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What do you wish you knew

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 5:32 pm
by Lwschkmabe11
A professor at my school asked me for help directing and advising students who plan to apply to law school. So what do you wish you knew? Whether it was advice you wish you got as an undergrad student, as someone studying for the lsat, or about the application process as a whole? Thanks in advance

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 5:39 pm
by xtremenite
Listen to advice from lawyers or current law school students. Don't take advice and opinions from family members or laypeople too seriously.

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 5:41 pm
by cavalier1138
xtremenite wrote:Listen to advice from lawyers or current law school students. Don't take advice and opinions from family members or laypeople too seriously.
This wasn't an issue for me, but if I had applied closer to graduating from undergrad (especially if I had been a K-JD), I would not have realized that non-legal professors and pre-law advisors fall into the category of "laypeople".

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 5:44 pm
by OneHandedEconomist
1) Don't listen to pre-law advisors.
2) Your GPA and LSAT are the only things that matter. THE ONLY THINGS. Anything else you're considering does not matter.
3) Money and Job Prospects>>>>>>>>>>>Prestige

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 6:01 pm
by pancakes3
They have to know what sort of jobs are out there, and what sort of schools they need to graduate from to attain those jobs.

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 6:28 pm
by Rigo
xtremenite wrote:Listen to advice from lawyers* or current law school students. Don't take advice and opinions from family members or laypeople too seriously.
post-recession lawyers*
Boomers will lead you astray.

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 6:32 pm
by Rigo
Law school will always be there, so don't rush it. Try to get work experience first.
Take the LSAT very seriously and if you don't do as well as you hoped, retake.
Join TLS. Look at Law School Transparency. Just all around do your due diligence and don't believe everything you hear/schools tell you.

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 6:36 pm
by xn3345
Rigo wrote:
xtremenite wrote:Listen to advice from lawyers* or current law school students. Don't take advice and opinions from family members or laypeople too seriously.
post-recession lawyers*
Boomers will lead you astray.
Care to elaborate on why boomers would be more likely to lead a 0L astray? I'm definitely not doubting it. I'm just curious as to what in particular has changed.

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 6:43 pm
by A. Nony Mouse
When they went to law school, the market was much less saturated, so it was less difficult to get a job - and more importantly, law school tuition was much lower and so they more freedom to choose different kinds of jobs, or walk away altogether, since they weren't massively indebted. I went to a state school that currently charges about $32k a year in-state; even in 2000 (later than many boomers would have graduated), in-state tuition at my school was about $8k a year. $8k in 2000 dollars is still way less than $32k in 2017 dollars. It's a fundamentally different situation.

(really this applies to most people who got jobs pre-recession, but especially to boomers, who are especially fond of the "I paid MY way through school" kind of narrative without realizing how much more tuition is now than when they went through.)

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 6:48 pm
by Rigo
xn3345 wrote:
Rigo wrote:
xtremenite wrote:Listen to advice from lawyers* or current law school students. Don't take advice and opinions from family members or laypeople too seriously.
post-recession lawyers*
Boomers will lead you astray.
Care to elaborate on why boomers would be more likely to lead a 0L astray? I'm definitely not doubting it. I'm just curious as to what in particular has changed.
Boomer anecdotes are just pretty misleading. "So and so went to a TTT and he's very successful! That could easily be you!" -Rigo's dad
Boomers also have romanticized law school. "You can do anything with a law degree!" - Rigo's dad

They also still really hold onto the pillar of the American Dream that if you work hard, you will be successful. Sometimes hard work isn't enough.

Younger lawyers are just going to be way more in-tune with the current market. You shouldn't rely on anecdotes, but more recent anecdotes are better than dated ones.

I'm sure there are more reasons someone can more articulately convey.
e: thanks nony!

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 7:18 pm
by zot1
Stay away from 0Ls and boomer lawyers. I know this has been said already, but it seriously cannot be said enough.

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 7:33 pm
by pancakes3
staying away from people not in the industry, and boomers is sound advice regardless of profession.

