Please help! CA law school - state approved vs. ABA

[IPFDAGUY]

Hi All,

I am a part-time patent agent with the following education

Education:
B.S. Computer Science/Chemical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
M.S. Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Lehigh University (summa *** laude)
M.S. Molecular Biology, Lehigh University (*** laude)
M.S. Biochemical Engineering, Lehigh University (summa *** laude)
M.S. Negotiation & Dispute Resolution, Creighton University (summa *** laude) (I am doing this MS now)



I am about to graduate from a non-ABA approved law school and will practice IP and FDA law. I intend to convert my part-time patent agent practice into a law firm on day one after I pass the CA bar. I am 41 years old.



For the type of law I want to practice, unless you have a background like mine, you could graduate from Yale 10 times and still not be qualified. The law degree is a small (like 20%) of the professional package.



BUT


If you want to practice law in a firm or for a company in many other types of law your pedigree matters *** A LOT ***. With that said, I meet attorneys all the time that come from good pedigree and ****ING suck because they do not have the LOVE of the law in their hearts. If you lose the love of the law and you come from Yale or Harvard you will not last long. Nothing trumps desire to be the best.



My $0.02.


BTW, I never took the LSAT because as an executive in a software company (my full-time job) I travel a lot and cannot sit in a classroom to get a law education. I would be expelled for lack of attendance or would just fail out for missing test dates etc. If this were not the case I would attend SCU if I could.


Good luck
IPFDAGUY

[Coldjensens]

Wow. This is all very amusing. A lot of misperceptions here.

First off you may not take the CA bar exam after graduating from a unaccredited law school unless you first pass the baby bar. That eliminates a large percentage of the persons who attend those schools right off the bat.

Second look at bar passing rates. A law degree from anywhere will not do you any good at all unless you pass the bar (and the patent bar as well for the patent lawyer wannabes). I am not familiar with the overall rates in the past four or five years, but generally the passing rates in CA are around 55% in July and 28% in February. That means that most or nearly most of the people who take the CA bar fail it. Many people take it 3,4,5, even 15 times and never pass it.

The dreams of working 40 hours a week or less are not very realistic. First most firms require 1900 to 2000 hours BILLED a year. Add at least 20% -30% of administrative or other non billable time to that number to get actual hours. For the first five years add another 30% of time necessary to learn what you need to know. Add 50% to 60% if you are trying to make a go of it on your own without a mentor/partner guiding you. (Law school does not teach you enough to practice law, in fact it mostly just teaches you how to think like a lawyer and some of the basic concepts). When dividing that into hours per week, keep in mind that you will take off two weeks of holidays, two weeks of vacation and two weeks of sick time. That means that you work 46 weeks. Of course most of us do not get to take off all of the holidays, try not to get sick (or work anyway) and often have no vacation for a year or two at a time.

The billing requirement is true of small and large firms. It is just a fact necessary if they are going to actually make money on your work. A few firms still require only 1800 hours a year, but those firms are dying out. Some allow part time work, in my former firm some partners were permitted to work on a 1000 basis for reduced pay. However that does not work for litigators and it is very rare in any event.

Second. Even if you open your own practice and take only a few clients, the practice of law is demanding. It is impractical to work part time as a litigator. Are you going to walk out of the courtroom when you hit your weekly goal of hours? Are you going to fail to stay up half the night preparing for the next day and return to court unprepared? Will you lose your client's case because you do not want to put in the time that is necessary? You do not control your schedule. Your client's needs, the judge, and your opponent (to some extent) control your schedule. A transactional attorney may have somewhat better chances of controlling their schedule, but even that practice does not allow you to walk out when you feel that you have worked enough hours. Your client is placing what is probably the most important even of their lives in your hands. You do whatever it takes, you work until you are done. That is it.

A law degree and a license does not do you any good if you do not find a job. Underqualified candidates will either find no job, end up working for an unscrupulous solo who will treat them like dirt and pay nothing, or try to start their own practice and fall on their tails. You need 3-5 years of working with an experienced lawyer before you are qualified to do anything. Some may get into the DA's office and get some experience. A few open a practice out of law school and manage to stumble though the first years and only ruin a few people's lives along the way.

