I have a strong interest in politics. I didn’t choose it just because it is a common major for law school. I chose it because it fascinates me the most
Thank you for this suggestion. In regards to the good for five years rule. Does it have to be within five years of applying or within five years of when I start attending?
For me it was 5 years of the application date, as I recall. However, you should check with the LSAT folks; it might also be something that each state bar determines.
It is easy to assert: “That the top law students at my law school had no trouble finding employment.”
The problem is in defining “top law students” and in the debt burden carried by any individual law student.
Placement into the highest paying law firms usually is a realistic option for those with median or slightly below median class rank standing at top 14 law schools.
I doubt that posters referring to “the top ranked law students at my law school” are referring to students ranked anywhere near median in their law school class.
One should understand most likely employment outcomes from attending any particular law school prior to enrolling. The differences are substantial. Check out lawschooltransparency.com to understand further & with specificity.
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With respect to T-14 law schools: Prospective law school students are obsessed with the top ranked law schools in order to have a realistic chance at landing a position as an attorney with income sufficient to pay off one’s student loans in a reasonable number of years.
To those able to attend a low cost state supported law school as well as those who earn substantial merit scholarships to attend law school, there is less pressure to secure a high-paying position after graduation.
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Also, some law students may simply not want to live/work in a large city; and may not want to work 80 hours a week in a big city law firm in order to generate the big salaries to pay for a higher cost of living (+/- student debt).
A lot of it just comes down to personal preference.
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You are correct; I was referring to the students in the upper 20% of my public flagship university’s law school. Although I would say that most of the top 50% from my law school found good work (based on anecdotal and some empirical evidence).
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I think the WSJ did an “expose” of sorts a few years ago about how hard it is to keep those merit awards after the first year of Law School… forced rankings, kids losing their merit, etc. So choice- drop out of law school after one year, or keep on and finance the next two years with loans? This is “personal preference”?
For a kid who cannot get admitted to his/her public law school or a top private who either needs hefty merit or loans, this might be karma telling you “maybe plan B?”
This is not an argument about Big Law or bust. This is reality that low tier law schools have poor bar passage rates and do not do a good job with career development.
Not everyone can/wants to/should work at Skadden Arps. But few law school grads want to be working as a paralegal temp after finishing a law degree.
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What I was referring to when I mentioned personal preference was that some law students – and I am thinking of the ones who attend (and attended) my public flagship university’s law school – might simply want to go home to their small town or small city, or wherever they are from, and engage in the practice of law there. It’s more a lifestyle preference for when they get out of law school – they don’t want or need the “LA Law” or “Boston Legal” (or whatever is the current show about the high-powered practice of law in a big city) experience.
I agree with you completely about the reality of the lower-tier law schools, especially those that saddle their graduates with a lot of debt.
We are in agreement. There are lots of paths to having a successful and satisfying career in the law-- but so many myths and half truths and outright lies.
I am counseling a young woman, recent college grad, hasn’t really launched, thinks she may want to go to law school, needs a job now. Her “Backup” career if she can’t get a job at a good firm is to become a Federal Prosecutor. I almost choked on my coffee as I explained to her the path to becoming a prosecutor- top grades and near the top of your class (unless you are at Yale which this young woman will not be), tippy top recommendations from your professors, then a clerkship or maybe two…
Yikes. When did the myth get started that this is a backup career???
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You have a very good plan. You definitely don’t need to worry about a T-15 law school if you are planning on doing JAG as your first “job” after law school. Coming from being a JAG will open just as many doors for you as a T-15 law school. Might as well get the military to pay for your law school! Being a JAG will get you amazing advocacy experience that no baby out of law school working for BigLaw is going to get. Also, you will not need a Big Law salary to support yourself because you will not have loans. You are also doing the right thing timing wise. At least when I graduated from law school, there was a kid in my class who was not eligible to sit for the bar for a couple of years because he was too young. I think you might be pushing that if you went to law school in a year. As for the MIP, its always better to disclose than get caught not disclosing. There was a question on a state bar application application about whether I had ever failed to pay my debts and I said no. I almost didn’t get licensed because someone had reported a $15 charge from a doctors office to a collection agency (that was not even MY debt). I actually had to go to an ethics hearing over failing to disclose it! Some states and schools are very strict about disclosure.
