Tuesday, March 8, 2011

After the LSAT

I got my LSAT results on Friday.  Did very poorly compared to what I should have done, but I know why.  Now, I'm just waiting while my two applications are snaking their way through the admissions boards at University of Toledo and Case Western Reserve.

I will end up going to UT if I am accepted.  My life is such that I really don't have the luxury of going anyplace else.  I am applying at Case because that's where I got my MBA, and because that appears to be roughly the caliber of the best law school I could get accepted to.  It won't mean much, but it'll be my way of knowing that I could have gone there if things were a little different.

Schools, even the state supported ones, are basically businesses that exist to put butts in the seats.  With law schools, there are a handful at the very top.  They are commonly referred to as the "top 14", where they are essentially all the most prestigious law schools in the country and your ticket is punched if you attend any one of them.

You need a stratospheric GPA and LSAT.  Once you're in, you have a considerable advantage in grabbing the brass ring over people who attend other schools.

There's a tier below, and I put CWRU in that bunch.  It's the schools that are basically very competent, but that will get passed over if a person can get into, say, University of Michigan or Stanford, instead. 

Admissions are competitive, but not overly so.  You don't need a perfect GPA or LSAT score, but they need to be solid.  They deny admission to some candidates who probably would have attended and done just fine in the school.  If you do very well at these schools, by, say, graduating in the top 10%, you can probably get a biglaw job and put yourself in position to do very, very well.

The biggest difference between these schools and the top 14 are that the vast majority of T14 grads are going to get jobs and most of those jobs are going to be good.  For the grads of the next lower tier, finishing in the middle of your class is almost certainly not good enough to get you a monster job.  You might very well end up employed at wages that are considerably less than what you had expected.  (Not BAD wages, mind you, but maybe something in the $60,000 range, versus the $160,000 range.)  Those at the very bottom of their classes may really have difficulty finding a good job.

Now, folks in the know will immediately raise the objection (see?  I'm using law words!) that US News and other ranking systems put 25 schools in the "top tier".  Yes, that's true.  I'm sharing an opinion here.  Within legal circles, the T14 are considered a cut above the rest of what US News would consider top tier. 

If you go to Berkeley or Cornell, you're just in a different strata than if you went to University of Minnesota.  Sorry, that's just the way it is.  If you went to Notre Dame, your employment prospects aren't substantially different than the prospects for folks who went to Loyola Marymount. 

So, instead of tiers of 25 schools, each, personally, I'd say the reality here is more like 14 schools in the top tier.  (Perhaps with an uber-tier of the top half of those 14 schools.)  Maybe 50 or so in the tier below, and frankly, no matter where your school is in that tier, your prospects after law school really aren't that different.

The tier below that are the schools that essentially accept all qualified applicants.  They won't take just anybody, but if you have a GPA and LSAT score that indicate that you have the potential to graduate, you probably will not be denied admission.  I don't mean any disrespect to any of the schools in this tier, and especially no disrespect to my likely alma mater, University of Toledo, when I describe the schools this way.  However, I think most people would say this is a fair assessment.

Contrary to what some folks say, it IS possible to land biglaw jobs from these schools.  At least it is according to two people I met throughout the years who worked biglaw.  However, instead of graduating in, say, the top 10%, you better be looking at graduating like top 2 or 3 in your class. 

After those top handful of graduates, employment prospects start to plummet dramatically for the rest of the graduating class in these schools.  You will read a lot of accounts of recent law school grads who say things like, "law school isn't worth it" and "there aren't any good jobs" and "I took on a mountain of debt for nothing".  These folks are, by and large, the folks who did poorly at the 2nd tier schools and the folks who didn't graduate at the top of their class from 3rd tier schools. 

There is a fourth tier below that.  I'll basically call them open enrollment schools.  If you can fog a mirror and fill out a FAFSA, you're going to get in.  If you graduate at the very top of your class, you stand a shot at a good job.  If you don't graduate at the top of your class, you're hosed. 

In California, because apparently the place is under-lawyered, they managed to come up with a tier even below 4th tier, which is the non-ABA accredited schools.  Say what you want about schools in the 4th tier, but at least they are fully accredited by the American Bar Association.  California is known for having the worst bar passage rate of any state in the country.  That is hardly surprising when they let so many people sit for the bar who don't even meet the basic education requirements to sit for the bar in any other state.

Anyway, so that's what I'm thinking about as I ponder my chances of admission.  I have one application in at a second tier school, although it's extremely unlikely my life circumstances will allow me to go.  I have one application in at a third tier school.  (Again, these don't correlate to the US News tiers.)  I am basically completely out of the running to even apply to any of the first tier schools, and as a practical matter, half the second tier is probably out of my reach, too.

However, a funny thing is happening.  Apparently, the LSAT folks share your LSAT with schools and I've been getting "application waivers" from a bunch of law schools.  If not for my present circumstances, I'd probably be looking to go to school at Texas Tech or Florida State.  As is, I am hoping to get an acceptance to UT, to get me into law school, and an acceptance to CWRU as an ego-boost.

Every day, I get e-mails from the admissions folks at some pretty cool and interesting schools.  For me, it's just nice to think about.  I don't really regret the way I've lived my life, but it has been a crooked path.  There are times when I wish I would have applied to, say, Temple, and tried to land a biglaw job in Philadelphia. 

So, there's not a lot to do while I wait for the admissions decisions.  Once those come in, if I'm accepted, I can go to the financial aid office and see what I need to do to afford to take this little detour.  Until then, I'm just waiting on a notification.

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