Uncreative123 wrote:QContinuum wrote:Uncreative123 wrote:I don't understand why LSAC would request a Graduate transcript if it essentially has no impact. ... I'm not even sure how to approach this in an addendum without sounding like I'm making excuses, "Well my ACTUAL GPA was...."
Absolutely do
not write such an addendum. A GPA addendum is for the relatively rare scenario where you have a compelling explanation for a sudden, eyebrow-raising dip in performance. Say, you were a straight-A student every single semester in college, except for one semester where you received 3 Cs - because a close relative had severe health issues.
That would warrant a GPA addendum. But every single applicant has their LSAC GPA calculated the exact same way. Do not write a GPA addendum protesting the LSAC GPA calculation.
I recognize that in many cases it is
desirable to attend law school sooner rather than later, but that doesn't mean delaying a year is "impossible". It's just inconvenient and unpleasant and unwanted, but so are many things in life worth working for. Likewise, I do not mean to handwave the difficulty of the LSAT. It's a tough test, and even tougher to approach a 170. But, it's doable, and the TLS community stands ready to help you achieve your goals.
What do you want to do as a lawyer? Depending on your goals, it may make total sense to attend a local law school, or it may not. If attending a local law school wouldn't help you achieve your goals, then you should not attend.
I'm very late in responding because I've been filling out apps and surprise surprise, studying for the Feb. LSAT because January was a disaster. Honestly, I'm interested in becoming a public defender and then possibly branching out on my own after that. Not interested in "big law". I didn't come to this decision lightly- it's been marinating for about four years now. The 'local' school here has a great criminal law program and a lot of externship/internship opportunities plus pretty much all the law firms in the state are here (capital) and are in some ways partnered with them. I'm not worried about getting accepted, I am more concerned about having to pay anything over half tuition. I don't want to pay anything, really. It's not even a T100 school, yet every attorney in this city seems to have graduated from there. The only other option in the state is a T27.
As far as the doubt.jpg goes I'm not going to go into detail. I know some admissions peruse the forums here and I'm trying to remain relatively anonymous. In a nutshell, I was "gifted" a certain amount of time (no control over when it happened) to prepare for the LSAT and get accepted into a school. That window closes for me next month no matter what and there will be no time to study or retake the LSAT beyond that. I am no spring chicken- and believe it or not, some people who say "it's not an option to go in 2021" really do have obstacles that would prevent them from going in 2021---usually financial, sometimes exacerbated by tax implications, employment, and a slew of other things.
You seem pretty riled up and stressed out about this so I'm not going to conflict with you but breakdown what you might be going through so that maybe you can read it and think about whether you are making the best decision for yourself given the circumstances.
Your posts that state you were given a certain amount of time and need to apply now suggest that perhaps you were let go, and given a severance package that allowed you to study for the LSAT for a few months. That time is about to end and you may have planned a way to support yourself until the fed loans kick in that allow you to go to school next year. This assumption may be wrong and it could be something in your personal life, but that came with the same deadline for support and cutting support.
If I am correct, let's unpack this:
You're making a major life and financial investment - tuition money + 3 years of your life based largely on an impending deadline and feeling stressed/older, etc. Every decision we make from what we eat for breakfast to going on a first date with someone is an investment, but most decisions don't have big consequences so it's fine to go off of sudden, immediate feelings.
Other investments are big - which job you take, what to do with your life savings, etc.
You don't want emotion or feeling "trapped" to be your primary reason for making any major investment. Law school is a huge investment, probably a bigger investment than stocks or real-estate, because (1) you don't have to commit 3 years of your life to these other investments, and (2) the net benefit is less zero-sum. It's rare your property in Louisiana or investment in Apple will go down to $0 and it's also readily tradable. A law degree is not. You either win, lose, or wind up somewhere in between (working long hours for many years for okay pay).
We don't know what your LSAT score is but given that you stated you never prepped close to a 170 and stated the last LSAT was a disaster, I'm going to assume you either have no score or a score below a 160.
