Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If you want to go to law school, then it's going to be very, very expensive unless you can somehow land a substantial scholarship. And/or attend a top-14 school. More than almost any other field, job prospects in law, even immigration law, are prestige-sensitive (for example, a bottom-15% student from Harvard may get an immigration law job over a top-15% UF student) and law school specialties only matter within its prestige bracket.
Law schools are highly stratified: top-3 (Harvard, Yale, Stanford), then top-6 (HYS+Columbia, UChicago, NYU, or HYSCCN), then top-14 (HYSCCN+UPenn, UVA, Michigan, Duke, Berkeley, Cornell, NWU, Georgetown), then top-25 (or 30, I'm not sure, but you get the idea by now)...
And pay attention to the fine print on any law school scholarship offer: non-elite law school scholarships often are contingent on more than 2.0. If you have a substantial scholarship for law school, make sure it is contingent on 2.0 (i.e. not flunking out)! I can help you out with the law school part of the conundrum, only if you're willing to tell us your GPA. And also where you wish to practice law, in which case I can suggest you some law schools and the LSAT scores required for the operation to succeed.
I've read in recent years that law school is not a good investment. Too many lawyers out there. Computer science would have more career opportunities, be more flexible and more portable in the future as well.
OP, you should do whatever you think is best for you. But, unless you can start your own practice jobs in law are very hard to find right now. Many in my niece's law school class are still struggling to find work in the fiels after 3 years.
That said, a law degree is always useful in other fields. Law school does teach you to think like a lawyer. But it is very difficult and expensive.
Personally, I think I'd go for computer science, get a well paying job in that field. Then, after I was established, go to law school part time if I was still interested in law.
FYI, there is basically no money in immigration law. The best paying jobs are basically in the government, working for DHS or the DOJ deporting people or criminally prosecuting illegal immigrants.
In private practice, the only immigration lawyers that make decent money are those that are part of a diversified labor law practice, and then it is really only complementary work in between other labor related assignments.
Most of the "immigration" lawyers I met in real life are general practitioners. They take whatever comes in the door. Divorce, DUI, plaintiffs work (i.e. medical malpractice, slip and fall). Or that work for nonprofits like Catholic Charities, where they make $30,000 and are married to someone that makes six figures. The best immigration attorney I have ever seen makes 70% of his money from plaintiffs work were he is essentially suing insurance companies. The immigration law work is just work he does in between the big paydays in plaintiffs work. It's too bad because he is quite good at the immigration stuff, especially asylum claims.
A little bit seriously, one has to understand a very big item about law: it is a human interpretation to the factual real world. For example, two decades or so ago, we had a nasty vehicular homicide here where the driver passed a stopped school bus (and a line of cars) and killed a little girl.
What was the situation, what was the trigger that caused this incident? Impatience, he wasn't going to wait. Impatience, however, was not a criminal charge, so he was tried on, I believe, drunk driving. Whether or not drunk driving caused the incident or whether or not the girl would still be alive if he wasn't driving drunk is not as important as that when the girl was killed by the car he was driving, he was in violation of the law by driving drunk.
The law is an interpretation to fit the facts, hopefully a good interpretation with the best fit.
Looking at things from the other side of your question, one of my pet dreams is to design a GIS system, perhaps with ARCGIS, that uses a psychological cybernetic (Norbert Wiener defn.) construct to predict where border penetrations will occur. Assuming that such is possible, works, one has to be ready to be handle at least two things. First of all, even if their system did catch someone red handed, the matter is now out of their hands and what legally happens to those people may be neither their wish nor their concern.
In the mid 80's, I had a very minor hand in a USCG/USN drug boat bust off the coast of Colombia. The destroyer tracked the drug boat PRECISELY inland with its 3D air search radar where the locals were able to arrest the crew on site. The locals, however, did not bring the crew before a judge in the allotted time and the crew had to be released. On the USA side of things, we rather screamed that they could be so careless about doing so. The Colombian Supreme Court was bombed in those days, everyone thought the cartels had done it (turned out to be another group), so the locals were VERY NERVOUS....and hence, why things weren't done, was somewhat understandable.
Secondly, for the victims, if you are in security, you have to be really able to detach yourself from them, even if you have come into contact with them, in order to do your job, maintain your sanity. "They" may be the reason why you are doing it, some of them may even be the reason you are able to do it (ie, the cybernetic construct), but in order to be able to do the job, you must have a level of separation.
Hence, for you question, you have to decide which you are more concerned about, the facts or the human interpretation.
Now, an item about age. Dad was a lawyer, a brother is a lawyer, and me, I've been a cop. Dad became a lawyer after 30 years combat arms in the Army. Interviewing with law firms, the general conclusion was the only reason they would hire him was to have his name on their letter head. He was too old, too experienced for them to train to their way of thinking. So Dad put out his own shingle and did estate and bankruptcy law for about 12 years or so. He wouldn't touch criminal law since for a lot of those clients he would probably believe should be in jail.
Brother's comment about being a lawyer is that he should have graduated from a better school. The school he did was cost effective but apparently was not a name that the firms like to hire from.
As far as myself (if I had a law degree), well, first of all, I'm now Dad's age when he was interviewing (OUCH!). Secondly, while my vast array of knowledge is probably impressive to "them"........I probably know far too much to be of any use to them.
Long story short on age, if you are thinking of having your own business, there are probably workable options but there are a number of things you need to be aware of.
Dad said, "the self employed man wakes up unemployed each day". If you are running your own business, you have to go out and get the business yourself. Do not expect it to come to you or at least, come to you enough to pay all your bills. Secondly, get board specialized in something. That means a lot of work shops (which also enables you to network), a lot of continuing education, so you are actually a someone out there.Third, cover your tail. One of the things Dad did was have a work station license on each and every computer in his office. Why? A defense against a turned away salesman who then turns in the lawyer to the software companies because the lawyer didn't buy from him. Running your own business is not easy, is not the thing to be lazy about.
Law school also won't prepare you to actually be a functioning lawyer in a solo practice.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
