<p>I don't care about the "college experience", the campus, the location. My question is strictly about the academics and the ECs like internships that are good for law school. All I know that UCSD is ranked a lil higher than UCI. I spent a lot of my life in OC and just moved back, would like to stay here, but if there's something extraordinary that I don't know about UCSD that would help for law school then I'll go there. I'm majoring in Philosophy (but don't turn this into a discussion against majoring in philosophy lol).</p>
<p>from a strictly LS admissions perspective, the short answer is Riverside or Merced. Attend the school with the least competition for A’s. Win-win.</p>
<p>LS is all about GPA+LSAT. Unlike underdgrad admissions, EC’s barely matter for LS; they won’t care one whit about the supposed prestige difference between the two.</p>
<p>btw: I like philosophy.</p>
<p>Note that law school admissions recalculates GPAs. A+ grades are counted as 4.33 in that recalculation, even if your undergraduate school counts them as 4.00 (of course, that assumes that your undergraduate school gives A+ grades to top students – not all do).</p>
<p>If you look at sample LSAT questions, you will see that there are some logic puzzle type questions. It is no surprise that applicants with majors in things like math and philosophy tend to do well on the LSAT.</p>
<p>Do educate yourself about the current conditions of the legal profession. There are a lot of highly qualified, experienced lawyers out of work right now who are going to be hired quite often before the new grads, no matter where those new grads went to law school. I don’t know you from Adam but I know that one must be cautious about assuming the kind of debt you will assume for law school and so I’m urging you to educate yourself about the current state of the profession. Read trade news, talk to partners, talk to new grads. Don’t believe the hype coming out of law schools; they are in part responsible for over-producing the new grads who are both victims of and contributors to this mess. I too like philosophy and hope you do well. Do take some advanced symbolic logic courses.</p>
<p>There are two major criteria I would look at when deciding your undergraduate college. The first is the quality of the undergraduate education. The second is the ability of that education to make you competitive for law school.
Law school, like medical school, is very biased towards a high gpa and high LSAT score. For that, I agree with bluebayou.
As far as actually learning the material, I would go with San Diego. I would place UCSD’s academics on a higher tier than UCI’s. On top of that, the resources in La Jolla, which just a drive away from downtown san diego, may end up supplying you with more real-world opportunities.</p>
<p>No one can predict the market for lawyers three years from now, let alone seven, and if you can, I suggest you head to Wall Street where you will make an infinite amount of money.</p>
<p>Given that law school applications are at a 36 year low, I would suggest that for anyone now eligible to apply to law school, do so and go if you can get into a top tier one. I don’t know the breakdown of top law school applications, but there may never be an easier time to get in one, and the market from grads will likely be far improved in 3-4 years. Lower ranked schools, I’d think twice, but if you happen to get in a Top 30, definitely go.</p>
<p>[Welcome</a> to LawSchoolNumbers.com | Law School Numbers](<a href=“http://lawschoolnumbers.com%5DWelcome”>http://lawschoolnumbers.com) can give you an idea of what it takes to get into each law school.</p>
<p>@MrMom62: “the market [for] grads will likely be far improved in 3-4 years.”</p>
<p>who has the crystal ball now, MrMom ;+) But seriously on what do you base your prognostication? Has there been some national uptick in hiring? Here in the DC area, the lawyers I speak to say their firms remain apprehensive about doing any substantial new hiring and are not encouraging me to send my students to law school. And this is one of the stronger regional economies in the nation.</p>
<p>Dead cat bounce? It’s darkest before the dawn? Or maybe I don’t quite believe it’s all that bad out there provided you go to a top law school and are near the top of your class and aren’t graduating right now. And you have to be flexible in what you’re willing to do. I don’t imagine the top half of the class at Harvard or Yale or Stanford are exactly suffering, it’s the poor schlubs at third tier law schools who still think it’s the glory days of 2005 that can’t find jobs, especially those on the lower end of the class. Someone is getting hired, it’s not like every new graduate is permanently unemployed.</p>
<p>Traditionally, those who go in the pipeline in any profession when the number of students is low tend to do pretty well by the time they come out on the other end. For HS seniors, that’s over 7 years from now, for college seniors, it’s a little over 3. If you’re not just chasing dollars, but truly are interested in the law, it’s still a good profession. It’s not exactly like they’re making any fewer laws and regulations, or filing any fewer lawsuits.</p>
<p>My wife is an attorney and they are always looking for associates with a few years experience in corporate law who are willing to do transactional work, not the glory stuff like Big Deals and M&A. They are amazingly hard to find.</p>
<p>My sister’s law firm in San Diego is not hiring. True what the article says.
