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Candid Advice for Undergraduates Considering Law School
Nick Smith, J.D. and Ph.D.
University of new Hampshire Department of Philosophy
Nick.smith@unh.edu
Deciding to apply to law school can fundamentally alter the trajectory of
one's life. The application process can consume much of your energy as an
undergraduate, the years you spend in law school will require intense
dedication to your studies, you may take on well over
$200,000 in law school debt, and you can
be transformed in three years from a rather unmarketable college graduate to
earning a
$160,000 starting salary at a major law firm.
You can use your law degree as a powerful tool to help people. The stakes
are high, both financially and existentially. Like enlisting in the
military, law school changes your life. It should not be taken lightly. Just
as many students attend college because that is "what you do" after high
school, too many undergraduates plan on law school primarily because they do
not know what else to do with themselves after college. Law school seems
better than moving into your parents' basement.
Law school served me very, very well. I would do it again in a second. I
have friends and colleagues, however, who believe that attending law school
sent them down the wrong path in life. They cannot change course without
considerable difficulty, in part because of their law school debt. I care
about my students deeply, and I offer these thoughts just as I would give
advice about law school to my own children. Hopefully reading my
perspectives here will help potential law students make more informed
judgments. If you disagree with any of my comments, please email me with
your concerns. I will take them seriously and revise when appropriate.
1. My Background: Why Listen to Nick Smith's Opinions on Law School?
At
the risk of appearing like I enjoy talking about myself, explaining my
background may help readers understand--and discount where they see fit--my
perspectives. As a first generation college student who lucked into generous
financial aid from Vassar College and became
fully serious about his studies in his
junior year, I applied to law school in my senior year. I applied to joint
J.D./Ph.D. philosophy programs, thinking that I would ideally like to be a
philosophy professor but my chances of that were so slim that I needed a
back-up plan to make a living. In other words, I did not know what I was
doing and I was hedging my bets. I spent July through October of my senior
year studying for the LSAT from 4:00 to 10:00 in the morning just about
every day, driven by the fear that if I did not go to law school I would
spend the remainder of my productive years slicing deli meat at a grocery
store as I had throughout high school.
I
scored well enough on the LSAT to be admitted into the J.D./Ph.D. programs
at a few
"Top 20" schools. The thrill of these
acceptance letters faded when I realized the debt entailed by the top New
York law schools. If I took the path of the most prestigious and most
expensive schools, such debt might effectively foreclose the possibility of
ever living comfortably on a philosophy professor's salary. I swallowed this
bit of class consciousness--if my parents could pay for law school I would
have both the fancy degree and freedom from debt--and narrowed my choices to
SUNY Buffalo and the University of Iowa. Iowa was at the time ranked in the
Top 20 and offered me a large discount off of the public school rate.
Buffalo ranked lower, but offered a fellowship (full tuition plus a living
stipend) through the
Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy.
Buffalo also had a stronger philosophy department in my areas, and the law
school specialized in the sorts of public interest law and legal theory that
interested me. Matters were complicated by the fact that my Vassar
girlfriend planned to make the move with me. We visited Iowa City together
two weeks before I was to start classes and I dropped her off at the O'Hare
Airport so that she could fly home to prepare for the move. I remember
pulling off at a rest stop on I90 somewhere between Iowa and Buffalo and
trying to decide whether to go east or west. I took a nap in the car, woke
up, and went to Buffalo. My girlfriend disliked both options, but she
perceived Iowa as especially undesirable. I mention this personal story not
because I think my case is especially dramatic or interesting but because it
is rather typical. Emotions and irrational fears often drive the application
process as much as clear-minded reasoning. Brace yourself for this.
Buffalo proved to be a great fit for me, though not so much for my
girlfriend who left early on never to be seen again. The faculty challenged,
inspired, and mentored me. I made law review, graduated second or third in
my class (I think I had the equivalent of a C in Tax Law and probably
deserved worse), and had offers from top Manhattan firms. I met the woman I
married. I summered at Leboeuf's (now
Dewey and Leboeuf) Manhattan office and
finished the philosophy Ph.D. at Vanderbilt. I worked a few different law
jobs, including at a boutique firm in Buffalo and as in-house counsel at a
major medical technology firm. I served a mind-blowing one year term
clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the third Circuit and returned to
LeBoeuf as a litigation associate.
I
have been a philosophy professor at UNH since 2002. I teach
courses and
publish in areas of legal philosophy,
and I have kept many close friends from my stints in the legal profession. I
serve as a pre-law advisor for UNH's Pre-Law committee, the Philosophy
Department, and the Justice Studies program. I have written letters for
students who have been admitted to just about every law school in the top
100. I have seen students with 4.0 grade point averages bomb the LSAT and
get rejected from every school on their lists. I have seen late-bloomers
with modest grades ace the LSAT and go to N.Y.U.
