Top Law Schools

Hello all,

I'm taking the December LSAT and have been improving each and every test. I usually test between a 160-163 (depending on whether or not I get stuck on a certain logic game, or time in general). I still have another 6+ weeks to get work in, so it is safe to assume I will get a ~162 on my test. With that said, my undergrad GPA is certainly sub-par @ 3.1 in a non-challenging major (Political Science, History minor). I went to a top 50 school, so it wasn't a bad school, but it was not an ivy. I had a decent amount of extra-curriculars (Greek Life, positions, clubs) but nothing that jumps out at you.

I graduated in 2013 and worked within local government/politics since graduation. I currently work in my County Attorney's office and have a great relationship with both he, and my prior boss (elected office). Because of this relationship, I will most likely be using both of them for my letters of recommendation.

Considering my LSAT score (future), sub-par GPA, and work experience/LOR, chance me at:

Brooklyn Law (PT)
Fordham Law (PT)
Uconn Law (PT)

I will be going part time (evenings) as I need to work while attending (unless offered a great package including housing). While Brooklyn isn't the most reputable, my plan at this juncture in time is to do Army or Navy Judge's advocate for 5 years, and possibly going for an LLM or MA in government after service. I haven't spoken to anyone from any of the schools listed, but I would love to do a joint program (JD/MPA or MA). Obviously this changes if offered clerkship or a position at a top firm, but this doesn't seem likely.

I know that the market is inflated with lawyers, and those from outside the top schools are at a huge disadvantage in a market like NYC. However, I'm confident that I can make it work. At this point, I see Brooklyn as being a match, with Fordham and Uconn being low-reaches.
I will most likely be applying to St. Johns and Hofstra as well, but I see both as being bad moves in the long term. And if you have believe that another school in the immediate area (CT, NJ) are good moves for me long term and realistic, I am also open to that. I just need to be able to get affordable housing and a good package, but who doesn't.

Thanks for the advice, and I appreciate brutal honesty

Getting JAG is really, really competitive, especially if you're not a veteran. It's not like enlisting, where if you meet the basic qualifications they'll almost certainly take you. They reject far more people than they accept. It's not a safety net job.

If you want to be a JAG, that's fine, but you need to go to a school that has solid employment prospects in case you don't get it.

Brutal honesty is don't take till you can get 167+, or more with your GPA

I'd imagine most (all?) people who attend bad law schools are confident they can make it work. Most (almost all?) are wrong. Your confidence doesn't mean anything.

Don't go unless it's a school that places well and is at a reasonable cost.

While I appreciate your concerns, I simply asked for the probability of getting accepted to those schools and other schools in the region. I've read internet posts before, and understand that the perception is that unless you're L12, you're out of luck.

I've relayed these concerns to my colleague's and boss (former judge), and they said that it was all what you make of the experience. An employee that just left graduated from Pace Law and just went to Reed Smith, it happens.

In terms of Jag, I see how competitive it is as they accept a small percentage. I also see that they accept people from throughout the country, and not simply the ivies and historically strong universities. My uncle is also a recently retired Navy E-7 whose buddy is a career Navy JAG officer. Anything is possible.

If people are going to try to tell me a school like Fordham or Uconn yields no positive future, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree as a quick gander of U.S district court judges shows that any background can have a good outcome, even if the cards are against you.

prospectiveLS91 wrote: I've relayed these concerns to my colleague's and boss (former judge), and they said that it was all what you make of the experience. An employee that just left graduated from Pace Law and just went to Reed Smith, it happens.

Of course it happens. It just happens very, very rarely.

prospectiveLS91 wrote: In terms of Jag, I see how competitive it is as they accept a small percentage. I also see that they accept people from throughout the country, and not simply the ivies and historically strong universities. My uncle is also a recently retired Navy E-7 whose buddy is a career Navy JAG officer. Anything is possible.

Again, I didn't say you definitely couldn't get JAG. I'm saying your odds of getting JAG are relatively low, so you can't depend on it. I'm not even sure what you're getting at with your uncle and his JAG buddy. So?

prospectiveLS91 wrote: If people are going to try to tell me a school like Fordham or Uconn yields no positive future, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree as a quick gander of U.S district court judges shows that any background can have a good outcome, even if the cards are against you.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, no one is saying that positive outcomes are impossible from mediocre schools.
They're just very unlikely. When you're talking about investing three years of your life and quite a bit of money, you need a little more than, "Hey, it's technically possible!"

oh boy

prospectiveLS91 wrote:While I appreciate your concerns, I simply asked for the probability of getting accepted to those schools and other schools in the region. I've read internet posts before, and understand that the perception is that unless you're L12, you're out of luck.

