Top Law Schools

What are the strong regional law schools in the DC area? Not looking to go into big law. Maybe Public Interest or enter a small firm. I want to keep tuition pretty low. I can get in-state in Maryland and Virginia.

lawschooltransparency.com

Click on Virginia

UVA > Georgetown > GW > William & Mary > Maryland = George Mason > American

Don't go to W&M, Maryland, GMU or American if it'll cost you more than $10-15k per year.

Doorkeeper wrote:UVA > Georgetown > GW > William & Mary > Maryland = George Mason > American

Don't go to W&M, Maryland, GMU or American if it'll cost you more than $10-15k per year.

So, I appreciate the TLS warning advice about going to law school. But I think posts like these are just bad advice. You seem to create this bright line between UVA-GW & WM-Am with a set figure in between about cost. That is going to make a new poster (like one with, say 4 posts like OP) think that GW at sticker is just grand and William & Mary at anything less than 15/year is a bad idea. That's just absurd advice.

Despite my disagreement with Doorkeeper's instructions, his ranking is roughly right. Note that W&L is on the same playing field as W&M. To some degree each of these has relative sub-regional strengths. For example, W&M will do better in Southeastern Virginia and Maryland will do better in Baltimore. All of them have some portability to the DC Metro area, but as a matter of pure odds, UVA to GW will give you the best show at being there. Apply to all of them, find out what scholarships you get, negotiate as much as you can, then come back with actual figures to evaluate.

wired wrote:

Doorkeeper wrote:UVA > Georgetown > GW > William & Mary > Maryland = George Mason > American

Don't go to W&M, Maryland, GMU or American if it'll cost you more than $10-15k per year.

So, I appreciate the TLS warning advice about going to law school. But I think posts like these are just bad advice. You seem to create this bright line between UVA-GW & WM-Am with a set figure in between about cost. That is going to make a new poster (like one with, say 4 posts like OP) think that GW at sticker is just grand and William & Mary at anything less than 15/year is a bad idea. That's just absurd advice.

Except that's not at all what he said. For all you know, he could be saying none are worth sticker (and I imagine that is what he's saying), but that the schools towards the bottom are worth less than the ones at the top. I don't see anything "absurd" about that at all, and I'd agree with it. GT, and even UVA, are not worth sticker in my opinion, but they're very clearly worth spending more on than GW, and GW is very clearly worth spending more on than American.

romothesavior wrote:

wired wrote:

Doorkeeper wrote:UVA > Georgetown > GW > William & Mary > Maryland = George Mason > American

Don't go to W&M, Maryland, GMU or American if it'll cost you more than $10-15k per year.

So, I appreciate the TLS warning advice about going to law school. But I think posts like these are just bad advice. You seem to create this bright line between UVA-GW & WM-Am with a set figure in between about cost. That is going to make a new poster (like one with, say 4 posts like OP) think that GW at sticker is just grand and William & Mary at anything less than 15/year is a bad idea. That's just absurd advice.

Except that's not at all what he said. For all you know, he could be saying none are worth sticker (and I imagine that is what he's saying), but that the schools towards the bottom are worth less than the ones at the top. I don't see anything "absurd" about that at all, and I'd agree with it. GT, and even UVA, are not worth sticker in my opinion, but they're very clearly worth spending more on than GW, and GW is very clearly worth spending more on than American.

Romo is, as always, correct. None of these schools are worth sticker + COL.

My purpose for the $10-15k warning was to explicitly target those schools whose sticker price are so absurdly unrelated to their employment prospects that special note was deserved.