[Enrollments</a> at U.S. Law Schools Plunge - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304858104579264730376317914]Enrollments”>Enrollments at U.S. Law Schools Plunge - WSJ)</p>
<p>Have to agree with JKeil^^^</p>
<p>onto question: Assuming you can afford law school without loans or debts: UCSD or University of San Diego Law School (Catholic)</p>
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<p>However, being at the top end of your class at a top 14 law school describes only a small percentage of law students.</p>
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<p>Those two statements, taken together, appear rather naive. Sure, 99.99% of the LS population would be “flexible” enough to attend HYS. Only 000.1% get in. :)</p>
<p>And sure, the top half of the T14 do ok, but that still leaves hundreds (thousands?) of recent T14 grads who are under/unemployed.</p>
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<p>Sure, its a great profession, but with few jobs. According to the census bureau, we are graduating nearly 2x the number of JDs that the market requires.</p>
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<p>Sure, they recently minted JD goes into a job that does not require a JD. Baristas pay ok too plus health care after a few years!</p>
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<p>A REALLY bad bet, IMO, unless the T30 is free. Take George Washington, for example, ~#20. Only a quarter its students earn jobs that enable them to pay back the bone crushing debt. Things are so bad, that the school is using funds to provide “jobs” for its grads: 25% of its grads have school funded jobs. Again, that is #20. </p>
<p>BU & BC have similar Big Law employment numbers (25%), but those two schools don’t use current tuition to give make-work jobs to recent grads. Instead, a quarter of their grads are just unemployed. Period.</p>
<p>So I took the question directly to the source, my wife, who is a partner in an AmLaw 200 firm. I asked her what would her advice be to someone wanting to go to law school that could currently apply to law school, given the current job environment for lawyers. Her response was as follows:</p>
<p>“If you are a very strong writer who enjoys looking through large amount of reading material, analyzing it, and coming up with solutions and then writing them down, definitely apply to law school. If you’re doing it because you don’t know what else to do, you think you’ll make a lot of money, or you think it’s easy money, don’t apply. The job market four years from now is impossible to predict, we’re hiring good people right now, we’re always looking to hire good people, we just don’t necessarily give them everything they’re looking for. And we fire bad people all the time as well.”</p>
<p>As for HS students, that’s so far off, she said you have no idea what you’l be doing by the time it’s time to apply, and half the people who wind up becoming lawyers have no idea they want to be one right now.</p>
<p>So if you want to argue with her, go ahead, but you’re going to lose. I usually do.</p>
<p>She’ll get no argument from me, since I don’t disagree with anything she said. </p>
<p>But what you fail to address are the unemployment stats for JD’s today, which just maybe the new normal (and may not be).</p>
<p>Ask her if it make sense to incur $250k in debt to attend a T30, with only a 25% chance of graduating into a job in which you can service the debt? “Good profession” does’t equate to ‘jobs are plentiful’ for grads who are a quarter million in debt…</p>
<p>The only way to be $250K in debt would be to have $100k in debt from undergrad. Even Harvard only charges $52k per year. Even adding in living expenses would likely only take you to $180k or so, once you figure in summer work.</p>
<p>If you have $100k in debt from undergrad, which would be stupid, work a few years before going back to law school. Pay some of that down. Often times, the most interesting lawyers for getting hired purposes are those who have some work experience.</p>
<p>It’s not like law firms aren’t profitable, very few go out of business. The “new normal” may be that equity partners have to adjust to making less money, right now they’re still squeezing everyone and pulling in mid-six to seven figure bonuses while poor mouthing the financial situation of their firms. The work still needs to get done and you can only make people work so hard before they start to bolt to firms that treat and pay them better. Eventually the dam will break and they will hire the new people they need, and/or students will adjust and they’ll go in-house instead of to firms.</p>
