Washburn, Creighton, Nebraska, or Willamette Forum

[digger13]

Hello,

154, 3.55 LSAC, 3.75 degree. 50 year-old white male.

Schools that accepted me and cost of attendance after scholly:
Washburn (Topeka): $17k
Creighton (Omaha): $33k
Nebraska: $43k
Willamette (Salem, OR): $65k

I am trying to leverage a better offer from Willamette with my other offers, but I have not yet received an answer (though I did receive an acknowledgement of my request).

Factors I am considering:
1. I have lived most of my life in the Southwest, and I spend much of my free time in the mountains.
2. Of these choices, I prefer to relocate to and probably live in the Pacific Northwest, but the COA is pretty high.
3. Creighton has the best overall university (not law) reputation.
4. Nebraska has the highest rank and is steadily climbing (though I know that second-tier rank is largely meaningless.)
5. Washburn has the lowest COA.
6. I am raising three sons, ages 15, 10, and 5, who are all active outdoorsmen with me.
7. There is a strong probability that I will lose my job this year and I will be forced to relocate, so I would rather not retake the LSAT and wait until next cycle even though I am confident I could do much better (I studied part-time just over a month to get the 154.) Also, I would rather take my high school freshman son to a new school next year rather than a year later.

I have looked at this every way I can, and I cannot decide. I have considered housing, cost of living, quality of local schools, weather, outdoors activities, as well as all aspects of the law schools. I have scoured these forums and read all that I could find related to these schools. I do know that my best chance for employment will be in the region of the school I attend, but the dean of admissions at one of the schools did tell me in passing that he has placed students in my home state, so I know it's possible.

I will work only about 18 years after graduating, so COA is a consideration - though I can finance most of the cost with the sale of my home and still have enough for a sizable down payment on or to purchase another. I am not averse to taking on a bit of debt.

This decision should not be so difficult for me. Geographically, I strongly prefer Willamette but I am worried that I will be stuck in Salem for the rest of my life (which might not be bad, but I don't like limits). Perhaps I am wrong, but I think I would have better and more widespread employment options if I were to go to Nebraska or Creighton. Washburn is still an option because it's almost free. Washburn has also just started an oil & gas specialty which interests me, though I have not decided which area of law I want to practice - I just want to practice law, and I always have. I finally just earned my bachelor's, and now I will fulfill my lifelong dream. Finally, although I am not going into law for the money, I must consider the loss of three years wages against the additional earnings I may make as a lawyer. Considering that I currently make just under $40k per year, I do think it will be at least a break-even prospect.

Any thoughts? Please don't suggest I reconsider going to law school, as my mind is set. What am I missing? What else should I consider? Thanks for reading this, and I look forward to any ideas, no matter how trivial they may seem.

Regards,

D.

[IAFG]

All of these schools graduate a sizable number of people each year who despite their best efforts fail to ever practice law at any salary (and I have heard of entry level private practice gigs paying $20k). If that doesn't give you pause, it should.

[thevuch]

if youre mind is set then i ask

are these COAs per year or total?

i'd honestly go most inexpensive option if i were you.

but if youve got the cash id just go to which state youd be OK with being stuck in

[jbagelboy]

if youre mind is set then i ask

are these COAs per year or total?

i'd honestly go most inexpensive option if i were you.

but if youve got the cash id just go to which state youd be OK with being stuck in

Op doesn't have the cash. He's liquidating his main equity asset for a coin toss shot at a job and less than a dice roll for a good one.

No offense, but to be brutally honest, attending law school sounds like a horrific financial decision for you and your family right now. In 3 years, you will need to pay for your eldest to go to college - and you'll have no income, and have taken out additional loans which you will probably be stuck on PAYE trying to pay back until retirement. Then you have two more kids to put through college on the salary of a TTT attorney: i.e., making less than the tuition cost of one child for one year. This is assuming public secondary education and very low CoL.

Selling your home in this market could be disastrous. With these choices and your demographics, reality militates heavily against you ever owning another one. Unless your eldest child is a computer prodigy or runs his own profitable company a la tenenbaum children, there is no defensible way for you to attend law school.

I understand the fear of being laid off without a supplementary skill set or another industry to fall back on. My father has spent his late 40s and early 50s working part time or unemployed since the crash. It's tough out there and ageism is real in many professions. Law school is not an out. I cannot conjure a compelling enough reason to want to become an attorney or start law school for you next year, regardless of the deferential standard applied to your motives, faith, and good intentions.

I know you must have put tremendous effort raising three children, working, taking the LSAT and applying to law school. Dropping it now probably doesn't even seem like a cognizable option. But don't trap yourself in this vicious game - at least sincerely reconsider what you are doing here both for yourself and your family. There are many industries more open and willing to employ you that law, which is truly crippled beyond belief right now. At least one of the schools you are considering may even close within the next few years.

