Will this be calculate into my law school gpa?

Graduate School Law School
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<p>I am currently a sophomore at a community college and had a 3.85gpa that I was happy with. I had to take ONE remedial class, intermediate algebra. I ended up getting a C in it which really killed my gpa. I pretty much gave up my dream of going to law school, as I really only want to go if I can get into one of the top 10 schools. </p>

<p>However, reading the LSAC website they say that remedial classes, if stated on transcript are remedial, won't be counted towards your law school gpa...</p>

<p>Is this true? My transcript doesn't say it's remedial but it says 051 intermediate algebra which is obviously not a college level course.</p>

<p>Anyone know if it's true that this wouldn't be calculated into my law school admission gpa?</p>

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<p>If it’s remedial, your best bet is to contact LSAC itself with proof from your school about the course. In any case, I don’t see how one C over the course of a college career would end law school ambitions anyways.</p>

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<p>Like I said in my post the C affects my ambitions because law school is all about numbers and having a 3.85gpa vs. 3.75gpa takes me out of the game for most of the big name law schools…and if I can’t get into them I plan on taking my grad school plans in a similar but different area that takes a more holistic approach to admissions.</p>

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<p>If you read it on the official LSAC site you can probably trust it to be correct. The thing you really need to worry about is, if your class really was remedial, and verify that LSAC has that information.</p>

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<p>What makes you think a 3.75 takes you out of the running? With a decent LSAT score you should have no problems. It’s not like you’d be the first splitter they ever accepted.</p>

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<p>You want to be a lawyer, but only if you can get into one of the top 10 law schools? Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds? Either you want to be a lawyer if you don’t. Do not go to law school if you only want a flashy name to bandy about. </p>

<p>If you actually want yo be a lawyer and not just go to law school at a big name school, what kind of law do you want to practice? Tax law? Appellate? Criminal defense? Civil defense? Corporate? M and A? Transactional? Real Estate? Immigration? Family Law? I could go on and on. </p>

<p>The type of law you want to practice will direct you to the best laws school for that career.</p>

<p>Also, where do you want to live and practice law? Geography is huge for law schools, because career services offices have relationships in different cities. </p>

<p>Good luck, but think this through before you spend $150K on a degree just for the name.</p>

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<p>I’d agree with Texas that you need to think things through before spending 150K, but disagree about brand name. Everything in the law is about pedigree, so you’re absolutely correct-you want to get into a very top school, or it probably isn’t worth attending. Right now, it’s worth focusing on your LSAT; a great LSAT with a 3.75 can open a lot of doors at admissions time.</p>

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<p>It sounds entirely prudent and reasonable. Your disbelief sounds to me like you’re ignorant of the state of the legal market. In that case, what makes you think you should be giving advice? Go spend some time on [Law</a> School Transparency](<a href=“http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/]Law”>http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/) looking at employment outcomes as you go down the USNWR rankings.</p>

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<p>Did you really just ask a 0L, a sophomore no less, to distinguish between a desire for civil defense work and corporate work? Most law students can barely make these distinctions. What makes you think a teenager can do better?</p>

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<p>Complete nonsense. Law schools do not do a better job for one field rather than others. The only exception being tax LLMs (but still not JDs). Law schools all give basically the same curriculum, which is one reason why employers care a lot about which school you went to (it’s one of the only two standards they have, the other being your grades).</p>

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<p>I am a lawyer, currently in-house counsel for a Fortune 500 company and before that a partner at an AmLaw100 firm. I have interviewed law students and lawyers for at least 15 years for all levels of practice. My husband is also a lawyer and I know exactly what I am talking about here.</p>

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<p>Texas, I may have mis-read your post, but I too have been an attorney for a while(almost 30 years now) and am entirely unfamiliar with the idea that an applicant picks a law school based on the area of law in which he/she wishes to practice. It’s always been that you go to the best school you can afford(and at which you have been accepted). So what school does one wish to attend to practice criminal law? or corporate? This is a concept I’ve never heard before.
And as a partner in AmLaw100, you’d agree that pedigree carries a lot of weight-really, it’s the trump card for new grads entering the legal marketplace. And Demo’s right-all potential applicants need to weigh prospects of getting a job after graduation before attending. It’s a very tough market, especially for grads of second-level schools.</p>

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<p>My point in asking about career plans was that the OP says s/he will only go to law school if s/he gets into a top 10 law school. Yet there are very, very few careers where a top 10 law school is make or break. </p>