Numerous guides to law school exist and
you should talk to as many law students and practicing attorneys as you can
before you commit to this path. I was once interning at a public defender's
office and an attorney I had never met pulled me aside and said: "Do not, do
not, do not ever go to law school." I did not heed her unsolicited advice,
but I appreciated her candor and felt a little less naive going in. My
thoughts here are opinionated--philosophers and lawyers make a living giving
opinions--and you may disagree or receive conflicting advice from other
sources. But hopefully my comments will add some perspective to your
considerations.
2. Getting Accepted to a Reasonably Good Law School
A.
Your Major and Course of Study
No
formal "pre-law" curriculum exists at the vast majority of schools. You can
major in music, chemistry, philosophy, or any other undergraduate program if
you plan on law school. Having said that, what should you look for in your
undergraduate curriculum? First and most importantly, you should find a
major for which you have passion. Do not choose a major because your high
school guidance counselor told you that it is "better for law school." Get
to college and take classes that interest you. Explore different
disciplines. Once you have taken a few classes that you love in a discipline
or two, then you know your major or majors. By "love" I mean a class you do
not want to end because you feel so excited and engaged by the material--a
course that inspires you to work as hard as you can and learn as much as you
can. Settle for nothing less. You spend four of the most vibrant years of
your life in college. Don't waste your time with classes or majors that
don't light a fire under you. Once you find this passion you will likely
excel in these courses, which in turn will raise your grade point average.
There is no irony here: you will likely do best in the things you love most.
This holds true in choosing your major and in life generally.
Second, you want to take classes that teach you how to read, write, and
argue rigorously. All majors do not accomplish this equally. Philosophy, for
instance, requires you to read some of the most difficult texts ever
written, discuss them in class, and construct precise analytic essays
arguing your position. If you have years of practice analyzing Kant, the
Uniform Commercial Code will seem comparatively easy. Law school and legal
practice require you to read, write, and discuss complex issues. Analytic
essays count for one hundred percent of your first year grades in many law
schools, and students who have experience constructing sophisticated
arguments have a considerable competitive advantage. Note that I do not
equate good writing with merely good grammar, flow, or creativity. Law
school requires extensively researched, meticulously organized, and
logically constructed arguments. As a general rule, you will receive the
best preparation for law school from classes that require a lot of writing,
professors who give feedback on the structure and substance of your writing,
and smaller courses that require intense discussion and debating. Large
classes with little writing will not typically prepare you well for law
school, even if they are devoted to legal topics. You can memorize every
word of your constitutional law textbook, but if you cannot construct a
compelling argument about the material you will have serious difficulties
succeeding in law school. In addition to choosing the right major and
classes, conducting advanced undergraduate research offers one of the best
means of preparing for law school. At UNH, the
S.U.R.F.,
U.R.O.P,
I.R.O.P,
R.E.A.P, and
senior thesis programs provide an
exceptional way to develop research and writing skills. If you are serious
about law school, do as many of these as you can.
Third, good advising is essential when navigating the pre-law process. The
basic application process is simple enough, but you will need a steady
stream of advice over all four years of your undergraduate career if you
hope to maximize your chances of being accepted at a top school. This
becomes especially important if you cannot seek advice from relatives and
family friends who practice law or attended elite law schools. At each stage
in your career small decisions can have a considerable impact. Take logic
(PHIL 412), for instance, to satisfy your "math gen-ed" if your major
allows. LSAT tests for your ability to build and evaluate logical arguments,
and if you excel in 412 you can master these skills further by serving as a
teaching assistant for the course. Study informal fallacies in particular
and practice diagramming the logical structures of sentences. Enroll in the
honors program and stay in it. Meet Professor Putnam and participate in
UNH Mock Trial. Take Class X rather than
Class Y. Apply for an undergraduate research fellowship. Present a paper at
Conference Z. In the aggregate, each of these seemingly small bits of advice
from an advisor builds a strong undergraduate portfolio. One misstep--like a
D in a math class that you never should have taken because you should have
registered for logic instead--can seriously compromise your chances. If you
take the process of applying to law school seriously, you will spend many
hours in your advisor's office gathering advice along the way. If you
advisor does not know your name, does not have time for you, or does not
know much about the law school process, you have a problem. Consider finding
a new advisor or a new major.
B. The
Dreaded LSAT
The LSAT is brutal. I have taken many tests in my life, and this was one of
the worst. I have seen very smart people--even those with perfect SAT scores
and grade point averages--crash and burn on the LSAT. Many test preparation
courses can teach you the rather silly tricks and mind-numbing strategies
for scoring well, and I see very little relation between one's LSAT score
and their legal aptitude. The LSAT does test, however, how well you have
prepared for the LSAT. If you take it with little preparation to "see how
you do," you will do poorly. If you study full time for a year and become
obsessive about the test, you will likely score well. I use the word
obsessive intentionally, as the best analogy I can think of for LSAT
preparation is the total immersion of a ten year old in an elaborate game
like chess (or perhaps a video game) or other all encompassing passion. You
must breathe and sleep the LSAT until you literally know the answer to every
question asked on every previously administered LSAT. You develop a
classification system for every possible type of question, and you almost
know the answer simply by looking at the format of the test page. Again, I
find this test and the preparation it requires rather silly. This is,
however, the game you must play if you want to go to law school. The good
news: you can compensate for a mediocre grade point average by devoting
about four to six months of your life to the LSAT. The bad news: you can
squander four years worth of meticulous g.p.a. maintenance in one morning of
standardized testing.
