My standard response to people who aren't sure if they want to go to law school is, "Don't." In the past, I've gone on to say, "Law school sucks enough that unless you're positive you want to practice law [*], you shouldn't spend three years of your life at it."

This NYT article reminds me that my answer also must include, "and the job market is so bad that it is an amazingly risky gamble."

So, for the record.

[*] Two notes about "practice law":

First, if you're one of the minuscule number of people who can go straight into teaching law, you don't need to be asking me for advice.

Second and far more importantly, as the article says:

This gets to what might be the ultimate ugly truth about law school: plenty of those who borrow, study and glad-hand their way into the gated community of Big Law are miserable soon after they move in.

If you don't know what kind of law you want to practice and what it'll be like, it behooves you to find out.