GGU (accepted) or USF (wl but should know soon) Forum

[marksteere]

Psyched about GGU. They seem to have a good litigation program which is what I'm interested in. I'm an old guy (54) and money isn't a factor. Neither is the US News ranking. I guess I just want to hear arguments that favor one school over the other. I was planning to wait to see if I was accepted at USF before posting here but there isn't a lot of time so I'm requesting input now. All advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[paayter]

If money isn't a factor to you...why not just take time to improve on the lsat and see it as a challenge, then apply for schools a little higher up on the food chain. If not then USF over GGU.

[marksteere]

Thank you for your timely response paayter. Your advice is sound but I've already taken the LSAT twice (150, 154) and I f'ing don't want to go through that again. It's time to go forward.

[twenty]

Literally half of GGU students don't pass the bar... but that shouldn't concern you as much as the fact that less than a quarter found legal jobs nine months after graduation according to the ABA data. [1] University of San Francisco isn't much better, with only 33% of the graduates employed in legal positions nine months after graduating. [2] Even UC Hastings, less than half of the graduates found legal jobs 9 months after graduation. [3]

You might consider UC Hastings if you get a full ride scholarship, you're already living in the area, and you are unemployed so you're not giving up on a different career to chase a dead-end one from UC Hastings. Don't go to either GGU or USF, even for free.

Your best option is to not go to law school at all (since you very likely won't have a legal job from any of these three schools anyway), followed by study for + retake the LSAT.





[1] http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/goldengate/2013/

[2] http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/ ... isco/2013/

[3] http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/hastings/2013/

[marksteere]

What in particular about USF over GGU?

[twenty]

It's like asking if you want to be shot in the chest six times (GGU), or three (USF). USF is objectively better than GGU in terms of employment data, but both are still objectively terrible decisions.

[ManoftheHour]

You have to retake. If CA is your target, the lowest you can go is really Davis/UCI at full ride or don't go.

ETA: If money really isn't a factor, then I'd say the same thing. Get into Davis/UCI or don't go. At least both those schools place over 64% in full time law positions (real lawyer jobs).

http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/irvine/2013/

http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/davis/2013/

[marksteere]

Hastings rejected me.

A big part of it for me is that I just want to pass the bar as a challenge. "Because it's there." I know that might sound retarded but that's where I'm at.

My plan is prepare myself for the bar independent of what school I go to. I'm not expecting a big law job. Maybe legal aid followed by public defense office work. Or just hanging out a shingle.

[marksteere]

The school has to be in the SF/San Jose area. I have a wife and a house and I can't just fly off somewhere. Must commute.

[ManoftheHour]

GGU places 22.4% of people into law jobs period. I'm not talking about 22.4% in big law. This is a job as an attorney period. Any job as an attorney. 22.4%. Is that worth 3 years of your life, lost salary, and debt?

USF places 34%. It's not that much better. That means you have a 66% chance of not becoming an attorney at a firm, public defender's office, DA's office, etc.

If you're rich and want to start your own firm as a hobby (no harm no foul if you fail), then by all means choose whichever school you think will make you happiest to attend. If you plan to open up your own firm, I don't think the school you attend really matters (someone jump in if I'm wrong).

But if you are doing this as a career move, to make money, or debt you take out can be financially crippling if you shall fail (and by attending one of these schools, the odds are not in your favor), then you need to retake or don't go.

[marksteere]

If you're rich and want to start your own firm as a hobby (no harm no foul if you fail), then by all means choose whichever school you think will make you happiest to attend. If you plan to open up your own firm, I don't think the school you attend really matters (someone jump in if I'm wrong).

You're on the right track. I can't call myself rich in a place like Palo Alto. I'd get laughed out of town. But yeah, a law career is something for my own entertainment, and the money really doesn't matter.

[ManoftheHour]

If you're rich and want to start your own firm as a hobby (no harm no foul if you fail), then by all means choose whichever school you think will make you happiest to attend. If you plan to open up your own firm, I don't think the school you attend really matters (someone jump in if I'm wrong).

You're on the right track. I can't call myself rich in a place like Palo Alto. I'd get laughed out of town. But yeah, a law career is something for my own entertainment, and the money really doesn't matter.