So
how and how much should you study?1
The most distinctive feature of the test is speed. If you
sit down over an afternoon and leisurely try your hand at a few practice
sections, you might find the test rather easy and expect to score well
enough to be accepted to Yale. Timed conditions present an entirely
different situation. Given this, I generally recommend about four months of
study with approximately forty hours per week of studying. Again: four
months, forty hours per week. A good schedule, in other words, is to
graduate in May and study full time until the October test. I have advised
enough students to know the consequences of disregarding this advice: most
students, even the very best in terms of grade point averages, badly
underperform if they study less. You may score high enough to get in
somewhere with less intensive preparation, but if you are serious about
getting into the best possible school my advice is firm: four months, forty
hours per week.
How does one occupy this much time studying? Acquire copies of every test
previously administered. Spend five mornings per week taking an old test
under strict timed conditions with no exceptions. This requires all
morning and will train your stamina and concentration. Eat lunch. Take a nap
or get some exercise. Spend the afternoon checking your answers and studying
questions you missed. Repeating this for several months builds all of the
LSAT muscles and gives you the best fighting chance. I also recommend this
LSAT Study Guide, prepared by one of my
former students who complemented a modest g.p.a. with an outstanding LSAT
score and was admitted into Top 5 schools. This guide agrees with many of my
suggestions here (and disagrees with others) and also gives excellent "nitty
gritty" advice that can make a considerable difference: use bubble sheets
when studying, take your practice exams in public places to prepare you for
the inevitable distractions during the actual exam, etc.
Should you take an LSAT prep course? Some students find these a waste of
about $1200. Others find them very valuable. If you have the discipline to
complete the regimen suggested above, you can do well without a prep course.
Most students, however, benefit from the guidance of companies that have
made a science of LSAT preparation. Consider enrolling in an LSAT course as
a bit like a gym membership--paying the money provides additional motivation
to log the hours. Some students prefer to take the course for psychological
comfort--they do not want to enter the exam room thinking that other
students have taken the course and therefore have an advantage over them.
Although the value of prep courses is debatable, some students prefer to
take them just in case. Which test prep company do I recommend? I did not
take a course and I have little to judge them on. Several UNH students have,
however, recently spoken highly of
Powerscore. Do not loose sight of the fact one or two points on
the LSAT will likely have considerable impact on which schools accept you.
The $1200 dollars can seem like a bargain in hindsight if it raises your
score by even one point.
Please be advised that you should only take the LSAT after you have studied
to the best of your ability. Although this has changed somewhat since 2006,
schools will average your scores. If you take it without much preparation to
"see how you will do" and then a few years later spend six months studying
properly, that early score will drag you down. Many students have made this
devastating mistake, in part because of poor advising that does not
emphasize the difficulty of the test. Do not take the LSAT unless you have
completed a comprehensive preparation program.
I
should offer a final thought on test preparation. I have heard a version of
the following many times: "Yeah, right. I work full time. There is no way I
can take off six months to study for the LSAT. And $1200 for a prep course
is impossible on my budget." I faced similar difficulties and I am entirely
sympathetic to these concerns. See the section below on Money and Law
School.
C.
Internships, Resumes, Etc.
In
the vast majority of cases, your LSAT score and g.p.a. will determine which
schools accept you. All of those internships and public service projects you
completed will probably not help if you don't have the raw numbers. This may
seem ruthless, but schools receive thousands of application for hundreds of
spots and they must draw the line somewhere. If you have the g.p.a. and the
LSAT score, then you also need the strong resume to compete with the other
applicants who have it all.
In
general, I do not recommend that students view legal internships as a means
to the end of law school admission. First, it is far more important from an
admissions perspective that you maintain your grades and study for the LSAT.
You should avoid anything that interferes with this. Second, one should view
internships as a way to learn more about the legal profession rather than a
line on the resume. Take a job or internship to gain some perspective on the
daily lives of attorneys. In this respect interning can help you determine
if legal work would be satisfying to you before you proceed further down
this expensive and time consuming process. In my experience, internships at
large private firms tend to be less exciting than those at public agencies.
Law firms usually have plenty of staff to do the legal work so you often end
up tagging along and fetching coffee. Public defenders' offices, by
contrast, can often use an extra pair of hands and will assign meaningful
tasks to interns.
D. The
Mechanics of Applying
I
will leave most of this to the professionals:
LSAC and the wonderful Paula DiNardo at
UNH Pre-Law Advising. Beyond the
mechanical advice about how the process works, a few points merit
consideration.