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Most of the federal prosecutors – Assistant U.S. Attorneys – whom I know locally are either former JAG Corps officers, or former state DAs who came over after many years working for the State, or attorneys who joined after many years in private practice. The common thread for all of them is many years of the practice of law before joining a U.S. Attorney’s office. So, yes, unless you have a J.D. from a top law school, and have clerked for one or more judges, then you are not going to slide into a job as a federal prosecutor right out of law school. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen, except on television or in the movies.
Whenever parents I know with kids in college ask me if their children can talk to me about law school, I say that I am happy to but I am going to tell them that they should probably work for a couple of years before applying to law school: first, you get a little bit of real life experience, plus a little bit of money in your pocket (both of which are good to have in law school); second, that work experience helps you focus on what you really want to do with your life, and whether you even want to practice law; and third, law schools aren’t going anywhere, so it really doesn’t matter when you start or graduate.
Good luck with the young woman who you are counseling!
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And, no felony convictions! One of my law school classmates, after graduation, went to take the bar exam in another state where he had a job lined up; it turns out that he had pled guilty to a felony when he was in high school – something stupid like vandalism, or malicious mischief, or some other property crime – and when the state bar ran a routine check on his criminal history, that felony conviction came up. As a result, he could not take the bar exam and, thus, could not practice law. All that law school tuition down the drain! It was very sad for him. (I don’t know whether he was able to get the conviction expunged or not, or how his tale ended up.)
Good catch on the felonies!
And I love your line “law school isn’t going anywhere”. I wish you could get that word out!
Great advice on this thread - I wish that prospective law students were required to read it. When people ask me whether they should think about law school, I usually say that you should only go to law school if: (1) you can get into a top national school (the term “T14” is essentially Georgetown propaganda but gets at the general idea), OR (2) you have enough financial aid/other resources to attend debt-free and already know what kind of practice you want to have, OR (3) you have a guaranteed job waiting for you due to family connections. I find that some humanities grads think of “law school” generically as a relatively straightforward way to monetize their non-STEM undergrad degree, but they don’t understand how little margin for error there may be at a lower-ranked law school. I used to mentor 1L and 2L students at a regional public law school, and while a small handful of top students got decent jobs with local firms or via personal connections, even the best of the rest often struggled to find anything. Some ended up with public-sector jobs or quasi-volunteer jobs with small non-profits, but it was tough. A few actually dropped out to avoid going any further into debt. Law school isn’t always the right choice.
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FWIW: It may be of interest to OP & other readers of this thread to compare median first year starting salaries of recent law graduates by law school as compiled by lawschooltransparency.com: (there are currently about 200 ABA–American Bar Association–accredited law schools in the US):
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Columbia–$185,800
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UPenn–$179,700
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Cornell–$179,200
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NYU–$177,200
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Northwestern–$176,100
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Virginia–$175,700
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UChicago–$174,000
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Harvard–$172,400
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Duke–$168,300
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Stanford–$163,900
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UCal-Berkeley–$160,300
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Georgetown–$145,600
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Michigan–$145,200
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Yale–$130,700 (almost 26% of grads opt for lowering paying federal judicial clerkships)
The above listed schools make-up the Top 14 law schools as ranked by US News. The above figures represent just first year associate salaries and do not include annual bonus compensation (which is about $15,000 to $25,000 for first year associates employed in national law firms).
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Vanderbilt–$129,300
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Fordham–$118,200
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UCLA–$110,000
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Boston University–$109,300
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UTexas–$106,100
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USC–$99,325
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Notre Dame–$95,300
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WashUStL–$93,300
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Boston College–$91,700
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George Washington Univ. (GWU)–$87,200
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Southern Methodist Univ. (SMU)–$87,700
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Santa Clara–$79,600
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Univ. of San Diego–$77,000
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UNLV (Univ. of Nevada-Las Vegas)–$73,600
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College of William & Mary–$70,000
The remaining law schools’ median first year salaries tend to be in the low $60,000 to $50,000 range. Raises at non-national law firms tend to be about $5,000 or $6,000 per year, but can vary by a wide margin. Most of the national law firms pay on a lock-step compensation system. Annual raises tend to be about $20,000 or more for base salary and a bit more with respect to annual bonus amounts.
The likelihood of being offered a position as an attorney or other position requiring a law degree is significantly higher for graduates of the top ranked law schools than for lower ranked law schools.
