Help me decide where I should go. Forum

[paranoia4ya]

Schools probably had more issues with your LSAT/GPA than your C&F issues. You should retake.

I got rejected from brooklyn and waitlisted at cardozo.

Bull.

P.s. gpa is a 3.46, straight As for two years, moved it up from a 2.55.

[kapital98]

what is a northeastern jd/mba

Worthless?

Ouch. could you elaborate? during my interview for the mba portion of the program, the only information i could get out of them was that some of their graduates landed good jobs, and that there were around ten people in the program.

Also, I did apply to several schools across the country because I was not sure where I would get accepted due to some C&F issues. (Expulsion and driving (a scooter) without a licence). I understand that this put my transcript under higher scrutiny by admissions. I feel as though schools in NY were particularly displeased with my background, as the only school that accepted me in the area was st. johns.

What else? It is true that I have no connections to arizona, and very few in NC, but I do have cousins in indiana. Some of them went to bloomington undergrad, and I recently found out that they know Michael Maurer's mom. I am visiting the school in two weeks, so i guess i will find out for myself. Personally, I am going to try and get a minor in business that they offer through the business school and gun for a job at a big 4 (accounting firm). I will have some time over the summer to relax before school so i am going to study and pass all four parts of the cpa exam too. I know this is not the highest paying job, but i plan to use this background to end up working for my family's company. I am already basically guranteed the job as long as i dont turn into a TFA.

Have you ever thought of being a tax lawyer? There seems to be a certain niche for tax lawyers during OCI and hiring in general. Your past experience could give you a small edge in hiring.

[paranoia4ya]

Yes. I could also see myself working as a tax attorney at a firm long term.

[somewhatwayward]

Practice as a CPA for a few years before going to law school! That will improve your chances at post-law-school employment because you will have WE in a relevant field. Plus it will give you a chance to study seriously and retake the LSAT. If you can get a 4.0 for two straight years while taking accounting classes, you can do better than a 164 on the LSAT. Your GPA and C&F stuff are not holding you out of the T14. It is your LSAT. I am a third-year student at Columbia, and I would kill to have worked a few years as a CPA or a similar type of job. You are passing up a huge opportunity if you don't take advantage of that.

It is nice that your parents are paying, but I am assuming you still care about getting a job after you graduate, right? The thing is that all of the schools listed are extremely regional as others have noted in this thread. This decreases your shot at the markets where they place, and you will have to be even higher-ranked to compete with the local kids. Do you want to live in AZ, IN, or NC? (I know you have MA ties but Northeastern places terribly....see below). Putting aside the regionality issue and assuming you have the same shot at a job as every other person entering, here is what you are looking at:

Northeastern
Employed in long-term full-time legal jobs: 49%
Firms of 101+: 2%
Clerkships: 0% ( )
Salary Ranges: not reported (very suspicious....)

IU-B
Employed in long-term full-time legal jobs: 60%
Firms of 101+: 14%
Clerkships: 4.6%
Salary Ranges: ~72nd percentile: 50K (ie, ~70% chance of making less than 50K); ~82nd percentile: 70K; ~91st percentile: 100K (extrapolated based on the median salaries reported by only 37% of the class....all the high salaries get reported bc schools track them down)

Wake Forest
Employed in long-term full-time legal jobs: 54%
Firms of 101+: 10.8%
Clerkships: 2.5%
Salary Ranges: not reported (again, very suspicious that a Tier 1 school does not gather and release salary data....not sure what is worse between Indiana providing medians based on 37% of its class or WFU not releasing any data)

UA
Employed in long-term full-time legal jobs: 73%
Firms of 101+: 6.3%
Clerkships: 1.3%
Salary Ranges: 58th percentile: 50K (so ~58% chance of making less than 50K); ~72nd percentile: 58K; ~86th percentile: 75K (extrapolated from the medians reported based on data from 54.4% of the class)

Of those choices, UA places the most people into full-time long-term jobs, but it has poor big law/clerkship placement and only 25% of the class is employed on other states (the 25% includes all types of employment; short-term, part-time, non-legal, etc). Your chances of becoming a tax attorney at a Big 4 are very low from there, and your lack of ties to AZ will hurt you. Plus, you have more than a 50% chance at making less than 50K a year and a ~70% chance of making less than 58K after you graduate! You can make more than 58K a year once you get your CPA! Why spend three more years and a lot of money getting a JD that gives you a ~70% chance of making less than you could have made before law school and a 25% of landing no legal job at all? It is crazy. It might make a tiny bit more sense if you had actual work experience.

