Top Law Schools

Reading a thread about someone who got a full ride at John Marshall got me thinking about schools that are simply "not worth it", even at a full ride. What would you say is a good indicator of those schools? Non-state flagship? Employment/Bar passage rate below 60%?

I think it depends on your goals and situation. If your dad has his own law firm you want to work and inherit, for example, I don't know if it really matters.

Unless there are schools that just teach horribly. I always thought the low bar passage rates might be correlated with the low median LSAT of the schools and therefore the legal aptitude of it's student body, not how the school taught law.

Also, I don't see a scenario where a non-ABA accredited school can be worth it even at a full ride.

Even at a full-ride some lower ranked schools wouldn't have been worth it to me because of: 1. Their attrition rates, 2. Their bar passage rates, 3. Their employment rates. As to the latter, even if I could get a degree for free, there are also opportunity costs associated with that transaction and I wouldn't just spend three years of my life somewhere just because it's free.

As an aside, and more personal to me, your school name stays with you for one reason or another. Although eventually you go on and work somewhere (best case scenario), you will also be part of your law school community for life (if you choose to be). So affiliation mattered to me. But then again I went to a then-unranked school so take that for what it is.

Bar-passage required employment rate of 50% or less. Attrition of more than 10% of the 1L class. Conditional scholarships. Any school that is not attached to an actual educational institution.

cavalier1138 wrote:Bar-passage required employment rate of 50% or less. Attrition of more than 10% of the 1L class. Conditional scholarships. Any school that is not attached to an actual educational institution.

This

cavalier1138 wrote:Bar-passage required employment rate of 50% or less. Attrition of more than 10% of the 1L class. Conditional scholarships. Any school that is not attached to an actual educational institution.

There are 119 (!) out of 208 ABA law schools that fall into any of the criteria you mentioned above. Holy cow.

uion1715 wrote:

cavalier1138 wrote:Bar-passage required employment rate of 50% or less. Attrition of more than 10% of the 1L class. Conditional scholarships. Any school that is not attached to an actual educational institution.

There are 119 (!) out of 208 ABA law schools that fall into any of the criteria you mentioned above. Holy cow.

Pretty scary, right? Granted, something like a conditional scholarship is dependent on whether or not you are offered a conditional scholarship. So that category might be a little more flexible.

uion1715 wrote:

cavalier1138 wrote:Bar-passage required employment rate of 50% or less. Attrition of more than 10% of the 1L class. Conditional scholarships. Any school that is not attached to an actual educational institution.

There are 119 (!) out of 208 ABA law schools that fall into any of the criteria you mentioned above. Holy cow.

Yup, I would say that's pretty accurate. I kind of think that if it doesn't fall into the T100~ it's not worth attending.

cavalier1138 wrote:

uion1715 wrote:

cavalier1138 wrote:Bar-passage required employment rate of 50% or less. Attrition of more than 10% of the 1L class. Conditional scholarships. Any school that is not attached to an actual educational institution.

There are 119 (!) out of 208 ABA law schools that fall into any of the criteria you mentioned above. Holy cow.

Pretty scary, right? Granted, something like a conditional scholarship is dependent on whether or not you are offered a conditional scholarship. So that category might be a little more flexible.

Aha, I considered all schools that had conditional scholarship. Take that out and there are 99 law schools out of 208 that fall into either of the categories. Even if you take out 10 state flagships in the list, you are looking at 89 law schools that basically should not exist (and dozens more that's barely above the fray)

Thomas Hagan, ESQ. wrote:

uion1715 wrote:

cavalier1138 wrote:Bar-passage required employment rate of 50% or less. Attrition of more than 10% of the 1L class. Conditional scholarships. Any school that is not attached to an actual educational institution.

There are 119 (!) out of 208 ABA law schools that fall into any of the criteria you mentioned above. Holy cow.

Yup, I would say that's pretty accurate. I kind of think that if it doesn't fall into the T100~ it's not worth attending.

A good rule of thumb seems to be T100 + State flagship is fine at full ride. Obviously if you are paying tuition, then the acceptable range of schools goes down dramatically (T14/T25/etc, etc.)

Good indicator is that if you have to ask, you probably shouldn't go.

nunumaster wrote:Good indicator is that if you have to ask, you probably shouldn't go.

But when do you ask?

If they bombard you with unsolicited emails...

Litt1tUp wrote:If they bombard you with unsolicited emails...

True, but top schools do this as well. I'm actually thinking of going to a school that constantly bombarded me. maybe i should rethink lol

Stylnator wrote:

Litt1tUp wrote:If they bombard you with unsolicited emails...

True, but top schools do this as well. I'm actually thinking of going to a school that constantly bombarded me. maybe i should rethink lol

Which top school bombards ? I know some T-14s will send an email or two, but it's not like Elon that hits me up on the daily haha

Litt1tUp wrote:

Stylnator wrote:

Litt1tUp wrote:If they bombard you with unsolicited emails...

True, but top schools do this as well. I'm actually thinking of going to a school that constantly bombarded me. maybe i should rethink lol

Which top school bombards ? I know some T-14s will send an email or two, but it's not like Elon that hits me up on the daily haha

There was a week where Penn sent me like 4 emails in a row, they clearly didn't get that I was never going to apply

Schools that send you a scholarship offer (explicit amount, not just "you could be eligible for...") without having received an application from you.

I've also gotten a few emails from schools beginning "Dear [applicant name here]..." I guess those are mostly just funny, but do leave a bad impression.

areyn22 wrote:Schools that send you a scholarship offer (explicit amount, not just "you could be eligible for...") without having received an application from you.