If money doesn't matter and you're happy with starting your own firm (something you might have to do due to the bad employment prospects of both schools), then you should visit both schools and see which one will make you happier. I don't think it makes a difference. Of course, if I were you, I'd go USF just because their employment rate is higher by almost 10%. Both schools are accredited. Just study hard and pass the bar.

Best of luck!

[WaltGrace83]

....I don't even..............

[twenty]

If all you care about is passing the bar, then do a correspondence JD here:

http://www.nwculaw.edu/finances_tuition.html

or here:

http://www.aisol.org/TuitionExpenses.aspx

Both of these programs will let you sit for the CA bar and you'll be able to attend for less than 10k total.

[timbs4339]

If all you care about is passing the bar, then do a correspondence JD here:

http://www.nwculaw.edu/finances_tuition.html

or here:

http://www.aisol.org/TuitionExpenses.aspx

Both of these programs will let you sit for the CA bar and you'll be able to attend for less than 10k total.

This.

I'm sorry, but it's unlikely that you'll get hired at Legal Aid or the PD office out of either school. Those are extremely competitive positions nowadays, especially in a desirable urban area and because they qualify for good government loan repayment programs. Students from top schools will be looking to get into them.

As for smaller private firms, you leave law school completely unprepared to do any kind of litigation (GGU does not have a "good" litigation program. No law school has a good litigation program because law school does not teach you how to practice law). Unfortunately there's a lot of age discrimination in the law- people want to hire young associates who they can work to the bone, because like I said, you don't bring anything specific to the table in terms of legal skills. This is assuming you haven't developed connections with potential high-paying clients in your life, if you have, you could probably secure a position with a firm in that practice area (but it sounds like you want more general practice).

So that leaves going solo. Not a very good option for most recent grads because you don't know how to practice law, don't have any clients, and have no capital. If the third factor isn't a problem, and you're okay with running an unprofitable small business for a few years until you can build up a client base and the experience to be a decent lawyer, then you just need a bar license, which you can get on the cheap from the quoted schools and study for the Baby Bar and the full Bar on your own time.

[NorCalLaw]

Honestly, it would be a much better choice to go to one of those "California accreditation only" law schools than GGU. Those places are awful, but at least they cost a lot less. You won't be missing out on any scintillating prestige by skipping out on GGU, I can assure you.

There's a reason that GGU plasters advertising all over San Francisco: they're desperately searching for suckers.

Re: your goal of hanging a shingle: do you have experience networking, drumming up business, and marketing yourself? You'll be doing far more of all that than actually practicing the law, and your advertising/networking skills will be far more valuable than anything else.

[paayter]

Thank you for your timely response paayter. Your advice is sound but I've already taken the LSAT twice (150, 154) and I f'ing don't want to go through that again. It's time to go forward.

Surprised your not an auto admit at USF. Also please don't say things like you dont want to go through that again there have been plenty of people who have taken the test 3 or 4 times, myself included. You will make them scoff heh. If you are just looking to pass the bar PLEASE save your money and go somewhere much cheaper like a california accredited.

[paayter]

....I don't even..............

lol

[marksteere]

I'm glad I came on here to ask for advice. You guys have been totally cool in helping me deal with my awkward situation. The 0L books typically don't have a chapter on well-to-do old guys who want to go through law school mainly just for kicks. I'm going to follow ManoftheHour's advice and revisit these schools, sit in on more classes, check out the neighborhoods, and just see which place I like better (assuming I get accepted to USF). I guess for my purposes, there really isn't a big difference between the two schools, even though USF has a 10% better job placement rate. I think a lot of these stats, including bar passage rates, are affected mainly by the quality of students they admit in the first place. It's not them. It's you (or me, in this case).

The first thing I considered was correspondence schools but there are a couple of things I don't like about them.
1. The baby bar.
2. The skype-type interface. I want to interact with people and I want to engage in the Socratic method - in real life. Call me crazy but that seems like a lot more fun than, for example, watching Transformers, though I am looking forward to that.
3. Putting all my eggs in the California basket seems highly imprudent. It's very unlikely that I'll want to move to another state upon graduation, but it is conceivable. And if I did, that'd be four years (part time) down the drain.

