Seeking Opinions - 2019 Grad 0 Employment 0 Law School Debt Forum

[Anonymous User]

Looking for some advice, primarily from people that graduated in or before 2018. I graduated from a top 30 law school in 2019. At graduation I had no solid job offers and was planning to attend either Northwestern or GTowns Tax program. In the middle of bar prep I had some personal issues and had to delay my sitting for the bar exam and further schooling for a year. I have held no positions since then. I'm currently scheduled to sit for the UBE and I'm weighing whether or not to attend those tax llm programs this fall. As stated in the headline, I have no law school debt and no job leads. I graduated with a 3.1 from my law school.

At GTown and Northwestern I would be paying sticker price.

For those with legal experience, how would you approach the situation, keeping in mind that I hope to practice in the fields of either mergers & acquisitions, tax planning or general transactional law.

[sparty99]

Looking for some advice, primarily from people that graduated in or before 2018. I graduated from a top 30 law school in 2019. At graduation I had no solid job offers and was planning to attend either Northwestern or GTowns Tax program. In the middle of bar prep I had some personal issues and had to delay my sitting for the bar exam and further schooling for a year. I have held no positions since then. I'm currently scheduled to sit for the UBE and I'm weighing whether or not to attend those tax llm programs this fall. As stated in the headline, I have no law school debt and no job leads. I graduated with a 3.1 from my law school.

At GTown and Northwestern I would be paying sticker price.

For those with legal experience, how would you approach the situation, keeping in mind that I hope to practice in the fields of either mergers & acquisitions, tax planning or general transactional law.

Why would you have to pay full sticker price? They should be offering you scholarships with the current pandemic and assuming it is online. Regardless, I would not attend at a full sticker. Why go into debt?

[Sackboy]

Why would you have to pay full sticker price? They should be offering you scholarships with the current pandemic and assuming it is online. Regardless, I would not attend at a full sticker. Why go into debt?

Things that should happen and things that will happen are two separate categories. GULC/Northwestern aren't going to cut their rates, and OP's GPA likely locks OP out of any sort of merit-based aid. If OP wants to remain in the law, this isn't a terrible option. $100k in debt for a pretty reasonable path to a Big4 position isn't a bad proposition if it doesn't look like OP can grab anything else. I wouldn't necessarily go this route, but it's not completely indefensible.

[nixy]

I also didn’t have the impression that LLMs do merit aid. The whole point is that they’re cash cows for their universities.

I would look really carefully at employment outcomes though.

[Anonymous User]

I also didn’t have the impression that LLMs do merit aid. The whole point is that they’re cash cows for their universities.

I would look really carefully at employment outcomes though.

LLM programs do offer merit scholarships, but they are very competitive. With OP's stats, merit aid at GT or NYU is very unlikely (your JD rank has to be approximately in the top 10% of your class). However, he might be eligible for aid at NW/UF Tax LLM. The Tax LLM programs generally have pretty good employment outcomes, particularly in Big 4.