First, apply to as many schools as you can. Don't waste your time and money
applying to schools that you know won't accept you (don't apply to Yale with
a 3.2 g.p.a. even if you're a great person) and don't apply to schools that
you would not attend if they accepted you. I usually recommend submitting
about twenty applications. This may seem too costly, but again see the
section on Money and Law School below. View applying to law school as a kind
of high-stakes gambling. Do your research, determine whether your numbers
give you a chance, and play the
percentages. Obviously you do not know
which schools are in your range until you have your LSAT score.
Be
aware that the law School Admission Council
recalculates your grade point average
according to their own scale. You cannot assume, therefore, that your
UNH grade point average will used during the admissions process. Students
who exercise UNH's option of
retaking courses to improve their grades
will find LSAC's conversion especially frustrating.
One of my friends applied to fifteen Top 20 law schools. His g.p.a and LSAT
score seemed to make him a very strong candidate. He received fourteen
consecutive rejection letters and called me to let me know that it looked
like he wasn't going to law school. The next day Stanford, his first choice
all along, accepted him. The moral of that story: nothing is certain in the
law school application process, and the more applications you submit the
better your odds. You only need one good acceptance to dramatically change
the course of your career. This is not the time to be penny wise and pound
foolish.
I
will say more about the geographic location of law schools below, but for
the most part I strongly suggest that you do not allow geographic
considerations to narrow your pool during the application process. Apply to
the best schools in your range regardless of location. Make the difficult
decisions about location once you have acceptances in hand. I have seen many
students make poor decisions limiting their options because of rather myopic
geographic considerations. One excellent student, for instance, disregarded
my advice and only applied to law schools in Manhattan because his
girlfriend worked in the city. The prestigious schools rejected him, and he
enrolled at a poorly ranked school in Queens. He separated from his
girlfriend during the first semester (note: law school is tough on
relationships2),
and dropped out soon thereafter. Try to avoid conversations of the following
form at the application stage: "If you apply and get accepted to Berkeley
and I'm at an internship in Boston, our relationship will never work out. So
don't apply to Berkeley if you are committed to me." I appreciate that this
is easier said than done, but avoid such speculation. Cross that bridge when
you come to it. Do not limit your choices because of a college romance.
Compare applying to colleges based on a high school romance. If anything, I
might advise against applying to schools in sought-after locations.
Some law schools in New York, Boston, D.C., and San Francisco receive so
many applications because of their location that they become more selective
than they probably should be based on the quality of the school.
In
general, you do not need to know what kind of law you wish to practice
before going to law school. Just as you use college to explore your passions
and determine your major, law school provides the opportunity to experience
different areas of law. Most schools share a similar curriculum and
therefore you do not need to apply to law schools according to specific
areas of law. With that in mind, however, exceptions apply. If you intend to
study intellectual property law, UNH Law (formerly Franklin Pierce Law
Center) should rise to the top of your list. Buffalo offers excellent
programs in family violence law. Apply to the University of Florida or Lewis
and Clark, respectively, if you plan to specialize in tax or environmental
law. Do your homework to understand these distinctions.
Should you "take a year off" between college and law school? I did not, but
I probably should have. I increasingly recommend taking at least one year
between undergraduate education and law school. As you can see, studying for
the LSAT requires months of study. Writing samples and personal statements
can require weeks of work. The applications process requires weeks of
attention and can be emotionally draining, especially as you wait to hear
your fate. Completing all of this work during your senior year presents
numerous difficulties. Your final year of college should be filled with
class work (and raising the g.p.a. as high as possible), senior theses, and
enjoying your friends and college life. Cramming in LSAT study and
applications can produce misery. I have seen students complete successful
applications during their senior year, but only the most disciplined and
high-achieving ones who spent the entire summer between their junior and
senior years studying for the October LSAT. Applying during the senior year
usually results in haste. Notice two additional benefits of waiting. First,
your g.p.a. will be highest on the day you graduate. If you apply in January
of your senior year, grades from your final semester are not included on
your transcript. For many students their final semester is their strongest,
and a few tenths of a g.p.a. point can make a considerable difference in
your portfolio. In this regard, waiting a bit also allows you to benefit
from deepening relationships with your professors and finalized senior
theses and other advanced writing. This should result in stronger letters of
recommendation, writing samples, and personal statements.
Second, a year or more of distance from college can provide broader
perspective on why and whether you should go to law school. You do not want
to rush into such an important and expensive decision. I do not find the
argument from twenty-two year olds that "I'll never go back to school if I
take time off" very compelling. Most of my friends took of several years
between college and professional or graduate school, and they did some
life-defining things during this time. If you can, do something meaningful
before law school. Join the
Peace Corps,
Americorps, or
Teach for America. Serve something you
believe in most deeply. Move to an interesting city and have experiences.
Travel frugally. Especially if you are a traditional student graduating from
college in your early twenties, get out into the world and do things that
you might never be able to do again. Once you begin law school you take on a
new level of debt and responsibilities. You will probably not have more than
a few weeks "off" until your retirement. Think hard about how you will view
your post-college years from your death bed. They are brief and will end too
quickly.
