I can't say that I agree with the bolded. I defend my PhD very soon. Never once did I contemplate dropping out of grad school at any point over the last 5 years.  Also, I didn't have to pay a dime for school, so can't say it's money wasted. Finally, I am pretty positive that all I learned in grad school will be very useful to me in my career. I'm going IP, so I may have interests different than yours...

Well, my PhD was also paid for as it was scientific, I was trying to make the point that if a PhD won't help your career, its a waste of money, maybe not for you, but it costs the government on average 200K to turn out PhD students.  Additionally, it might not cost you money to go to school, and you may get a stipend while in school, but in the long run you are losing wages during that time, so yes, you are paying for school assuming that you will make up those wages one day (and since we are all PhD's talking law school, i have no doubt that money will be made up).  I'm sure there are people that don't want to quit at some point, but I talked many people (including myself) off that cliff during grad school.  Finally, I never said it wasn't useful, I will be going into IP myself, so I'm sure (as I said) the degree will be useful and probably help me get a job.    My point is...if one is unsure whether or not to go to grad school as a means to get a better attorney position, their time could be better spent in other ways.  I never had any intention of going to law school when i started grad school, its something that developed as i progressed through grad school.  I think that saying "I want to go to grad school and then law school" is potentially a big mistake because 5 years is a lot of time to dedicate to a degree that you won't be using except as a way to convince people that you are an "expert" in something. 

I think I'm basically echoing what qmmm is saying. 

qmmm - thanks for the congrats..the dissertation was accepted by the school today, officially ending my graduate school career.  whew.....

CHICA!!!

Alas....I will be retiring from LSD for the forseeable future.  I have too much work to do finishing up my dissertation, doing experiments, and deciding if law school is really what I should be doing.

Best of luck to all of you with the cycle.  Perhaps I will make my way back around these parts after graduation.

- Bucky

I don't even know what to say.

http://www.lawschooldiscussion.org/prelaw/index.php/topic,71335.msg1677718/boardseen.html#new

a distant second:

http://www.lawschooldiscussion.org/prelaw/index.php/topic,76455.0.html

.