Top Law Schools

Hi, I've looked at some other posts and the yahoo group and I was wondering if anyone would be so kind to offer me some advice. I am at Southwestern Law (I believe T3) with an overall 3.63 GPA, which should place me in the top 10%. Also, I have professional finance experience working in big finance firms for a couple years between college and law school. I received all my grades in the A range (A+, A, A-) except for two B- grades which are really like outliers and without them, I would have had a 3.87 GPA. Oh well, but I was wondering if anyone could give me advice on which schools might be feasible to apply to. Also, would you suggest mentioning the possible GPA without those two outlier grades in the personal statement or would it be basically useless? I don't know if the other "softs" matter, if that is the correct term of art, but I have those two years of finance experience, an undergraduate GPA of 3.2/Major GPA 3.6 (basically because I didn't care much about school until law school), a 157 LSAT, what I believe will be two strong letters of recommendations from professors, 1 CALI and 1 Witkin award, I had a large amount of success in the moot court competition in my first year, and I worked part-time as a law clerk during the first year too. I want to apply to at least UCLA and USC, and I am considering UC Hastings and perhaps any schools outside of California too but I do not know what is possible and I don't want to send a thousand applications.

My two questions in a nutshell:

1) What schools do you think would be feasible to apply to? Any specific suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

2) Would you suggest I stress any of the above specifics in my personal statement?

Any advice or help you could provide would be extremely appreciated. Thank you so much for your time and I hope that my message was "appropriate" and in the right form for this forum. Have a wonderful day!

IMO, it would be a bad idea to try to rationalize your lower grades in your personal statement. It seems like it would be more effective to focus on your strengths to draw attention away from any negatives. I think focusing on your finance background is a good way to go. And putting academic highlights in your resume.

A GPA is a grade point average. It is pretty silly to say "this is what my GPA would have been had I not gotten two B- grades." You should have a solid shot at USC and UCLA. If you want to ensure that you actually transfer, you should apply to Hastings, Davis, and maybe even Irvine, San Diego and Loyola. My guess is you have an over 80% chance of getting into Hastings or better. If there are schools out of state in the 20-50 range where you would go over Hastings, then go for it. Hopefully you will have some connections to those areas should you decide to apply. You don't want to take someone's transfer spot unless it is truly a viable option for you.

-Your classmate

Definitely don't make excuses for the B- grades. Just put together good apps and wait for the results. I would apply to as many schools as you can as long as they are school you'd like to attend. After acceptances roll in, you can decide where you want to go.