I don't need to go through the same analysis with the other schools (and cannot with WFU and Northeastern since they don't provide salary data but I assume you can surmise that a school would publicize the data if it were favorable) because you can see that with any of these choices, you are taking a 25-50% risk of getting no legal job and a 50-70% risk of making less than 50K. The types of jobs that pay less than 50K a year are:

-small firms (typically personal injury, insurance defense, family law, Chapter 7 bankruptcy...the stuff you see advertised on bus benches)
-direct services PI (things like defending tenants in housing court or helping kids get special ed services)
-local gov jobs like working in the legal dep't of the municipal sewer agency in the city where the school is located
-no legal job

You need to look at these options and ask yourself if you would be satisfied with them since all these schools give you at least a 50% chance at this type of outcome. Prospective students tend to overestimate the likelihood that they will land the type of job they came to law school to get (in your case, tax atty) and overlook the very high chance that they won't obtain that job, so they forget to consider whether they would be satisfied with the outcomes from the prospective school other than their dream job. So would you be satisfied with one of those <50K/year jobs I listed?

Even if you be satisfied with those outcomes, you should still get the work experience. Law school is not going anywhere.

[paranoia4ya]

Practice as a CPA for a few years before going to law school! That will improve your chances at post-law-school employment because you will have WE in a relevant field. Plus it will give you a chance to study seriously and retake the LSAT. If you can get a 4.0 for two straight years while taking accounting classes, you can do better than a 164 on the LSAT. Your GPA and C&F stuff are not holding you out of the T14. It is your LSAT. I am a third-year student at Columbia, and I would kill to have worked a few years as a CPA or a similar type of job. You are passing up a huge opportunity if you don't take advantage of that.

It is nice that your parents are paying, but I am assuming you still care about getting a job after you graduate, right? The thing is that all of the schools listed are extremely regional as others have noted in this thread. This decreases your shot at the markets where they place, and you will have to be even higher-ranked to compete with the local kids. Do you want to live in AZ, IN, or NC? (I know you have MA ties but Northeastern places terribly....see below). Putting aside the regionality issue and assuming you have the same shot at a job as every other person entering, here is what you are looking at:

Northeastern
Employed in long-term full-time legal jobs: 49%
Firms of 101+: 2%
Clerkships: 0% ( )
Salary Ranges: not reported (very suspicious....)

IU-B
Employed in long-term full-time legal jobs: 60%
Firms of 101+: 14%
Clerkships: 4.6%
Salary Ranges: ~72nd percentile: 50K (ie, ~70% chance of making less than 50K); ~82nd percentile: 70K; ~91st percentile: 100K (extrapolated based on the median salaries reported by only 37% of the class....all the high salaries get reported bc schools track them down)

Wake Forest
Employed in long-term full-time legal jobs: 54%
Firms of 101+: 10.8%
Clerkships: 2.5%
Salary Ranges: not reported (again, very suspicious that a Tier 1 school does not gather and release salary data....not sure what is worse between Indiana providing medians based on 37% of its class or WFU not releasing any data)

UA
Employed in long-term full-time legal jobs: 73%
Firms of 101+: 6.3%
Clerkships: 1.3%
Salary Ranges: 58th percentile: 50K (so ~58% chance of making less than 50K); ~72nd percentile: 58K; ~86th percentile: 75K (extrapolated from the medians reported based on data from 54.4% of the class)

Of those choices, UA places the most people into full-time long-term jobs, but it has poor big law/clerkship placement and only 25% of the class is employed on other states (the 25% includes all types of employment; short-term, part-time, non-legal, etc). Your chances of becoming a tax attorney at a Big 4 are very low from there, and your lack of ties to AZ will hurt you. Plus, you have more than a 50% chance at making less than 50K a year and a ~70% chance of making less than 58K after you graduate! You can make more than 58K a year once you get your CPA! Why spend three more years and a lot of money getting a JD that gives you a ~70% chance of making less than you could have made before law school and a 25% of landing no legal job at all? It is crazy. It might make a tiny bit more sense if you had actual work experience.

