, go for it. If it's from a prestigious institution that'll build valuable connections and open opportunities, that's a strong point in favor. If you can afford it without accruing a big debt (scholarships or some sort of employer subsidy, for example), that's also an important consideration. Otherwise, if you're doing it merely because you're ambitious and are looking for opportunities to advance, maybe you've already got what you need to make that happen.

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    1. MathewA

      I actually think getting my MBA was pretty helpful to me (even though I already had my CPA degree)

      I'm making more than twice what I was before the MBA. Of course that's not all due to the MBA, but I definitely think it helped. It told management that I was going to be moving up.

      Side note, I got mine pretty cheap because I was able to take class on the local military base through an extension program (no I wasn't in the military at the time, I got special base access because I was taking classes there).

      I think all told I paid $15k or so for my MBA

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        George.Skinner

        $15K isn’t bad - $50K was more the mark for the guys I knew, in addition to all the other costs like travel.

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        1. MathewA

          Yep my main cost was the three years of night classes

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    Clint

    Alabamian. To answer the first question asked in this podcast.

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    Kevin M. James

    Three responses to the always-valuable law school discussion, the first two of which I'm contractually obligated to keep repeating:

    1) Yes, law school can open many doors. It also *closes* many other doors. (And not just for student debt and golden handcuffs reasons.) You'll want to do thorough due diligence about both ends of this.

    2) "Should I go to law school?" is an incomplete question that can only ever have a preliminary answer until you've got actual admissions to specific law schools on the table. The top 14 schools have pull everywhere; the right flagship school like Alabama can open a lot of doors within its state (if not necessarily anywhere else); farther down the pecking order, there are way too many that will gladly accept your tuition money while knowing full well it could be as little as a 50/50 chance you'll ever land a job requiring a JD (much less a desirable one) with their degree.

    3) The longer it's been since a person graduated from law school, the less likely it is that the environment you would graduate into and the probable paths you might take would resemble their story, at all. So many things have changed so much just since the turn of the century. (And don't get me started on the world Boomer lawyers graduated into.)

    Add in the factors of pre-law-school connections, having the right politics and right political friends in the right place at the right time, and sheer good fortune, and I'm not sure how much any prospective law student today should actually draw from the (admittedly great and interesting) stories of the fine panelists here.

    Law school is a huge, consequential decision in life. It turns out to be a wonderful choice for some people, and a terrible choice for others; if you're considering it for yourself, it's critical that you tune out the well-meaning but clueless people patting you on the back for setting out on this path, and do your very best to figure out which bucket you're likely to fall into before committing to it.

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  5. Daniel Schweizer

    Please discuss: Justice Samuel Alito, during oral arguments of NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton:

    "I mean, if your—if—let’s say YouTube were a newspaper, how much would it weigh?"

    Thank you, TMD "Presented Without Comment" section

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  6. Dave from Denver

    Have not reached the end of the pod yet (shorter than usual commute) but a legal question and an observation, mixed, coming out of it somewhat indirectly, because it should have been posted on the last pod. The observation first. The state of Alabama needs to figure out how to fix the IVF issue and I was very happy to hear on the top of the pod that a bill had been introduced to do so especially by a republican. I am a reformed republican, meaning an independent these days, that as been somewhat the “squishy middle” on abortion for years, though solidly anti-Rowe for the simple reason that since law school I have seen no support for that decision in the constitution (neither the 14th nor any other amendment has a penumbra on which the court gets to gratuitously hang things). That said I have a fourteen year old upstairs who is a product of IVF and who is the light of my life, can’t live without her, reason for being of my existence. Yep, all that and a bag of chips. Short answer we need to figure this out. Against that the legal question. I read that on the federal level a bill has been introduced to protect IVF and, I assume, unimplanted blastocysts. What is the constitutional basis for that?

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    1. MathewA

      " I read that on the federal level a bill has been introduced to protect IVF and, I assume, unimplanted blastocysts. What is the constitutional basis for that?"

      IMHO, none. But then again I view most of the legislation since FDR to have no basis in the constitution. The commerce clause wasn't meant to allow the federal government to regulate the nation like we've allowed.

      For example, if we needed a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol at the federal level, then we should have needed one for a federal war on drugs, or the FDA

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  7. John Matthew IV

    I respect David French, born at Auburn, for not attending this event.

    War Eagle!

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  8. Mollie

    I was struck Escalona's point that law school is not very much like being a lawyer and doesn't prepare your expectations for life after law school. I'm a nurse and despite nursing clinicals and in-hospital training, I would say nursing school also doesn't prepare you super well for life as a bedside nurse after school! I expect this is probably fairly common in different professions, perhaps because full-time school is so unlike working full-time.

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    1. MathewA

      I'm an accountant and had the same thought. I really wish they could better set expectations. Ideally in the first class you took.

      For example, in my intro to business class I did a Monster.com project where we researched careers. That's how I switched from business management to accounting.

      We need something similar for what you really are expected to do with that major

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  10. New reader

    This podcast made me very sad. The guests all said that they did well because they had connections. Coming from a poor area , from a hard working, but not well connected, family, I still had hope because I had heard that , in America , you could do well if you worked hard. So glad I decided not to become a lawyer, but rather a doctor, which depended more on how much organic chemistry I studied, than who I knew.

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