This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my link, at no extra cost to you.
Study Law vs. Business?
How to make a correct choice between law school or MBA? Lets see. In short, an MBA can be described as be more general graduate and law school as a specialized professional narrow-focused degree. Also, law school is more study-intense than MBA. At least that was my impression. Finally, the MBA allows for much more creativity than law school and business knowledge obtained through MBA is applicable for wider range of positions across industries, but it depends.
Law School vs. MBA choice depends on such factors as you previous experience and program rank.
Which path should you take – law school or MBA? The debate law school vs. MBA depends on many factors. Well, there are many considerations for each choice. A side note – law profession does not leave much room for creativity no matter what they tell you. It is a very strict and conservative profession requiring adherence to rules.
Business world – does offer many channels for creativity. Law is very specific, business has wide range of applications. Law school leads students to a specific profession – lawyer. MBA can have application in many settings. But, it depends on rank of MBA program.
Frankly, unless one goes to top college, both choices suck.
If you already have work experience MBA may boost your existing career. MBA from low-ranking business school will not yield new exciting career. MBA from high-ranking business school may.
I think MBA is better as a leverage to some specific business career of a student – from marketing to accounting. Law school can actually give possibility to start new career as attorney (who wants to go into supersaturated legal market?).
Organizational environment.
Like I said in the previous article law school vs. grad school, I enjoyed studying at the MBA program. And I also applied MBA knowledge in daily life and it helped me in my legal career. If I had to choose again between law school vs. MBA, it would be an MBA.
But I worked mostly in law and obtained MBA rather for my knowledge and interests. Finance was interesting. Economics too. Management – hell yeah! Almost fun, and I had a great professor.
In deciding between law school or MBA for personal interest, I would choose MBA. I enjoyed working and collaborating in groups for presentations, doing, preparing for presentations in lavish offices where some of our students worked at executive positions. In MBA they taught us how to collaborate and the environment was more collaborative. We learned how to quickly create cohesive teams from scratch for each project. I also learned few things about economics and can see market and other trends and read media news between the lines.
In law school, on the other hand, people either studied alone or in small study groups – tribes, formed by law school newbies at the beginning of the first semester and pretty much stayed in those tribes through the whole law school. People were competing for grades. Sometimes they lied to each other about grades.
It is a no-no in law school to discuss grades with classmates outside your tribe. We had people set other people up in an attempt to remove competition. Well, that was good preparation for being a lawyer shark in the future. In law school, we learned how to compete with each other rather than collaborating.
Well, I had law school friends and have them. We had quite a lot of fun together. And that is what we did not do in MBA – we did not form tribes that survived outside MBA much, except for professional individual connections. MBA program had a larger share of a married adults than law school. Everyone was busy working on their careers and coming back to their families.
In the MBA program, you form a group and then you may move on to the next group. But in law school, if you make a law school friend – that can become a friend for life. A law school tribe, a gang.
Law school vs. MBA difficulty (MBA vs. JD)
Law school or MBA decision must involve such factor as what you want to do with your life and what you are good at. In the MBA curriculum we studied a variety of specialized and some quantitative topics like economics, finance, accounting, management, operational management, marketing, etc.
I think MBA accounting is not enough to become an accountant, by the way. Same issue with finance. MBA is more of an overview of those topics. Each of these topics is a separate professional area in real life.
The law school curriculum is much narrower. We specifically studied law and law and law again – all theories. We drilled that law thinking in our heads. For law school newbie, law school life is a continuous hardcore and not fun study, study, and brain drilling, especially in the first year or year and a half.
In the second year, you realize that it is too late to drop out and the reality of going to law school and becoming a lawyer is different from what law professors told you in your first semester. Law school is a legal boot camp.
Law School or MBA - Job Prospects
This is probably the single most important consideration – which of the two better for getting a job. Frankly, nowadays it is very hard to say. I would think that the top 25 MBA programs by rank are almost on par with the top 25 law school programs in terms of prospects of getting a job.
But, the important difference in law school everyone usually starts from scratch, regardless of previous experience. There are exceptions which I will discuss in later posts. On the other hand, in the MBA, even at top MBAs, previous experience plays a large role in landing a job after graduation.
Job market for attorneys is dismal. Especially, for those who graduated from low-ranking law schools. In deciding between law school or MBA you must take that into account.
On the other hand, try to do Indeed.com search for MBA and you will find mostly positions which require significant professional work experience. You can also check US Department of Labor for info. Job market for low-tiered MBA’s is almost non-existent. Going for low-tiered MBA after low tier law school will not make job candidate more employable.
Law School vs. MBA Salary
Law school vs. MBA will lead to a different salary long term. If someone worked in finance and obtained a Wharton MBA degree, most likely they will jump into the executive role relevant to their finance experience and land a really good salary up to several hundred thousand dollars annually. Others will get anywhere from 50k to 200K annual salary upon graduation.
On the other hand, law school top 25 graduate after passing the bar exam and able to get into Big Law is usually looking at anywhere from 90k to 160k in their first year. Unless they have previous engineering or medical experience and degree – then doors are open for them.
I know about a pharmacist who went to law school and got a 300k job offer in the third year of law school plus assistance with bar preparation course to pass the bar. It is all about the law of supply and demand.
Anything outside the top 25 is a wild guess but probably also on par. But anything after the top 50 – there are zero guarantees of job.
Take the same person without much previous job experience who went to law school ranking 100-150 may have a better shot at a job than the same person who went to 100-150 ranking MBA program. Why? For a few reasons.