I don't need to go through the same analysis with the other schools (and cannot with WFU and Northeastern since they don't provide salary data but I assume you can surmise that a school would publicize the data if it were favorable) because you can see that with any of these choices, you are taking a 25-50% risk of getting no legal job and a 50-70% risk of making less than 50K. The types of jobs that pay less than 50K a year are:

-small firms (typically personal injury, insurance defense, family law, Chapter 7 bankruptcy...the stuff you see advertised on bus benches)
-direct services PI (things like defending tenants in housing court or helping kids get special ed services)
-local gov jobs like working in the legal dep't of the municipal sewer agency in the city where the school is located
-no legal job

You need to look at these options and ask yourself if you would be satisfied with them since all these schools give you at least a 50% chance at this type of outcome. Prospective students tend to overestimate the likelihood that they will land the type of job they came to law school to get (in your case, tax atty) and overlook the very high chance that they won't obtain that job, so they forget to consider whether they would be satisfied with the outcomes from the prospective school other than their dream job. So would you be satisfied with one of those <50K/year jobs I listed?

Even if you be satisfied with those outcomes, you should still get the work experience. Law school is not going anywhere.

Thank you for this post. Before i prepared to take the lsat I attempted to get a job at a big four accounting firm. These occupations are basically closed to people from my undergrad bc there are no big 4 offices in NH and my school isnt that great. I think one person in my entire class got a job at a big 4, and it wasnt me. Basically, they only recruit out of good schools and people who get a MSA. I could either have my parents pay for an MSA or a JD, and the latter is more valuable to me.
Also, I do not think that the job prospects at IU-B are as bleak as your analysis indicates. a greater portion of students who went into the private sector reported salaries than the public sector, and their salaries were not as bad as these totals. Plus, working at a big 4 firm after graduation is considered a JD advantage job, so the 60% of the class getting full time jd required jobs doesnt really affect me as much. I know in all likelihood i will be making less money than you after I graduate, but if you look at the buying power index of living in Indiana and compare it to NYC you would understand why I chose these schools. (they are somewhat undervalued except northeastern, which i added to the list bc of its great location and my interest in the dual degree). Since I will have no debt when I graduate, I should weigh the BPI of the area I am interested in practicing more than someone who has to make ridiculous interest payments of 6-7% a year. The fact of the matter is, over 70% of the 2011 bloomington class was employed b4 graduation and most of the employed grads are not searching for other jobs, indicating they are happy with their current employment.

[LRGhost]

I am almost certain you won't get a Big4 placement with a JD/MBA from a non M7 or non T10/15 MBA. As you said, they recruit mostly out of undergrad. Unfortunately, and I am a bit ignorant to the hiring practices of these firms, to be fair, once that boat sails, it's safe to say it's gone. Hoping to be one of the few is not a smart gamble.

That said, are you saying you have a job with your parents business? Is this in accounting or in legal work? I would highly recommend doing accounting work prior to going to law school for a variety of reasons. First, you'll get 'real world' work experience and get to make some decent dough. You'll also get to retake the LSAT once, if not twice more. But more importantly, you'll get the opportunity to avoid spending three years in law school with dim employment prospects.

If you have a legal job with your family and it's something you can do for a career, then go to the cheapest school possible. Your degree won't make a difference since the main reason to 'trade up' is for increased job prospects.

Also, ~70% employment is not something to think of as a success. Look at how many people are working in small firms. Those people are not making 'good' money, even for the region. I know you say that business includes the Big4 accounting (and lets throw in MBB consulting) but it also includes people working retail, sales, and anything else that isn't law. I can almost guarantee you that the overwhelming majority of graduates in 'business' do not have these prestigious Big4 or MBB jobs.

