Does a JD give you more flexibility than an MA/MPP/MPA?

[MeganSaraS]

Hi!  I've been a longtime lurker on this forum, and I'm hoping to do my grad school applications in September/October.  I'm about to take the GRE for the second time this August (first time scores: Q: 150, V:165, AW: 5.5).  The first time I took the GRE, I went in with very little studying, which is very clear based on my quant score.  I'm also a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia, and I have other work experience abroad and some nonprofit work experience.

I was planning on applying to HKS, SAIS, Fletcher, WWS, GW, Georgetown, and Korbel (I graduated from DU in 2015 with majors in IR and Journalism).  I really want to work in the IR field, especially international development, but I'm also pretty flexible about what this career trajectory could look like.  Basically, I was pretty set on this path until I read something that made me stop and think.

Someone mentioned that in the IR field, people with JDs tend to be paid more.  For me, it's not so much about the pay as it is about the flexibility to find work.  Would a JD give more flexibility in terms of finding a job or give me more opportunities to advance?  What's your experience with people that have JDs vs MAs/MPPs/MPAs?  Any insight would be appreciated!

[wcw]

I have worked at 4 different development organizations (private foundation, development contractor, consultancy firm, non-profit) and I have never met a single JD. I have met many, many MPPs, MPAs, and MBAs. 

Don't go to law school because you want to do international development. Go to law school because you want to be a lawyer. If anything, you'll be coming out of your JD with 3 years of debt instead of 2 years, and you'll still be applying for similar roles as if you had gotten an MPP/MPA/MBA. 

[ZebraFinch]

If you want to stick to IR, don't get a JD. I mean, I'm not convinced an MPP/MPA/grad school is an answer for an IR job either, but still better than a JD. I've met two people with JD's only, and they both had a ton of experience elsewhere before getting an IR job.

[Ben414]

 I occasionally visit the Government Affairs forum out of intrigue, but I haven't felt the need to post in quite a while. Although I'm going to echo what everyone else has said, it's worth repeating: Don't go to law school to become anything other than a lawyer. Don't go to law school because you think you will get paid more because of your degree. Don't go to law school to become an international development/human rights/etc. lawyer unless you have done extensive research on how to become one and the realities of what being one looks like, you are able to get into a law school that gives you a relatively good chance of reaching that goal, the school's COA is significantly reduced for you (or you have an incredible LRAP like Yale), and you are willing to become a lawyer in a different area if it doesn't work out.

[ExponentialDecay]

17 hours ago, MeganSaraS said:

Someone mentioned that in the IR field, people with JDs tend to be paid more.  For me, it's not so much about the pay as it is about the flexibility to find work. 

Then why does it matter that people with JDs get paid more?

Lawyers get paid more because lawyers always get paid more. If you want to be a lawyer, a JD is a good idea. Otherwise, no. 

Assuming by "flexibility to find work" you mean you want to easily find a job, using the term "flexibility" is a bit ironic. The most requested people are people with a narrow specialization... but then you have a narrow specialization. You have to be careful about picking one because it may very well lock you into a certain region, type of organization, or even fall out of vogue in a few years and leave you doing the unemployment version of Eat Pray Love. Law (or finance, and sometimes M&E) is a good specialization because it's basically a support role that allows you to work on a variety of projects in a variety of organizations and it has exit opps from the field. In that sense it's good. Getting a JD to work in any non-law role? Huge waste of your time.

Ultimately your question is never about degrees. You just default to degrees because school is all you've known so far and this is how you understand career progression (and PC, for all its benefits, does little to teach you otherwise - yeah you're in a "shithole country", but someone else is still making the strategic decisions for you). If you have the right skills, most organizations won't care if you have a degree or not. A degree is either the first step or a formality - it won't determine your "flexibility" or your success in the field. For all the harping that schools do on their successful alumni, success is something you create yourself. This is as delicate as the balance between flexibility and specialization, but while it's important not to do dumb shit like take out 6 figures for an MPA or get a JD to not work as a lawyer, if you're gonna do school, do a program that works for you. Maybe that's HKS, maybe that's Georgetown, or maybe it's a tiny university in Europe. Don't follow anyone's advice.

[chocolatte_]

JDs are for those who want to practice law. Not everyone practices forever, and there are definitely other things you can do with a JD, such as become director of an institute or go into policy. In the same way, an MD could become director of a health policy think tank, or become the CEO of a hospital group. These are later in life career changes, however, and you need to do the attorney work first - especially if you have 6 figure debt to work off from law school.

Also, JDs are increasingly taking non-attorney positions because there aren't enough attorney positions left. The field is suffering due to several factors, automation being one of them, so you're considering a degree in which it's hard to even do what the degree is supposed to be for.

These are the patterns I'm seeing; the choice of what to do is up to you. You wouldn't be the first person to get a JD because you think it gives you flexibility, and you won't be the last. One thing I suggest, if you can make it happen, is to find a program which lets you do a legal focus, or at least take some law school classes. That way, you get some of the experience and knowledge without having to go all in.

 

[Boolakanaka]

Just to add-in, but on the side side of the coin—the JD as a pathway to a public policy career. Now, granted I have 20 plus years in law, and a LLM in sustainable development (which was basically fully funded). But, I have held numerous senior public policy positions such as Genral Counsel to a US Senate Committee, Senior Policy Advisor at the US State Department, Democratic Governors Association (DGA) and US HHS and Director of Policy for a State Governor, as well as international consulting gigs wth everyone from Boston Consulting to the UN and the Asian Development Bank. My point being, is that I was not exclusively piegoned holed into legal positions, but rather, brought an additional patina of experience and expertise. 

The LLM in sustainable development at the University of Washington Law is at once very small, can be tailored to your specific areas of interest and comes with both a high degree of financial support and placement. See—https://www.law.uw.edu/academics/llm/sid