Hi guys! It’s been a while since I posted but I just finished up my first semester at a state university and it went awesome! Even though it’s still early in the process, I’ve been trying to look into some law schools that I think would be a good fit. I finished my first semester with a 3.9 so hopefully if I don’t slack it should stay at least around the 3.7-3.9 range. I am an economics major so I know it will be pretty tough, but I love it! Anyways, I have of course looked into the typical Harvard and Yale law schools, but I’m not feeling really drawn to them. I am not going into law solely because of money. While a nice paycheck would be good (if I got one) in order to pay off debt, I genuinely want to go to law school to help people and because the law interests me. It is what makes me still want to go even after hearing stories about why you shouldn’t or hearing the names that lawyers are called. I think I would really like to do criminal law or veterans law, and do pro bono work with a child advocacy group. A few law schools that I feel more “drawn” to are Stetson in Florida and Drexel in Philly. I really like Drexel’s co-op program and I don’t understand why more law schools don’t have anything like it.
If my GPA stays high and I manage to get a high LSAT, I’m hoping to get some good scholarships even if that means having to go to a lesser known school. At the end of the day, I’m just wanting a law school where the students are truly passionate about helping people and where it’s not all about getting into a BigLaw firm and making $$$. I don’t mind a state university law school but I think I might be interested in a small school where I will be able to get more one-on-one with professors and be able to know more of my classmates. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! (BTW, I think I’m going to go volunteer with Americorps’s City Year before I apply anywhere.)
Wrong answer. Good pro bono gigs are harder to get than Big Law. NYU Law has a huge PI group, for example, all of which will be interveiwed/hired over a Drexel grad.
You should go to the highest ranked school that you can afford. If you have the numbers for Harvard you will easily receive merit money from others in the T14. Unless Drexel pays you to attend, you would be wasting that GPA.
Graduate, work for a year, and then study for the LSAT. Prosper.
I don’t follow your logic at all.
If you are inherently interested in the law per se, why wouldn’t you go to Harvard or Yale? They have the leading experts in law teaching at them and the sharpest students in law studying at them. I believe that HLS has the world’s largest law library. Why on earth wouldn’t you be interested?
If you are inherently interested in helping people, your view of HLS and YLS is incredibly condescending, and it’s wrong, too. Have you not looked on the HLS and YLS websites? Both schools are full of passionate people who want to change the world for the better, and there are slews of resources there to help you do that. YLS, for example, sends a relatively small number of people to large law firms; a disproportionate number (compared to Columbia, for example) from YLS go to public interest, in part because public interest jobs are very hard to get and it takes having a YLS degree to really open doors in fields that “help people”.
Have you not heard of Barack Obama, and do you not know where he went to law school and what career path he took? Have you not heard of the Supreme Court and seen where its members went to law school? Did any of them go to Drexel or Stetson?
Drexel has a co-op program. So what? At better schools, you don’t need co-op programs because you get hired due to working in the summer. HLS and YLS have plenty of programs for working during the year, typically for high-profile professors or clinics. Their students don’t need to get jobs during the school year–they use the school year to learn.
And Stetson? Seriously?
Do you think that anyone goes to Drexel or Stetson because they dream of it? No; they go because they couldn’t get in anywhere better.
I’d spend time learning about what law schools offer before taking the LSAT and applying to them. Don’t wreck your career (public interest or not) by going to a third-rate law school where the talent pool is small and options are limited.
What I mean is that I really feel like I wouldn’t fit in. Academically, maybe I would. But I’ve just always heard that a lot of people who go to the Ivy law schools are ones who want to get into BigLaw, but now I see that that’s definitely a minority case. Thank you.
Pretty much every single person from HLS and YLS is eligible to get into BigLaw. Only a small portion of them do at YLS, and only some of them do at HLS (more than YLS, but still only far fewer than are eligible). Thus pretty much everyone can go to BigLaw, but most don’t want to, and of the ones who do, a lot of them drop out of that rat race after a few years and move onto greener pastures, from teaching to serving as President to heading nonprofit organizations.
