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Kaplan Test preparation group performed a survey recently and found a significant and growing gap between what law school seems prepared to offer their students and what the actual law students seek from their studies. That is not even taking into account that fact that affordable is hardly something you could call much of any of the law schools. Massive student loan debt from law school has become the norm unfortunately.

Kaplan’s study held that the following is true:

Competition cut-throat? Seventy-seven percent of students planning to pursue law school want law school environment to be collaborative in nature and with this culture that they are hoping to be a part of, they are sorely disappointed when they learn as students that they are not really collaborating and working together, but rather against on another. On the flipside, 23% of the pre-law students want their culture to be competitive by nature. This means that if you are ambitious and seek to be a top litigator, then you would thrive in such competitive atmospheres assuming that you could master the experience of law school as opposed to the former situation involved in going to undergrad classes. Interestingly, the law schools themselves boast collaborate and talk about that constantly; but that does not end up being the reality. A whopping 98 percent of law schools maintain that they have a collaborative approach and only 2% state that it is competitive by nature.

This points more to the fact that law schools are into marketing. If they see that the majority of their incoming students to the tune of 77% want collaborate, then that is what they are going to pitch. One texas law firm capitalized on the fact that most students deep down seek collaboration if they want steady jobs as associates. But the real rain makers thrive on the competitive edge. Hence they have undergone plans to focus certain hiring on the competitive group, and other phases on the hiring of less ambitious new associates.