What tier 2,3,4 law schools have the most generous grading curves? Forum

[Anon-non-anon]

Consider looking at the assumption material I posted on here a year back. You don't need to be able to "spot" or predict the assumption. The assumption is always that the facts lead to the conclusion. An alternative approach is to simply identify the conclusion, think about from the writer's point of view, identify what their best fact is, and just reduce the argument to "if fact, then conclusion". The assumption is the "then". Try using an alternative approach. 12-15 hours is too much. You should be learning an approach for one question type, and seeing if it leads you to get 90% right on that q type. If your score isn't improving on that q type after a few days, go for a new approach. Don't just buy into a methodology for 4 months from the get go. That's ridiculous.

If there is truly no way your score can improve and if the LSAT plays to your weaknesses in a way other standardized tests do not, the reality is that it may be really difficult for you to do really well in law school. It's one thing to have a 158 because you get a 4/22 games because those don't really have much relation to law school and are 90% prep based, but LR is very indicative of the way you need to think in law school. The ability to write an A exam will at least marginally require comfort with every question type being tested on the section - you need to identify your assumptions, good arguments/bad arguments, what the sides are disputing about, the relevance of a fact to a case, apply rules to facts, consider which position the principle of the law supports, etc. While law school exams are very different from the LSAT, you are being tested on your ability to use that skillset in conjunction with the laws you've learned for a semester on a random fact pattern in a short time frame.

I don't think its going to increase further. It has to do with tricky wording of the questions/ right answers in the short questions, not being able to do more than 3 games in time, and the challenge of getting through more than 3 passages with a high degree of accuracy (slowish reader). 158 = around a 75% when I did the LSAT, which usually means I don't get to give proper time to the last 2-3 questions in a timed test. I bought different books to try to get different approaches and methods to fixing this issue in the short questions, it didn't improve, it seems that there is just a good 20% of questions where I am going to select the wrong answer, no matter what which is the "trick answer". Even after going over it, and being explained how it is the correct answer, it makes pretty much no sense from my perspective, even if I try to view it from their view. This is why I determined it won't improve more. The timing element also hurts me big time on reading comp and games.

On an untimed LSAT, I'd probably score much higher on the games because I'd get the 4th one and reading comp 4th one, but just get an additional 2-3 questions on the LR, so probably be working out to like a 165 or so if time wasn't so tight.

Are law school exams on a very tight timeline like the LSAT?

A significant portion of law school exams (at least for me) involved typing out every possible iteration of the answer as fast as possible. It was very much about knowing the law well enough (w/o digging through outlines even if open book) that you could read the facts, identify the material ones and the red herrings quickly, and run through every possible analysis as quickly as possible. You often get points for saying this is an argument but its wrong for xyz reasons, so its not just finding the "right" answer, and the questions are designed to fit in between "right" answers.

Not trying to discourage you, I think people can do well w/o doing great on the LSAT (I think I fit into that category) but that's the reality of what many law school exams are.

[LSATWiz.com]

Consider looking at the assumption material I posted on here a year back. You don't need to be able to "spot" or predict the assumption. The assumption is always that the facts lead to the conclusion. An alternative approach is to simply identify the conclusion, think about from the writer's point of view, identify what their best fact is, and just reduce the argument to "if fact, then conclusion". The assumption is the "then". Try using an alternative approach. 12-15 hours is too much. You should be learning an approach for one question type, and seeing if it leads you to get 90% right on that q type. If your score isn't improving on that q type after a few days, go for a new approach. Don't just buy into a methodology for 4 months from the get go. That's ridiculous.

If there is truly no way your score can improve and if the LSAT plays to your weaknesses in a way other standardized tests do not, the reality is that it may be really difficult for you to do really well in law school. It's one thing to have a 158 because you get a 4/22 games because those don't really have much relation to law school and are 90% prep based, but LR is very indicative of the way you need to think in law school. The ability to write an A exam will at least marginally require comfort with every question type being tested on the section - you need to identify your assumptions, good arguments/bad arguments, what the sides are disputing about, the relevance of a fact to a case, apply rules to facts, consider which position the principle of the law supports, etc. While law school exams are very different from the LSAT, you are being tested on your ability to use that skillset in conjunction with the laws you've learned for a semester on a random fact pattern in a short time frame.