"Do good" law is mostly done by big business lawyers who volunteer their time. It is called "Pro Bono" All lawyers are morally obligated to spend some time doing pro bono work. Not that many actually do. Who do you think will pay you to do "do good" law? There are a few foundations that have funding for this work, but not many. Those places mostly hire exceptional candidates from Berkley or Stanford who will work for almost nothing because they want to do good. Otherwise, you are not looking at low pay, you are looking at what essentially amounts to no pay at all. Can you live on nothing? If you represent clients with no money, who will pay for the paper, filing fees, court reporteer fees, expert witness fees, office supplies, secretarial help, computers and IT support, transportation costs, copying charges, attorney service fees, etc etc?

If you want to do "do good" law, get a good job, become a manging partner and require everyone in your firm to do at least 100 hours a year of pro bono work. That way you will cause more Do good law to get done then you could ever do by just doing the work yourself.

So take the advice of other posters and go to the best law school that you can get into. If you cannot get into an accredited law school then you are not cut out to practice law - go do something else.

I had no knowlege of the difference between ABA approved schools and State approved schools until I read this thread. Thus in hiring, I do not care whether a school is state approved or Aba approved (I hate the aba by the way and I am not a member). I do know which schools produce consistently good associate candiates who ultimately perform consistently well. I do not bother with applicants from unaccredited schools nor from schools that I have never heard of or know nothing about. I am a fairly typical member of the hiring committee of a typical mid sized law firm. i.e. the type of law firm that empoys the largest number of attorneys in the aggragate. Also keep in mind that when we advertise for an attorney position, we usually get over 100 resumes. We interview 3-5 people and hire one. You need your credentials to stand out as much as possible. Reading your resume, I have no idea what a remarkable person you are, other than what is reflected in your credentials. If you do not have the credentials, I am never going to meet you to find out what other positive traits that you may have beyond academic credentials. You need to be a remarkable person AND have exceptional credentials if you want a decent job.

Last but not least, remember that you will likely come out of law school heavily in debt. You will not be able to pay that debt off without a really good job, and even then it takes years. All the idealism is nice, but reality tends to put a crimp in most idealistic plans. Not to mention that you can do far more for underprivileged people from the helm of a substantial law firm than the most dedicated public service lawyer will ever accomplish for the simple reason that you will control far greater resources.

[allorio]

I see this is a little late and you probably have mad your decision already, but I will put in my two cents. It is not true that you can not become an attorney anywhere other than california graduating from a california approved school. Some states will allow you to sit for the bar upon graduating from a cal bar school, many others require you to first become an attorney in california, some require you to practice for some time, and some do require an ABA approved law degree.

Also, the LSATS are generally used in admissions decisions at Cal Bar schools. While they do not require you to score as high as ABA schools do, generally you need a fairly decent score. Although, some do not require the lsat.

An online/correspondence school is NOT approved by the california bar but is merely registered with the state bar. Students at these schools must take the First Year Law Students Examination (aka the Baby Bar) upon completing their first year of law school and must pass within three tries or they will not recieve any credit for the first year and will not be able to continue their legal education.

The greatest advantage is that a state bar approved school is generally half the cost and often less than an ABA approved law school. I would reccomend it.

[Coldjensens]

As an attorney at a mid sized firm, I have no problem hiring older associates. If they are older than people that they will be subordinate to, I ask them whether they have a problem with that concept. If not, age is not really an issue. However it is rare that we hire people right out of law school.

Frankly I may be more inclined to consider an equally qualified older candiate. For one thing, I have encountered too many people who have never had a real job and do not understand what work is. ("I have to go home early today, Muffy is supposed to marry Buffy on As the Toast Burns and I just cannot miss it"). Further, older people are more likely to have useful life experience that can be applied to finding practical solutions to problems.

However, it is not likely that a candidate with a degree from an unaccredited ABA law school woudl ever get their resume on to my desk. We get hundreds of resumes. In the rare occaisions where we are considering hiring a first year, staff members do the intial vetting of resumes and select the ones that they think that we will be most interested in reviewing.

Let me give you another little tip. One woman send me her resume and a cover letter directly by E-mail. That has only happened once, so naturally I read her resume and sent it around to some of my collegues. We ended up interviewing her. I cannot remember whether we made an offer and she went elsewhere, or we did nto make an offer, but it ws a good trick. It got her in the door without going through the vetting process. She got lucky too becuase we were considering hiring an associate just at the time she sent her resume. If we were not looking, I probably would have just sent her a quick sorry note and deleted it.

[Unstable]

I think most "do good" law types end up in criminal work, as either DAs or PDs. I know more about the defense side, but I know that good offices (DC, Maryland, Philadelphia, Bronx, New Hampshire, etc.) are very competitive themselves.