If you absolutely must attend and won't heed these warnings, go to the absolute cheapest school so your children will have the least, or hopefully none, to pay off for you when you retire.

[cron1834]

Please tell me those are total COAs and not annual costs ...

These schools are pretty terrible. They'll give you a 50/50 shot of actually getting a job, and the job probably won't pay better than being an assistant manager at Costco. Don't do this to your family.

[rickgrimes69]

if youre mind is set then i ask

are these COAs per year or total?

i'd honestly go most inexpensive option if i were you.

but if youve got the cash id just go to which state youd be OK with being stuck in

Op doesn't have the cash. He's liquidating his main equity asset for a coin toss shot at a job and less than a dice roll for a good one.

No offense, but to be brutally honest, attending law school sounds like a horrific financial decision for you and your family right now. In 3 years, you will need to pay for your eldest to go to college - and you'll have no income, and have taken out additional loans which you will probably be stuck on PAYE trying to pay back until retirement. Then you have two more kids to put through college on the salary of a TTT attorney: i.e., making less than the tuition cost of one child for one year. This is assuming public secondary education and very low CoL.

Selling your home in this market could be disastrous. With these choices and your demographics, reality militates heavily against you ever owning another one. Unless your eldest child is a computer prodigy or runs his own profitable company a la tenenbaum children, there is no defensible way for you to attend law school.

I understand the fear of being laid off without a supplementary skill set or another industry to fall back on. My father has spent his late 40s and early 50s working part time or unemployed since the crash. It's tough out there and ageism is real in many professions. Law school is not an out. I cannot conjure a compelling enough reason to want to become an attorney or start law school for you next year, regardless of the deferential standard applied to your motives, faith, and good intentions.

I know you must have put tremendous effort raising three children, working, taking the LSAT and applying to law school. Dropping it now probably doesn't even seem like a cognizable option. But don't trap yourself in this vicious game - at least sincerely reconsider what you are doing here both for yourself and your family. There are many industries more open and willing to employ you that law, which is truly crippled beyond belief right now. At least one of the schools you are considering may even close within the next few years.

If you absolutely must attend and won't heed these warnings, go to the absolute cheapest school so your children will have the least, or hopefully none, to pay off for you when you retire.

/thread

OP, this plan that you have? It's a bad plan. Go back to the drawing board.

[Paul Campos]

NO ONE IS GOING TO HIRE YOU.

You are considering schools where roughly half of the graduates are getting any kind of jobs as lawyers, AND you're going to be at a massive disadvantage in comparison to your classmates.

Why?

(1) You're way too old. Legal hiring is rife with age discrimination. Legal employers have to train entry-level hires, because law schools pretty much skip the whole teaching people how to actually practice law thing, and employers don't want to train 53-year-olds.

(2) Almost all the legal jobs the graduates of these schools will get will go to people at the top of the class, people with good connections to the legal community, and people with excellent connections to the local community. You definitely aren't going to be in two of these categories and there's a 90% to 95% chance you won't be in the third.

No one is going to hire you. You will be incurring huge opportunity costs -- you're going to spend something like 20% of the remainder of your potential working life outside the labor force, retraining yourself for a career that isn't going to happen. You're planning on liquidating your most valuable asset to pay for the direct costs of this, which is financially insane. You're (solely?) financially responsible for three children.

Don't do this.

[NYSprague]

ORiginal poster: why did you think of law school? Is it because you think employment will be better?

You should not sell your house to pay for law school.

[cron1834]

Can someone find a law school hypothetical worse than this one for the cycle? I started reading TLS this fall, and I really can't recall one. This would be truly terrible. Don't do this.

[TheSpanishMain]

Can someone find a law school hypothetical worse than this one for the cycle? I started reading TLS this fall, and I really can't recall one. This would be truly terrible. Don't do this.

I can't come up with one either.

Digger, please understand that no one is saying "don't go" just to be an asshole. It's not a judgment on you as a person. It's just that for someone in your situation, it's very unlikely that law school would be a good investment of time and money. It's much more likely that you'd regret it for the rest of your life. The legal market is not what it was 20 years ago. Don't do this to your family.

[Question Everything]

First off, don't go anywhere you wouldn't be alright with living after you graduate. Additionally, I'd ask to attend the evening program (if any of these schools have one) and plead to keep the scholarship they've offered you. Then I'd start calling around to small firms that practice something you could see yourself doing and try to get a paralegal or administrative position with them. This is a good way to, hopefully, graduate debt free and set yourself up for having a good shot at gaining employment as a lawyer once you pass the bar. Good luck.

[typ3]

OP You will not get hired anywhere at age 50. Period. Law firms expect 70-80 hours of work in this economy. You are not employable regardless of your "experience" in life or anything else. In law you are a cog in a gigantic wheel. If you want to work and make money move to the Dakotas plain and simple. You're too old to be going backwards in life and reentering academia. Academia is for teenagers and 20 somethings to avoid the realities of the real world.

