Top Law Schools

Hello everyone, I have been a lurker since 2012 and have finally gathered enough facts and circumstances to write a half-intelligent post. After having read these forums exhaustively and still deciding that I want to pursue a career in law, I'd like input from those of you that seem to be as much in the know as a person can be. So, hoping to not illicit a series of "TL;DR" here we go.

I've come to realize that given legal employment is highly dependent of a number of factors, chiefly your school of graduation, class rank, and ties to the area. Given this, I'd like to maximize my opportunity by having a very focused approach, as I believe every detail is crucial in developing a complete package. I will list a number of facts about myself that I believe to be relevant, and hopefully you can advise me to target a particular school or region.

1. My undergraduate degree is in history and from California State University, Fresno. Just a regional school in an area that exists because of its history in agriculture.

2. My performance was mediocre. I graduated with a 3.1 GPA.

3. I have serious ties to the Central California area, having grown up there and attended the university there. My father and grandfather both worked for the police department.

4. I commissioned into the Army National Guard, where I am currently the executive officer for a reconnaissance troop (mind you, this is the Tennessee National Guard).

5. I believe that being in the Tennessee National Guard counts as a "tie" to the state of Tennessee. Considering how military-friendly seemingly everybody in Tennessee is, this could help me get into Vanderbilt, and probably would help me get into UT-Knoxville.

6. I currently reside in central Georgia where I am employed full-time as a police officer. This could count as a tie.

7. I achieved a 170 on my LSAT.

Which should be my target school? I feel like UVA would be the smartest decision. It is splitter-friendly, I can maximize my military tuition assistance there, and it is close enough to the Nashville market where that coupled with my service in the Tennessee Guard might provide me some extra opportunities (assuming I was a high-performer in law school of course). It also is of close-proximity to D.C., and I am quite fond of the D.C.-Northern Virginia area.

I wouldn't mind going back to California, but I wouldn't gain admission into either Stanford or Boalt, and I feel that the bay area market is pretty exclusive to those schools. I think I'd only have a shot at Davis or maybe UCLA, and have to go back to Fresno.

Having been a police officer, I am very passionate about the justice system, and would be ecstatic to be either a prosecutor or a public defender (or a non-public defender's office Defense Attorney).

I apologize if this post is too long, but I want to prove that this is not a decision I'm taking lightly. You all on TLS are the best source of information, and I want to make the most informed decision I can. Thank you for your help.

Sounds like you have a healthy, realistic grasp of the legal market and your options.

UVA would indeed be a good target for you, not only because of its splitter-friendly admissions office but also because it values veteran status. Vanderbilt is likewise a good option, though if I were you I would hope to be able to squeeze some money out of them.

I think you are correct to discount your odds at California schools. In fact, I would probably not even bother apply to any of the California schools with your numbers. UCLA is almost just as GPA-focused as Boalt, and the rest of the California schools just don't have the job stats to justify attending them for anything except a full-ride.

If I were you, I would include in my list of reaches the lower-end of the T-14's East Coast schools. So we're talking Cornell, Georgetown, and UVA, as well as maybe Duke and Northwestern even though your odds at those two are fairly low.

Someone who knows more than me may be able to tell you whether you're going to realistically need to ED one of these five schools, UVA included. I think it's a strong possibility you don't get into any of them without the ED. I would personally recommend you do *not* ED anywhere because you are already employed and making probably even more income than you would as a PD/DA when you add up your police benefits. You have less of a need to make the high-risk decisions that we K-JD English majors had to when we applied to law school. You want more options.

So, as for the rest, I would go for a cozy list of Midwest and East Coast T-25 schools, like Illinois, WUSTL, Vanderbilt, GW. I think you'll get some great scholarship offers, though a full-ride at any of these is unlikely for splitters. When you get the scholarship offers, add up your GI benefits and see if you can't get away with next to no cost out of your pocket.

