Admission chances

Graduate School Law School
1

<p>Anyone want to take a guess what my chances are at getting into a decent law school? </p>

<p>I have an honours computer science degree from a top school, with an average around 70%. But since I never gave any thought to law school I took a lot of very hard, and very educational courses which brought my average down, and just my degree is considered a lot more challengine than a simple B.A. I could have taken for straight-A's.</p>

<p>LSAT-wise, I should be in the mid-high 160's.</p>

<p>I did extensive volunteer work as a student but that was 8 years ago. I have worked for years as court staff which meant I was right inside a criminal courtroom every day, I've observed hundreds of trials and every other kind of proceeding, including those closed to the public. My letters of reference will be from judges, and, obviously, I understand the legal system and actual criminal law quite well (better than most new lawyers).</p>

<p>Thanks for any insight.</p>

2

<p>How can you guess what your LSAT will be? Judges recommendations may not mean very much. LSAT & GPA are the two most dominant factors considered by law school admissions committees.
I will assume that you will be able to achieve over a 150 LSAT (which I think is the mean score). There are many law schools in the country that are accredited and will accept, for example, a 156 LSAT with significant work experience and a moderate GPA.
Your courtroom experience may be perceived as a negative by highly selective law schools--especially with the attitude that you know law better than many lawyers. Comments like that show a gross misunderstanding of the law, but good working knowledge of the court's administrative system. You are an administrator--not a lawyer. Working as a court administrator can ruin you for attorney work. For someone around the courts & lawyers for four years, you do not present yourself as one who thinks like a lawyer--more like an administrator. That being written, your inquiry is too broad. What do you mean by a top or good law school. Sorry but I am stunned by your lack of knowledge re: lawyers, law schools & the practice of law from a lawyer's standpoint.
There is an old adage that states that the "A" law students go on to become law professors, "B" law students work for the big firms making big bucks & "C" level law grads go on to become judges. This is a saying that has successfully withstood the test of time. The biggest hurdle faced by many trial lawyers is how to simplify issues so that the judge can understand them. All too often the attorney presenting the easiest understood version of a case wins.</p>

3

<p>CW overstates the case, but I think he/she is right on the essentials.</p>

<p>1.) Extensive courtroom experience will be a minus, not a plus, if you work to sell it too hard.
2.) LSAT projections need to be based on something in order to be reasonable.
3.) Your GPA is unclear to me; if you convert it to a 4.0 scale, what happens?
4.) Judge recommendations won't matter much.
5.) "Decent" is too vague for us to be helpful in providing answers.</p>

4

<p>BDM: I will bet that I have litigated many,many more cases than you. I have dealt with judges in six or seven different levels of court and know law schools well. My first response was restrained, not overstated by any means. To be clear to the OP: Law schools & lawyers will not like your attitude, your work experience or your writing. Although this may sound harsh, it is advice that should help you; and that is the intent of my posts.</p>

5

<p>You absolutely have more experience than me. 100% conceded on that point.</p>

6

<p>Thanks for your input so far.</p>

<p>First, I wouldn't direct that sort of attitude to the law schools, though based on your responses I will be a lot more careful than I otherwise would have.</p>

<p>For some of the other points, I'm in Canada, we don't use a GPA scale but percentage grades and averages. I'm not sure what mine converts too, but I do know it's not very impressive, it just has the mitigating factors I mentioned of being a very well respected degree but I'm not sure the law schools will look at that.</p>

<p>What I meant by decent was trying to place the schools here. American law schools run from very, very good to quite bad. Canadian just go from very, very good down to good, with far fewer spaces available. The lowest of the schools I was looking at, in their mature student category, says "Competitive candidates typically possess a 70% average at university and an LSAT score in the 65th percentile or better."</p>

<p>I'm just borderline on the 70%, though I'm quite confident I'm closer to the 85th percentile on the LSAT (based on historical raw to percentile conversions and the number of answers I'm certain of). The part that concerns me is the lack of current volunteer type stuff.</p>

<p>Also for September 2009, they're getting rid of the mature student category and taking "a holistic approach", so it's totally up in the air what the new criteria will be, that's one thing I'm nervous about.</p>

<p>For mature students, I know they want people with diverse experiences to "enrich" the learning environment, and I do understand that for the reasons you're thinking, my court experience won't help there, but I also do have a rather unique background for a law student (how many have B.Maths in Computer Science -- it gives me a different perspective, particulairly on intellectual property law). And I've seen people go to jail over computer crime, child porn, etc because their lawyers didn't understand computers enough to cross-examine the computer forensics expert and left glaring (to me) holes. I also do have work experience in the computer industry (Among other things, I wrote driver-related code for ATI before I started working for the courts). IT law is a rapidly expanding part of civil law, and I would bring a different point of view. I'm hoping that will help me.</p>

<p>Sorry this is so long-winded, but I'm really concerned about my chances.</p>