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I'm in a bit of an interesting situation, so was hoping for some advice.

I attended a T1 in the in the fall and for some of this spring semester. About 2 months ago, my older brother (he's 25) passed away...devastated my family and I. 2 weeks after he passed away my 93 year old grandmother who lives with us passed away and 1 week later my mother was diagnosed with Stage III Leukemia.

I took a leave of absence from law school as a result. Way tooo much stuff going on at home (which is a 6 hour plane ride away from school) and with everything that has happened, I needed to be there to help/be with family. I am likely not returning in the fall (at least not at the moment) and anyways I think I have 7 years or something to finish the JD at the school. Additionally, I'm also considering transferring law schools to one closer to home, but won't likely be ready to do that till Fall of 2015. Is it possible to transfer with that year+ off? There's a handful of T14s close to home, do I have any chance of getting in one of those (Transfer FAQ suggests probably not since only landed in Top 33% first semester; but maybe?) ? My LSAT was not my strongest point; can I take the LSAT again, and reapply fresh as a 0L to the T14s with one semester already under my belt, or is that not even a thing?

Weird/kind of sucks knowing that my 1L mates are just about done with 1L year, though definitely don't regret coming home.

Quiters don't prosper. You know whose family members die? Everyone's. You know who life doesn't stop for? No one. What do you want, a pause button? Sorry, you don't get one. Your mates are moving on. Your career doesn't care, it will move on without you. Compartmentalize, deal with your personal problems, and stick to the schedule. What are you asking? Will life wait for you? No. I'm sorry, I can't understand your pain, I've no doubt it was and is .... I don't have words. But if life kicks you in the teeth, get back up, smile crazy with blood on your lips, counter punch, and make it doubt ever crossing you. Good luck.

user has been warned for being kind of a dick when answering the simple question of whether OP can transfer or reapply

NotMyRealName09 wrote:Quiters don't prosper. You know whose family members die? Everyone's. You know who life doesn't stop for? No one. What do you want, a pause button? Sorry, you don't get one. You're mates are moving on. Compartmentalize, deal with your personal problems, and stick to the schedule. What are you asking? Will life wait for you? No.

Aren't you a charmer.

elterrible78 wrote:

NotMyRealName09 wrote:Quiters don't prosper. You know whose family members die? Everyone's. You know who life doesn't stop for? No one. What do you want, a pause button? Sorry, you don't get one. You're mates are moving on. Compartmentalize, deal with your personal problems, and stick to the schedule. What are you asking? Will life wait for you? No.

Aren't you a charmer.

Why are YOU here at 2 am? And give me a second to edit - I've always got to reread what I write before its final. I'm done now.

NotMyRealName09 wrote:Quiters don't prosper. You know whose family members die? Everyone's. You know who life doesn't stop for? No one. What do you want, a pause button? Sorry, you don't get one. Your mates are moving on. Your career doesn't care, it will move on without you. Compartmentalize, deal with your personal problems, and stick to the schedule. What are you asking? Will life wait for you? No. I'm sorry, I can't understand your pain, I've no doubt it was and is .... I don't have words. But if life kicks you in the teeth, get back up, smile crazy with blood on your lips, counter punch, and make it doubt ever crossing you. Good luck.

When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!

NotMyRealName09 wrote:Quiters don't prosper. You know whose family members die? Everyone's. You know who life doesn't stop for? No one. What do you want, a pause button? Sorry, you don't get one. Your mates are moving on. Your career doesn't care, it will move on without you. Compartmentalize, deal with your personal problems, and stick to the schedule. What are you asking? Will life wait for you? No. I'm sorry, I can't understand your pain, I've no doubt it was and is .... I don't have words. But if life kicks you in the teeth, get back up, smile crazy with blood on your lips, counter punch, and make it doubt ever crossing you. Good luck.

Posts like this make me hate TLS at times and give law students/lawyers a bad rap. Whoever posted this, please go away...

Anyways, to OP, very sorry for your loss and struggles. I'm not sure what the process is for reapplying or anything. It might be good to talk to admissions. Best wishes -- keep up in accomplishing your goals.

NotMyRealName09 wrote:Quiters don't prosper. You know whose family members die? Everyone's. You know who life doesn't stop for? No one. What do you want, a pause button? Sorry, you don't get one. Your mates are moving on. Your career doesn't care, it will move on without you. Compartmentalize, deal with your personal problems, and stick to the schedule. What are you asking? Will life wait for you? No. I'm sorry, I can't understand your pain, I've no doubt it was and is .... I don't have words. But if life kicks you in the teeth, get back up, smile crazy with blood on your lips, counter punch, and make it doubt ever crossing you. Good luck.