Bear in mind that I am in no rush. The "retake and apply" still applies to me. I still have another year and a half worth of exam sessions before I plan on applying. By this time I'll have been a police officer for 2 years.

blsnared wrote:Bear in mind that I am in no rush. The "retake and apply" still applies to me. I still have another year and a half worth of exam sessions before I plan on applying. By this time I'll have been a police officer for 2 years.

Okay. Well, if you think you can do better than 170 on the LSAT, it certainly isn't going to hurt to keep at it. I got a 170 myself and was practicing in the 172-174 range, but I knew when I got my score that any further practice would be looking at diminishing returns. If you had a 165 I'd be singing you a different tune.

For someone in your position, you might honestly consider a part-time program. If you could stay on as a police officer while attending law classes part-time, you wouldn't even need to line up a job before graduation. You would have a networking advantage as a police officer and could just apply to the local prosecutor's office after passing the bar, whenever a job actually opened up. Traditionally, this has actually been how a lot of police officers got into prosecution. This would also give you the avenue of simply continuing on as a police officer or going into security/investigation/accident consultation, which I'm sure you know by now would make you a lot more money than almost any criminal prosecution/defense attorney salary.

The difficulty with part-time programs is, of course, that they're only worth going to if they are right next to the place where you are working, and not all law schools have them, which is particularly an issue among the higher ranked schools. If Georgia State or Georgia Tech is the part-time program you'd be looking at, I don't know if that would be worth it because you'd have zero portability out of the area. GULC has a part-time program it might be worth applying to, but then you'd have to find a cop job in D.C., at which point that kind of defeats the purpose of going part-time.

I'm tracking. Luckily I have a lot of avenues of approach. I'm not one to put all of my eggs in one basket. I'm working on a couple of other things with some different agencies. There is solid money to be made in the Lieutenant+ ranks in a big police department. Or like I said earlier, I'm working on making a jump into FedLaw (get it? play on biglaw! /endbadjoke) and if that worked out, it would be game over. I'd be saying hi to a 30 year career then triple dip into my LEO and ARNG pensions, and my ROTH IRA.

blsnared wrote:I'm tracking. Luckily I have a lot of avenues of approach. I'm not one to put all of my eggs in one basket. I'm working on a couple of other things with some different agencies. There is solid money to be made in the Lieutenant+ ranks in a big police department. Or like I said earlier, I'm working on making a jump into FedLaw (get it? play on biglaw! /endbadjoke) and if that worked out, it would be game over. I'd be saying hi to a 30 year career then triple dip into my LEO and ARNG pensions, and my ROTH IRA.

If you stay on the beat, make sure you quad dip into consulting. Have a buddy cop in Athens who makes 200k off his pension + accident reconstruction investigatory work while technically "retired" at age 35. All of us PDs/DAs went to the wrong kind of school for this kind of work.

Tanicius wrote:

blsnared wrote:I'm tracking. Luckily I have a lot of avenues of approach. I'm not one to put all of my eggs in one basket. I'm working on a couple of other things with some different agencies. There is solid money to be made in the Lieutenant+ ranks in a big police department. Or like I said earlier, I'm working on making a jump into FedLaw (get it? play on biglaw! /endbadjoke) and if that worked out, it would be game over. I'd be saying hi to a 30 year career then triple dip into my LEO and ARNG pensions, and my ROTH IRA.

If you stay on the beat, make sure you quad dip into consulting. Have a buddy cop in Athens who makes 200k off his pension + accident reconstruction investigatory work while technically "retired" at age 35. All of us PDs/DAs went to the wrong kind of school for this kind of work.

I know a former officer that quit because he got a job working for a power company investigating copper wire theft. He makes gobs of money.

damn maybe i should be a cop instead

Small sample size but here ya go:

http://mylsn.info/br9255/

Vandy's looking good

Do you think UVA or Vandy would be better for the Nashville market?

blsnared wrote:Do you think UVA or Vandy would be better for the Nashville market?

Vanderbilt.