Although many schools do not require you to submit your applications until
well after January 1, you give yourself the best odds if you complete the
process before the end of November. Many schools accept and reject
candidates well before their application deadlines, and you don't want to be
late to the table. You should secure your transcripts, letters of
recommendation, writing, sample, and a personal statement during the summer
before you apply so that you can send off as of your materials as soon as
you receive your LSAT score.
I
often hear students expecting admission into prestigious programs because,
in their words, "my g.p.a. is only 3.0 but I did really well during my
junior and senior year." This very common situation will win you little
sympathy from admissions councils. First year undergraduates should hear
this loud and clear: your performance at the very beginning of your career
will determine your ultimate g.p.a. One bad semester--even the first
semester in your first year--can keep you from a top school. I find this
particularly unfortunate because even the most gifted students coming from
underprivileged schools and backgrounds have difficulty making the
transition to college. Students from prep schools catering to the wealthy
come to college prepared to hit the ground running. This provides another
example of how privilege compounds and the playing field isn't exactly even,
but it is best to understand how the game is played.
When considering who you might ask to write your letters of recommendation,
you should look to professors who know your work best. The smaller the class
and the more writing in the course, the better the professor probably knows
you and your work. Thus you have another reason to enroll and excel in
writing intensive courses. Your thesis advisor will likely know you best. Be
warned that many professors, like me, are very candid in their letters. I
write approximately twenty letters of recommendation per year, and these
often arrive on the desks of the same application committees year after
year. In order to retain credibility, I give an honest evaluation with no
whitewashing. If your work was mediocre, you missed a few classes, you did
not participate much, or your papers came in late, I will say so. When
merited, I will provide detailed accounts of how you excelled in my courses,
perhaps noting your specific contributions to class discussions,
participation on Blackboard, helpfulness to your classmates, efforts on
rewrites and extra credits, or your development as a writer. I usually do
not write letters for students unless they have taken more than one class
with me.
What if every school rejects you or if you realize that your grade point
average or LSAT score are too low? You have a few options. You can lower
your standards. You can study harder for the LSAT. This is one of the few
benefits of that test: a good score can compensate for years of inadequate
work. With a good enough LSAT score some school will eventually take you.
Appreciate, however, that schools will average the improved score with the
previous score. You can also enroll in another sort of graduate program,
excel in that program, and then reapply to law school after improving your
LSAT scores as well. Several students have successfully used the
UNH Justice Studies masters program to
this end. The key here, obviously, is excelling in the graduate program and
not repeating the mistakes of the past.
3. Money and Law School
I
will repeat unpopular advice I have given
elsewhere. More than ever, students work
nearly full-time jobs while at UNH. If you have a full load of classes, you
probably do not have enough time to also work for money. Your grades will
suffer, and you will compromise your education. You only have one chance at
college. What you study and the g.p.a. you earn will be with you for the
rest of your life. I have seen many A students who do not have enough time
for their class work reduced to C's because of their jobs. This can change
the course of their lives for the worse. Students who work during college
suffer a major disadvantage when competing with classmates who can devote
more time to studying. In my courses I have students who work forty hours
per week at Dunkin Donuts during the semester (some of them logging eight
hour shifts before their 1:00 classes) sitting next to students who have
never worked a job. When I grade their papers, I am supposed to ignore this
fact and pretend like the competition for grade point averages is fair.
Working during college may seem fiscally responsible, but it is actually bad
financial planning. Over the long term, knowledge and a higher grade point
average pay much higher dividends than the few thousand dollars you make
waiting tables or working other service jobs while in college. Student loan
rates are relatively reasonable. You should take out the loans you need to
survive, live frugally, spend your time studying and learning, get the job
you want, and pay off the loans. You may find it impossible not to work
while in college. If this is the case, you have personal experience of how
someone's financial situation can hinder her success in other seemingly
non-economic aspects of life. You may believe that your finances have
nothing to do with your grades, but wealthy students can spend all of their
time studying if they chose. They can get a good night's sleep before an
exam. Many others don't have this luxury. This uncomfortable and often
frustrating situation becomes more salient for students considering
professional school. If your LSAT score and g.p.a. do not meet a school's
minimum threshold, your work schedule is no excuse. I do not mean to be
callous here, but I want to make the reality for many students explicit.
In
this respect, someone considering law school must appreciate that she enters
a high-stakes world. Law school may cost more than your family's house.
Studying and applying properly will cost thousands of dollars. You compete
for admission into top schools (and even bottom schools) with some of the
world's most privileged students. On the other end, the potential dividends
from these investments explain why admission remains so competitive. Law
school debt of $200,000 seems much more manageable to an associate making
$160,000 than it does to an undergraduate work-study student earning $7.50
per hour.
You absolutely should not work during the first year of law school. You will
need every moment to study. By the summer between your first and second year
you should be able to secure reasonably well-paid legal work. Many law
students work during the second and third years of their studies, but the
first year requires your full attention.
