2.42 GPA and 148 LSAT Forum

[anonomus2525]

Hi! First of all, thank you for your time and consideration with my question. I will graduate in December with a 2.6 gpa and right now I have a 148 on my lsat. If the only schools I can get into are in the bottom tier, how realistic is it to transfer up to a better school. If I get really good grades during my first year at a bottom tier school, what schools should I be trying to transfer to? Is T50 possible?

[The Lsat Airbender]

Not realistic.

[HopefulSplitter0000]

No clue about transferring, but why not just do what I and many others did: study hard and retake the LSAT?

[dvlthndr]

Your numbers are a good "fit" for the infamous Thomas Jefferson School of Law (median 2.8 GPA and 147 LSAT). For a ~$150k price tag, they offer some of the worst job outcomes and bar passage rates in the country. That said, ABA reports show the top 15% or so of the class transfers out. They are usually transferring to T50-T70 range schools. However, you can search this forum and find examples of people in the top 5% of the class purportedly transferring into a T50. Schools of similar quality have similar outcomes, and the transfers are usually focused on schools in a similar geographic area.

So to answer the question, you could technically attend a "bottom tier" school and have a very small (nonzero) chance of clawing your way up to a nearby T50 school. Keep in mind that you may still be treated like garbage at OCI because recruiters will see the old school's name on your 1L transcript.

So yeah... make of that what you will. But your time and money is probably better spent elsewhere.

[cavalier1138]

What makes you think you're likely to get good grades in law school?

[LSATWiz.com]

Admission #'s are somewhat predictive of 1L grades so it would be a mistake to assume you will just have the best academic performance of your life. I think the question is why would you have a 2.6 GPA in college and get a majority of questions on the LSAT wrong, but somehow be #1 in your class. Further, your numbers are so low that the schools you'd get into will limit your ability to transfer even if you are #1 out of 300. The t-14 will likely be cut off to you regardless of how you do.

Presently, you'd be looking at a 0% chance of getting into the t-14 and about a 2-3% chance of getting into a tier one school if you're looking to estimate your chances of transferring to a school you can get into with a 165 LSAT so if your goal is to transfer into a tier one school, your odds are nowhere near as good as they'd be in a casino but higher than lottery ticket odds. For LS to be worthwhile, you need a complete wholesale approach to how you study and an entirely different LSAT score.

[anonomus2525]

Just a few more things to consider. I am trying to be a sports agent. While a law degree is not necessary it is extremely helpful and almost all of the top agents have one. Because of this, I would not say I need to be in a T14 school to get a job at one of places I am looking to work at. I am not trying to be a traditional lawyer. Marquette would be my dream scenario because of their sports law program. I was basically wondering if it would be possible to transfer into there. As far as what makes me think I could do it...I understand your points and my only counter would be that my last year of school was really good actually. I was a terrible student for the first three years. Like really bad. I feel as though I matured and I am actually interested in learning now.

[Pennoyer v. Meh]

So, a few issues.

First of all, sports law is an incredibly niche practice, and it's not like Marquette guarantees that outcome for anyone to begin with (no law school does, but you seem focused on Marquette).

Second, with that GPA/LSAT, any school you get in to won't likely lead to a good career outcome. And you certainly, certainly, certainly cannot assume that you'll (1) get good grades or (2) be able to transfer anywhere from the kind of school you'll get into with your numbers, even if your grades are "good".

Essentially, given both a low GPA and low LSAT score, I would be very reluctant to go to law school at all.

[cavalier1138]

In order:

-Don't go to law school if you don't want to be a practicing lawyer.
-Specialty programs are meaningless.
-Don't go to law school if you don't want to be a practicing lawyer.
-You cannot count on performing well in law school based on one year of acting like an adult in undergrad.
-Don't go to law school if you don't want to be a practicing lawyer.

[LSATWiz.com]

My brother in law is a sports agent and is not a lawyer. You don't gain anything by being a lawyer. The only benefit is that you can technically give advice pertaining to the contract a player might sign, but the reality is that your advice is going to be deemed useless even if you went to Harvard because you don't have specific experience practicing contract law. Consequently, there is really nothing to be gained with a law degree.

To become a successful sports agent, you really need an existing agent to take you under their wing and share their connections with you. This requires internships, sometimes for years, and a great deal of luck. It's not as if Scott Boras is going to Marquette Law School to recruit sports agents because (1) the law degree adds little to no value and (2) it's very much an apprentice based field.

Another thing to consider logistically is that even if you did succeed in finding a sports agent who took you under their wing, you are not going to be making much money right away. Until you develop a book of business, much of what you'd be doing is arranging personal chefs, flying out to give emotional support during surgical procedures, arranging travel, etc. and you are essentially a glorified secretary who is paid a secretary's salary. Even when you develop a book of business, the money is generally in the second contract so it's very likely you'd be making about $50k for your first decade even if you have a great outcome. Good luck trying to repay sticker debt with that (which you would be doing given your #'s).

There is also the fact that you will probably be looking at unpaid/minimum wage internships for the first few years you're in the field so you really want to be in a position where you do not need an income when you enter the industry. You'd likely need to be okay waiting tables or the like just to be able to pay rent and buy ramen noodles. Having law school debt can very likely mean you will have to be living with your parents and working odd jobs in addition to these internships just to repay law school debt that adds little to nothing to your employability because again, law school does not make you substantially more competitive. If you find it impossible to break into the industry now, it's 99% likely you will find it similarly impossible in 3-years but with a lot of debt.

You find a lot of lawyers who succeed in fields outside of law but this isn't because their law degree makes them more marketable. My day job is part in-house counsel/part business development so is not a typical legal job, and my trajectory is similar to most and in hindsight, it's easy to see why lawyers often succeed in professions that aren't strictly speaking "law":

Law is a service based profession - lawyers provide a service for their clients much like a waiter or doctor, but the nature of their relationships to their clients is different. Whereas a businessman isn't discussing the inner workings of their business with their waiter or urologist, they do speak about their business with their attorney, which gives the attorney the ability to demonstrate their value add to their business. What I mean to say is that lawyers who succeed in fields outside of law often do so because they practiced law for some time, not because they are a lawyer. For this reason, the idea that you don't need to go to a law school with a good track record of getting their graduates jobs as lawyers if you don't want to practice law is misguided. In 9 out of 10 instances, the lawyer who is successful in a non-legal field would not have succeeded had they not previously been gainfully employed as a lawyer. You meet people who can be valuable connections through practicing law, not by becoming a lawyer. This is an important distinction and one many young people don't realize. The legal degree itself adds nothing, but practicing law can introduce you to people who get to know you and your skillset.