Assuming you meant T14 instead of L12? Nobody says that on TLS (at least anymore). For a lot of people, the T14 doesn't make sense. Depending on one's goals, a school that provides a nice scholarship and has solid placement statistics into the person's preferred market is -- regardless of rankings -- possibly a fine option.

prospectiveLS91 wrote:I've relayed these concerns to my colleague's and boss (former judge), and they said that it was all what you make of the experience. An employee that just left graduated from Pace Law and just went to Reed Smith, it happens.

Yes, these freak events happen. To discount all those left dead and bloodied on the way for the exception requires some great deal of hubris. In the case of Pace, the "dead and bloodied" crowd is 60% of all graduates, while the percentage of biglawyers was a solid 4.1. http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/pace/2013/

prospectiveLS91 wrote:In terms of Jag, I see how competitive it is as they accept a small percentage. I also see that they accept people from throughout the country, and not simply the ivies and historically strong universities. My uncle is also a recently retired Navy E-7 whose buddy is a career Navy JAG officer. Anything is possible.

We are not disagreeing that anything is possible. However, many things are extremely unlikely. You should not be planning for the best case scenario when it comes to law school outcomes.

prospectiveLS91 wrote:If people are going to try to tell me a school like Fordham or Uconn yields no positive future, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree as a quick gander of U.S district court judges shows that any background can have a good outcome, even if the cards are against you.

The landscape of the legal profession has changed monumentally over the past few decades. In the 70s, you could literally pay your law school tuition with a minimum-wage summer job. There is an incredible glut of lawyers today: 44% of all graduates nationally do not get jobs as attorneys -- period -- while the average graduate has over 100K in debt. UConn has some of the worst employment statistics in the country: http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/uconn/2013/. Fordham places a good amount of people into biglaw, but the people who do not get it are royally fucked. http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/fordham/2013/

Fordham can be an acceptable option -- with your stats, however, it simply will not be. UConn is a raging dumpster fire and if you go there in the face of their employment statistics, well, godspeed.

Also boomers and a lot of xers have no idea what they fuck they are talking about when they try to give advice; they went to law school and made their way in an entirely different era.

prospectiveLS91 wrote:If people are going to try to tell me a school like Fordham or Uconn yields no positive future, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree as a quick gander of U.S district court judges shows that any background can have a good outcome, even if the cards are against you.

Those Judges probably went to law school at a time where the large majority of students got jobs. Times have changed, and everybody here is going to recommend you weigh the current job placement of each school as well as the debt load on repayment.

Here's a thought. It is well documented that law school enrollment is in decline, and all signs point that it will continue to decline in the near future. You mentioned attending law school part-time and working to mitigate debt, but I don't see a real benefit of that over attending full time with a sizable scholarship. As far as your low-ish UG GPA, if you could bring your LSAT up 4-5 more points from where you're currently PTing, which you should be able to do with proper study, there are a number of schools that are "splitter friendly" and generous with scholarships in that regard.

Is putting law school off for another year to try to ace the LSAT an option? I think you should really give it some thought.

P.S. - The reason people are going to criticize the law schools you've mentioned as well as the debt load you'll reasonably face from each, in all honesty, is because they're looking out for you.

op is absolutely right. there are uconn grads who became successful lawyers in large firms. there are fordham grads who got prestigious clerkships. there are brooklyn grads who went into academia.

no one would say that going to any given school guarantees failure. but we have tools to measure the success/failure rate of different schools. the aba requires schools to release information about graduates nine months after they graduate. that information is a strong indicator of a school's ability to place graduates.

the most critical tool (given the range of schools you're looking at) is the employment minus school funded score (there are other metrics that we can talk about later if you're interested)

the employment minus school funded score is the number of graduates employed in full-time, long-term, JD-required employment, minus school-funded jobs and solo practitioners.
-full-time is important because most part-time legal jobs do not pay enough to cover necessities, let alone service debt. in many cases, wages are on par with those working in the food industry.
-long-term is important because you should have some job security (and maybe even some benefits) after three years of law school and paying six figure tuition.
-JD-required is important because most non-JD required employment can be obtained without a law degree. yes, there are "JD advantage" jobs, but these jobs are often similar if not identical to jobs graduates had before entering law school.
-non school-funded is important because some schools hire their own graduates on a short-term basis to increase their employment score
-non solo-practitioners is important because the failure rate for new solo practitioners is very high; if you want to hang a shingle, it's advisable to gain experience first

let's establish a reference point. we'll consider vanderbilt. it's not a t14, but it's a solid regional. since you're looking at regionals, that's a good benchmark.

vanderbilt's employment score is 77.6%.