One bit of good news is that although most law students pay full price, they
typically have little trouble securing all of the loans they need to pay for
even the most expensive law school at a relatively low interest rate. Banks
view future law school graduates (even the ones not from the top schools) as
sound investments. The bad news is that you must repay those loans, and
payments can be well over $1000 per month for thirty years. See this
debt calculator for a sense of the
numbers. You should also keep in mind, as noted below, that most beginning
attorneys do not earn nearly as much as the superstars hired by big firms.
Students at top twenty schools have good odds of being offered high salaries
at "Big Law" firms. Others take a greater financial risk.
Notice a potential trap here. You enter law school because of an interest in
social justice work, you get accepted to the school of your dreams, you take
out the loans, and you finish at the top of your class. Then you cannot
afford $1000 per month loan payment on a $40,000 per year social justice
salary. You take a job at a high-paying firm in order to pay the debt,
expecting to live modestly and pay $3000 per month to your lender for six
years to break even. Your salary rises from $160,000 to 200,000 to $250,000
to.... Meanwhile you become accustomed to this salary. You have a
family and buy a house. You want to send your kids to the best schools. At
this point you have to really, really desire to work in social justice to
justify a $200,000 pay cut. I did it when I moved from LeBoeuf to UNH, but
it was not easy. It was only possible for me because this is genuinely my
dream job. I would continue this work without hesitation if I won the
lottery tomorrow. I know many people in law firms looking for an exit
strategy, but they cannot think of another position so satisfying that it
would merit the decline in salary. Thus firm money has a gravitational force
that keeps many in its orbit even though they never planned on staying so
long. This equation becomes more complicated when you have a family to
consider.
A
new federal program may change the
landscape of law school finances for students who devote their careers to
public service. In brief, the program provides law school debt forgiveness
to law students who work as public interest attorneys for at least ten
years. The program is new enough that the full consequences to the
profession remain unclear, but most
studies of the legislation view it as a
godsend for public interest lawyers. Several elite law schools have offered
similar programs for some time. Also note, however, that recent years have
been difficult for the legal job market and even students from top schools
can no longer bank on getting offers at high-paying firms. See
this article for a summary of the
situation as of January 2010. And this gloomy January 2011
New York Times
article received a lot of attention, although some signs indicate
that the U.S. law market has strengthened in recent months.
Having said this, if you expect practicing law to be a passion that defines
your life then the price is probably money well spent. Your car payment can
easily be $500 per month and by comparison $1000 per month for your legal
education is in most cases a much better investment given its potential long
term value in so many aspects of your life. I raise these financial matters
not to scare anyone aware from law school but to help potential law students
appreciate the costs that accompany the many benefits of legal education.
I
teach entire courses on the relationship between money and law and I am
writing a book on the subject. If you would like to read more,
this article may interest you.
4. Deciding Where to Go
A
new set of questions should come into focus once you have been accepted to
one or more law schools. In general, choosing the highest ranked school
provides a starting point. Regardless of the complaints one has about
the biases and superficiality of law school rankings, the U.S. News
provides an accurate account of how the powers that be view particular law
schools. For another perspective, see Brian Leiter's equally controversial
rankings. In addition to the general
rankings, you can also find hierarchies for specific areas of legal study.
As mentioned above, you should pay special attention to these if you intend
to narrowly focus on a particular area of law. Thus if you know that you
want to practice health care law, for instance, you should think seriously
about choosing the University of Houston over American University even
though American generally ranks higher.
Although I encourage prospective law students to disregard geographic
location when applying to schools, location becomes a more significant
consideration once you have acceptances in hand. As a general rule, the
lower ranked the school the more relevant the location. Attending Yale Law
School will not limit you to a legal career in New Haven. Elite schools
carry prestige widely. If you choose a little known and poorly ranked
school, the degree will carry the most weight in its region. This is not to
say that a law degree from a bottom ranking school confines you to that
region, but only that you will probably find the majority of your
opportunities (interviews, clerkships, connections, etc.) in that area.
Relocating to another region will require a bit more effort and luck.
Students (especially those enduring four years in Durham, New Hampshire)
sometimes claim that they would like to go to law school "someplace warm."
Three years of law school will lay the foundation for your life's work. Do
not treat it like Spring Break. Whether you are in Concord or Honolulu, you
will be holed away in the law library studying for most of your waking
hours. You should choose the law school that will maximize your
opportunities to work and live a satisfying life after you graduate, not the
one that offers the best beaches for three years. If, however, you wish to
build your career in a warm climate, then choosing a regional law school in
such a location has some legitimacy.
As
discussed above, the financial numbers will seem much more concrete once a
law school offers you the privilege of taking on such enormous loans. Unlike
undergraduate costs which are frequently mitigated by scholarships and
tuition reductions of various sorts, in most instances law schools will
expect you to pay the full bill via loans. In some cases schools will
recruit students with superior credentials with scholarships, and here a
candidate usually must choose between full price at an elite school and a
reduced rate at less prestigious school. I faced such a decision and choose
the bargain. For reasons mentioned above, this worked out well for me but I
cannot know how things might have unfolded had I paid full price for a top
school. I probably would have been a stronger candidate for some jobs with a
stronger law school pedigree, but I have enjoyed many opportunities with my
degrees. If I had taken on the full debt of a private Manhattan law school,
I do not know if I could afford to work as a professor. I would probably
still be at a Manhattan firm. Visit a
debt calculator and have a hard look at
the numbers. Remember to add you undergraduate loans to your total estimated
burden.
