Top Law Schools

What should I do? Is the difference in rank worth what would amount to a 3k difference per year?

You should not attend either of those schools. Even with the scholarships, you're looking at $150K+ of debt at graduation. That's an insane gamble to take on schools with such terrible employment outcomes.

The answer is neither. These are both bad schools in a highly overcrowded market. Retake the LSAT in October and reapply next year. If you do not want to retake, do not go to law school.

Only 56% of Kent grads are able to actually become attorneys.

Only 39% of DePaul grads are able to actually become attorneys.

Are those odds worth the $150,000 + interest in non-dischargable debt you'd have to take on for these JDs?

Your future would be much better served by retaking the LSAT, like many people on this site have.

Id go kent

I could live at home and attend either, so I would only have about 70k in debt. That breaks down to a minimum monthly payment of about $800 a month. I know I could find something to pay that off. I know I could find a job to pay that.

Younks wrote:I could live at home and attend either, so I would only have about 70k in debt. That breaks down to a minimum monthly payment of about $800 a month. I know I could find something to pay that off.

Being able to pay it off and it being worth the money are very different things. Neither school is worth more than about 10 grand

Kent's the better pick between the two, and 70k is within the YOLO range, but tcr is retake or don't go, especially since the comparative advantage of going to Kent over just getting another job is likely to be next to nil.

I understand that starting off I won't make as much as an experienced lawyer will make, but I tend to agree with the whole "investing in a career, not a first job" argument.

Younks wrote:I understand that starting off I won't make as much as an experienced lawyer will make, but I tend to agree with the whole "investing in a career, not a first job" argument.

The problem is that there is a large chance that you will never become a lawyer in the first place. The answer is still retake or don't go.

Younks wrote:I understand that starting off I won't make as much as an experienced lawyer will make, but I tend to agree with the whole "investing in a career, not a first job" argument.

You misunderstand. Earlier I posted this:

North wrote:Only 56% of Kent grads are able to actually become attorneys.

Only 39% of DePaul grads are able to actually become attorneys.

It's not about how much you'll make as an attorney -- out of these schools, you're almost guaranteed to end up in the left lump in the legal profession's bi-modal salary distribution -- it's about whether you'll have the chance to get a job as an attorney at all.

At Kent, 44% of graduates didn't get jobs as lawyers.

At DePaul, 61% of graduates didn't get jobs as lawyers.

Do you see what we're saying? There's a better chance than not that you won't have a career as a lawyer. That's a BAD investment.

Younks wrote:I understand that starting off I won't make as much as an experienced lawyer will make, but I tend to agree with the whole "investing in a career, not a first job" argument.

First, as others have said, it's not a question of whether you'll get a low-paying job as an attorney -- it's a question of whether you'll work as an attorney at all. From either of these schools, odds are unacceptably high that you will not. Second, if that happens, you haven't "invested" in a career -- you've just set a ton of money on fire. Anyone who tells you otherwise is an ignorant boomer or someone who doesn't know anything about the legal profession. An unused JD goes rancid quickly. If, like so many of the graduates from those two cesspools, you are unable to find JD-required work within nine months of graduating, you likely never will. There's nothing attractive about a JD who graduated a while back but hasn't actually worked as a lawyer.