Creating the best lawyer Forum

[jarofsoup]

Law schools do not make good litigators. There are some awesome litigators who want to some crappy crappy schools.

[Bronte]

Law schools do not make good litigators. There are some awesome litigators who want to some crappy crappy schools.

So what? The question is job prospects. Whether you turn out to be a great lawyer has way, way more to do with things other than where you went to school, but you're not going to have a chance to become a great litigator if you can't get a job.

[Veyron]

Maybe someone should explain to cmartin5970 that the issue is not which law school "creates the best lawyer" but which law school provides the most law students with legal jobs. I think OP's a little in the dark about a number of basic TLS assumptions, like the fact that the legal market is in the shitter.

Wanting to be a trial lawyer is a very different proposition than getting most other jobs. Obviously OP needs to go somewhere where he doesn't pay a penny because aiming to be a trial lawyer is a crapshoot but otherwise, the normal recruiting rules don't apply.

Criminal defense can be extremely competitive. In this market, getting any full time, JD-required job is competitive because it qualifies you for LRAP programs. Thus, students displaced from better schools inside and outside of any given market are clamoring for JD required jobs.

On another note, being a trial attorney is not a rare thing among those who actually do practice law. It's true that many people hold the misconception that being a lawyer means going to court. It's also true that even among "trial attorneys," the majority of cases settle and the majority of work is out of court. But that shouldn't lead to the opposite misconception that few lawyers are trial attorneys.

Right, there is a huge difference between being a trial attorney and being a litigator. Criminal lawyers make up the bulk of trial lawyers. Those firms tend to be small and it can be difficult to get a job with one but grades + school is not the predominant metric that it is with most other sorts of legal employers. LRAP at most schools does not cover private criminal practice or products liability etc so its a non-issue if you want to be a trial lawyer unless you want to be a prosecutor.