<p>I live in Texas. Here, the top law firms and top corporations routinely hire from Texas, SMU, Baylor and Texas Tech law schools. None of these are top 10. Texas is typically around 15, but the others are much lower. </p>

<p>Credentials matter in law, absolutely. But it depends on your intended career path. The DAs office pays the same to its attorneys regardless of law school. Tier four law grads get the same jobs as Tier one law grads, when you look at criminal practice. </p>

<p>If you want to live in Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, Seattle, Tampa, Lincoln – your law school choices will matter, but they matter differently.</p>

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<p>I don’t care if you’re Chief Justice Roberts; the data is unequivocal. Who you are doesn’t change the facts: the legal market is severely depressed and where you go to school matters a hell of a lot for employment prospects. If you think otherwise, you are wrong and astonishingly so given that not only have I supplied you the data but plenty of notable publications (the NYTimes, WSJ, etc.) have run several stories on precisely the same issue.</p>

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The first four words are key, TexasMom. Here in the Northeast, you’re much better off going to a higher-ranked school than a lower-ranked regional school or one that is strong in certain legal specialties. Texas has a large legal market and exactly zero T-10 or T-14 schools within its borders (and really, within about a thousand miles). </p>

<p>If someone wants to work in Texas, the Midwest, the Southeast, or Southwest, then yes, they should find the strongest law school in their area and go there. But those who want to work on the coasts or in Chicago will face an entirely different set of circumstances, and it’s odd to pretend that reality is different than it is.</p>

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<p>I don’t know about the midwest/southeast/southwest, but it looks like for Texas you still want to go the T14 route. The [url=<a href=“http://www.lstscorereports.com/?r=tx#jobs]data[/url”>http://www.lstscorereports.com/?r=tx#jobs]data[/url</a>] suggests that fewer top law school students want to go to Texas, but those who do have better outcomes from the T14 than the Texas schools. The Texas schools place more in Texas (obviously) but place more poorly. UT is notable in that it places fairly well but seems to have the highest number of students working elsewhere. The “top law firms and top corporations” may “routinely hire” from the Texas schools, but it looks like they only routinely hire the top 10%. A student interested in Texas is still way better off going to a lower T14 than any school besides UT, and better off going for the upper T14 regardless.</p>

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<p>I have to correct you about there being no t14 law schools in or around Texas. UT is a T14 school in the 2013 ATL rankings. <a href=“Top Law Schools 2022 - Above the Law”>Top Law Schools 2022 - Above the Law;

<p>But in any event, my point to the OP, a first-year college freshman, was that he was freaking out at this point for no reason. There are very few careers that require a top 10 law school. To throw away a legitimate dream of becoming a lawyer because you got a couple of Bs in your first semester of college is a complete overreaction. </p>

<p>Yes, you have more job opportunities right out of school if you are at a Tier 1 school. You also have more opportunities if you are top 10% in your class. You also have more opportunities if you are on law review. And unlike with other careers, even as a 15 year lawyer, where you went to law school will be a question people use to pre-judge you. </p>

<p>But all is not lost if you make a couple of Bs in undergrad. (I had three Bs in college, all my freshman year.). All is also not lost if your law school is not in the top 10. (I was accepted to Harvard law school, but chose a free tuition/oos waiver at UT, and still got all the interviews I wanted.)</p>

<p>At my AmLaw100 firm, the Dallas office had partners from Texas, SMU, Baylor, Texas Tech, Vanderbilt, Pepperdine, UGA, Arkansas, Pitt, LSU, Oklahoma. The Houston office had all of the above, plus South Texas College of Law, St Mary’s, GWU and Georgetown. My Fortune 500 company legal department, looking only at Sr Counsel and above, has UCLA, Texas, Duke, UVA, SMU, Texas Tech, Cornell, Howard, Northwestern, Indiana, Oklahoma. </p>

<p>Out of these, only Duke and UVA are top 10. Add in Cornell, Michigan, Northwestern and Texas to round out the T14. The rest of these lawyers work at the same company/firm, similar and sometimes higher title and pay. </p>

<p>This is for someone intent of chasing BIGLAW. If you want to go criminal law, government work, family law, etc., your law school matters much less.</p>

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<p>Concur, but in the Republic that is called Techsus, UT-Austin is pedigree of the highest order. Indeed, for someone who wants to practice/live in Texas, they are better off attending UT (~#15) than most of the T14. Heck, I would posit a full ride from UT might even be better for career prospects (in Texas) than attending a CCN with massive debt.</p>

<p>Similar cases can be made for some other states, particularly in the SE. Attending a Yankee LS is probably not much of a bonus in the Deep South. :)</p>