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I realize @publisher knows this but for other potential law school applicants and law students looking at this salary info – the difference in salary at the top is not that someone from Columbia gets paid more than someone from NYU or Harvard, but rather reflects how many students go directly into the highest paying “biglaw” jobs where $190k is currently the starting salary, and how many go into public interest or clerkships, which pay a lot less. Also, some of the top law schools – including Harvard and NYU – have the best low income protection plans for students going into public interest work, which makes it easier for students with loans to take those public interest jobs. Once you move down the list, you start to see the impact of narrower career options – schools where the bulk of the class will be competitive for mid-market or regional firms which pay a lot less than big law “market” salary. Some schools do really well in their own markets – BU/BC and Fordham, so more of the class will have access to those high paying jobs in Boston and New York respectively.
For students making decisions about law school – the key is to find the sweet spot between indebtedness and career options, and that spot will vary, depending on the student’s priorities and goals. Students in the top of their class at schools ranked 15-25 (or 30, no clear cut-off, and people can argue about where it starts to drop off and what “top of the class” means) will still be competitive for biglaw market rate jobs, but will have to network more and will have some doors closed to them (heck, I’ve heard that Wachtell, one of the elite of the elite NY firms, doesn’t interview below #7 Penn, though I don’t know if that’s true).
The challenge is, no one can predict before 1L year just how well any particular student will do – everyone in the top 25 law or so schools was a very good student in undergrad so it’s not like there are a lot of slackers in a law school class. Plus, who does well is not always tied directly to work ethic – some people just find law school more accessible while others struggle more in making sense of the concepts. Plus there is the high stakes exam format, often with a mandatory curve – typically, a single, cumulative exam at the end of the semester which is graded anonymously and which uses a new format – the dreaded “issue spotter” that takes getting used to for most students. So it is a big mistake for a student to think, “I’ve always been an A student so I’m sure I will be in law school.”
(Advice shared with love, and kindness, from an attorney/law professor with a child in law school).
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And to add to Midwestmom’s terrific post- someone who was a strong student in college while juggling EC’s, maybe a sport, and a part-time job, thinks they are going to replicate that in law school. Yes- there are some very strong students in top law schools who can do something else while in law school. But even someone who managed to juggle in undergrad is going to be astonished at how time-consuming law school is. Your volunteer work? That will be a clinic (a law clinic) where you learn how to be a lawyer while being supervised by professors and actual lawyers. Maybe representing indigent clients in housing court. Your EC’s? That will be getting on a journal or law review. Your part-time job? Being LUCKY enough to get a research spot editing for a law professor. Law, law and more law.
So the mistake that Midwestmom points out “I’ve always been an A student and that won’t change in law school” gets exacerbated by the sense that “I’ve always been able to juggle- what’s so hard about just going to class and studying?”, forgetting that your outside classroom commitments are VERY time-consuming as well.
So you decide you aren’t interested in editing, research, clinic, journal, etc? You’d better hope you have some really cool work experience between undergrad and law school- because otherwise, you aren’t going to have much to talk about during an interview!!!
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Agree with @Midwestmomofboys & with @blossom regarding all comments, but especially with respect to “A students in college who expect to be A students in law school”.
The basic difference is that colleges & universities tend to reward undergraduates for memorization & regurgitation of memorized material on examinations.
This will not work in law school—especially during one’s first year of law school which rewards “issue spotting” = analysis of a situation followed by asking relevant questions (raising appropriate issues).
Recommending a proposed course of action or suggesting a “right answer” is usually not necessary if one spots the correct issues to research in light of the facts & circumstances presented on the test. This type of uncertainty can make former “straight A students” uncomfortable since hard work & sustained effort by itself does not “produce” the “correct response or right answer”. And, to further raise the level of discomfort of first year law students, there is often no universally correct response in common law jurisdictions = the law is fluid = constantly subject to change.
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My experience was about 50% of my law school class came in thinking they would be top 10% of the class. Even for attorneys (who generally suck at math – want to make a group of attorneys nervous – tell them you are going to do math – and not high level calculus – just beyond basic arithmetic or algebra) the math obviously doesn’t work. There was some bitterness after our first semester for the 40% who didn’t make it in the top 10% but a semester or so later, in general people came to acceptance where they were. A few tried to do something about it and were sucessful. And a few were bitter at graduation.
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