so how do your schools measure up?

fordham has an employment score of 63.4% (fordham doesn't school fund lt/ft/jd jobs). wow. think about that. less than 2 out of every 3 students obtaining a ft/lt/jd - school funded job. you want to practice law, right? are you sure you want to commit three years of your life and six figure tuition payments for 2 in 3 odds?

brooklyn has an employment score of 56.5% (brooklyn doesn't school fund lt/ft/jd jobs). i know that sounds unbelievable, but check the stats yourself (lawschooltransparency.com, abarequireddisclosures.org). a little over half of the graduates from brooklyn last year managed to find long-term, full-time, jd-required employment.

uconn has an employment score of 41.2% (uconn doesn't school fund lt/ft/jd jobs). that's unconscionable. uconn is one of the very worst law schools in the nation. please strike it from your list.

it's not that we don't get where you're coming from. everyone thinks they'll do well in law school. everyone thinks they'll beat the odds. that's normal, it's human nature to be optimistic about your own abilities.

and who knows? maybe you'll be proven right. after four years of studying and working hard in a part-time program, paying tremendous tuition, sacrificing opportunities, compromising your personal life, going into debt... maybe, just maybe, you'll be proven right.

but do you want to risk being proven wrong?

All your Law School classmates will be as smart and hard-working as you. Going somewhere that doesn't have good employment outcomes is a bad idea.

prospectiveLS91 wrote: I appreciate brutal honesty

There you go. Don't get butthurt, OP; none of it is personal. No one is saying you're a bad person or anything. Telling you stuff you don't necessarily want to hear may end up saving you from making a disastrous choice.

What you're saying is equivalent to the following:

My name Borat, I look for new life. I can go US and A, make job auto mechanic 50,000 US and A dollars per year... or I can go Afghanistan. Afghanistan, I starve and die 9 times out of 10, but 1 time I become big rich drug lord. Therefore, I go Afghanistan, because it make me rich drug lord.

AReasonableMan wrote:What you're saying is equivalent to the following:

My name Borat, I look for new life. I can go US and A, make job auto mechanic 50,000 US and A dollars per year... or I can go Afghanistan. Afghanistan, I starve and die 9 times out of 10, but 1 time I become big rich drug lord. Therefore, I go Afghanistan, because it make me rich drug lord.

Hahaha this is awesome

AReasonableMan wrote: My name Borat, I look for new life. I can go US and A, make job auto mechanic 50,000 US and A dollars per year... or I can go Afghanistan. Afghanistan, I starve and die 9 times out of 10, but 1 time I become big rich drug lord. Therefore, I go Afghanistan, because it make me rich drug lord.

This was strangely an excellent way to describe what I was about to post. Great work. Very reasonable man here.

imKMart wrote:

AReasonableMan wrote: My name Borat, I look for new life. I can go US and A, make job auto mechanic 50,000 US and A dollars per year... or I can go Afghanistan. Afghanistan, I starve and die 9 times out of 10, but 1 time I become big rich drug lord. Therefore, I go Afghanistan, because it make me rich drug lord.

This was strangely an excellent way to describe what I was about to post. Great work. Very reasonable man here.

The flaw in the analogy is that if OP gets a good LSAT, he doesn't lose anything by going to a better law school.

If the options OP currently has are limited sticker at a TT like UConn, the Afghanistan metaphor is apt.

However, if OP had a score 10 points higher and say was choosing between close to a full ride to UConn or sticker at NYU, they aren't cut off from the most successful outcome - in the analogy, this is being a rich drug lord.

I appreciate the kind words, but the analogy is imperfect, because Boat's logic is actually better than OP. Namely, Borat can only have the #1 outcome for him - being a rich drug lord, if he goes to Afghanistan. OP doesn't lose the #1 outcome by sufficiently prepping for the LSAT.

AReasonableMan wrote:

imKMart wrote:

AReasonableMan wrote: My name Borat, I look for new life. I can go US and A, make job auto mechanic 50,000 US and A dollars per year... or I can go Afghanistan. Afghanistan, I starve and die 9 times out of 10, but 1 time I become big rich drug lord. Therefore, I go Afghanistan, because it make me rich drug lord.

This was strangely an excellent way to describe what I was about to post. Great work. Very reasonable man here.

The flaw in the analogy is that if OP gets a good LSAT, he doesn't lose anything by going to a better law school.

If the options OP currently has are limited sticker at a TT like UConn, the Afghanistan metaphor is apt.

However, if OP had a score 10 points higher and say was choosing between close to a full ride to UConn or sticker at NYU, they aren't cut off from the most successful outcome - in the analogy, this is being a rich drug lord.