We also don't know your exact reason for having to start next year and it's unlikely that this is is a life adaptation of the 1994 film "Speed" in which you need to complete law school by 2023 or a busload of innocent people will die. If this is the case, I'd urge you to keep in mind that you're dealing with criminals and there's no guarantee that finishing law school in 2023 will guarantee they set the people on the bus free. Also, do you have any reason to believe they're going to feed the hostages and care for them to ensure their survival through 2023? Even in this circumstances, I'd urge you to contact the authorities and not just follow the terrorists' instruction even though I admire your commitment to saving the hostages.
If you are not entangled in trying to save a busload of hostages, I'm going to assume your reasons for having to start law school next year are either (1) age, (2) finances, or some mixture of both. Let's look at these separately.
(1) Age
I don't know how old you are. In truth, it doesn't really matter if you graduate at 50 or 51. You're going to be old regardless, have fewer working years left, and are going to encounter some ageism. It won't be very different either way.
What I will say is this. There are some ways to offset ageism. Law is a lot of stressful and sedentary work so lawyers do not tend to be the fittest people in the world. It's a little bit like in football where the most predictive aspect of someone's future career health wise isn't how old they are but how many snaps they have played. The 30 year old lawyer with 5 years experience who is 40 pounds overweight and breathes heavily may have fewer working years left than the 40 year old rookie with 8% body fat. I'd say getting in great shape before starting law school can offset your age to some extent at least from a working year standpoint.
The other thing is if you do have fewer working years, you have less time to build yourself up and pay off debt over a long period. It's hard to transition from being unemployed to gainful employment in law, much harder than other fields. You definitely cannot come out unemployed when you are 50.
(2) Finances
The need to support yourself with government backed loans is a bad place to be in. It's basically a payday loan because you have to pay them back in 3 years
along with tuition. This is a big deal because tuition will be at least 200% of your living expenses, probably a lot more. You can argue that it comes with the added benefit of a career, but that's only the case if you have access to that career.
Let's transition to what seems to be your plan:
Your plan seems to be - "I will not pursue competitive jobs, but will be okay with being a public defender so I repay my loans with LRAP and earn a living wage". This assumes that public defender jobs are not competitive. They are!
Unemployment from 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Tier schools is a huge thing - a lot of students are unemployed or in positions with $50 or $60k starting salaries while repaying six-figure debt. Do you really not think that 90% of these students would take the PD job over no job or the $50k insurance defense job with little upwards mobility and no LRAP? Let me clue you in on a secret - they all would!
This is a bad plan because it seems to be emotion and stress fueled, and not a rational analysis of likely outcomes under the circumstances and a mature risk:reward analysis.
If you are cash strapped and need to support yourself next year, there are many cheap areas in the country you can move to for next to something and find a way to earn money online or wait tables or work at a 7/11. You can always find a way to find some form of employment and if you're smart enough to hold down any job and graduate college, always some job you can take to support yourself. Throw your pride aside if it's only one year. Who gives a shit what people think about you for one year?
If law is what you want, you need a mid-160s LSAT with that GPA at the very least. If you're thinking, "well, I have a great Grad School GPA so they'll overlook the college GPA," you're going to be very disappointed. That just isn't what they do. If you are older, then they will overlook your college GPA relative to someone younger with that GPA because they have your LSAT. What they won't do is overlook your college GPA and LSAT, and focus only on your grad school GPA. That just isn't going to happen.
I apologize if any of this post offends you, but this does reflect the reality of your situation, which isn't that bad of a situation because you haven't made any irreversible decisions yet. It sounds like you are about to. I'm not saying "don't do it" because you are so passionate about this you will take that as a conflict and only cling harder to your emotions.
What I'm saying is try to think about your situation unemotionally, consider the evidence, and try to make the choice you'd counsel your client to make if they were in this same situation and you were an objective third party looking to help them. In many ways, we are all our own biggest clients regardless of whether we're first starting law school or 10-years out. Learn to counsel yourself and make the best choices for yourself.