Top Law Schools

Looking for any insights into top-law-schools.com with a spouse. I'm a military officer now, so 12 hour days and not seeing each other many nights will be no change. I'm looking more for things like schools that have particularly good or bad options for married housing or other things that might not have been obvious before choosing the school or go unmentioned in the K-JD/single person focused law school admission world. I'm an extereme splitter, so im basically blanketing the T15 and crossing my fingers, but if there's any T25 schools I should consider applying to based on exceptional accomidations or other factors I'd like to know. She's a teacher, so the hope is that she'll be able to find a job before I start school, as it's pretty slim hiring after Julyish. Thanks in advance!

I think you'll be able to find accommodations at just about any school. Personally, we shied away from on-campus housing-but that's only because we didn't want to live around a bunch of other students (including those who literally just graduated high school). If you're looking for convenience, I'd just look for a nearby apartment.It'll be more quiet and feel more like a home.

It's good that you've got the not-seeing each other thing down, but I think that actually gets exaggerated sometimes. I would just do my best to prepare him/her for the stress that comes with 1L, and that it may seep into your personal lives. Just remember that it's temporary, and that after 1L the stress goes way way down.

Personally, living with my wife helped me a lot. She understood what I was going through (the best she could) and did her best to support me. I think that sort of relationship with a non-law student can have an immensely positive impact.

There's no special trick to it, people have full time jobs and maintain marriages all the time and law school is much less work and less time consuming than a full time job. It's like a 3 year extended vacation punctuated by some busy times, particularly around finals. 1L is more work and more stress than 2L/3L but not that bad, as long as she understands that you'll be busy around finals time you should be good.

I think the biggest issue my wife and I had was 1L year she really wanted to go to her parents house for Easter and I wanted to stay home because I had a legal writing assignment due the next Monday. Ultimately I caved and just did it early because it didn't seem worth fighting about and it wasn't like I didn't have enough free time to get it down early.

The OMG LAW SCHOOL IS SO HARD AND TIME CONSUMING thing is largely flame, IMO. Law students are just the type of people who naturally get stressed out and complain about everything so that's why that myth gets perpetuated.

law school shouldn't be a serious strain on your relationship. Lots of serious pre-law school relationships fail in law school, (I know of four classmates who divorced this summer, for example), but it's generally not because of law school.

As zuck said:

BigZuck wrote:The OMG LAW SCHOOL IS SO HARD AND TIME CONSUMING thing is largely flame, IMO. Law students are just the type of people who naturally get stressed out and complain about everything so that's why that myth gets perpetuated.

I'm not sure anyone has ever prepared a survey of campus housing for married couples at law school because most people avoid it and those who take it are generally not narrowing their school selection on the basis of quality of the housing (maybe on the mere existence of it, but that's altogether different). Almost every school will have some option for you, if you really want to go that route, which few would ever advise. I don't believe "exceptional" has ever been used to describe grad student/married student housing at any institution. It tends to range from decent (see, e.g., Escondido Village at Stanford) to something less than that (see, e.g., UT); of course some of that is by necessity: Austin has a lot more in the way of affordable student rentals than Palo Alto.

As far as 12-hour days, you won't need to work that much. As Cube said, that's a bit exaggerated. There will be times in the semester when you may be working like that, but it will be limited and predictable. (Week before 1L memo/brief are due; time after Thanksgiving and before Christmas, and similar time in the spring). [ETA: And our 1L briefs were due the Wednesday after spring break, and I didn't work on it (or any other LS stuff) during spring break at all until the Thursday of break; my wife and I kicked it at the lake for Saturday-Wednesday].

Some schools actually have an orientation session for married couples where older students and their spouses talk about the experience (but that alone is no reason to pick one school over another). Basically the info there is: Your spouse will be stressed and will be occasionally unavailable especially at the end of the semester -- please understand that. My additional advice if you have kids is that finals week is a very good time for a spouse to take the kids to see the grandparents or for a grandmother to come visit and help out.

Got married right before law school. As said above it's not a big deal. Kids, however, is a different question.

I agree with everyone else. Probably the most important thing is for you guys to be on the same page about is that finals will be particularly stressful and so you should probably be cut some slack at that time (especially 1L), but I don't think that's too hard for most people to deal with (without kids - I'm sure it's tougher when child care is involved). But otherwise it's no more difficult on your spouse than you having a regular job. The stress is very much overblown.