I've also gotten a few emails from schools beginning "Dear [applicant name here]..." I guess those are mostly just funny, but do leave a bad impression.

what was that school that sent us all "you're accepted!" emails on January 1 last year, but to their whole email list? that was a pretty amazing apology email...

eck456 wrote:

areyn22 wrote:Schools that send you a scholarship offer (explicit amount, not just "you could be eligible for...") without having received an application from you.

I've also gotten a few emails from schools beginning "Dear [applicant name here]..." I guess those are mostly just funny, but do leave a bad impression.

what was that school that sent us all "you're accepted!" emails on January 1 last year, but to their whole email list? that was a pretty amazing apology email...

Haha I never got that - wasn't registered through LSAC yet - but that sounds pretty bad. Stetson's emailing me every day now. Thankfully it's starting to go to spam...

Litt1tUp wrote:

Stylnator wrote:

Litt1tUp wrote:If they bombard you with unsolicited emails...

True, but top schools do this as well. I'm actually thinking of going to a school that constantly bombarded me. maybe i should rethink lol

Which top school bombards ? I know some T-14s will send an email or two, but it's not like Elon that hits me up on the daily haha

WUSTL comes to mind. Not T-14, but probably worth it at full ride.

I'd say take any law school's cost of attendance for four years, multiply it by 1.3 to factor in costs that aren't included. Then you have the total debt you'll carry at graduation roughly if you're borrowing for everything. Then take the class's median salary and perhaps discount it 10%-20% or so to just to protect yourself in case the legal mkt doesn't look as good when you graduate. If the resulting debt to income ratio is above 2, I wouldn't go unless my lifelong dream was to be a lawyer and only a lawyer or I was dead set on working in the government for my career

studentloanplanner wrote:I'd say take any law school's cost of attendance for four years, multiply it by 1.3 to factor in costs that aren't included. Then you have the total debt you'll carry at graduation roughly if you're borrowing for everything. Then take the class's median salary and perhaps discount it 10%-20% or so to just to protect yourself in case the legal mkt doesn't look as good when you graduate. If the resulting debt to income ratio is above 2, I wouldn't go unless my lifelong dream was to be a lawyer and only a lawyer or I was dead set on working in the government for my career

I think the bolded is super important. I took on a lot of debt to go to law school, but I really wanted to be a lawyer and it's really hard to be one without going to law school.

If that hadn't been the case, I probably would have never taken on this much debt.

But here's an important fact: although I was certain I wanted to do this forever, I'm not so certain anymore. So I guess my point is even if you're super set on it, you might still change your mind after the fact.

studentloanplanner wrote:I'd say take any law school's cost of attendance for four years, multiply it by 1.3 to factor in costs that aren't included. Then you have the total debt you'll carry at graduation roughly if you're borrowing for everything. Then take the class's median salary and perhaps discount it 10%-20% or so to just to protect yourself in case the legal mkt doesn't look as good when you graduate. If the resulting debt to income ratio is above 2, I wouldn't go unless my lifelong dream was to be a lawyer and only a lawyer or I was dead set on working in the government for my career

so it will never be above 2 with PAYE (.1 debt payment per year * 20 years of repayment) and thats not even using a discount factor for the future of the payments, which would probably make it under 1.

JohannDeMann wrote:

studentloanplanner wrote:I'd say take any law school's cost of attendance for four years, multiply it by 1.3 to factor in costs that aren't included. Then you have the total debt you'll carry at graduation roughly if you're borrowing for everything. Then take the class's median salary and perhaps discount it 10%-20% or so to just to protect yourself in case the legal mkt doesn't look as good when you graduate. If the resulting debt to income ratio is above 2, I wouldn't go unless my lifelong dream was to be a lawyer and only a lawyer or I was dead set on working in the government for my career

so it will never be above 2 with PAYE (.1 debt payment per year * 20 years of repayment) and thats not even using a discount factor for the future of the payments, which would probably make it under 1.

The offered equation didn't say anything about repayment methods. It just uses total debt vs. expected salary.

You can disagree with the equation, but whether or not someone "pays" their debt off with the PAYE program is irrelevant for what was proposed.

JohannDeMann wrote:

studentloanplanner wrote:I'd say take any law school's cost of attendance for four years, multiply it by 1.3 to factor in costs that aren't included. Then you have the total debt you'll carry at graduation roughly if you're borrowing for everything. Then take the class's median salary and perhaps discount it 10%-20% or so to just to protect yourself in case the legal mkt doesn't look as good when you graduate. If the resulting debt to income ratio is above 2, I wouldn't go unless my lifelong dream was to be a lawyer and only a lawyer or I was dead set on working in the government for my career

so it will never be above 2 with PAYE (.1 debt payment per year * 20 years of repayment) and thats not even using a discount factor for the future of the payments, which would probably make it under 1.

It's true that PAYE managed properly can significantly lower the cost of attendance vs accruing the interest say on an extended repayment plan for 25 years and paying it all back. But the PAYE plan is an executive order signed by Pres Obama. Are people going to get to use it for 20 years? Probably because there would be a huge outcry if it was cancelled. But it's by no means a certainty. And for that reason I don't believe in the "borrow anything you want because there's going to be a bailout or rescue" mindset.

At the very least, you're going to owe 35% to 40% of the forgiven balance that's going to grow with accrued interest at the end of the 20 years. That's a pretty indirect impact from the cost, but you do feel it at least a little.

I think if folks followed the above equation, I wouldn't see nearly as much trouble from grads coming out of law school. There's tons of $200,000-$250,000 debt loads out there with $60,000-$80,000 salaries from small to mid sized practices, if they're in a JD required / JD advantaged job at all