Top Law Schools

flashes23 wrote:Its really hard to gauge because applicants here are calling Harvard a "hail marry", but I would have killed for a dental school to have a 9% acceptance rate, our acceptance rate was literally 3% (4500 applicants, 140 spots)

flashes23 wrote:Its really hard to gauge

flashes23 wrote:Hello! I am currently a practicing dentist and am thinking about applying to law school in a year or two. My undergrad GPA was a 3.75-3.8 (not exactly sure off the top of my head as its been a while). I haven't taken the LSAT yet, however I'm pretty confident I would do well if I invested the time and energy. My ultimate goal would to end up in malpractice, particularly in dental malpractice.

How competitive am I for the top tier law schools (Harvard, Yale, Stanford,etc..)? Is an applicant with a doctors degree pretty common, or does it make me enough of a unique snowflake that I would stand a good chance applying? Its really hard to gauge because applicants here are calling Harvard a "hail marry", but I would have killed for a dental school to have a 9% acceptance rate, our acceptance rate was literally 3% (4500 applicants, 140 spots)


I really look forward to your feedback, thanks!

flashes23 wrote:Thank you for all the replies. Am I a minority if my family came from Russia as refugees in the late eighties? I was considered a minority or "disadvantaged" applicant in dental school. Or is a minority in law school just blacks, native americans, etc.. Basically what qualifies as a minority? Is it really that numbers based? In dental school after you reached a certain threshold i.e.. 3.77+ GPA and 22DAT score it was VERY heavily based on your interview. In law school interviews seem more like a formality.
Also, is any weigh put in that my undergrad major was Biochem and not some cakewalk major I would have gotten a 4.0+ in?

I am able to self finance Harvard or any other law school, at 200k its only 40% of what my dental school loan used to be. Im fortunate enough to do well in the field, however I would be happier in law. Not only because its more stimulating but because I just don't want to deal with the back/neck pain.

flashes23 wrote:Thank you for all the replies. Am I a minority if my family came from Russia as refugees in the late eighties? I was considered a minority or "disadvantaged" applicant in dental school. Or is a minority in law school just blacks, native americans, etc.. Basically what qualifies as a minority? Is it really that numbers based? In dental school after you reached a certain threshold i.e.. 3.77+ GPA and 22DAT score it was VERY heavily based on your interview. In law school interviews seem more like a formality.
Also, is any weigh put in that my undergrad major was Biochem and not some cakewalk major I would have gotten a 4.0+ in?

I am able to self finance Harvard or any other law school, at 200k its only 40% of what my dental school loan used to be. Im fortunate enough to do well in the field, however I would be happier in law. Not only because its more stimulating but because I just don't want to deal with the back/neck pain.

flashes23 wrote:I don't expect you to know much about dentistry as this is a law forum, but if you think it's the same neck/back strain as sitting at a desk you my friend are sadly mistaken. About 30% of dentists leave the field with permanent or long term disabilities from practicing dentistry. How many lawyers do you know that need neurosurgery from sitting at a desk?

Also, I'm not going into law for money. I don't need your financial advice, I pay enough people for that. The practices I own now will function fine without me and the money will still come in.

Mr. Archer wrote:

flashes23 wrote:I don't expect you to know much about dentistry as this is a law forum, but if you think it's the same neck/back strain as sitting at a desk you my friend are sadly mistaken. About 30% of dentists leave the field with permanent or long term disabilities from practicing dentistry. How many lawyers do you know that need neurosurgery from sitting at a desk?

Also, I'm not going into law for money. I don't need your financial advice, I pay enough people for that. The practices I own now will function fine without me and the money will still come in.

I don't expect you to know much about law school forums, since you're a dentist, but the poster's comment was really on point about finances. It looks like you've done no research on law school, so you should be thankful anyone is giving you advice with that attitude.

Mr. Archer wrote:

flashes23 wrote:I don't expect you to know much about dentistry as this is a law forum, but if you think it's the same neck/back strain as sitting at a desk you my friend are sadly mistaken. About 30% of dentists leave the field with permanent or long term disabilities from practicing dentistry. How many lawyers do you know that need neurosurgery from sitting at a desk?

Also, I'm not going into law for money. I don't need your financial advice, I pay enough people for that. The practices I own now will function fine without me and the money will still come in.

I don't expect you to know much about law school forums, since you're a dentist, but the poster's comment was really on point about finances. It looks like you've done no research on law school, so you should be thankful anyone is giving you advice with that attitude.

lacrossebrother wrote:Sorry that when you asked a human being on an Internet forum for the answer to a very easy to lookup question about the correlation between numbers and admissions, you got a response that opined on something more than you asked for.
Here are some points:
1. Your odds are directly related to your lsat score. Your odds of scoring a particular score on the lsat are not easy to predict. How smart are you? Where did you go to undergrad? Are you good at logic? Why did you become a dentist instead of a medical doctor?
2. I don't know how many doctors apply sorry. That number probably gets bigger depending on broadly you define "doctor." If you define it just based on the degree, I'm thinking the majority of JD applicants who already hold doctorates are ph.d's. I suspect not a lot of dds, do, or md. I don't really think they care though.
3. No you don't get automatic affirmative action by virtue of being from Russia, and you lose any immigrant discretionary bonus by already having a career.
4. I'm sure you have lots of advisors already telling you this, but law firms hire medical advisors.
5. My financial advisors aren't really up to date on law school job prospects.
6. If you're escaping the dental business to avoid neck problems, you'd think you'd be interested to know about the job prospects in general
7. If you're interested in HYS, this usually indicates a desire to get a great job that pays well. That's a financial decision. If you're interested in them for some other reason, like prestige, you could indicate that.
8. You're an asshole.

flashes23 wrote:Thank you very much for the input.

