Went to the Toledo Law School Preview day. No particular theme to this post, but a bunch of observations:
1. Law students sure are short. Maybe just 4T law students. Or maybe just Toledo Law students. Maybe just the ones who showed up today, but they're short. I notice this because I am essentially of average height. Maybe an inch or two higher. It's strange how many groups of people are identifiable by height. In the Army, I was probably of average height. In the Navy, I'm one of the taller folks. I guess short people don't want to be in the Army, or they don't worry so much about bumping their heads if they have to be in a submarine. In b-school, I was about average height. Today? I was pretty much the tallest person there. It was that noticeable. So, if the law school ever takes on the b-school in basketball, I'm betting on the b-school.
2. Holy ****ing cow. Helicopter parents!!! I swear to god, 3/4 of the people there today were with their moms and dads. I don't know if this is just a change since I was in school back before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but I can't imagine ANY parents at any college functions when I was in school. I didn't even know my classmates had parents. Maybe these guys were all from out of town, and their parents drove them, but even then, that's sorta WTF. I really, really don't get it. The people there with parents FAR outnumbered the people without.
3. Whenever I get into a large group of people I don't know, my immediate reaction is, "Jesus, look at all these effing hipsters. How in the world did I end up in a room with THESE people." My sense of repulsion is almost always replaced by a feeling of, "why do I always have to practice douchebaggery every time I get with a new group of people?" during the first few minutes of actually talking to them. The folks I got to speak to were uniformly cool and easy to approach and talk to. I could really enjoy being in school with them.
4. Applications to the law school are up 90% this year. Probably due to the fact that nobody has a ****ing job around here. When they said this, I immediately dropped any plans I had of letting my acceptance lapse. This was reinforced by talking to another guy who hadn't been accepted, and was, instead, wait-listed. I really have taken this whole thing for granted. Yeah, that's me, unappreciative and self-centered. Small wonder I want to be an attorney.
My plan at this point is to wait until the 11th hour, then submit my seat deposit. It's only $150. So, if I don't go, not a huge deal. With any luck, I'll have a scholly by then, but with applications spiking like this, I'm probably less competitive for a scholarship than I already thought I was. The admissions director said this was likely to be a very high-achieving class based on what she saw. ****ing great. Will make class rank all the harder to attain. I should have done this 3 years ago.
5. I was amazed at how many people at the preview day were not from Toledo. They actually are leaving their home town and moving here specifically for the purpose of attending UT Law. I overheard one kid in there whose parents said (yes, his parents were talking, not him) that he took the LSAT 3 times and I believe he was applying to CSU, Akron and Toledo. All I could think was, "Wow, dude, you want to be an attorney THAT BAD?"
6. The part of the day I least wanted to do turned out to be the most enjoyable. It was like a "sample law school class". Okay, it really wasn't. They said it was, but please. For one thing, the prof was AMAZINGLY energetic, positive, upbeat... a truly, truly gifted and entertaining educator. If every teacher in there is like that, I'll be more than mildly surprised. Second, we really just sorta glossed over a few scenarios. I mean, what could be more like law school than sitting in a class in front of an entertaining teacher, while not digging into the details of things at all?
Despite being against my better judgement, I spoke up (since the class was supposed to be Socratic method) and the prof politely told me my head was in my ass. That happens a lot with the law. A reasonably intelligent, educated person can read a law and think, "Oh, that law means X." Then, when they talk to their attorney the attorney says, "No... I mean, I know that's what it looks like, but they really aren't talking about X at all. What they mean is that when you're talking about Y and Z, under conditions W, that you have to consider factors L, M and N."
7. Overall, I couldn't help but feel that the whole thing was like when a guy on Vegas gives you free tickets to some musical, and all you have to do is sit through a brief sales presentation. They were there to sell. We were there as potential buyers.
8. Not one single question about jobs after graduation. Not one. I can't believe these kids. In b-school, that was all anybody ever thought about. We had multiple opportunities for Q&A, but not one question on how placement is going. Maybe they all already know the deal, and don't care, but honestly, I don't think a lot of the kids knew.
9. University of Toledo campus? Majorly beautiful. I totally didn't know how nice it is. The university trail runs within 3 miles of my house. If I got a bicycle, it's a nice 10 mile ride to campus. I may do that.
10. Toledo has a reputation as being a bit more collaborative and not at all cutthroat. Based on what I saw today, I believe it, and I mean that in the most sincerely complimentary and nice way. I think it's a situation where the class quickly stratifies and the 90% who realize they're not gunning dial it way back.
The class sizes are smallish, too. 120 or so in the entering 1L class. Maybe that has something to do with it. I mean, if you're competing against 300 people you barely know, you'll always feel like you can work just a little harder and catch that nameless faceless bunch of people who just barely outperformed you last semester by getting one letter grade better in one class.