There is no “type” at HLS or YLS, other than having high LSAT and SAT scores; you can easily find your own niche at either school.
Its a professional school in a profession which really cares about preftige. Yes, many, perhaps even most, who attend a T14 end up in Big Law, but the T14 also opens more doors to public interest gigs.
You need to look at professional school different than choosing undergrad – fit should be a minor consideration, unless you have a family that cannot relocate.
@bluebayou is exactly right. All that matters in law school is the outcome: the job you get and your financial situation with that job (e.g., the debt load that you have and the salary, public interest or otherwise, that you have).
Note that the higher-ranked the school, the more likely it is to have some type of debt repayment plan for public interest work–HLS will repay at least some of your law school loans if you pick a public interest career.
Some things to think about are where you want to live & practice, how easy it will be to participate in relevant clinicals and intern/extern programs, and what your appeal will be to prospective employers in that area. My own opinion is that many students are better off with a high class rank at a “lower” school than a mediocre record at Harvard and its ilk. I’m in the SF Bay Area, and top-10 applicants from Stanford, Boalt, Hastings, USF, Santa Clara, and, yes, even Golden Gate, who have relevant clinical experience and are able to be productive from day one impress me a lot more than a Harvard B who knows nothing of California law.
Huh? Why would you or anyone, for that matter, be looking for a JD in California who has not passed the California bar?
P.S. It’s a fool that matriculates into law school with the expectation that s/he will be in the top 10 of the class. Nearly every other student has the exact same goal, and it is statistically impossible. One should assume median, and then look at the job opportunities.
P.P.S.
Golden Gate has a 25% employment score. Looked at another way 75% of its grads do not end up with a legal job requiring a JD. Just an awful choice.
@bluebayou : The California bar exam does not specifically test knowledge of California law, except in specified areas. See here for more information: http://admissions.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/4/documents/gbx/BXScope_R.pdf
In my area, which is criminal law, it does not require knowledge of the the California Penal Code. I do. We often hire recent graduates as legal assistants before bar admission. This is not unusual. Does that answer your question? If not, be more specific, and I’ll try to do better.
Not an “awful choice” for the #1 in his class at GG who has a good job with me. I don’t think you’re grasping what I was talking about, and we’re in danger of straying off topic from OP’s question. I was trying to point out that there are alternatives to Harvard and its ilk that can be considered. If the student has Harvard-level qualifications, the student may well be a superstar at a “lesser” school and have job options more suited to him or her (please look at OP’s statement about interests).
@AboutTheSame, bluebayou is correct and seems to clearly understand your posts.
If a student has Yale-level qualifications, the person can turn down Yale and get a full scholarship at another Ivy or other top school. Nobody–nobody–turns down Yale for somewhere like Golden Gate (or Drexel or Stetson); someone who turns down Yale goes to somewhere like Duke. Duke is a good alternative to Yale (it’s highly regarded, gives generous merit aid and there is likely significant overlap in job prospects with Yale) and can be considered in lieu of Yale; Golden Gate is not and cannot be.
Nobody should ever plan to go to a “lesser” school and plan to be highly-ranked in the class though since, for law school, “prior performance does not guarantee future results”; getting amazing grades in an undergrad major often requires different interests and often less competition than getting amazing grades in law school.
Northeastern Law also has a successful co-op program, if that’s what you’re looking for. But I tend to agree with the others that the better law schools present better opportunities in public interest law. For example, since you mention that you are doing City Year, that was a program founded by Alan Khazei, a Harvard Law School graduate.
@HappyAlumnus : Feel free to hold your views. I will stick to my own hiring practices, which have served quite well.
Anyone attending any law school expecting to be #1 in the class is a fool. Plain and simple.
And don’t forget, that Harvard-level qualifications includes a 3.8 from Podunk State, plus an excellent score on a 3-hour test.
And the job options coming from Stanford & Boalt beat those of any grad from Golden Gate. If the OP is interested in Philly, for example, Penn is a much, much better choice than Drexel will ever be, unless Drexel will pay the OP cash money to attend.
