Top Law Schools

Hi
I graduated with a PhD in health sciences with a grad GPA of 3.65. Currently I work as a research associate in a company. What are my chances of getting into law school. Are there any chances of getting into the top 5 law schools? If I do want to get into a top law
school what do I need to do?
I would appreciate your advice in this regard.

You are definitely not alone in considering law school after getting a Ph.D. I attended Berkeley's Boalt Hall and an amazing 5% of my classmates had Ph.Ds. Some law schools, such as Boalt Hall and NYU, look favorably upon those with advanced degrees, for it brings an additional knowledge base to the law school and makes for a diverse perspective and interesting classroom discussions.

Note that most law schools will look first and foremost at your undergrad GPA versus your graduate GPA. So when you are looking at the median GPA for the top law schools, look at your undergrad GPA as much or more than your grad GPA.

Assuming your undergrad GPA is around the 3.65 you received in graduate school, you are right on the border of getting into the top law schools. Expanding your search to the top 15 law schools will definitely get you in to some great schools.

The key to how well you fare in your law school admissions will hinge upon your LSAT score. This is weighed by law schools even more heavily than the GRE was used for grad school admission.

In your case the LSAT will take on even more weight because there are so many years since you earned your undergraduate GPA. Thus, your LSAT score will be an indicator for the law schools of how you currently compare to other applicants.

Spend a lot of time preparing for the LSAT and I recommend that you spend the money for a LSAT prep class. If available in your area, Testmasters generally offers the best preparation. I wrote another post about what LSAT class is best and it really hinges upon the quality of the instructor, so try to preview the instructors of various programs to see if you are impressed.

You will need at least 2 (and ideally 3) recommendations. This will also be very important for you because you likely developed close relationships with your advisor while writing your dissertation, so make sure you get excellent recommendations.

You will want to do all of this quite quickly if you are thinking of applying this year for ideally you will take the LSAT in October (or if you are not prepared then by December, but this delay in time hurts you because your applications get in later) and get your applications in by December.

A good site to guide you through this process is:

http://www.lsac.org/

This is the non-profit group that administers the LSAT and facilitates the law school application process.

Note that your qualifications will be well received by law schools, but apply to quite a few for how the top law schools perceive a Ph.D. heavily varies by the school. I recommend that you definitely apply to Boalt for they love Ph.D. students.

Best of luck!!

Ok , I couldn't help it...

BUMP, This is the oldest post on TLS (i think)

.... Nostalgia .......

This is still fantastic advice. Definitely worth the bump. Anyone know if ghafoor went to law school, which one they picked, and how they are doing now?

This old post and reply was one of the most helpful I've found on this board.

Does anyone know what other schools weight PhDs heavily? Particularly if the PhD is in a field relevant to law?

Ken cited NYU and especially Boalt, both of which rank very highly on my target list (Stanford, Harvard, NYU, Boalt, and Chicago are my top five reaches/targets for various reasons; I excluse Yale because I'm not getting in ). Any others in the top 14 worth particular mention?