I appreciate the kind words, but the analogy is imperfect, because Boat's logic is actually better than OP. Namely, Borat can only have the #1 outcome for him - being a rich drug lord, if he goes to Afghanistan. OP doesn't lose the #1 outcome by sufficiently prepping for the LSAT.

Agreed, but that's assuming a certain outcome. If OP can score higher on the LSAT: more power to them and I hope they add a few schools to their list. As it stands, I like the analogy. I do see what you're saying. Thankfully this site offers great advice to increase the LSAT and I increased my own 14 points from when I took my very first practice LSAT cold.

imKMart wrote:

AReasonableMan wrote:

imKMart wrote:

AReasonableMan wrote: My name Borat, I look for new life. I can go US and A, make job auto mechanic 50,000 US and A dollars per year... or I can go Afghanistan. Afghanistan, I starve and die 9 times out of 10, but 1 time I become big rich drug lord. Therefore, I go Afghanistan, because it make me rich drug lord.

This was strangely an excellent way to describe what I was about to post. Great work. Very reasonable man here.

The flaw in the analogy is that if OP gets a good LSAT, he doesn't lose anything by going to a better law school.

If the options OP currently has are limited sticker at a TT like UConn, the Afghanistan metaphor is apt.

However, if OP had a score 10 points higher and say was choosing between close to a full ride to UConn or sticker at NYU, they aren't cut off from the most successful outcome - in the analogy, this is being a rich drug lord.

I appreciate the kind words, but the analogy is imperfect, because Boat's logic is actually better than OP. Namely, Borat can only have the #1 outcome for him - being a rich drug lord, if he goes to Afghanistan. OP doesn't lose the #1 outcome by sufficiently prepping for the LSAT.

Agreed, but that's assuming a certain outcome. If OP can score higher on the LSAT: more power to them and I hope they add a few schools to their list. As it stands, I like the analogy. I do see what you're saying. Thankfully this site offers great advice to increase the LSAT and I increased my own 14 points from when I took my very first practice LSAT cold.

But sometimes you're not cut out for certain things, including law.

I had work experience before law school, and overachieved (some success) relative to my pre-law credentials (none). A significant percent of the world is incompetent, and unreliable. Elite law schools are different. Almost everyone is smart, rational, and dependable. They are people who would obviously generate value for whatever team they're on. Yet a significant percentage of these people are in very poor shape even from the top schools. (No, I am not one of these people, but I try to absorb things objectively).

The it is what you make out of it mantra is a joke. He's speaking about people who went to school when tuition was 25% of what it is today, and there wasn't a gluttonous number of attorneys. "What you make out of it" is a scam that somehow is tolerated when discussing schools but not other products. For instance, if a used car salesman sells you a lemon advertised as a reliable car, a judge won't say "it is what you make out of it... you could rebuild the car, and make it good. My brother's friend's grandmother's one night stand on March 12, 1944 once rebuilt a Lincoln from scraps so therefore you will too." Some people are better at up keeping their cars like some are better at outperforming their resume, but the product itself is what it is. A shit degree is a shit degree, and the people who succeed with a shit disagree would have significantly less stress if their degree was not a flaming pile of shit.

prospectiveLS91 wrote:I know that the market is inflated with lawyers, and those from outside the top schools are at a huge disadvantage in a market like NYC. However, I'm confident that I can make it work.

"I know this is an objectively bad idea, but I'm gonna do it anyway."

Here you go:
Brooklyn Law School
Part-time score-60 , Peer assessment score (5.0 highest) 2.6, LSAT scores (25th-75th percentile) (part-time) 155-163, Acceptance rate (part-time) 23.8%

OP: The retake chorus is probably wrong here. You don't appear to grasp logical reasoning so you aren't hitting the 170s or high 160s. Be true to yourself.

Chances at Brooklyn: High. Fordham & UConn: Low. You're chances of unemployment are very high from any of these institutions. Your chances of forking over obscene amounts of money for the privilege are very high.

Julius wrote:OP: The retake chorus is probably wrong here. You don't appear to grasp logical reasoning so you aren't hitting the 170s or high 160s. Be true to yourself.

Chances at Brooklyn: High. Fordham & UConn: Low. You're chances of unemployment are very high from any of these institutions. Your chances of forking over obscene amounts of money for the privilege are very high.

Yeah, no. Self-affirmation bias is common in most healthy people. He needs to get better numbers. His boss has no knowledge of the market , and is going off of his opinions from 40 years ago that were likely not based on data even then. A mistake young people make is assuming old people automatically know what they're talking about. Just get better numbers where the odds are in your favor. You always have to think: why will an employee pick you?

WHOOSH