Top Law Schools

First, a little background. I graduated from the University of Maryland in 2008 with a degree in History and a minor in Rhetoric with an average 3.0 GPA. Not sure if I wanted to go to law school (or if I could get in) after graduation, I decided to forego the LSAT and go to graduate school instead and try to obtain a Master's Degree in Legal and Ethical Studies from the University of Baltimore. I figured that this course of action would help me decide. I currently have a year left in my graduate program and I really like what I am doing. I currently have a 3.8 GPA and I took the LSAT and got a 166. My question is, would the 3.0 UGPA hurt me enough to prevent me from getting in to Top 15-50 level school, or will the Master's degree and the decent LSAT score sort of offset the low GPA?

TIA
Zachary

Your grad gpa is irrelevant. You still should be able to get into a top 50 school.

Your 3.0 will lose a bit of importance the further you get from undergrad, but it won't ever become insignificant for the application process. Having said that, the 3.0 will hurt you quite a bit if you apply next year (I guess that you would be a few years out of undergrad). But this does not mean that you will not be able to get into a 35-50 ranked school, provided that you have an actual LSAT of 166. But why not prepare more for a later LSAT and try to improve? After all, the job prospects from most of 35-50 are terrible. Why not shoot higher?

With a 166, you'll get into some decent schools (UMD-B being one of them). Drop out of your grad program unless it's free.