<p>That being said, I do think it prudent and wise to be aiming at a T10 LS…not only are high aspirations a good thing, with T10 numbers, one can then pick and choose big money from a regional LS, if that is desired later on. Why pay sticker at UT or Minnesota or WashU or Georgia when, with better numbers, one can attend for free?</p>

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<p>Cooley is #2 in the [Cooley</a> Law Rankings](<a href=“http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/overall2010.html]Cooley”>http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/overall2010.html). That doesn’t make it a T14 either. UT, like Vanderbilt and UCLA, is in the tier right below the T14. As you can see from the LST data I provided earlier, these are all very strong schools regionally with a reasonable chance at placement into other markets. They are all below the bottom tier of the T14, however, which you can see by looking into the placement data of Georgetown, Cornell, Duke or Northwestern. The T14 are the 14 schools with historically strong placement and recognition that have sat in the top 14 USNWR slots since they were created. Really, the former matters and the latter doesn’t, but it holds just as true for both.</p>

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<p>The OP is a college sophomore. His very first sentence: “I am currently a sophomore at a community college…” As for whether legal careers require a top 10 law school, technically it is true they do not. After all, he could get employment coming out of Cooley or Thomas Jefferson. To give the OP advice based on mere logical possibility is at best disingenuous and at worst unethical. </p>

<p>Let me set out a few facts for you: There are roughly [45,000[/url</a>] law graduates per year. Of those, about [url=<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304458604577486623469958142]half[/url”>http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304458604577486623469958142]half[/url</a>] will find jobs as lawyers. You can wipe those right off the table. Of the remaining 22,500 jobs, only a few (about 8% of employed grads) will pay market BigLaw (either because they are BigLaw or because they match salary). This is pretty important because 85% of law students (including those with no jobs at all) are walking around with roughly [url=<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/jmaureenhenderson/2012/06/26/why-attending-law-school-is-the-worst-career-decision-youll-ever-make/]one”>Why Attending Law School Is The Worst Career Decision You'll Ever Make]one</a> hundred thousand dollars in debt](<a href=“http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2013/02/historical-data-total-number-of-law-students-1964-2012.html]45,000[/url”>http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2013/02/historical-data-total-number-of-law-students-1964-2012.html). Employment is not evenly distributed among the schools. Not surprisingly employment prospects [go</a> down](<a href=“http://www.lstscorereports.com/?r=other]go”>http://www.lstscorereports.com/?r=other) as you drop in rankings.</p>

<p>So what we’ve got here is a situation where if you want to be a lawyer you are entering a highly glutted market, taking on huge debt with deeply uncertain prospects for repayment. The only thing you can partially control is what kind of employment risk you’re willing to take, and that means which school to go to. In the face of that you’re coming in and telling someone they’re ridiculous for only wanting a top 10 school. </p>

<p>Yeah, OP overreacted by thinking one bad class would sink a top law school application. But OP’s reaction is entirely justified based on just how much your law school matters. What the OP needed was cogent, reasonable advice based on a thorough understanding of both the legal market and the requirements for admission to a top school. What you provided was nonsense about where partners come from (hint: partners are not graduating in today’s market). Half of law students won’t ever be lawyers of any stripe and many will only survive on the doc review circuit. Law school matters tremendously and if you want to offer advice you have an ethical obligation to make sure you have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.</p>

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<p>I didn’t say anything incorrect or irrelevant. Your attack on me is complete unwarranted. </p>

<p>Since you clearly don’t know what you are talking about, I will clue you in on a little (not so) secret, partners interview at their alma maters. If you already know where and what kind of law you want to practice, look up the partners at those firms and see where they went to school.</p>

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<p>cccblues, there is some good advice in the posts above. But, if the tenor of this discussion annoys you (as it does me) you might want to think twice about law school. Choosing law as a career likely means you will routinely be engaged in snippy dialogue like this. Keep your grades up, do your best on your LSAT (if you are still considering law school when the time comes to take it), and keep your mind and options open.</p>

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<p>I already listed and covered your errors. I see no need to repeat myself. As for that “alma maters” business, your anecdotes are meaningless. The data doesn’t lie. It is a fact that some schools perform better than others. They do so generally in accordance with rank. Either partners follow roughly the same proportion, in which case your advice boils down into nothing more than “go to the best school you can,” or partners do not actually follow your advice. Either way, OP was entirely proper in trying to go to a top 10 school. Hardly “ridiculous.”</p>

<p>@niceday: It’s easy to go along to get along. I take my responsibilities more seriously.</p>