<p>Would you advise students not go to medical school also because of the potential situation with Obamacare? (Doctors being forced to accept patients at low reimbursement rates - right now only a theoretical possibility.) Plenty of doctors are also complaining about that, and they incur much more debt than law students.</p>
<p>COA for Harvard Law is $78,700 this year.</p>
<p>COA for NYU is $81,000 this year.</p>
<p>COA for Columbia is $82,795.</p>
<p>Berkeley Law (aka Boalt) is $73,990 at instate prices.</p>
<p>Take all of them and increase by 3-5% for next year, and the year after and the year after.</p>
<p>Add in compound interest, since it starts to accrue the day the loans are first distributed by the government.</p>
<p>Attending HLS at full loan, and the GULC calculator, one would end up with $292k in debt.</p>
<p>[Georgetown</a> Law Financial Planning Calculator for Prospective Students 1213.xlsx](<a href=“Financial Aid | Georgetown Law”>Financial Aid | Georgetown Law)</p>
<p>The math is real simple. :)</p>
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<p>Again, the math does not support your argument. Over 50% of Associates leave (or are pushed out) of Big Law within 4 years. The odds of making equity partner are slim; perhaps incurring nearly $300k in debt for that slim chance is a good bet for you, but not me.</p>
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<p>Unlike law grads, med grads have (near) zero unemployment, at least today. Good paying jobs are available in any speciality. (Assuming the ACA stays in its current form, I have predicted that we will morph into a Canadian-style system in a generation. So, perhaps medicine will still be a “good” profession for the next 20 years. But that is just my crystal ball.)</p>
<p>$30k undergrad debt = $270k law school debt = $300k upon graduation.</p>
<p>[V10</a> Corp owing 300k. PAYE make sense?](<a href=“V10 Corp owing 300k. PAYE make sense? Forum - Top Law Schools”>V10 Corp owing 300k. PAYE make sense? Forum - Top Law Schools)</p>
<p>George Washington Law paying its own grads $15.00/hr (which is a pay increase over last year’s $12.50.) How many applicants plan on graduating into a job making $26,250 in their first year out? (With OT, baristas pay more!)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.gwhatchet.com/2013/02/07/in-dim-job-market-law-school-pays-more-graduates-to-work/[/url]”>http://www.gwhatchet.com/2013/02/07/in-dim-job-market-law-school-pays-more-graduates-to-work/</a></p>
<p>GWU Law COA = $77,610 for this year</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.law.gwu.edu/Admissions/financial_aid/new/Pages/StandardCostofAttendance.aspx[/url]”>http://www.law.gwu.edu/Admissions/financial_aid/new/Pages/StandardCostofAttendance.aspx</a></p>
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<p>You are starting to argue apples and oranges. The odds of making equity have always been small, even in good times. My wife has a shot at making it by her 20th anniversary after graduation from law school. And if she doesn’t, she’s still making a good living considering how much it costs to live here. </p>
<p>One can’t be “pushed out” of Big Law after 4 years unless one has a job in Big Law, which you were just arguing isn’t happening. No one should ever go into law depending on the idea they’re going to make equity and it doesn’t even factor into the idea about whether attending law school is a good idea. </p>
<p>The fact is, many if not most associates here in Flyover-Country, where we live, leave voluntarily for in-house jobs at various companies. Some stay in law, others transition to the business units, where a JD is the new MBA. Some never had any intention of staying in a firm environment, they always wanted to transition to in-house, others hate billing their lives in 6 minute increments, others are impatient and are lured by seemingly lucrative pay packages when they’re within a few years of making partner, when the real dollars kick in. There are a million reasons why associates leave, but few are actually pushed out, retention is actually a problem, but all generally continue to earn a good living after leaving a firm environment. In-house jobs are not poverty level, and sometimes pay even more than BigLaw, depending on the firm and the job one does in-house.</p>
<p>Law is like every other profession, the cream rises to the top, though there is a significant proportion of the industry who rises on connections alone. Hard work and skill are generally rewarded, but it is not a license to print money.</p>