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 7:04 pm
by tncats
Still a 0L, but at this stage, I wish I had known before now that preparing for law school applications should take more than a couple of months, and that I should start early. I wish I had known that a strong LSAT score could partially make up for a crappy GPA, and that I wasn't relegated to a TTTT just because shit happened in college.

Also that there is a wealth of data about outcomes available and not to just go to a school because someone said it produces good attorneys.

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 11:58 am
by us3rnam3
1) Study for the LSAT for real
2) Don't listen to your parents (unless they are lawyers).
3) Apply to three schools you don't think you can get into.

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 11:59 am
by us3rnam3
us3rnam3 wrote:1) Study for the LSAT for real
2) Don't listen to your parents (unless they are lawyers).
3) Apply to three schools you don't think you can get into.
4) Tell them scholarships are negotiable, I didn't know that until it was too late.

...

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 12:04 pm
by Brutus_the_Younger
...

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 12:15 pm
by Bob loblaw law blog
Brutus_the_Younger wrote:
OneHandedEconomist wrote:
2) Your GPA and LSAT are the only things that matter. THE ONLY THINGS. Anything else you're considering does not matter.
This is downright untrue for Stanford, Yale, and arguably Berkeley.
Meh. Most people aren't applying to those schools and the ones that have the numbers but not the softs for them are probably gonna turn out fine regardless (okay maybe not Berk). I think this was more about general advice.

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 12:33 pm
by TripleM
Rigo wrote:
xn3345 wrote:
Rigo wrote:
xtremenite wrote:Listen to advice from lawyers* or current law school students. Don't take advice and opinions from family members or laypeople too seriously.
post-recession lawyers*
Boomers will lead you astray.
Care to elaborate on why boomers would be more likely to lead a 0L astray? I'm definitely not doubting it. I'm just curious as to what in particular has changed.
Boomer anecdotes are just pretty misleading. "So and so went to a TTT and he's very successful! That could easily be you!" -Rigo's dad
Boomers also have romanticized law school. "You can do anything with a law degree!" - Rigo's dad

They also still really hold onto the pillar of the American Dream that if you work hard, you will be successful. Sometimes hard work isn't enough.

Younger lawyers are just going to be way more in-tune with the current market. You shouldn't rely on anecdotes, but more recent anecdotes are better than dated ones.

I'm sure there are more reasons someone can more articulately convey.
e: thanks nony!
+180
Rigo, you're in the TMNWR (TripleM News and World Reports) HYS of posters along with Chukes and Sybill.

I'd add to the general discussion that you shouldn't just know that you "want to be a lawyer". You need to take it a step further... what type of lawyer do you want to be? You don't need to know exactly what practice, but you should have some general ideas.

I say that because it should dramatically effect what school you choose. Are you interested exclusively in PI jobs without concern for income/Big Law? Then maybe a top regional school with a full scholarship would be the right fit so that you can take that low paying job without fear of financial ruin. Want to keep open the doors to Big Law or Unicorn jobs? Well then maybe you need to consider higher ranking schools with debt.

Finally, if you don't have some general ideas of what you'd like to do, then you don't want to be a lawyer, you want the prestige of calling yourself a lawyer, which is subtly but significantly different.

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 12:42 pm
by MKC
us3rnam3 wrote:1) Study for the LSAT for real
2) Don't listen to your parents (unless they are lawyers who will hire you when you graduate.).
3) Apply to three schools you don't think you can get into.
Fixed to avoid taking advice from boomer lawyers who aren't promising to hire you.

Re: What do you wish you knew

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 1:04 pm
by Thomas Hagan, ESQ.
I wish I knew that that real smart kids in high school were the ones that dicked around for 4 years, went to community college and got that 4.0, transferred to a low-tier state school and graduated with a 3.9 GPA when applying to law schools.

I also wished that I knew that law schools placed much more emphasis on the LSAt over GPA. Great to know now that schools favor someone that breezed through UG with a 3.0 and most likely had a really lucky day on test day over someone who grinded for that 3.8 and got a few more questions wrong. :(

Sincerely,

Extremely Bitter