If
you did not fare well in the application process, pause and reevaluate your
options. You only go to law school once and you do not need to accept an
undesirable offer. Should you study harder for the LSAT and take another
swing next year? A law degree from Harvard costs about the same as one from
Suffolk. Is it worth taking on such debt for every school? Also note that
choosing a poorly ranked school makes it especially important that you make
law review and otherwise do well. While even the worst Yale Law students
seem to have plenty of opportunities after graduation, mediocre grades from
a bottom ranking law school can create a potentially dangerous combination
of debt and unemployability. I do not mean to imply that you must be on the
Stanford Law Review to get a good job or be a successful attorney, but only
that you should soberly evaluate your likely post-graduation opportunities.
Most of those $160,000 starting salaries go to graduates from the top ten
law schools.
At
some point you will need to decide and (if you find one of your options
satisfactory) submit a deposit to a law school. In many cases you may be
waitlisted at a school you prefer. Sketchy situations arise here. Some
students place deposits at multiple schools, an ethically suspect practice
with a domino effect on other students. If I place a deposit at both UNH Law
and the University of Connecticut, I leave in limbo the person behind me in
line waiting for an acceptance from either school. She may remain on the
waitlist until classes begin, only to have her spot at Connecticut open up
when I do not show up for classes there because I decided on UNH. Meanwhile
she may have begun classes at the University of Maine, but then uproot once
Connecticut offers her a spot. Then Maine offers her seat to someone on
their waitlist, and so on. Having already endured an emotionally taxing
application process, this can be terribly stressful and disruptive to your
first year in law school. Similar concerns apply to students who attempt to
transfer to a different law school after the first year. You will have
little time or energy to go through the law school application process while
in the throes of the first year curriculum, and I doubt that many students
successfully "upgrade" via transferring. Don't bank on it.
5. What to Expect in Law School
Dozens of law professors have offered plenty of
excellent insider's advice to law students,
so I will be brief. The basic curriculum varies little between law schools.
You will take eight to ten assigned classes over the first year, usually
some combination of constitutional law, criminal law, torts, property,
contracts, civil procedure, and legal research and writing. You have little
choice regarding your schedule, and this academic boot camp will test your
limits. All but the research and writing courses will typically be large
courses of seventy or more students taught in a form of the "Socratic
Method" specific to legal pedagogy. In some cases anonymous day-long written
exams will determine your entire grade in each of these courses. Thus you
can find yourself a few days before your final exams, facing several
marathon tests during finals week, and with very little feedback regarding
whether you are studying the massive and dense books properly. Add the
stress of accumulating debt and you can appreciate why most law students
consider quitting at some point. Your classmates will intimidate you and you
will wonder if you belong here.3
I certainly had my days during the first year when the whole process seemed
like an absurd and masochistic initiation ritual, but in retrospect it was
pretty reasonable.
The research and writing courses, I believe, are far and away the most
important. These smaller classes train you in the skills of thinking,
writing, and arguing in the legal style. Good research and writing
professors work you hard and provide copious feedback. If you can learn to
proficiently read, write, and research in the legal style, these skills will
transfer to every other course and written exam. Make the investment in
these legal writing courses. If you must choose, work for a research and
writing course should take priority over studying for your other courses. I
view research and writing courses as so fundamental not only because they
pay dividends in your other courses, but also because these skills are the
building blocks of good lawyering. I've said half-seriously that I forgot
just about everything I learned in law school except legal research and
writing, and that was all I needed. If you ever need to know some legal fact
while practicing law, you will look it up and communicate what you found.
You need the skills to research and communicate more than the raw knowledge
of laws. To some extent all of the other courses in law school provide
pretexts for practicing legal thinking. Many of the best litigators, for
instance, do not know much about any specific area of law. Instead, they
master the craft of efficiently researching, writing, and arguing about
matters they may have never studied in law school. You will eventually need
to demonstrate proficiency in certain areas to pass the bar, but you will
take bar preparation courses designed specifically for this purpose.
Just as you finish the last exam of your first year of law school, the law
review competition begins. You will be running on fumes at this point and
the timing is cruel, but an offer to join the law review can be as important
as the offer of admission into the law school. Law reviews serve as the
primary "honor society" in law school and segregate student populations into
roughly the top ten percent of students and everyone else. Law review
students get the best job offers, the best clerkships, and the best research
assistantships. Membership delineates the law school caste system.
Membership on a law review at the one-hundredth ranked law school can make
you competitive with non-law review students at top twenty schools. If you
rise to become editor-in-chief of your school's law review, you will be
treated as the best of the best at your school. One gains entry to law
reviews through a combination of first year grades and something like a
"writing competition" conducted after first year final exams. As a member of
the law review you will serve as an editor for the journal. You will gain
intimate knowledge of The Bluebook.
