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I know people look down at T3 and T4 schools, but would schools that are the only schools in the area be better than T3 and T4 schools located in the same area as T1 ad T2 schools?
Tennessee is a state I wouldn't mind living in, so I was looking at University of Memphis and Belmont University. The median LSAT score for those schools is a 155 with GPA's around 3.2. With my 2.7, I'm guessing if I can work my butt off and get around a 160 on the LSAT, then I'd have a small chance with schools that have those averages?
Also, I was curious if law offices allowed people to sort of shadow employees for a couple hours to see what it's like working in a law firm. Thinking of emailing around.
I'm not looking into Law School with the expectation of making six figures once I graduate.
I know people look down at T3 and T4 schools, but would schools that are the only schools in the area be better than T3 and T4 schools located in the same area as T1 ad T2 schools?
Tennessee is a state I wouldn't mind living in, so I was looking at University of Memphis and Belmont University. The median LSAT score for those schools is a 155 with GPA's around 3.2. With my 2.7, I'm guessing if I can work my butt off and get around a 160 on the LSAT, then I'd have a small chance with schools that have those averages?
Also, I was curious if law offices allowed people to sort of shadow employees for a couple hours to see what it's like working in a law firm. Thinking of emailing around.
I'm not looking into Law School with the expectation of making six figures once I graduate.
Every law school has to publish its bar pass rates -- you need to look up that info. It is a waste of your time and money to attend a law school with a low rate. If you know someone at a law firm, I'd ask that person abut hanging around time. If you are a stranger, I doubt you will find a law firm that will allow you to see what is happening with clients due to confidentiality issues. A couple of hours of shadowing won't tell you anything anything. A couple of months -- now you're talking. If you are interested in pro bono work, you might want to try contacting some of the public interest firms and actually offer to put in some time with them.
Every law school has to publish its bar pass rates -- you need to look up that info. It is a waste of your time and money to attend a law school with a low rate. If you know someone at a law firm, I'd ask that person abut hanging around time. If you are a stranger, I doubt you will find a law firm that will allow you to see what is happening with clients due to confidentiality issues. A couple of hours of shadowing won't tell you anything anything. A couple of months -- now you're talking. If you are interested in pro bono work, you might want to try contacting some of the public interest firms and actually offer to put in some time with them.
Thanks for your input. I'm not really interested in pro bono work, but if they'd let me do some work with them, I would so that I could get a feel for the career.
So should I only focus on T3 and T4 schools and completely give up on T1 and T2 schools?
So were you set on going to law school before you applied for this position? Would you be applying to law school if you did not get this job? Sounds like you made the decision to go to law school as a result of being hired as a legal secretary. That is like deciding a culinary career as a result of being hired by McDonalds.
So were you set on going to law school before you applied for this position? Would you be applying to law school if you did not get this job? Sounds like you made the decision to go to law school as a result of being hired as a legal secretary. That is like deciding a culinary career as a result of being hired by McDonalds.
I've always had a small interest in working in law. Getting the interview just made me look into the career a little more and it's something I'm interested in. I've been applying to lots of jobs and internships the past week. Even if I did not get this job, I would still be looking into law schools.
I know people look down at T3 and T4 schools, but would schools that are the only schools in the area be better than T3 and T4 schools located in the same area as T1 ad T2 schools?
Tennessee is a state I wouldn't mind living in, so I was looking at University of Memphis and Belmont University. The median LSAT score for those schools is a 155 with GPA's around 3.2. With my 2.7, I'm guessing if I can work my butt off and get around a 160 on the LSAT, then I'd have a small chance with schools that have those averages?
Also, I was curious if law offices allowed people to sort of shadow employees for a couple hours to see what it's like working in a law firm. Thinking of emailing around.
I'm not looking into Law School with the expectation of making six figures once I graduate.
If you were planning to live in Tennessee, attending an in-state law school might be a good alternative IMO. I'd bet though that a lot of law students at Vanderbilt and the University of Tennessee have the same idea. And they would be tremendous competition for you. In short, you'd likely be wasting your time.
I've always had a small interest in working in law. Getting the interview just made me look into the career a little more and it's something I'm interested in. I've been applying to lots of jobs and internships the past week. Even if I did not get this job, I would still be looking into law schools.
Provided you're patient enough to read this post through to the end, please allow me to give you some candid insight.
I'm not too proud to admit that I graduated from a T4 law school. I wish I'd had the academic chops to get into a better program, but like you I had a sh*tty undergraduate GPA. It was only because I had a solid LSAT score, and presumably a compelling admissions essay, that I was able to get into even a bottom-tier law school. I didn't bother applying to anything above T3; and even then most of the T3/T4 schools I applied to politely suggested that I go fly a kite in a thunderstorm. So let me be blunt: don't kid yourself if you think UCLA Law School will ever admit you to mop their hallway floors, much less offer you a seat in their program. And the bottom-feeder schools won't be that anxious to offer you a seat either.