If you can explain more what you want to do with your JD, we can probably give better advice.

[somewhatwayward]

Practice as a CPA for a few years before going to law school! That will improve your chances at post-law-school employment because you will have WE in a relevant field. Plus it will give you a chance to study seriously and retake the LSAT. If you can get a 4.0 for two straight years while taking accounting classes, you can do better than a 164 on the LSAT. Your GPA and C&F stuff are not holding you out of the T14. It is your LSAT. I am a third-year student at Columbia, and I would kill to have worked a few years as a CPA or a similar type of job. You are passing up a huge opportunity if you don't take advantage of that.

It is nice that your parents are paying, but I am assuming you still care about getting a job after you graduate, right? The thing is that all of the schools listed are extremely regional as others have noted in this thread. This decreases your shot at the markets where they place, and you will have to be even higher-ranked to compete with the local kids. Do you want to live in AZ, IN, or NC? (I know you have MA ties but Northeastern places terribly....see below). Putting aside the regionality issue and assuming you have the same shot at a job as every other person entering, here is what you are looking at:

Northeastern
Employed in long-term full-time legal jobs: 49%
Firms of 101+: 2%
Clerkships: 0% ( )
Salary Ranges: not reported (very suspicious....)

IU-B
Employed in long-term full-time legal jobs: 60%
Firms of 101+: 14%
Clerkships: 4.6%
Salary Ranges: ~72nd percentile: 50K (ie, ~70% chance of making less than 50K); ~82nd percentile: 70K; ~91st percentile: 100K (extrapolated based on the median salaries reported by only 37% of the class....all the high salaries get reported bc schools track them down)

Wake Forest
Employed in long-term full-time legal jobs: 54%
Firms of 101+: 10.8%
Clerkships: 2.5%
Salary Ranges: not reported (again, very suspicious that a Tier 1 school does not gather and release salary data....not sure what is worse between Indiana providing medians based on 37% of its class or WFU not releasing any data)

UA
Employed in long-term full-time legal jobs: 73%
Firms of 101+: 6.3%
Clerkships: 1.3%
Salary Ranges: 58th percentile: 50K (so ~58% chance of making less than 50K); ~72nd percentile: 58K; ~86th percentile: 75K (extrapolated from the medians reported based on data from 54.4% of the class)

Of those choices, UA places the most people into full-time long-term jobs, but it has poor big law/clerkship placement and only 25% of the class is employed on other states (the 25% includes all types of employment; short-term, part-time, non-legal, etc). Your chances of becoming a tax attorney at a Big 4 are very low from there, and your lack of ties to AZ will hurt you. Plus, you have more than a 50% chance at making less than 50K a year and a ~70% chance of making less than 58K after you graduate! You can make more than 58K a year once you get your CPA! Why spend three more years and a lot of money getting a JD that gives you a ~70% chance of making less than you could have made before law school and a 25% of landing no legal job at all? It is crazy. It might make a tiny bit more sense if you had actual work experience.

I don't need to go through the same analysis with the other schools (and cannot with WFU and Northeastern since they don't provide salary data but I assume you can surmise that a school would publicize the data if it were favorable) because you can see that with any of these choices, you are taking a 25-50% risk of getting no legal job and a 50-70% risk of making less than 50K. The types of jobs that pay less than 50K a year are:

-small firms (typically personal injury, insurance defense, family law, Chapter 7 bankruptcy...the stuff you see advertised on bus benches)
-direct services PI (things like defending tenants in housing court or helping kids get special ed services)
-local gov jobs like working in the legal dep't of the municipal sewer agency in the city where the school is located
-no legal job

You need to look at these options and ask yourself if you would be satisfied with them since all these schools give you at least a 50% chance at this type of outcome. Prospective students tend to overestimate the likelihood that they will land the type of job they came to law school to get (in your case, tax atty) and overlook the very high chance that they won't obtain that job, so they forget to consider whether they would be satisfied with the outcomes from the prospective school other than their dream job. So would you be satisfied with one of those <50K/year jobs I listed?