The second and third years of law school tend to feel less onerous and seem
more like other graduate programs. Students choose from electives based on
their interests, classes are usually smaller, professors provide more
feedback, and second year students have a better sense of what the faculty
expects of them. Jobs opportunities begin to materialize and third year
students may know by September where they will be working after graduation.
Bar preparation begins soon after graduation.
6. What Can I Do with a Law Degree?
A
law degree opens many doors beyond the obvious, and dozens of books with
titles like
What Can you do with a Law Degree?
enumerate the possibilities. You can find almost as many treatises along the
lines of
The Unhappy Lawyer: A Roadmap to Finding Meaningful
Work Outside of the Law.
I
repeatedly mentioned my work in a large urban law firm, in part because I
can speak from my experiences and in part because the salaries associated
with such jobs occupy the imagination of many attorneys in the making. These
positions pay well, but you will work very long hours. Depending on the firm
and your disposition, you might consistently devote from eighty to one
hundred hours per week to the job. That means something like being away from
home from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days per week. You are always on call.
Scheduling dinner with your spouse can often end in disappointment because
work intervenes at the last minute. You record your efforts in billable
hours, requiring you to account for every six minutes of your work. The more
hours you bill, the bigger the bonus added to your base salary. In other
words, these high salaries come at a price. The hours may be long, but I
found the work less strenuous than slicing meat or landscaping.
Of
the approximately 1.1. million attorneys in the United States, however, such
large firm positions constitute only
small fraction legal profession. A much
higher percentage of lawyers work as
sole practitioners, in small to medium sized firm, or in the public sector.
One can find a potentially infinite variety of legal careers. Whether in
criminal law, international law, human rights law, intellectual property
law, family law, elder law, tax law, insurance law, bankruptcy law, sports
law, entertainment law, or various other specializations, attorneys
graduating from all accredited law schools can design niches for their
practice and find satisfying and lucrative work. Many law school graduates,
like myself, make use their law degree in non-legal fields. Two of the last
three presidents of the United States have law degrees.
7. Gender and Race in Law School and the Legal Profession
Statistics regarding race and gender in law school are grim. According to
the most recent census,
73% of licensed attorneys in the U.S. are male and
88.8% are white. Recent
studies suggest progress
on these fronts, with 19.9% of the J.D.s awarded in 2003 going to
minorities and 49.2% to women. For studies on the status of female
attorneys, see
these articles from the American Bar
Association's Commission on Women in the Profession. Also see the report
from American Bar Association's Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in
the Profession titled "Miles
to Go: Progress of Minorities in the Legal Profession." Several
students have recommended the book
The African American Pre-Law School Advice Guide:
Things You Really Need to Know Before Applying to Law School.
8. Joint Programs
Many schools now offer joint programs between law schools and other areas of
graduate and professional study. One can now find tracks in J.D./M.B.A.,
J.D./M.D., J.D./M.S.W., and all stripes of J.D./Ph.D. These arrangements
often present distinct opportunities for funding law school and students can
usually complete the joint program in less time than the two degrees pursued
separately. Applicants to these programs typically must be admitted
separately into both the law schools and the accompanying program. See
Brian Leiter's controversial but informative
opinions about J.D./Ph.D. programs in philosophy. See the the
Philosophy Department's materials for
advice specific to philosophy graduate programs.
9. Addendum on UNH and Franklin Pierce Law Center
For information regarding the affiliation between UNH and Franklin Pierce
law Center, see:
http://www.piercelaw.edu/news/posts/2010-04-28-sign-affiliation-agreement.php
http://www.piercelaw.edu/news/posts/2010-07-12-unh-affiliation-on-course.php
Notes from Former Students School Referenced Above
1.
A student advises: "I think that it can not be stressed enough that that
stupid test is worth (in the end) putting all the time into. I would
definitely say to anyone applying to think long and hard about the decision,
because law school is WAY too expensive and time consuming to do if you are
not fully committed to it."
2.
A student advises: "I think that it is hugely important for anyone
considering law school to understand what kind of impact it will have on
your social life.... Especially with the first year schedule, you are
basically in class from 8-4 every day, then come home/stay in the library
and read for the next day. Forget about seeing anyone during finals week.
Thankfully, after talking with you and others who had gone through the
process we were prepared for what would happen, and a few trips to the
florist always helps."
3.
A student advises: "A specific piece of advice for students coming from UNH,
particularly going to more prestigious schools, would be to have as much
confidence in yourself as you can. Some of the jerks from the private
schools will try their hardest to let you know how impressive they are.
It's not bad at Notre Dame, particularly compared to other top schools
(that's what the faculty say), so I haven't had much of it. But it is
definitely kind of intimidating to have classes with multiple kids from
Yale, Duke, Stanford, etc. and now be on their playing field. I just had to
remind myself at the start that I was smart enough to get into the school,
they must think I can do ok, and after I got through my first cold-call in
class (one of the most terrifying moments in my life), things were good."
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