Residency concerns in Law School

<p>Can someone define for me what is considered "residency" and "primary residency" for me? Because I think I may be making the biggest mistake of my life!</p>

<p>Here's my concern: I'm going to be quitting a good paying job to go to law school in FL in the fall. I've been trying to get into said law school for the past 4 years since getting my B.A., and in the mean time I've been working full-time. I've had to follow the money, in part to keep up with my undergrad student loans, so through internal transfers I've lived in 3 different states, in all of them at least 6 months to a year or more.</p>

<p>However, I've always claimed my FL address as my primary address, mainly because I've always known I would eventually quit my job and move back home once I got accepted, and I didn't want to go through the hassle of changing my residency essentially twice, losing residency tuition in my home state, etc. My driver's licence, credit cards, car tag, etc, have always been registered in FL.</p>

<p>Now the general rule, from what I've been told, is that whenever you move anywhere you have 30 days to change your residency, or at least you can claim residency after 30 days, or something like that. But as I said, I've always kept FL as my primary residence, and I've only rented rooms in the states I lived in, never getting an apartment or anything like that. So, technically, did a break any laws by never changing my residency? If so, wouldn't that preclude me from practicing?</p>

<p>HELP! Can someone give me a straight answer on this? Because otherwise, I'm about to quit my job, go to law school and rack up thousands of dollars in more student loan debt, and possibly be in a position where I have no way to pay it back! I don't want to go through all of this just to be rejected because of a technicality!</p>

<p>You need to check the residency rules of any particular law school in Florida that you will be attending (and the rules may differ among the different public law schools in Florida). The 30 day thing you mention has nothing to do with residency for law school (it instead relates to whether you can vote). It sounds like that you have retained Florida as your permenent residency despite being out of state at times and thus it is likely you will be treated as such for law school but you need to confirm with the particular law school.</p>

<p>“I’m going to be quitting a good paying job to go to law school in FL in the fall.”</p>

<p>Most people would say you are making a huge mistake, but it is your life…</p>