Here's the basic difference between you and me: for me, law school was a lifetime dream, at least since my early teens. Now, being a stupid shortsighted teenager and prolonging my stupid teenage tendencies well into my collegiate years meant I didn't exactly lay the groundwork in my early academic career to pave my way into a reputable law school. But I never lost sight of my dream even when I was too lazy and stupid to actively pursue it. By the time I got serious about it again as an adult with adult responsibilities, it was too late for me to worm my way into even a "decent" law school, much less a highly reputable law school. But the long-held self-fulfillment goal of obtaining a law degree compelled me to carry on.
When I started attending classes at my T4 law school and got to know my classmates, it didn't take long to sort them into two basic groups: those who had a passion for their studies even though this was a bottom-feeder school, and those who were ambivalent about the whole enterprise and/or thought they could coast their way through. Even though this was a T4 school, our incoming class ran the gamut from ho-hum also-ran state university undergraduates (like me) to prestigious state university undergraduates from such schools as Berkeley and Madison, on up to Ivy League (and equivalent) undergraduates from Northwestern and Harvard.
It would be too cliché (and just plain false) to suggest that the dedicated underdogs from humble academic backgrounds consistently outperformed or even matched wits with our contemporaries who graduated from more prestigious institutions. So here's the reality: as one of those dedicated underdogs, I worked my balls off and barely made it out alive. As for my classmates from elite undergrad backgrounds? Well, those who lived up to the reputations of their alma maters did very well and often excelled. But those who thought they were so smart that they could coast their way through a bottom-feeder law school either flunked out or struggled to graduate in the top half of their class while their prior credentials impressed nobody along the way, including prospective employers.
So to make a very long story short: if you're only mildly interested in law school as your posts in this thread suggest, don't even waste your money on the application fees, because even very clever folks who are not completely dedicated to the process don't do well. If you're not 100% committed, even the bottom-feeder law schools are going to chew you up and spit you out. You certainly don't have to be a genius to graduate from a T3 or T4 law school; but as shabby as their reputations may be in professional and/or academic legal circles, most people plucked from the general population wouldn't last last a semester in any of them.
Provided you're patient enough to read this post through to the end, please allow me to give you some candid insight.
I appreciate your input.
But some of what you said is wrong. It's actually very possible for me to get into a T2 or T1 school. I've looked it up, and people with my GPA and even lower have been accepted into Top 50 schools because they had really good LSAT scores.
Someone once told me that the careers you wish for and obsess over as a kid usually aren't the right careers for you. So maybe it's a good thing I haven't focused on law school my entire life like you did.
I'm not mildly interested in law school, though I was when I first got my interview at a law firm last week, but I've become very interested in a law career as I've done more research on it.
Well I certainly can't tell you what to do, but some of your notions border on delusional. So I'll lay it right out: You have a better chance of traveling into outer space in your lifetime than getting into a T1 school with that GPA. MAYBE you'll get a couple to consider you if your LSAT score is at least in the upper 160s which is a very difficult score to achieve even for very smart people who do very well on standardized tests.
You have people who have been on the front lines trying to give you helpful and realistic advice and you seem completely unwilling to hear it. It was my experience that people with this trait also didn't do well in law school, and if I may be candid again, I get a sense that you wouldn't either. That's not meant to be an insult and I'm not saying it to be mean; it takes all types of people to make the world go round and there's a place for you too in the world. I just don't think law school is that place.
That's my last piece on this matter. Take it for what you think it's worth.
Well I certainly can't tell you what to do, but some of your notions border on delusional. So I'll lay it right out: You have a better chance of traveling into outer space in your lifetime than getting into a T1 school with that GPA. MAYBE you'll get a couple to consider you if your LSAT score is at least in the upper 160s which is a very difficult score to achieve even for very smart people who do very well on standardized tests.
You have people who have been on the front lines trying to give you helpful and realistic advice and you seem completely unwilling to hear it. It was my experience that people with this trait also didn't do well in law school, and if I may be candid again, I get a sense that you wouldn't either. That's not meant to be an insult and I'm not saying it to be mean; it takes all types of people to make the world go round and there's a place for you too in the world. I just don't think law school is that place.
That's my last piece on this matter. Take it for what you think it's worth.
I'm not ignoring anyone's advice. You stated it would basically be impossible for someone with a GPA like mine to get into a school such as UCLA. I simply stated you were incorrect, because you are. I've already seen people with GPA's around mine and below get into T1 schools. Don't get upset that I dispelled your opinion with a fact.
I'm not completely unwilling to hear anything. I just don't listen to people when they tell me it's impossible to do something. You're obviously the opposite. Maybe I can get into a high caliber school. Maybe I cannot. That doesn't mean I'm just going to give up because someone tells me I can't do it. That's not a quality anyone should have. People told me I wouldn't finish high school, but I did. Same people said I wouldn't finish college, and I did that. Maybe I didn't graduate with a 4.0, but I worked my butt off and got a respectable GPA once I committed myself.
I'm going to try my hardest to get into top schools. If I don't, then I'll be satisfied knowing I got rejected but I still gave it everything I had.
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