[SFrost]

If OP didn't have so many kids, I'd say roll the dice and go for it. If OP had a full ride to a strong regional, I might say go for it even with the kids.

18 years isn't enough to save for retirement while supporting three children and paying off law school loans. Your quality of life is going to suck if you go. Big difference being a 26-year-old with no responsibilities working at Starbucks after law school VS 53-year-old with the world on their shoulders.

[20141023]

.

[cron1834]

Not that I disagree, but playing the Elizabeth Paskiewicz card is cold.

ETA - Reach for those dreams, doe.

[20141023]

.

[cron1834]

You know you're a TTT when your deans can't even pull that.

[Chrstgtr]

On another related note, what is up with all of these posters who are deciding between several regional schools across the country. These schools do not have any placement power outside of their immediately surrounding area so unless you (and all other similar posters) are literally indifferent between practicing in the Pacific Northwest and Nebraska (which seems pretty unbelievable to me), some schools should be eliminated a priori (and probably never applied to at all).

[20141023]

.

[timbs4339]

if youre mind is set then i ask

are these COAs per year or total?

i'd honestly go most inexpensive option if i were you.

but if youve got the cash id just go to which state youd be OK with being stuck in

Op doesn't have the cash. He's liquidating his main equity asset for a coin toss shot at a job and less than a dice roll for a good one.

No offense, but to be brutally honest, attending law school sounds like a horrific financial decision for you and your family right now. In 3 years, you will need to pay for your eldest to go to college - and you'll have no income, and have taken out additional loans which you will probably be stuck on PAYE trying to pay back until retirement. Then you have two more kids to put through college on the salary of a TTT attorney: i.e., making less than the tuition cost of one child for one year. This is assuming public secondary education and very low CoL.

Selling your home in this market could be disastrous. With these choices and your demographics, reality militates heavily against you ever owning another one. Unless your eldest child is a computer prodigy or runs his own profitable company a la tenenbaum children, there is no defensible way for you to attend law school.

I understand the fear of being laid off without a supplementary skill set or another industry to fall back on. My father has spent his late 40s and early 50s working part time or unemployed since the crash. It's tough out there and ageism is real in many professions. Law school is not an out. I cannot conjure a compelling enough reason to want to become an attorney or start law school for you next year, regardless of the deferential standard applied to your motives, faith, and good intentions.

I know you must have put tremendous effort raising three children, working, taking the LSAT and applying to law school. Dropping it now probably doesn't even seem like a cognizable option. But don't trap yourself in this vicious game - at least sincerely reconsider what you are doing here both for yourself and your family. There are many industries more open and willing to employ you that law, which is truly crippled beyond belief right now. At least one of the schools you are considering may even close within the next few years.

If you absolutely must attend and won't heed these warnings, go to the absolute cheapest school so your children will have the least, or hopefully none, to pay off for you when you retire.

OP: This is some of the most thoughtful advice I've seen on this forum, and at 2000+ posts I've seen a lot of advice. If you are not flame do not do this. There are other technical or job training programs you can go to that are shorter, cheaper, and much more likely to lead to gainful employment.

"I must consider the loss of three years wages against the additional earnings I may make as a lawyer. Considering that I currently make just under $40k per year, I do think it will be at least a break-even prospect."

No, it's not. You'll be three years out of the workforce to make the same money and you'll have sold your best asset or taken out a bunch of high-interest debt. Do not do this.

[cron1834]

That Cooley woman is in a bad way.

Don't emulate.

[Nebby]

I want to crawl into a ball after reading that Cooley thing. That school needs to be shut down.

[Kimikho]

I can't imagine any of these schools gave the scholarships without substantial stipulations.

[HRomanus]

This decision should not be so difficult for me.

OP, you are completely right. My heart is breaking that this decision is even on the table for you.

Please don't suggest I reconsider going to law school, as my mind is set.

I am 22 years old. Most posters on here are below 30 and are not married. At a fundamental level, our lives can handle the average results of making a horrible decision like this and being trapped in years of debt and poor employment. But you can't. You have to think of your sons. You have to think of your retirement coming rapidly. Please do not make this decision.

Watch this video from Shark Tank and see how Kevin and Robert react to this entrepeneur: http://youtu.be/RgA5RhYdw9U?t=25s Here's what Robert says: You always have to save your money so you don't put your family at risk. You have to put your family first. Here's belief and here's being a fool. Don't cross that line."

[Hutz_and_Goodman]

OP attending law school would be such a terrible decision I can't even begin to explain. If you decide to not attend law school I would be happy to send you a gift card to the restaurant of your choice to celebrate (PM me your mailing address). I am a very financially cautious person but I would rather give this gift to you than to have you make such a terrible life choice that is guaranteed to have very dire consequences for your family.