Even if you be satisfied with those outcomes, you should still get the work experience. Law school is not going anywhere.

Thank you for this post. Before i prepared to take the lsat I attempted to get a job at a big four accounting firm. These occupations are basically closed to people from my undergrad bc there are no big 4 offices in NH and my school isnt that great. I think one person in my entire class got a job at a big 4, and it wasnt me. Basically, they only recruit out of good schools and people who get a MSA. I could either have my parents pay for an MSA or a JD, and the latter is more valuable to me.
Also, I do not think that the job prospects at IU-B are as bleak as your analysis indicates. a greater portion of students who went into the private sector reported salaries than the public sector, and their salaries were not as bad as these totals. Plus, working at a big 4 firm after graduation is considered a JD advantage job, so the 60% of the class getting full time jd required jobs doesnt really affect me as much. I know in all likelihood i will be making less money than you after I graduate, but if you look at the buying power index of living in Indiana and compare it to NYC you would understand why I chose these schools. (they are somewhat undervalued except northeastern, which i added to the list bc of its great location and my interest in the dual degree). Since I will have no debt when I graduate, I should weigh the BPI of the area I am interested in practicing more than someone who has to make ridiculous interest payments of 6-7% a year. The fact of the matter is, over 70% of the 2011 bloomington class was employed b4 graduation and most of the employed grads are not searching for other jobs, indicating they are happy with their current employment.

You didn't answer my question about whether you would be satisfied with the legal positions I listed that are the most common outcomes from these schools.

There are jobs outside of the big 4 for CPAs. Get one of those and profit. Like the person above me said, it is unlikely that you would get hired by the big 4 from any of these law schools, but it would definitely help if you had actual accounting experience before you went to law school.

Here are IU-B's employment stats: http://www.lstscorereports.com/?school=indiana. The 60% is full-time, long-term legal jobs. I don't know where you are getting 70%, but that may include nonlegal positions. You can't assume that the 60% figure won't impact you because you are going to be hired by the big 4 because you need to make a contingency plan in case of the very likely scenario that that does not happen. Also, do you have hard data on what your chances at the big 4 are from IU-B? If not, how can you feel so confident that you will land it?

I think I was unclear about my salary data calculation. I did not use the calculation 100-37=63 (see the equations below for what I did use). The 25th/median/75th were based on 37% of the class' salaries. My calculation assumed that those are, more or less, the highest salaries in the class, which is a reasonable assumption because schools are allowed to track down salary data for grads, and the schools are incentivized to track down every person in big law, and it is easier to do so because they are listed online. The people working at the sewer agency or Home Depot are not listed online, and the school doesn't want their salaries anyway. Also, people with high salaries are more likely to report in the first place. If the 37% who reported have roughly the highest salaries, then the median provided is actually the (100-(37/2)) = ~82nd percentile of the whole class. The 25th percentile provided is the (100-(3*(37/4))) = ~71st percentile of the whole class, and the 75th percentile is the (100-(37/4)) = ~92nd percentile of the class. You can quibble around the edges (maybe a few high salaries are left out or low salaries are included, but it is very safe to say that more than half the class is getting work that pays less than 50K/year.

You're right that it is cheaper to live in IN than it is in NYC, but the question is not your choices v. mine but your choice to go to law school v. your other alternatives. In this case, you have a marketable undergrad degree (unlike many on here who have English degrees that are good for basically nothing in terms of jobs post-college) and you haven't maxed your LSAT score. Thus, if you choose law school now, then you forfeit the alternative of working in a relevant field and improving your LSAT in exchange for law schools with marginal employment outcomes. That decision is not logical. In addition, because you have a marketable undergrad degree, it would be a giant fail for you if you went to law school and ended up doing flat-rate divorces for 40K/year or got no job. For people with a useless undergrad degree, it is still a fail to get no job, but the flat-rate divorce gig might be better than what they could've gotten post-college (although if they have a ton of debt, the calculus changes).