I don't think its going to increase further. It has to do with tricky wording of the questions/ right answers in the short questions, not being able to do more than 3 games in time, and the challenge of getting through more than 3 passages with a high degree of accuracy (slowish reader). 158 = around a 75% when I did the LSAT, which usually means I don't get to give proper time to the last 2-3 questions in a timed test. I bought different books to try to get different approaches and methods to fixing this issue in the short questions, it didn't improve, it seems that there is just a good 20% of questions where I am going to select the wrong answer, no matter what which is the "trick answer". Even after going over it, and being explained how it is the correct answer, it makes pretty much no sense from my perspective, even if I try to view it from their view. This is why I determined it won't improve more. The timing element also hurts me big time on reading comp and games.

On an untimed LSAT, I'd probably score much higher on the games because I'd get the 4th one and reading comp 4th one, but just get an additional 2-3 questions on the LR, so probably be working out to like a 165 or so if time wasn't so tight.

Are law school exams on a very tight timeline like the LSAT?

Yes, the most common type of law school exam is on a much stricter timeline than the LSAT. The difference is these racehorse exams aren't really capable of being completed in the allotted time frame so one of the most important variables is time management. That's important on the LSAT too but one difference is that just sticking true to an internal clock for how long you'll spend on each part of the exam will in and of itself ensure you do better than a certain percentage of your peers regardless of how much substantive law you know.

The one difference is that while the LSAT is predominately based on critical reading, law school exams are predominately based on critical writing, and the skills/efficiency don't necessarily overlap. In addition, on difficult LSAT questions you are often down to 2 choices and need to think through which one is better. You don't get any points for that thought process, only for being correct. Law school exams give you more points for the thought process than the answer.

That being said, the LSAT is the strongest predictor of 1L performance. It predicts who will do better between 2 students with 80% accuracy so there is some overlap between the two. The students with large scholarships tend to make up most of law review so you're generally paying the tuition of the students who outcompete you. It's also worth noting that there is no data to suggest that 80% figure is based on starting LSAT score or that it matters if you study your way up to a score or have that score cold.

Just a random note I'll leave you with to determine if you should study to retake the test - I have tutored and managed other tutors on nights and weekends for a decade. A lot of these tutors have gone through law school. The ones that have, have all remarked that they found the LSAT and the reading comprehension section in particular much easier after completing law school. You do so much reading that you become really fast at reading irrespective of your background. What this demonstrates is that reading speed can perpetually improve so you're going to develop these skills at some point. Why not acquire them before you go to law school when you get the most bang for your buck?

And I agree on salaries being bimodal. The bottom line is that no employer is training you just to train you. You're a worker bee that they want to work to make money so your salary is largely based on what they bill clients. If you're billed out at $450/hour, you're going to earn much more than if you're billed out at $200/hour. Those $100k legal jobs you see generally aren't available to new graduates. You normally have people working at larger firms go take a 9-5 for $100-200k. It's much more common to see people start at $45-60k, and while many of them work their way up to $100-200k after a few years, there is a lot of luck involved and it's not necessarily in your control. Some small firms are legitimately interested in their attorneys' development, and intend to turn the good ones into six-figure attorneys in a short time period. Others are more predatory and tend to be a revolving door. You won't necessarily know which is which until you're there. I have friends that have gotten lucky, and friends who have not.

[nixy]

What do you consider good money?

One thing to be aware of is that legal salaries tend to follow a bimodal distribution - they cluster around $190k (for biglaw) and $45-60k (for lots of other jobs).

Ty. I'm aware of this, I figure if biglaw doesn't work out, I can build a book of business by finding clients in tax or real estate or possibly some other in demand business area. So I might be in that 45-60k range, but don't those salaries rise by like 10k a year for many years?

I’ve never heard that? For non-biglaw firms, comp is really non-standardized and there’s no guarantee what raises would be. In some contexts it will be eat what you kill, so it will be on you (but in some firms it will be entirely on what your boss decides).