I’m sure that they have. But the unicorn that you may hire from Golden Gate will not find such hiring practices at ~90% of other companies/firms.
The current market for hires stinks. We currently graduate 2x as many attorneys as we need each and every year. For the mathematically-challenged, that means that ~50% of all newly minted JDs do not get a job requiring a JD. It’s a numbers game, and the numbers are terrible.
IMO, the best option is to ensure a chance of getting a job that requires a JD, and than means not being stupid in assuming that one will be #1 in the class. Instead, attend a high-ranked law school.
What the OP may not understand is that the Public Interest programs cost a lot of money to run, and the best training programs are run by the wealthiest large urban law schools. Hence, you find the best public interest law programs at Harvard, Columbia, NYU rather than smaller, less well-known schools. For example Harvard’s Legal Aid Bureau is more than 100 years old–older than most of the law schools the OP was talking about–and they have more than 10 full time instructional staff, plus several supporting tenured professors. How many schools can devote those kinds of resources to public interest law?, and that’s just one of many different public interest programs at Harvard.
I graduated from a state law school - albeit a very good one - over 25 years ago, clerked for an appellate court judge, worked at a large private law firm and have been an appellate prosecutor for the last 21 years. Throughout my career, I’ve worked alongside graduated of Harvard, Yale, Columbia and other “top” law schools. The only difference between us - I graduated with virtually no debt. I chose to go to this school over NYU, Fordham, Columbia and Boston University simply because I could graduate without the same debt load. And it hasn’t changed the trajectory of my career one bit. I truly believe that, unless you want to teach at a law school, or become a United State Supreme Court justice, it doesn’t matter where you went to law school, especially after you get that first job.
The whole discussion is a bit premature until you get a feel for how you will do on the LSAT. In the meantime keep your GPA as high as possible (sounds like you’re off to a great start).
I’m in the camp of “go to the highest tier law school that you can reasonably afford.” But I also agree with some earlier comments suggesting it’s not the end-all be-all.
I enjoyed law school very much, even though it was tough. Wish I could do it over and get even more out of it.
Unlike the previous poster, I hated law school and thought it was the worst 3 years of my life. LOL. I agree with the previous posts that you should go to the best law school that you can get into and graduate from with the least amount of debt. But I would add that I applaud you for making plans early. Sure, you can have a 3.9 from State U and get into Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, etc. But look at their admission numbers and you will see that out of thousands of applicants, they maybe took one applicant from Midwest State U; maybe they took 5 from University of Texas or UCLA. In other words, your odds of getting in are still tough. The good news is that it is a buyers market. Law school applications are down and law schools are getting aggressive in going after the best students.
A few things to keep in mind in your school hunt: generally, you work in the geographic region of your law school. What part of the country do you want to live in? We have had clerks at our firm from all over the country, but when their law school is over, they get jobs in the region of their school. Are you flexible in your career goals? If I had a dollar for every law student who went to law school intending to be one kind of lawyer when they graduated but then had to practice in a different area, I would be rich. In my graduating class we had a lady who graduated number two in the class and was determined to be a tax lawyer. She couldn’t get a job because she didn’t have an accounting degree. I’m not saying it is absolutely required, but I know she went through a lot of heart ache that last semester when all her friends were getting offers and she was planning to pound the pavement in search of a job despite 3 years of hard work. My associate that works under me went to school with a passion to help children by working for child protective services. The problem is that those jobs aren’t a dime a dozen and they don’t pay squat. Now she practices administrative law. She has found contentment and satisfaction doing something she never dreamed she would do when she chose to go to law school. My advice would be to go to law school if you enjoy the intellectual stimulation, not because you have a passion to help people. Are you more into esoteric and philosophic classes or rote memorization? Generally the lesser regarded state law schools are more focused on rote memorization of the bar exam. They are like 3 year bar review courses. The higher regarded law schools offer more esoteric classes. Their students will pass the bar regardless. If you want to take classes like child labor protections in South East Asia, as an example, going to Texas A&M Law School ( a newly accredited law school, for instance) may not be for you. Anyways, kudos for planning early!