Going To Law School

and will be starting (STARTING) at 135k when she graduates next year from the U of MN. debt won't be an issue.

law school is insanely demanding, yes, but if you suck it up and work for the Man, you'll make bags of money and pay of your education fairly quickly. alternately, a law degree doesn't necessarily mean actually working for a law firm, or even in law. loads of people get law degrees and never end up practicing.

(And is it realistic to think I can write a good essay when I can't even seem to put a sentence together? Gah!)

^^^ this could be a problem though. you know that there's, like, a LOT of writing in law school right?

This is enough information for me to say, "Then don't go." But why stop there?

will likely score in the low to mid 170s on the LSAT

How do you know this?

and have a few years of work experience.

Unless it's extremely fascinating, specialized, or famous nobel-prize winning type work experience, this doesn't matter.

So I know I can get into a fairly high-level school if not top 10.

No offense, and I only know you through this website and you seem like a very smart and funny person, but how do you know this? When you are competing for positions in top ten schools are are competing against people with excellent grades, lots of references, and high LSAT scores. Not to mention nepotism and name recognition. You might get in, but unless your recs happen to be tenured professors at said top ten law schools or there is a library on campus named after your father, there is really no guarantee about this.

I'm not wildly enthused about lawyering and the law

Then, seriously, do not go to law school.

but I do have a law-related job and sometimes find it relatively interesting.

Your law-related job is not the same as law school or being a lawyer, even if you're doing paralegal work.

I'm not a hugely driven person . . . So the question is, with a degree from a top-notch, if not top-10, law school, is it realistic to expect to be able to find a good-paying (like at high-five/low-six figure), moderately interesting that isn't insanely demanding? Or is this just a fantasy?

You've got three possible paths going to law school: 1) bust your ass night and day to put yourself in the top 10%, get on law review, get summer associate positions at big firms, get involved in lots of extra curriculars of whatever sort and basically be the type of go-getter, 80 hour a week-type guy that the $135k/year firms are going to want to hire; 2) do enough work to stay in the top quarter but let your passion for a particular area of law drive you into the types of jobs and activities that are going to make you the happy in your legal career and make considerably less money; 3) slack for three years, hate law school the entire time, wish you'd done something, anything else because now you're looking at triple-digit debt and you have to practice law, and eventually work doing something you really don't care about, which becomes just another daily grind job and isn't making the mega bucks you were hoping for.

The first one is out, because you're not a particularly driven person. The second one is out, because you don't really care about law school or a law job. That leaves number three, and if you have a fairly interesting law-related job right now, why go through the stress and debt of law school only to come out slightly worse off than you are now?

* Third year law student grappling with the nosy bastards at the character and fitness committee, trying not to think about the two days of essay and bubble testing that await me at the end of July.

How do you know this?

Well, here I have to defend myself. I have a second job as an LSAT instructor, and I consistently score between 170-175 on practice tests.

Otherwise everything you're telling me sounds about right. Are you in law school now or are you a lawyer? When I explain these things to my wife I'd like to be able to say "A woman on ILX, who does ---, told me."

(And is it realistic to think I can write a good essay when I can't even seem to put a sentence together? Gah!)

^^^ this could be a problem though. you know that there's, like, a LOT of writing in law school right?

-- gbx (polarbea...), September 26th, 2006.

Here I was just referring to my garbled post. Writing is pretty natural for me, actually.

Okay, that makes sense - and I didn't intend to come across accusatorily, so I'm really sorry if I did. My understanding is that actual LSAT scores remain pretty true to practice test scores. My final score was within one point of the score I consistently got on practice tests.

I'm a third year law student who went back to law school at the ripe old age of 31. I would classify myself as a "number two" above. I spent a brief period of time as a number one and decided that maintaining the necessary level of hard work required to remain in that category would kill me. I'm a passionate labor and employment do-gooder, anyway, and nobody cares about your grades in that field as long as your loyal to the cause. Oh I also go to a second tier law school (I think we're in the 80s or 90s).

Going to law school as an adult, and a married one (I am also married, no kids, three cats) presents a whole different passel of challenges that straight-from-undergrad-ers don't have to worry about over and above the regular difficulties of law school. I'm guessing you've got friends and a social life and hobbies and those will all take a serious hit if you go to law school no matter how hard to try to avoid it. Then there's the sad truth of how completely annoying the majority of your classmates will be just by virtue of their utter lack of life experience... Or maybe that's just me. I am a pretty grumpy old bitch sometimes.

Anyway, my first instinct when someone says they don't care too much about law or being a lawyer but want to go to law school is to dive tackle them out of the way of the onrushing bus because the bottom line is this: law school is three years of intensive study of the law, leading to a job that is fully immersed in the law (with some extremely limited exceptions generally available only to those with outstanding academic performance or an existing network of connections within a specific field). A JD isn't an all-purpose degree. Going to law school without really being interested in the law is like going to a very expensive, difficult, and stressful cooking school without really having any interest in cooking.

It's my happy place.

This is what I'm worried about. Am I looking at four...no, wait...eigh--twelve years of no hobbies? :/

ahahahahaha

She's not *making* me do anything, but she keeps saying stuff like "You're so good at this stuff. You love to argue and over-analyze things. Why don't you just do it?" as though it were all as easy as taking the LSAT. So here I am going to ILX for back-up.

I have enjoyed reading the theories as to how easy it is to get a job, how unimportant grades are, and how the practice of law is from people who are still students, though. How enlightening. I'll enjoy your updates upon graduation, and during your job search.

Being a lawyer may make you bitter.

I'm sure some do, but I woudn't say that's a given - the firm where I clerk starts associates at $50k. You are absolutely correct that $70,000 is more than $34,000, though.

Bottom line - go to top 10 school, be in top 25-10% of your class, schmooze hard, get posh job in posh firm, work 70 hours a week monday through sunday.

No billable hours? Dare to dream. Billable hours can eat me.

Don't go to law school for the money unless you're willing to work insanely long hours both during and after you graduate and are willing to do work for clients that you might find distasteful and make arguments you might find equally distasteful.

I also fear that my interest may be too academic, if that makes sense. At times that makes me consider legal academia as an option. I know from previous grad school that I have the temperament for acedemic work, and my exposure to legal scholarship gives me the (possibly false) impression that it favors a wider-ranging and more interdisciplinary approach than other quarters of the academy. But is the job market as dire as in the humanities/social sciences? And is the choice between practice and scholarship one I'd have to make in my first year of school? Please to make my life decisions for me, ILE.

there might be more choices than just practise or academia if you are interested in black letter law, which i suppose is what you mean about the academic interest. for example, you might look for work at whatever organisation drafts legislation in your country, or the local law reform commission, or go into some kind of legislative policy type work. i have just commenced as an associate to a supreme court judge and it is ALL scholarly stuff. which is cool and completely different to what my mates in firms are doing.

Become a law librarian. Get a joint J.D./M.L.S. and work in an academic law library.