I agree that time management is huge on law school exams. I disagree slightly that critical writing skills are more important than reading skills - I had a number of profs who’d give more points to bullet points that got more info across than well written but less info answers. I had profs thank me for writing well on exams at the same time that they acknowledged it didn’t really get me any more points (only one prof have more credit for well written answers and she told us that ahead of time). Don’t get me wrong, writing better always makes profs happier, but it’s often about getting more info onto the page, format be damned if necessary.

[LSATWiz.com]

How exactly do you intend to build this book of business? Does your father/mother have a practice they will pass onto you when they retire? The reason big law exists is you have large companies that don't really care if they spend $2 million or a million dollars a year on outside counsel because they want to know what they are getting without having to worry about it and it isn't their money being spent. Look at how much money government agencies spend on stuff. It's doubtful that most people would make the same purchasing decisions if it was their money on the line.

If you're working at a firm with 4 or 5 owners, do you really think they're going to make it easy for you to take their institutional clients? Moreover, will their clients leave them to work for a lawyer with 4 or 5 years of experience? What's in it for them?

If you're gifted at marketing, it's possible you can develop a practice based on working with a large number of people. This is very difficult in metropolitan areas, but if you're from or closely connected to a part of the country with an undersupply of lawyers, it's possible you can go there, make connections in the community through churches and the like, and become the tax guy or something in the local community.

However, the idea you can just expect to develop a book of business is pretty far-fetched. If lawyers could realistically able to develop a large book of business, they'd be much better served doing that than practicing at any firm where they're the equivalent of a waiter in a restaurant. Even in big law, you're being paid about $75/hour when the most inexpensive lawyers will probably still be about $200/hour. If you could garner the same amount of work, it's obviously much better to have your own practice. It's much better to own the restaurant than to be a waiter, but the majority of restaurants fail. The reality is that there are an oversupply of law firms like there are an oversupply of restaurants and the rules of professional conduct limit the extent you can be creative so make it more difficult to innovate the market, and lawyers can work into their 80s so you don't have a ton of turnover.

The reality is that if you're able to start your own practice, you'd be able to start a successful business in any number of areas. One of the mistakes that people in their 20s make is they meet someone very successful in a specific area and are able to connect with them so they assume that because the other person could accomplish X, they can easily accomplish X. The reality is that all this means is that the person they met is personable and capable of making a wide variety of people relate to them. It doesn't mean that their accomplishments came easily or are something most people can accomplish.

Starting a legal business is a completely different skillset from lawyering, and nobody knows whether or not you have it but let's say that you can start a successful legal practice. You still have that opportunity coming from a better school and a lot of fallback options. It's not as if clients will refuse to work with you because you went to too good of a law school.

It's also worth noting that most small businesses don't turn a profit for 4 or 5 years. How could you go 4 or 5 years without a salary if you were previously making $60k? Practically speaking, you'd want to start that small business while you're working, which is possible if that business were in something other than what you're doing. It's difficult to snag that book of business based on taking your employer's clients while working there.

[Wubbles]

Consider looking at the assumption material I posted on here a year back. You don't need to be able to "spot" or predict the assumption. The assumption is always that the facts lead to the conclusion. An alternative approach is to simply identify the conclusion, think about from the writer's point of view, identify what their best fact is, and just reduce the argument to "if fact, then conclusion". The assumption is the "then". Try using an alternative approach. 12-15 hours is too much. You should be learning an approach for one question type, and seeing if it leads you to get 90% right on that q type. If your score isn't improving on that q type after a few days, go for a new approach. Don't just buy into a methodology for 4 months from the get go. That's ridiculous.

If there is truly no way your score can improve and if the LSAT plays to your weaknesses in a way other standardized tests do not, the reality is that it may be really difficult for you to do really well in law school. It's one thing to have a 158 because you get a 4/22 games because those don't really have much relation to law school and are 90% prep based, but LR is very indicative of the way you need to think in law school. The ability to write an A exam will at least marginally require comfort with every question type being tested on the section - you need to identify your assumptions, good arguments/bad arguments, what the sides are disputing about, the relevance of a fact to a case, apply rules to facts, consider which position the principle of the law supports, etc. While law school exams are very different from the LSAT, you are being tested on your ability to use that skillset in conjunction with the laws you've learned for a semester on a random fact pattern in a short time frame.