Someone that didn't read the question asked, and was chomping at the bit to spew out this delightful little gem.

You won't be able to transfer to the T14 unless you're in the top 5-10% of your class.

Sorry for your loss. Hopefully your family is doing better, and you too.

CounselorNebby wrote:You won't be able to transfer to the T14 unless you're in the top 5-10% of your class.

I know for a fact this is wrong.

3|ink wrote:

CounselorNebby wrote:You won't be able to transfer to the T14 unless you're in the top 5-10% of your class.

I know for a fact this is wrong.

Me too. I was generalizing. I didn't want to softball the chances, because transferring is a black box.

Great catch tho.

Want me to be more blunt? OP, if you're only top 1/3 you wont be transferring anywhere but laterally, which--unless you're already in a T14--means you won't get into one.

Shewter45 wrote:My LSAT was not my strongest point; can I take the LSAT again, and reapply fresh as a 0L to the T14s with one semester already under my belt, or is that not even a thing?

You may want to contact schools you'd be interested in apply to. I believe you can withdraw and completely start anew. However, if you choose this route, I don't think your future school would apply your previous credits. You would also likely need a letter from your previous school indicating that you left in good standing.

It would be an awful lot of time and money wasted.

You can apply as a 0L as far as I know but your semester of credits will be used in admission / may count towards your Gpa depending on the institution. You could retake the LSAT. Since schools are hungry to fill seats you can get in places easier atm. Also the idiots on here telling you not to have taken time off are idiots. I lost a parent in the middle of 2L year -diagnosis of cancer due to toxic exposure from a couple F500's to death in one semester. I don't know your situation but if I wasn't engaged/married to a classmate during this period I would've failed out as it also required me to step in to takeover a family business with about 100 employees.

People on this forum are fucking retards if they think people shouldn't have a pause button from arcane legal academia / school with as much stuff as you went through. Especially since a lot of things such as taxes, trusts, wills, medical bills, lawyers, insurance, funeral plots, contacting family, burying family etc. takes a ton of time out of your day. People saying such garbage as that stuff is easy obviously haven't done it while in law school.

Reading case books and waxing on about legalese bullshit is way easier than dealing with denied insurance claims and 7 figures of medical bills or blowing through tens of thousands a month out of pocket and dealing with consoling someone who is dying and making sure they are getting good care in the medical industrial complex.

You may have to finish a years worth of credits to transfer. But, honestly, my advice would be to call the actual schools you want to transfer to and ask them.

CounselorNebby wrote:

3|ink wrote:

CounselorNebby wrote:You won't be able to transfer to the T14 unless you're in the top 5-10% of your class.

I know for a fact this is wrong.

Me too. I was generalizing. I didn't want to softball the chances, because transferring is a black box.

Great catch tho.

Want me to be more blunt? OP, if you're only top 1/3 you wont be transferring anywhere but laterally, which--unless you're already in a T14--means you won't get into one.

If the OP is at T1, people from my T1 transferred up with similar grades. Not to T14, no. So transferring "up" in terms of rankings may or may not be meaningful. But I think the above is a little stark (there may be a school that's now "better" for the OP's circumstances that they do have a chance to transfer to).

That said, I agree that you should just contact schools directly, explain your circumstances, and find out what they would allow, because I don't know if transfer or reapply would be the realistic options.

It probably depends on what T-1 means, and what T-14 means. I think if there's a way to tie the brother thing it makes it more impressive (if your grades stay the same or improve somewhat). The trick would be to find a way to make it not look like a pity party or excuse for not doing better.

Thanks for info!

I went to GWU, if that makes a difference. Honestly, not looking for a pity party, just trying to justify the reasons for my withdrawal and see what options are available.

I will starting hauling ass on contacting schools and seeing what their policies are on transferring and reapplying. I just thought that once you have a semester finished, ABA threw a big GTFO if you retake LSAT and reapply.

Thanks again.

I want the record to reflect that I recognize my prior post was in bad taste and even missed OP's point, and I regret it. Posting when not clear headed is bad, so I'm sorry for being a stupid dick.

Another option you may want to consider (though not sure if too late after taking leave of absence-or how it would work in your situation), but you could stay at your current school, and apply as a visiting student at a school near home. As a visiting student you would take classes and receive grades from the other school, and could then still graduate from your other school. It might be a workaround to get you through the next year closer to home-and then you could come back and finish your third year where you started.

You could also do it for just a single semester and then try and transfer/reapply/otherwise decide what is next. I believe you can only do visiting status for a single year, but I may be wrong. Either way, it could open a lot of different routes for you. For example, if you went back for your second year at a later time and then wanted to be closer to home-you could use the visiting status later.