Agree with the above. I recommend family housing if your school offers it - it's usually different than typical on-campus housing and you aren't surrounded by kids fresh out of high school or anything.

I think your spouse just has to realize that 1L, especially Fall, is your time and that you're going to have a lot on your plate while you figure things out. You're probably paying a lot of money wherever you go, and it makes sense to prioritize that in the short term over non-essential commitments. My wife and son went to stay with grandparents for the Fall exam period and that worked out. Come Spring, I knew the score and was able to work normally with the fam around. Now, as a 2L, things are pretty easy going and it's not really any different than having a full time job (and not even a stressful full time job). I imagine, if you don't take on any commitments in 2/3L such as RAing, organizational leadership, journal board, etc., the time you spend would slip well below it being a full time job.

Thanks for all the responses.

- No kids and no plans, so not worried about that.
- I'm really unworried about the stress, I highly doubt it will outpace my undergrad or current job. I just didn't want to have 500 people jump on and immediatly scream "don't do it it's a recipe for divorce!"
- The wife's been through 4 years of military school and a deployment, she's ride or die. She knows when I need my time to work, and she's got her own career.
- I'm ~45m from UT now, so I will most likely end up commuting if I end up there. And lol @ Stanford, I wish.

Thanks again for the feedback, a lot of this is comforting.

There is no married student housing at Georgetown, only a dorm. The married/family student housing at UCLA on the other hand is pretty decent and pretty affordable.

And yeah like others have said, don't believe the doomsayers; your marriage will be fine, or if it ain't, law school should have little to nothing to do with that.

Hi there, Capitol Idea is my spouse. So my perspective: Law school is designed to indoctrinate you into a particular way of thinking and approaching problems. I am sure the effectiveness of the indoctrination varies by school. Generally, though, the people I know who became lawyers/went through law school became more argumentative. What I saw a lot/experienced a lot is them becoming more inclined to treat all interactions like they would treat legal problems. Everything became a debate, and their goal in all encounters was to "win." If you learn to think this way and can't turn it off in your personal life, that can be stressful for your spouse. If you are self-aware and have your spouse on the look out for these kinds of changes - and willing to tell you to stop "lawyering" in your relationship if you start doing so - this shouldn't be a problem.

The only time you'll really be away from your wife is while studying for finals, which can be time-consuming. If you find that she is having trouble giving you space, put up a white board on your office door with "number of Coach purses I can buy you" (or whatever her favorite thing is) written on it. Every time she interrupts you, sigh, get up and walk to the board, and lower the number you started with by one, then say "yes dear?"

kalvano wrote:The only time you'll really be away from your wife is while studying for finals, which can be time-consuming. If you find that she is having trouble giving you space, put up a white board on your office door with "number of Coach purses I can buy you" (or whatever her favorite thing is) written on it. Every time she interrupts you, sigh, get up and walk to the board, and lower the number you started with by one, then say "yes dear?"

Now THAT would get my ass divorced.

Hand wrote:There is no married student housing at Georgetown, only a dorm. The married/family student housing at UCLA on the other hand is pretty decent and pretty affordable.

This is the kind of stuff I'm looking for, thanks.

kalvano wrote:The only time you'll really be away from your wife is while studying for finals, which can be time-consuming. If you find that she is having trouble giving you space, put up a white board on your office door with "number of Coach purses I can buy you" (or whatever her favorite thing is) written on it. Every time she interrupts you, sigh, get up and walk to the board, and lower the number you started with by one, then say "yes dear?"

Replace Coach purses with Chipotle Burritos and if I was this guy's wife, I'd never interrupt.

Nagster5 wrote:

Hand wrote:There is no married student housing at Georgetown, only a dorm. The married/family student housing at UCLA on the other hand is pretty decent and pretty affordable.

This is the kind of stuff I'm looking for, thanks.

I know it seems like this should matter but I assure you it doesn't. I would choose a law school based on quality of free coffee or quality of the in law school cafe before I chose one based on its on campus housing options. There are some exceptions I'm sure but most of the time you'll want to live off campus anyway. And really, you need to focus on job placement/geographic placement/cost before even thinking about on campus housing. By all means use it as a tie breaker if you want but it's really not that important.

BigZuck wrote:

Nagster5 wrote:

Hand wrote:There is no married student housing at Georgetown, only a dorm. The married/family student housing at UCLA on the other hand is pretty decent and pretty affordable.

This is the kind of stuff I'm looking for, thanks.

