In at both. After my merit scholarship and NRTE my tuition at Texas is 21k per year, so total cost would be 63k. With UCLA's scholly my total tuition cost would be 70k.

I liked UCLA's campus a lot more than I liked Texas, and I would prefer to settle down in socal over Texas, but I like both California and Texas. I am planning on doing IP law/pharma patents, possibly malpractice, or maybe even going into Public Interest with a health focus. Bio major undergrad, and want to complement my JD with a MS in immunology or biochemistry.

I should add that I am drawn to UCLA because it has a great entertainment law program, and I think it could be really cool to be an entertainment lawyer or sports agent. I'm a big sports fan, and I am really intrigued by the legal side of sports. But honestly, I don't know if this just an immature infatuation, and whether I would have any real future as a lawyer in sports/entertainment. I am really interested in health law/drug patents, and maybe I should stick to that instead of chasing rainbows and unicorns.

Thoughts? and no, do not want to retake. I am very happy with these schools.

edit- Any chance at an A3 clerkship or AG Honors Program from either of these schools

Sounds like you want UCLA more. Go there. 7k isn't much of a difference, especially if you'd prefer to live in SoCal.

What about job prospects? UCLA grads compete with USC, Berkeley, and Stanford grads, while Texas seems to have the entire state locked down. In addition, Texas' economy is better than California's.

The two are peers schools. If you want to work in California, go to UCLA; if you want to work in Texas, go to UT. It's really that simple.

UCLA is the better choice for you because you want to live & work in Southern California. Although the tuition difference over the course of three years is projected to be only $7,000, California has a budget crises that may result in steadily rising tuition rates. Additionally, the cost-of-living is higher in SoCal than in Austin, Texas so you need to more carefully estimate the cost difference between the two.

The tuition at the UC will continue to rise significantly into the future; be sure to factor that in too.

While that is a concern for many, it is by no means an established fact, so please do not present it as such.

It's not an established fact, but it should be a concern for anyone considering attending a UC school... That said, the largest tuition increase concern comes from Berkeley, UCLA seems to be less reliant on funding from the UC system for whatever reason and thus its on more solid financial footing.

To OP, I would probably choose Texas here, there are plenty of biotech companies in Texas and one of the US district courts in Texas (Eastern District?) is pretty much the patent prosecution capital of the world... It's really hard to do entertainment law, especially if you don't already have connections in the industry (many people leave entertainment industry jobs and go to UCLA) and if you want to be an agent there is absolutely no reason to waste $200k on a law degree. You will still have to work your way up from the mailroom/assistant ranks with very little pay to succeed in that field.

Regarding sports law, if you are talking about being an agent the majority get there by bringing clients to a firm. That's why you see these stories of guys hanging around prep schools and colleges before they are agents building bonds with athletes that eventual lead to getting signed. It's not like agencies hire fresh agents, train them up, and give them leads.

If you are talking about representing teams, leagues, players unions, etc, that is done by a small group of firms and getting into the practice groups is competitive so its not like just any law student walks into it. It's something that you work toward over a career as far as I know. The names of those firms are here on TLS somewhere though.

I'm not sure how one would get into like college athletic administration if you wanted to do that but it surely takes a certain type of person and connections. I'm guessing a law degree would be of marginal use though.


And I agree with the whole UCLA for cali, UT for Texas. If you literally consider it a tie I'd go to UT because it's cheaper.

Right. Is this market in Texas better than the market in SoCal though?

California as a whole is in worse shape than Texas is, though the legal market in LA specifically is probably bigger than any one city in Texas.

You are a miserable BoalTTT troll.

Texas has arguably handled the "ITE" better than most all other locations. Stealth firing and deferrals did happen, but on a much smaller scale than other major markets. 1L SAs can still be found, which seems like it is starting to not hold true in a lot of other locations. LA is a bigger market than anything in Texas, but Texas does have two very large markets in Houston and Dallas. (Austin, Fort Worth, and San Antonio are the smaller markets.) California's economy is a ticking time bomb, but I'm not sure how much effect that will have on firms there, especially the national ones.

Trying to base a decision on a comparison of the legal markets of two huge states' might not be the best way to go.

Honestly, I'm not sure if all this talk about Texas weathering ITE better than other markets is really true. Out of the UCLA/Vandy/UT tier, UT's been hit the hardest. Vandy's stayed roughly the same, while UCLA and USC surprisingly improved.

That's pretty fair. I was just talking about the state itself, but it would probably be better to limit the conversation to the schools.

I still do think that Texas, and the legal markets in Texas, handled the ITE better than most other legal markets--maybe the reason that this didn't translate over to UT is that more people at T14s with Texas ties decided to come back home over trying to go to D.C. or Chicago. Thus the combo of smaller classes at firms + large UT class + more of an influx of other top schools could have hurt UT even though the Texas legal market itself handled things better than other places. I think there might have been even a decent number of people coming to Texas with no ties but just b/c of the perceived health of the legal market. I remember reading plenty of xoxo threads back when everything went to shit asking about how to come up with ties for Houston or Dallas (the two most popular responses were 1) make up a g/f and 2) talk about how much you love tex-mex).

Yeah considering this thread concerns UCLA and Texas and I made no mention of Berkeley anywhere.