Are undergraduate "pre-law advisors" useful? Forum

[LawyerBrah]

My college was hosting a "Pre-Law Student Orientation", which i decided to attend for the heck of it.

We had representatives from Fordham, CUNY Law, Kaplan, and various school advisers.

Anyways, we had some lady from Kaplan trying to sign people for a LSAT course. She was trying to say that if people don't take the course they'll bomb the LSAT and things like that.

Most the people at the orientation seemed absolutely clueless. We had people asking questions like "uh what LSAT will i need to get into like a top-50 school", and stupid things like that.

So, I raised my hand and asked the Kaplan lady, what makes Kaplan a better choice than TestMasters, BluePrint, Manhattan LSAT, and other competitors.

Her face

--ImageRemoved--

After staring for a few moments and stuttering, she says something like "Our methods are better proven to work", and how people taking the course almost always get results. I was going to follow up and decided not to.

Next, some kid raised his hand and asked if law-school is a good investment if your grades might not be that good. One of the advisers replies with "how it's about doing what you like and following your heart", he goes on to explain that he went to Pace Law School and only had like a 2.5 GPA, but still is happy. All the other advisers agreed with him.

My face.



Lastly, the CUNY adviser was saying how people should only apply to CUNY if their interested in public interest law. She was saying that the school had rejected people with 180 LSATS and 4.0 GPAS, because they didn't want to practice public interest.

My face.




Are all pre-law advisers like this?

[FattyMcFatFat]

Sometimes your face is very pretty. Other times, not so much.

[North]

I've spoken to several UG pre-law advisors IRL and have seen pre-law advisors' advice repeated through posters on this forum for years.

In almost every single instance, their advice is some awful, SHITBOOMER drivel that steers the poor kid trusting enough to listen in the worst and most life-ruining direction. They put more effort into arranging "informative" events for prep company shills and TTTT law schools to push their wares (like the one you had the misfortune of attending) than they do researching the real-world, life ruining consequences of their uninformed advice.

[Pumpkin_Pie]

The problem with pre-law advisors is that not one will tell students not to go to law school. If they did, they wouldn't have a job.

[red52]

sounds a bit like she rustled your jimmies.

[LawyerBrah]

sounds a bit like she rustled your jimmies.

Do you even lift?

[lawschool2014hopeful]

edit

[Tom Joad]

At first I thought this OP was dumb, but it grew on me fast.

[radar714]

the undergrad pre-law advisors at my UG aren't even law school grads, they just have masters in education. Consequently, they give horrific advice, because they don't truly understand how LS admissions operates.

The prelaw advisor told my GF, who has a 3.95/164 and is still a senior, NOT to take a year off and retake the LSAT because "You just don't know if you're going to do better next time, you should just apply and hope for the best"

...

[prezidentv8]

There be some horrendous advice from pre-law advisors.

[gguuueessttt]

There be some horrendous advice from pre-law advisors.

My pre-law advisor was adamant that no one is allowed to take the LSAT more than once per year. So...not the best.

That being said, she did set up some meet and greets with different law school admissions officers and lawyers from around my city, so she was helpful in that regard.

[Gunnar Stahl]

.

[20130312]

But the answer to your question is no.

[worldtraveler]

There generally pretty terrible. Although I think the CUNY example from the OP is probably true. That is a very public interest oriented school, and schools do YP and reject 4.0/180 candidates anyway.

[Lovely Ludwig Van]

I would probably do what OP did and go back to troll my UG pre-law advisors if they weren't such nice folks to me while I was there. What I find more entertaining are the douchebag social science gunners who think that joining Blackstonians, doing legal internships, and talking the most in class will help them get into HYS.

[SumStalwart]

NO!

It's a shame that anyone can become a pre-law advisor. At my school, we had two.. Neither of their respective educations even bordered law. That's fine with me, as long as they do the necessary research. Unfortunately, they didn't have a clue as to what they were talking about.

[timbs4339]

They give life-ruining advice more often than not. TLS should crowdsource a "Law School Admissions" package that all prelaw advisors should have to memorize.

I remember when I was applying to law school with a 3.8, 175 some professor told me to go to Western New England for free and then get an LLM from HLS since it was "almost like the same thing." I had another tell a whole class of Intro to ConLaw poly sci kids not to bother applying to Ivies since we'd never get in.

I would volunteer to serve as a pre-law advisor to students from my UG if only to save people from making poor decisions (at my UG the median LSAT is in the low 150s).