I don't think its going to increase further. It has to do with tricky wording of the questions/ right answers in the short questions, not being able to do more than 3 games in time, and the challenge of getting through more than 3 passages with a high degree of accuracy (slowish reader). 158 = around a 75% when I did the LSAT, which usually means I don't get to give proper time to the last 2-3 questions in a timed test. I bought different books to try to get different approaches and methods to fixing this issue in the short questions, it didn't improve, it seems that there is just a good 20% of questions where I am going to select the wrong answer, no matter what which is the "trick answer". Even after going over it, and being explained how it is the correct answer, it makes pretty much no sense from my perspective, even if I try to view it from their view. This is why I determined it won't improve more. The timing element also hurts me big time on reading comp and games.

On an untimed LSAT, I'd probably score much higher on the games because I'd get the 4th one and reading comp 4th one, but just get an additional 2-3 questions on the LR, so probably be working out to like a 165 or so if time wasn't so tight.

Are law school exams on a very tight timeline like the LSAT?

Law school exams are almost always on VERY tight timelines. Time was my #1 limiting factor on 1L exams.

What do you consider good money?

One thing to be aware of is that legal salaries tend to follow a bimodal distribution - they cluster around $190k (for biglaw) and $45-60k (for lots of other jobs).

Ty. I'm aware of this, I figure if biglaw doesn't work out, I can build a book of business by finding clients in tax or real estate or possibly some other in demand business area. So I might be in that 45-60k range, but don't those salaries rise by like 10k a year for many years?

Major 10k raises are usually reserved for biglaw jobs. If you start at the low range, I would plan to remain at the low range for an extended period of time.

Edit* I see other people already responded, I was still on the last page.

[hernanday]

A 3.2 does not keep you out of the T13, and it certainly doesn't prevent you from landing a decent scholarship offer lower down in the rankings.

Retake the LSAT. If your goal is biglaw (which it is, because your salary goals and understanding of how lateraling works are unrealistic), you can't get it from any schools that will accept you with your current numbers. But the LSAT is a learnable test. Raise your score, and you'll have better options.

I have, multiple times, I bought so many books, took many different classes, tutors, the LSAT just ties to my weaknesses and I have trouble getting many of the underlying assumptions, my LSAT score is not realistically going to increase anymore. I was putting in 12-15 hours a day, doing nothing but LSAT, weeks on end but was not getting better scores. I'm really bad at it to be honest started out at a 131, so a 158 is a big improvement. I probably spent like a year + just studying LSAT. At a certain point, I just got to move forward to law school.

At this point I figure what is the best path forward accepting I won't get into a t-14, at best maybe a mid-tier 1 like Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana but as has been explained I'd be better off at Brooklyn/Cardozo, type schools, etc. So what would be my best path forward given the reality of the schools infront of me. We know what 10-15% of the class from there lands in big law. Even if I don't get into big law and just do tax or real estate/construction I'm sure I can make good money doing law no? Is that an unrealistic view?

Consider looking at the assumption material I posted on here a year back. You don't need to be able to "spot" or predict the assumption. The assumption is always that the facts lead to the conclusion. An alternative approach is to simply identify the conclusion, think about from the writer's point of view, identify what their best fact is, and just reduce the argument to "if fact, then conclusion". The assumption is the "then". Try using an alternative approach. 12-15 hours is too much. You should be learning an approach for one question type, and seeing if it leads you to get 90% right on that q type. If your score isn't improving on that q type after a few days, go for a new approach. Don't just buy into a methodology for 4 months from the get go. That's ridiculous.