First of all, there about twice as many MBA programs in the country compare to law schools. Second, MBA is a general degree and employers know that. No one can become an accountant, finance or investment pro with just an MBA. Law school too, but graduate from the top 14 law school has to sit for the same bar exam as a law student who graduated from law school ranking 100-150.
If both pass the bar, they become alike specialists, with prestige pedigree and professional connections being the difference.
Except, one form top law school will get a job offer, and one from bottom law school will have to find any relevant job to gain experience, or open own law office because of lack of jobs.
MBA students generally cannot open office unless they come up with some good business service or product idea.
MBA after low tier law school
Does it make sense to obtain MBA after low tier law school? Well, what for? You do not need MBA to become a lawyer. MBA may help catch and eye of employer, but I think it will be a waste of time.
After law school you need to prep for bar, take and pass the bar exam right away. Otherwise, you will forget all you learned in law school if you go for an MBA.
As always, the exception to this rule would be if you somehow get into top 25 MBA programs in the country. Maybe top 50. But top 25 for sure.
In such a case I would try not to miss opportunity of having top MBA on my resume. I may kick in later in your legal career or may start your business career right out of MBA program.
But keep in mind, that when going for MBA after low tier law school you may loose your bar preparation ability – business school will replace all you learned in law school.
Also, unless top MBA, when you apply for legal jobs recruiters and employers will be puzzled as to why you went for MBA and may ask questions about it to make sure you actually want to be attorney.
MBA after low tier law school may be helpful for law grads who cannot find attorney position and want to open own office. Business knowledge helps. But I would rather go for accounting courses and some online marketing course, rather than go for a full MBA. But it will not hurt. Just make sure you keep enough steem to prepare and pass bar exam. That is all that matters for attorney.
Overall, low tier MBA after low tier law school will not give you any job searching advantage. But it may help you gain some additional knowledge for yourself. Some business perspective. However, do not get into huge student debt just to get another low-tiered diploma to your collection.
MBA after low tier law school most likely will not land you a job. Unless, it is from top MBA program. Get your GMAT books and courses, work ass of to increase your GMAT score, and then apply for top 50 MBA programs. That may help your career somehow, or may launch a new career somewhere in consulting or media.
Cost vs. Benefit Analysis
As always, this comes down to the cost-benefit analysis. If you can go through a non-top 50-100 MBA program for like less than 15K annual tuition, or you can go through law school for less than 15K annual tuition – I do not even know what to choose. I think law school may offer better value for this money.
But, between lower-tier MBA for 10k tuition, and lower-tier law school for 15-30K annual tuition, I would say just go and get an MBA for your pleasure and personal knowledge. Not because the MBA is better, but because I am totally against spending anything more than 15K annually on any low tier program.
Between low tiered MBA for 15K or more annual tuition, and low tier law school for the same – I would choose law school because at least it is a professional degree. This is my opinion from personal experience and not advice.
Unless some MBA programs come up with teaching new relevant specific and tech or other skills in great demand by employers, the situation will not change. Having said that, if you want to break into, say, accounting after MBA, then try to take as many accounting electives as you can, even if it means taking an evening MBA program and extending it an extra year or so. Or, finance. Or statistics. Yes, statistics can be used even in the IT industry.
TIP: I would try to take electives that give you more specific hands-on skills: accounting, quantitative finance, statistics, applied mathematics, if available. Because at least you may have a shot at some specific job later, including switching to IT or programming.
In my opinion, entrepreneurship is really about recognizing market opportunities and serving the market via sales. MBA does not teach students how to market and sell to the public. Just like law school does not teach law students how to practice law.
That’s the flaw in our outdated educational system which teaches concepts and theories instead of specific skills.
If you cannot find a job after law school or MBA – take a low-paying job which will teach you specific relevant work skills. Or, unpaid internship. Or, take a sales job. Pretty much any sales job. That is what I did and I received very valuable experience and skills for life. Yes, I did not make much money. Yes, was not easy and I killed my car driving B2B. Yes, was frustrating at times.
But I lost the fear of coming up to strangers and making deals. I did a few good deals with small and large local businesses like Wal-Mart, where we were able to promote our company services right there in the store, to customers of those stores – B2B marketing.
And if you are offered a securities, insurance, annuities or other sales position – take it for a couple of years to learn some sales tricks, and then you can switch and take more college or community college classes in accounting, finance, statistics, economics, operations or IT to move into those industries.
Final thoughts on making a choice
It is unlikely to get a good entry-level position with just non-top MBA, but in my career, MBA kicked in several times later in my life, bringing some good money because employers or partners saw me as worthy. Still, you need to decide on a specialization.
By the way, it is OK to get MBA and then go to an accounting trade school or even community college to specialize in accounting – they still may land you the specific job even though you will seem overqualified. Just get more A’s in your accounting classes. And never forget to smile a lot – this trick works wonders beyond any common-sense explanation.
You can check US Department of Labor for more information about business degrees and job prospects. There you will read one paragraph which indicates that MBA is not necessarily required for most of professions. Just may be helpful.
I will not go any deeper into MBA studies just yet. I may have a separate blog about it later. Do you want me to? Then subscribe to my blog, my YouTube channel, my Pinterest account and write in the comments.
By the way, I would appreciate if you share this article – hopefully, it can help some people to make a better decision. Remember that in the end choosing between law school or MBA or other grad school is all about cost vs. benefit to YOU personally, according to your personal, life or career goals.