I finally got a chance to be back at my computer so I can give a little more in-depth response. First of all I'm sorry if I offended anyone, it seems people in this forum are either overly sensitive or I'm not communicating properly. I'll address the situation as if the later were true. First off I mentioned my neck/back pain. It was probably my lack of communication that caused the answer I was given. When I'm talking about neck/back pain, I'm referring to sharp pains from pinched/obstructed nerves, loss of sensation in my hands, as well as numbness in extremities. I am expressing health concerns as one of the reasons I do not want to practice in this field and someone gives me the answer "working at a desk also hurts your neck/back". This too me came off as a sarcastic and snarky answer. Then they followed up with "if your making money stick to what your doing", this answer is also completely useless seeing as if I wanted to practice dentistry I wouldn't be in this forum. I answered that post with an equally snarky post however now I am an "asshole" lol. Nonetheless, I thank the poster for the amount of good info that was also in the same post.

Secondly, I did use the search function and yes many of the same sentiments were echoed in prior posts, specifically, "numbers are all that matter". The reason I chose to ask the same question here is because I am truly dumbfounded by this. With no penalty for choosing an easy major, university, classes, and the ability to hire a personal tutor for the LSAT I don't see how this sort of system can possibly function. I participated in the admissions dept. at my school for a couple of years and this would NEVER fly there. We had olympic athletes, professional musicians, as well as a lawyer & pharmacist in our class. We looked at students with soft sciences majors and accounted for that when compared to harder majors such as physics, engineering, chemistry etc. Interviews were probably 60% of the deciding factor, and out of 4500 applicant maybe 600 got interviews.

As you can imagine coming from my background hearing that I could be an english or psych major with a 4.0 and study long enough to do well on the LSAT I would be let into a top school is literally mind blowing lol. I appreciate your patience with me and thank you for the great answers.

Finally, as to why Harvard. Most of the arguments here are about cost, but like I said i've done well enough to where that isn't a contributing factor for me. When somebody wants to buy 700$ Ferragamo shoes from Nordstrom, it doesn't matter how many free pairs he can get at Walmart/Payless. Its a life experience and challenge that I do not think I would regret just because I paid more. Having grown up with nothing and achieving some success I am less and less fueled by money, and more fueled by great experiences, challenges, and finishing the things I've always wanted to do.

Of course its nice to have the prestige of going to Harvard law School, I've done well enough to be able to afford it so why deprive myself just to save some money. Finally the most import reason as to why Harvard is the marketing potential alone is worth the 200k. Having been a practicing dentist, with a Harvard law degree, I would have a very strong marketing presence when dental malpractice cases arise. You all may know that good lawyers come from various small and large schools all over the United States, but to the average person someone that was a dentist and is a Harvard lawyer is as good as it gets from a dental malpractice case. If I were a single 25 year old with a 3k a month loan to pay off and only having a law degree of course I wouldn't go to Harvard over a full-ride, but that isn't my situation at all.

Some posters have said this does not make sense, if there is anything in particular I would love to answer what doesn't make sense. There are not many dentists with law degrees and having been in the dental world I know of the large potential there is for me. Not worrying about student loans, and having an alternate career puts me in a unique position, and more importantly gives me many unique opportunities that I am interested in pursuing.

Atmosphere wrote:This has to be a high quality flame.

On the absolute off chance that it isn't, cop an LSAT above HLS's median (173ish), which should be easy given how evidently gifted you are. That should make up for your below median GPA.

flashes23 wrote: Some posters have said this does not make sense, if there is anything in particular I would love to answer what doesn't make sense. There are not many dentists with law degrees and having been in the dental world I know of the large potential there is for me. Not worrying about student loans, and having an alternate career puts me in a unique position, and more importantly gives me many unique opportunities that I am interested in pursuing.

flashes23 wrote:

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

Atmosphere wrote:
OP, something to keep in mind is that the medical field and legal field have taken different approaches to barriers to entry. It's very hard to get into medical school (I'm assuming dental school is similar) but my impression is that once you make it into medical school, there's going to be a job for you somewhere as long as you can finish. The legal profession doesn't use entry to law school to regulate the numbers in the profession - the bar exam does this to some extent, but there are a LOT of underemployed and unemployed JDs out there. This isn't necessarily connected to the focus on numbers, but I think in practice it is, because when weeding people out of the profession happens later (at the "getting a job" point, not the "getting in" point), schools have less incentive actually to assess student ability/dedication/etc beyond the easy statistics. Also it's a lot cheaper to educate law students than medical/dental students - you just need books and a classroom, none of the actual hands-on training with technology and patients and so on that medicine requires - so there's little incentive to limit admission, because law schools are generally cash cows for their associated universities.

The immediate reason for the focus on numbers is what everyone has said, that UGPA and LSAT are heavily weighted in the USNWR rankings, which law schools live and die by. But I think the rankings play the role they do in law (and don't seem to in medicine) in part because of the different ways the professions are regulated.

Thank you, this makes a lot of sense! It really is a difference in philosophy to weed out prior to admission vs post graduation in the job market.
My GPA stands at 3.76 this is lower than the HLS average by quite a bit. Would they look at my GPA for dental school as well (a lot of pass/fail mixed in with A,B,C grading), or is it mostly undergrad that they're interested in for their rankings?