If there is truly no way your score can improve and if the LSAT plays to your weaknesses in a way other standardized tests do not, the reality is that it may be really difficult for you to do really well in law school. It's one thing to have a 158 because you get a 4/22 games because those don't really have much relation to law school and are 90% prep based, but LR is very indicative of the way you need to think in law school. The ability to write an A exam will at least marginally require comfort with every question type being tested on the section - you need to identify your assumptions, good arguments/bad arguments, what the sides are disputing about, the relevance of a fact to a case, apply rules to facts, consider which position the principle of the law supports, etc. While law school exams are very different from the LSAT, you are being tested on your ability to use that skillset in conjunction with the laws you've learned for a semester on a random fact pattern in a short time frame.

After sleeping on it, there is a small grain of me that is narrowly considering to try an additional approach you may have, do you have a link to your post you mentioned on this. My block with the lsat was basically I could get through 3 games, 3 reading passages mostly correct and would run out of time by the 4th one. For the LR short answer I already described but it I did try to switch up methods a little bit, once I got around 158-159 I saw no improvement no matter what I did.

"An alternative approach is to simply identify the conclusion, think about from the writer's point of view, identify what their best fact is, and just reduce the argument to "if fact, then conclusion". The assumption is the "then". Try using an alternative approach."

Can you give more detailed explanation on this, perhaps with an example could be useful, so I can see if it is something I already tried or not.

[FND]

It's also worth noting that most small businesses don't turn a profit for 4 or 5 years.

This doesn't apply to attorneys - unless you're a complete idiot, you should be profitable from your first client. However, that profit is probably too small to live off.

I am of the opinion (and I've seen it) that most attorneys can build a successful practice if they're able to live off next-to-nothing the first few years. If you can live with your parents and work from home*, you can slowly build up a client base.

The problem is, it's slow going. It takes a while to get a consistent stream of clients. The big mistake a lot of starting solos make is having high expenses. An office is a luxury*. A paralegal even more so. Don't get these until there's a steady stream of referrals coming your way.

If you must start solo, the only things you need are (a) cell phone, (b) business cards, (c) suit, (d) transportation. If you don't already have a computer, go to the library. print/scan/copy services are readily available.
Go to where potential clients are, let people know what you do, and get a few clients. If you do good work, hopefully they'll give referrals. People I know who did it in big cities made about $20-$50k their first year, and hopefully it'll grow every year after that. And yes, that is enough to live on, even in New York.


*note: some states have a bona fide office requirement. in that case obviously you do need an office. See if a virtual office is acceptable, as that's a lot cheaper.

[The Lsat Airbender]

People I know who did it in big cities made about $20-$50k their first year, and hopefully it'll grow every year after that. And yes, that is enough to live on, even in New York.

True, but not while servicing a huge debt load. That's the main thing that has changed since 1990.

[FND]

People I know who did it in big cities made about $20-$50k their first year, and hopefully it'll grow every year after that. And yes, that is enough to live on, even in New York.

True, but not while servicing a huge debt load. That's the main thing that has changed since 1990.

no, I mean today. Today, someone who starts solo in a big city and works their tail off can expect to make between $20k and $50k in their first year. From that they need to pay student loans, living expenses, CLE, legal resources, and whatever else.

Being able to survive on $20k/yr is a different matter.

[+] Spoiler

that being said, it's easier to do that with a heavy debt load today than 30 years ago. Back then, there were no income-based repayment plans. Today, you 'just' defer (and let the balance grow), until you can afford to make payments

[FND]

I figure if biglaw doesn't work out, I can build a book of business by finding clients in tax or real estate or possibly some other in demand business area. So I might be in that 45-60k range, but don't those salaries rise by like 10k a year for many years?

Do yourself a favor. Find the movie "The Verdict" starring Paul Newman. Watch the first 15 minutes. Consider that that's a realistic outcome for the path you're about to embark on. Then re-think whether or not you want to continue down that path

[antelope]

I wouldn't bet on salary going up every year. I met an attorney who attended a "tier 1" state school and, for the past 10 years, that attorney's been making between 45-55k working in small firms. That attorney is fine with the outcome, though, but graduated with less debt since tuition wasn't that high back in the day.

It's up to you on how determined you are on being an attorney. Cost of living, combined debt you'll have after graduation (undergrad, law school, additional debt if any), outcomes from your school, local legal market are some considerations you need to take into account. Make sure to think this through and prepare well before making life changing decisions