I understand that for most people, tuition, potential earnings, etc. are big issues, but, at the risk of repeating myself, for me the money doesn't matter. I'm no Mark Zuckerberg, but I have more than enough for tuition, and I really don't need to work. I'm just old and bored, and I want to do something interesting before I die.

Norcal, no I don't have experience networking, marketing etc. This is a good dose of reality though, that I may end up not doing anything but literally hanging a shingle. Even that would be cool though.

Thanks again

[03152016]

i think you have expectations that aren't in line with reality here
i understand you don't care about the money
so i'll approach this purely in terms of opportunity after graduation

pd stuff will be very hard to get from ggu. t1 grads already have a hard enough time getting these jobs; spoke recently with a top law school grad who himself had a difficult time getting such a position. bc of pslf pd offices across the country are flooded with apps from students at elite schools.

firm work will be hard to get too. you stated your belief that this has to do with the quality of student coming in. this is true in an indirect way. law school is about signaling, and ggu sends the wrong one. it's not that the people they admit are so lazy/unintelligent that they can't land a job. it's that few firms existing in this glutted legal market are interested in a fresh grad with zero relevant experience and a jd from a school perennially named one of the worst in the nation. (and do not expect to outshine your peers. everyone thinks they'll excel at law school, but no one really knows until they go. your numbers don't indicate you're not an academic fit for the student body, and you know that many of your peers will be gunning for those coveted firm positions). also, in reference to your mentioning the possibility of moving in the future, don't expect portability with a ggu jd, the number of opportunities outside of ca for a newly minted ggu grad without connections approaches zero.

as for hanging up a shingle, be aware that you'll emerge from ggu with little practical knowledge about the practice of law. the right way to go about it is to work in a firm for a while and then hang up a shingle, but since you may not have that opportunity, it's important to understand that the failure rate for new solos is high. balancing the professional side (legal work), business side (managing the practice), and business development side (marketing), all while learning the trade is grueling. further, without a big ad budget, work is simply hard to come by as a new grad. it may seem exciting to open up a practice now, but sitting in an empty office working your rolodex and scouring craigslist hoping to snag a will or trust may not be the best way to spend your last working years.

in short, i'm not saying don't go to ggu
if you have the money, go right ahead
but go because you're interested in the law school experience
not to actually become a practicing lawyer
there are far better ways to do that

[twenty]

I'm actually super down with the idea of folks in their 50s-60s going to law school for a late career change. The problem is a lot of your goals are super nebulous or contradictory. I guess my question to you is, what do you want? We're not trying to be wet blankets here/trying to spoil your fun, but you understand that at some level, any time you spend money you're investing in something. Now, if your feeling is that you want to take 3-4 years off work and spend many tens of thousands of dollars on a piece of paper that will have absolutely no value, then I'd say go nuts. At that point you're just taking a really stressful three year long vacation. But you're also talking about "hanging out a shingle" and "putting your eggs in a basket" which is kind of scary. As soon as you start taking the practice of law seriously (as opposed to "I have money to burn"), you have to know that your odds of actually being an attorney are pretty low coming from either school.

Speaking of schools, while you may be right that the quality of the students affects the bar passage rate, everything else is determined by faculty, employer, and alumni connections, all of which are totally outside your control. It's not that University of San Francisco kids just don't want to be attorneys as badly as Harvard kids, it's that substantially fewer firms are going to show up to interview USF students.

As far as correspondence schools go;

1) You say you're not happy about the baby bar, but the baby bar is easier than the actual bar, PLUS you seem pretty confident in your ability to pass the bar. Why are you not confident about passing the baby bar? If you can't pass the baby bar, you're out $2,000-$5,000 and a year; you can't pass the actual bar at USF, you're out $100,000+ and three years.

2) The Socratic Method is objectively awful - if you want somebody to ridicule you over some inane piece of knowledge that's never going to be of value to you on an exam or in the actual practice of law, I'll do that to you for half of whatever the law school is charging you. Correspondence school exams are going to be identical to in-person exams, all the lectures will be audio recordings, you'll still read the exact same cases/materials, etc. The only thing that changes is that you're not actually in a classroom, and you're being charged a 1/7th of the tuition.

