Advice on law Schools 3.82/167 94%/ 4 years of legal experience Forum

[FutureLawyerDude]

Hello,
I am looking at applying to UVA, Georgetown, George Washington, George Mason, Vanderbilt, and Emory. I am apprehensive about applying to west coast schools as I have never been before and I am not sure it would be a good fit for me. I have also worked for a law firm as a law clerk for around four years. I will begin applying my senior year next fall. Any advice as to any other schools I should look at? Additionally, my GPA should increase to a 3.85/3.87 over the next two semester if I stay on the current track I am on.

[trebekismyhero]

Hello,
I am looking at applying to UVA, Georgetown, George Washington, George Mason, Vanderbilt, and Emory. I am apprehensive about applying to west coast schools as I have never been before and I am not sure it would be a good fit for me. I have also worked for a law firm as a law clerk for around four years. I will begin applying my senior year next fall. Any advice as to any other schools I should look at? Additionally, my GPA should increase to a 3.85/3.87 over the next two semester if I stay on the current track I am on.

If you are still in school, retake the LSAT. With your GPA, a few points on the LSAT and you will get into a good number of t14 schools with some money. Right now, you might get into a couple t14s, but you would be paying sticker. What do you want to do after law school and where?

[FutureLawyerDude]

Hello,
I am looking at applying to UVA, Georgetown, George Washington, George Mason, Vanderbilt, and Emory. I am apprehensive about applying to west coast schools as I have never been before and I am not sure it would be a good fit for me. I have also worked for a law firm as a law clerk for around four years. I will begin applying my senior year next fall. Any advice as to any other schools I should look at? Additionally, my GPA should increase to a 3.85/3.87 over the next two semester if I stay on the current track I am on.

If you are still in school, retake the LSAT. With your GPA, a few points on the LSAT and you will get into a good number of t14 schools with some money. Right now, you might get into a couple t14s, but you would be paying sticker. What do you want to do after law school and where?

I studied all summer for the LSAT for 8 hours a day. I don't see my score improving as I don't have new material to study and I will never have the amount of time that I did last summer to commit to studying. I am very happy and proud of that score so retaking is really not an option for myself. However, I would like to go into sports and entertainment law, maybe alcohol law. Possibly start at big law, pay off loans, and then transition into a smaller boutique firm and eventually start my own firm. Given that I am a junior I am still exploring my options for which type of law i would like to practice. Not that it matters all that much but I have amazing softs and LOR's already.

[trebekismyhero]

Hello,
I am looking at applying to UVA, Georgetown, George Washington, George Mason, Vanderbilt, and Emory. I am apprehensive about applying to west coast schools as I have never been before and I am not sure it would be a good fit for me. I have also worked for a law firm as a law clerk for around four years. I will begin applying my senior year next fall. Any advice as to any other schools I should look at? Additionally, my GPA should increase to a 3.85/3.87 over the next two semester if I stay on the current track I am on.

If you are still in school, retake the LSAT. With your GPA, a few points on the LSAT and you will get into a good number of t14 schools with some money. Right now, you might get into a couple t14s, but you would be paying sticker. What do you want to do after law school and where?

I studied all summer for the LSAT for 8 hours a day. I don't see my score improving as I don't have new material to study and I will never have the amount of time that I did last summer to commit to studying. I am very happy and proud of that score so retaking is really not an option for myself. However, I would like to go into sports and entertainment law, maybe alcohol law. Possibly start at big law, pay off loans, and then transition into a smaller boutique firm and eventually start my own firm. Given that I am a junior I am still exploring my options for which type of law i would like to practice. Not that it matters all that much but I have amazing softs and LOR's already.

What is alcohol law? If you want to start in big law you should go to a t14. Sports and entertainment law are very hard to get, if you mean work for a team or an agency, I'd recommend trying to get a job there prior to law school to build a network. And a 167 is a very good score, but you are only a junior, there is no harm in studying more and trying to get a 170. RIght now a 167 maybe gets you into GULC, but at sticker with over $300k in debt. A 170 could cut that debt total by almost half and get you into better schools including UVA.

[kinge]

Hello,
I am looking at applying to UVA, Georgetown, George Washington, George Mason, Vanderbilt, and Emory. I am apprehensive about applying to west coast schools as I have never been before and I am not sure it would be a good fit for me. I have also worked for a law firm as a law clerk for around four years. I will begin applying my senior year next fall. Any advice as to any other schools I should look at? Additionally, my GPA should increase to a 3.85/3.87 over the next two semester if I stay on the current track I am on.

If you are still in school, retake the LSAT. With your GPA, a few points on the LSAT and you will get into a good number of t14 schools with some money. Right now, you might get into a couple t14s, but you would be paying sticker. What do you want to do after law school and where?

I studied all summer for the LSAT for 8 hours a day. I don't see my score improving as I don't have new material to study and I will never have the amount of time that I did last summer to commit to studying. I am very happy and proud of that score so retaking is really not an option for myself. However, I would like to go into sports and entertainment law, maybe alcohol law. Possibly start at big law, pay off loans, and then transition into a smaller boutique firm and eventually start my own firm. Given that I am a junior I am still exploring my options for which type of law i would like to practice. Not that it matters all that much but I have amazing softs and LOR's already.

Not so sure your softs are "amazing" (are you a Nobel Prize winner? Olympic athlete? C-level exec in a sizable company?), and LORs have little impact.

What was your LSAT spread by section, if you don't mind me asking? Any points missed (I'd say more than 2) in Logic Games is an easy retake. The key to studying for standardized tests is to work smart, not just work hard.

[decimalsanddollars]

Echo the advice to retake, because you have so much potentially to gain from doing so. Assuming you don't retake:

https://mylsn.info/gp9wo1

This myLSN output shows basically no chance at HYSCC and Penn; decent chances at NYU, Michigan, Duke, NW, GULC; not-so-great chances at Berkeley and UVA; and clear skies at Cornell and from Texas/UCLA on down. Your numbers put you in a tight spot: they're excellent for non-t14 but unexceptional for t14. You'll likely have mixed outcomes at the lower t14, which means you should apply as broadly as possible to make sure you have options worth comparing.

Realistically for you, this means expanding the search from the Mid-Atlantic to include at least the Northeast (NYU, Cornell, maybe BU), Midwest (Michigan, NW, possibly WUSTL/Minnesota/Iowa/ND), and Texas (UT). Also, if by "alcohol law" you mean wine law, I highly recommend reconsidering your aversion to the West Coast. Ditto if you want to have real options for sports and entertainment law (which, as trebek indicated, is notoriously hard to get into), where many of the jobs are in SoCal. Finally, I recommend continuing to seek advice about this process and soul-searching to make sure it's what you really want to do. Law school is a hard gamble, even (and perhaps especially) with numbers like yours.

[Johnnybgoode92]

Don’t go this cycle. Retake until you get a 172. The work to do this will pale in comparison to being a strong student 1L. Go to SLS. There’ll be wine and entertainment opportunities left and right. This is the most reasonable suggestion.

[FND]

I know it's been said, and I know you don't want to hear it, but, retake.

Even if you've gotten accepted at a school you're happy to go to, improving your LSAT by a point can make a difference of thousands of dollars in scholarship money for