Sahm taking lsat Forum

[Eschatological]

Hi. I have 3 kids under the age of 5 and am a stay at home mother. I would like to start studying for the lsat.

My husband is a successful lawyer. I got a perfect score on my GREs and was in grad school for a math related career before becoming pregnant and dropping out. I'm hoping this will translate to success on the LSAT. Not the dropping out part, obviously.

I don't have the focus I used to for academic work, especially since I'm still nursing my baby around the clock. I decided to sign up for the LSAT in December to give myself an end date for studying (registration isn't open yet but I love deadlines.)

Long term, I'd like to get a free ride to law school. I'm not a minority, so I'll be shooting for whatever score will get me there.

Any advice for me? Any moms doing the same thing I could connect with?

[BrainsyK]

I'm assuming that you're not willing to uproot your whole family to accomplish this so if you live near one of the many schools that take the GRE as part of your application package, just apply to one of those and bypass the LSAT entirely.

[Kiwilaw]

Most schools will give the best scholarship money to people whose undergrad GPA and LSAT are above their medians (this helps boost both of their median scores and, thus, helps them in the USNEWS rankings). Once above both medians, it seems to be a bit of a crapshoot. Look up the schools you would like to apply to and find what their medians typically are. You can also look them up on mylsn.com. On that site there's a scholarship graph where you can see what scores people with the highest scholarship amounts have.

[LSATWiz.com]

If you got a perfect score on the GRE, you should be able to do really well on the LSAT and December is plenty of time notwithstanding taking care of young children.

[Eschatological]

My GRE timed out a few years ago.

I took a practice test cold (after reading tls a bit) and only got 156. I know that's good, but I was hoping to score high 170s. I have to work on logic games the most, and I even got some reading comp wrong, which I thought I'd breeze through.

I will take the test in October hopefully. Just ordered the powerscore logic games bible. I will study every day at least a few minutes.

[QContinuum]

What's changed between five years ago, when you dropped out of grad school upon becoming pregnant with your first child, and now, when you're willing to consider law school with three small children and a reduced (per your post) focus for academic work? Do you have a robust childcare system in place? Do you have a good reason for wanting to switch from math to law? What kind of legal career do you envision, and which law schools would be realistic for you to attend (would you be limited to schools in your current city)? What if you were to have additional children during/after law school, either planned or unplanned?

I ask these questions not to attack you in any way, but to try to probe whether law school at this time would be a good fit for your goals. All too often, for many 0Ls law school proves to be a massive mistake.

To be clear, with enough drive and the right support network it's absolutely possible to succeed in law school as a parent. I had a number of female friends/classmates who had children during law school - and who were their children's primary parent - who are doing great professionally. But these women were - and still are - extremely driven, and I would have a hard time imagining them ever dropping out of any course of study due to becoming pregnant. (I also had a number of male friends/classmates who had children during law school, but those men - obviously - didn't have to contend with actually being pregnant, and they also had stay-at-home wives who took care of their kids while they focused on classes. So their experience is less relevant, IMO.)

[Eschatological]

What's changed between five years ago, when you dropped out of grad school upon becoming pregnant with your first child, and now, when you're willing to consider law school with three small children and a reduced (per your post) focus for academic work? Do you have a robust childcare system in place? Do you have a good reason for wanting to switch from math to law? What kind of legal career do you envision, and which law schools would be realistic for you to attend (would you be limited to schools in your current city)? What if you were to have additional children during/after law school, either planned or unplanned?

I ask these questions not to attack you in any way, but to try to probe whether law school at this time would be a good fit for your goals. All too often, for many 0Ls law school proves to be a massive mistake.

To be clear, with enough drive and the right support network it's absolutely possible to succeed in law school as a parent. I had a number of female friends/classmates who had children during law school - and who were their children's primary parent - who are doing great professionally. But these women were - and still are - extremely driven, and I would have a hard time imagining them ever dropping out of any course of study due to becoming pregnant. (I also had a number of male friends/classmates who had children during law school, but those men - obviously - didn't have to contend with actually being pregnant, and they also had stay-at-home wives who took care of their kids while they focused on classes. So their experience is less relevant, IMO.)

Thank you for your post. It certainly gave me food for thought.

I'm certainly motivated. I'll see how I do on the lsat. I do hope, God willing, to have more children while in law school. We are in a position where this is possible. Later pregnancies, as a rule, are easier than first pregnancies, and that has been my experience so far.

I assume those women were taking on the financial burden at home, and not hoping to have a large family. I intend to work minimally after passing the bar in order to focus on my kids, and only after the youngest is in school to work full time. Right now my kids are young and it seems a good time to do it.

[QContinuum]

I intend to work minimally after passing the bar in order to focus on my kids, and only after the youngest is in school to work full time. Right now my kids are young and it seems a good time to do it.

I'm a bit more skeptical re: timing. It's unfortunate and I don't think it's a good thing that the market operates this way, but it's generally very hard to get back on track professionally after having spent a number of years at home as a homemaker/parent. This is all the more true for inexperienced candidates - e.g., someone who graduated, then immediately became a stay-at-home parent, then X years later seeks to start working in the field. There's always a huge supply of fresh grads entering the market each year, and employers generally prefer to take one of those fresh grads over someone who graduated, say, 3-5 years ago and hasn't worked since then.

I also don't think you'd likely be able to land rewarding part-time work straight out of law school, with zero legal experience. You'd probably be limited to doing things like short-term doc review, which pay horribly and do not look remotely good on any resume.

My recommendation is that you should strongly consider postponing law school until such time when you'd be able and willing to pursue full-time work immediately upon graduation.

You didn't respond to my question regarding what kind of legal career you ultimately envision, and which law schools would be realistic for you to attend. You should be aware that as a general rule, legal salaries are bimodal, which means you'd either be making in the mid-five figures starting out, or market BigLaw pay. There are exceedingly few jobs that start out paying around $100k. Also, even the mid-five figure jobs don't necessarily come with good work/life balance.

There is also a dramatic difference in employment outcomes between the Top 13/20 schools and a few of the Top 50 schools (as ranked by USNWR), vs. the rest of the law schools in the country. At the non-T13/20 schools, you should expect to make in the mid-five figures starting out, and to be limited to practicing in the same city/state where you attend law school. When you go beyond the Top 100 schools (these are referred to as T3/T4 schools here on TLS), then you can't even be confident of landing a legal job out of law school, and attending law school at all becomes a dicey proposition unless you have a full-tuition scholarship and nothing else to do with your time.

[nixy]

My recommendation is that you should strongly consider postponing law school until such time when you'd be able and willing to pursue full-time work immediately upon graduation.

I absolutely agree with this, for the reasons Q gave. Having kids while you’re in school can work better than doing so while working full time, in that school is often more flexible wrt timing/scheduling (though you’d still need some child care support). But graduating and not trying to get a full time job until some time later is going to be pretty difficult. Not saying it’s fair or right, just that that’s generally how it works.

[AJordan]

The calculus does change if your husband is a solo/small firm success and would be hiring you whenever you decided to start working.