3) Okay, first, if you're 54 and you're only looking at schools in SF, you're not going to move out of state, you're just not. But even if you were, GGU and USF have about as much mobility as a correspondence school (i.e, none.) If you want to practice in Nebraska, go to law school in Nebraska. If you want to practice in Washington, go to Washington. Excluding the Top 14, no other law schools have inter-regional reach. And GGU/USF are a long, long way from the T14.

[03152016]

sharing brainwaves w my boy 20

[timbs4339]

Twenty for all of the points.

OP: I went to LS with several people who did what you're doing. For some it was a legitimate second career which they needed to make money, others had hit their number and wanted to do nonprofit or government work, others wanted to take their business in a different direction. Law school broadened their options, but you have to understand that at this slate of schools, you're pretty much stuck opening up shop as a solo. Not that it's a bad thing, but you seem to have an idealistic, unrealistic (I can't believe I'm saying this to someone twice my age) expectations of the bar, of the Socratic Method (twenty is right, it gets old after about 30 seconds) and of legal practice.

[Tanicius]

This is my take.

OP, you're asking the wrong question. The question isn't about Golden Gate versus USF. I'm going to go against the grain here and tell you that, for someone in your position, going to one of these schools can be okay. For most people -- certainly for all young people hoping to start a career and stay above the actual poverty line, GGU and USF are terrible decisions. In your case though, either one of them can be okay.

But you need to have a better idea of what you want from law school itself. From your posts, it's clear you don't really know what you want to do with the degree. You will not have the time after graduating to just dick around looking for work here, looking for work there. If you want to learn the law and pass the bar for the fun of it, well okay -- other people your age have said the same thing and it's America, can't fault them for using their own money how they see fit. But if you want an actual job out of this, then you need to think twice.

You will be stuck as a solo. You could go to Harvard, and you would still have a hard time getting a job as anything other a professor (which requires a degree or work experience in a field that professors are in demand to teach). No one will want to hire you for anything else when you're so close to the retirement age. It will take years to train you to be an effective attorney, by which time you'll have only a few more years of time to actually put those skills to use for your employer. It's not worth the cost for them to train you. Now add on top of that the disadvantage you will be facing with a degree from GGU/USF. Students in their 20's don't get jobs from those schools -- the hard truth is that you certainly will not, unless you have some very high-demand academic background, like you're a medical doctor who wants to lecture at a university about medical malpractice.

THAt'S ALL FINE, IF: You have some other skills that will allow you to succeed in solo practice. But it doesn't sound like you've thought about these skills. Solo'ing is HARD. It requires business acumen. You can be the best attorney in town, but no one will hire you if they haven't heard of you. And you won't be able to take on a lot of business unless you have a lot of startup capital. So really, we're talking a few ten g's more on top of the law school mortgage, just to start your business. And then you will need energy. You will have to hustle and network to get clients, to build referral networks from other law firms who can send you business. Think about that really hard. You have to be confident that as you enter your 60's you will have the energy left to play the hustle. I'm 25, and I don't think I have the energy to be a solo practitioner. You have to love your work enough that you're fine working 80-hour weeks to keep your business afloat during emergencies. Some people have that going into their 60's, I realize that. Some people work their job til they die at their desk because they love it that much. You pretty much have to know that you will want this enough to go through something like that.

What is NOT okay is a plan to just lackadaisically go through law school, soaking up the academic exploration at leisure, learning for the love of learning, and THEN trying to get a job or start a business with the degree. That will not work, both because of the schools you're looking at but also because of the economic realities of an age-ist market.

Sorry in advance if it sounds like I'm harping on old people. That's not my intent. For the record, discriminating against hiring someone because of their age is illegal, but every single employer who isn't already your personal best friend will do this whether it's legal or not.

[mi-chan17]

The advice in this thread so far has been good, so I won't rehash it.

Given that you don't seem to care about the school's employment prospects, and are primarily looking for permission to take the bar and a classroom experience, I'd recommend the two California bar-accredited schools in your proximity (one in SF and one in SJ). They hold actual physical classes, and will cost you a lot less than GGU or USF. The only downside is the baby bar, but as Twenty pointed out, that's not necessarily as bad a thing as you might think.