I know it seems like this should matter but I assure you it doesn't. I would choose a law school based on quality of free coffee or quality of the in law school cafe before I chose one based on its on campus housing options. There are some exceptions I'm sure but most of the time you'll want to live off campus anyway. And really, you need to focus on job placement/geographic placement/cost before even thinking about on campus housing. By all means use it as a tie breaker if you want but it's really not that important.

Solid advice, thank you. I am really not using this as even a factor in my decision, tbh I don't even have a realistic idea of where I'll get admitted due to my weird numbers/background. I'm just curious as to things I should be considering that may seem obvious to current or former married students. Sort of an"I wish I had known/considered" type thing. I was also hoping for some selling points to my wife for schools she might not be too hot on otherwise, and vice-versa for schools she'd rather I attend.

BigZuck wrote: The OMG LAW SCHOOL IS SO HARD AND TIME CONSUMING thing is largely flame, IMO. Law students are just the type of people who naturally get stressed out and complain about everything so that's why that myth gets perpetuated.

This should be posted on the registration page.

BigZuck wrote: The OMG LAW SCHOOL IS SO HARD AND TIME CONSUMING thing is largely flame, IMO. Law students are just the type of people who naturally get stressed out and complain about everything so that's why that myth gets perpetuated.

The other aspect of this is an inflated sense of self-importance thanks to Facebook and all the social media nonsense that conditions us to over-analyze and over-dramatize everything we do. Meeting veterans has given me perspective in this regard: if I screw up a legal writing assignment, it is inconsequential; if they had screwed up in their former jobs, people could die. Realizing this, it is kind of silly to get stressed during the former situation.

Nagster5 wrote:Looking for any insights into top-law-schools.com with a spouse. I'm a military officer now, so 12 hour days and not seeing each other many nights will be no change. I'm looking more for things like schools that have particularly good or bad options for married housing or other things that might not have been obvious before choosing the school or go unmentioned in the K-JD/single person focused law school admission world. I'm an extereme splitter, so im basically blanketing the T15 and crossing my fingers, but if there's any T25 schools I should consider applying to based on exceptional accomidations or other factors I'd like to know. She's a teacher, so the hope is that she'll be able to find a job before I start school, as it's pretty slim hiring after Julyish. Thanks in advance!

I went to UCI Law. Are you interested in that school at all?

UCI has family housing. The community is a mix of married couples with no kids and with kids. It's very close to the school, so I was always within a few minutes away from home.

The school itself is super supporting of spouses. I was able to bring my spouse to almost every school-sponsored event.

I'm not sure about what hiring for teachers is like, but irvine has plenty of schools and there are several other schools within the surrounding communities.

Finally, and even though you weren't necessarily asking about this, we have had several active and retired military members in our school.

If you want more info, feel free to PM me.

Probably beating a dead horse at this point but just to reiterate: You should have come to the decision that applying to a school like UCI is a good idea because of geographic/career goals and cost. Then you consider what on campus housing is like. You don't apply to the school because of on campus housing and then consider the other stuff. That would be a colossally poor way to approach law school admissions.

Hence the "are you interested in that school at all?"

BigZuck wrote:Probably beating a dead horse at this point but just to reiterate: You should have come to the decision that applying to a school like UCI is a good idea because of geographic/career goals and cost. Then you consider what on campus housing is like. You don't apply to the school because of on campus housing and then consider the other stuff. That would be a colossally poor way to approach law school admissions.

This.

OP: make your decision by finding the best nexus of the following three factors, and consider other factors if and only if you have a tie:

- General placement power and placement into preferred career path
- Placement into preferred region/cities
- Cost of attendance

A. Nony Mouse wrote:I agree with everyone else. Probably the most important thing is for you guys to be on the same page about is that finals will be particularly stressful and so you should probably be cut some slack at that time (especially 1L), but I don't think that's too hard for most people to deal with (without kids - I'm sure it's tougher when child care is involved). But otherwise it's no more difficult on your spouse than you having a regular job. The stress is very much overblown.

Agree. It is particularly helpful to have an honest conversation with your spouse/partner/SO about 1L and how things will look for you personally (study schedule, staying late at the library, reading assignments on the weekends, etc.-- whatever works for you), but also generally (grades = job, etc.). Some friends' spouses and SOs who were unfamiliar with how things work (like legal hiring) were less generous in understanding the stakes of doing well/finals black hole, etc.

It sounds like you guys have the kind of backgrounds that make this a non-issue.