If you're in a school of 100 classmates, everybody knows everybody. You know who the brains are. You know who's barely scraping by. You might be more likely to just accept your order in things. The 1L class at UT will be roughly half the size of my High School class.
11. I was a little alarmed by the lack of diversity. Given that the school is located in Toledo, I was anticipating a lot larger minority enrollment. I only saw a couple of prospective african american students. That was alarming.
As much as I hate Affirmative Action, every now and then, I see a large room that's almost exclusively full of white people and it sort of shocks me.
Now, on the other hand, Affirmative Action could explain the lack of minority applicants at Toledo. Qualified URM candidates are pretty fiercely competed after. So, people who might have gone to Toledo are quite possibly at much more highly regarded schools. Though I do think this indicates a lack of bench strength.
By that, I mean, URMs have their share of bright people who can compete with anybody, but behind them, the pickings get slimmer. Whereas, white people have bright folks, but right behind them, there are some less-bright people who still want to go to graduate school.
Showing posts with label Law school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Law school. Show all posts
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Law School is My Corvette
I got two interesting packets in the mail. One was from University of Toledo. It was my official acceptance packet. The other was from Seton Hall.
Yet another school that, yes, I would LOVE to go to, but no, I won't be attending. The way this works for those who haven't done this before is that the guys who give you the LSAT also are the ones you send all your application stuff to. They put you on lists that other law schools have access to, and you end up getting a never-ending stream of e-mails and the occassional mail-mail that invites you to apply to some law school, somewhere.
I wanted the UT packet because I was curious if I might have gotten a scholarship. I wasn't thinking this at first, but read some stuff on blogs about people who had LSATs like mine who got full-rides. Even a half ride or a quarter ride would be a big chunk of money.
I have my official acceptance letter. I also have a piece of xeroxed paper from financial aid that mentions that scholarships are awarded on a rolling basis, and that the decision is made shortly after the acceptance decision and the scholarship recipients are informed, directly.
Now, I'm pretty sure that the two items, when you put them together, mean I didn't get a scholarship. However, I shot off an e-mail just to make sure.
I suspect that I didn't get one, but they don't put things like, "incidentally, we reviewed you for one of our scholarships, but we don't give scholarships to dumbasses... nice gpa, doofus" on the acceptance letter.
Still, I want to hear one way or the other.
By not giving a scholarship, UT actually puts CWRU back in play. CWRU, with a 50% scholarship, is the same cost as UT at sticker price. Between the two, CWRU would be a monumentally huge hassle to attend. However, if the cost were the same, I'd seriously have to consider driving to the mistake on the lake... I mean Cleveland, to go to Case Western Reserve again.
I will almost certainly take out the maximum allowable direct loans, if for no other reason than I can use the money to pay off higher interest debt.
So, now, just waiting to hear back from financial aid on whether this is their final answer on a scholarship, then to wait to hear from CWRU. From what I remember about CWRU, though, they give precious few scholarships.
We'll wait and see.
If I don't get one, now, I can always try to compete for one later, but I think I would need something like a top 10 class rank to get one later in the process. It would give me something to work for, though. $20,000 isn't the biggest amount of money in the world, but it's real money.
The way I look at it, if my business recovers and I start making money again, it's only a matter of time until I buy a Corvette or Escalade. Instead, Law School will be my Corvette.
Yet another school that, yes, I would LOVE to go to, but no, I won't be attending. The way this works for those who haven't done this before is that the guys who give you the LSAT also are the ones you send all your application stuff to. They put you on lists that other law schools have access to, and you end up getting a never-ending stream of e-mails and the occassional mail-mail that invites you to apply to some law school, somewhere.
I wanted the UT packet because I was curious if I might have gotten a scholarship. I wasn't thinking this at first, but read some stuff on blogs about people who had LSATs like mine who got full-rides. Even a half ride or a quarter ride would be a big chunk of money.
I have my official acceptance letter. I also have a piece of xeroxed paper from financial aid that mentions that scholarships are awarded on a rolling basis, and that the decision is made shortly after the acceptance decision and the scholarship recipients are informed, directly.
Now, I'm pretty sure that the two items, when you put them together, mean I didn't get a scholarship. However, I shot off an e-mail just to make sure.
I suspect that I didn't get one, but they don't put things like, "incidentally, we reviewed you for one of our scholarships, but we don't give scholarships to dumbasses... nice gpa, doofus" on the acceptance letter.
Still, I want to hear one way or the other.
By not giving a scholarship, UT actually puts CWRU back in play. CWRU, with a 50% scholarship, is the same cost as UT at sticker price. Between the two, CWRU would be a monumentally huge hassle to attend. However, if the cost were the same, I'd seriously have to consider driving to the mistake on the lake... I mean Cleveland, to go to Case Western Reserve again.
I will almost certainly take out the maximum allowable direct loans, if for no other reason than I can use the money to pay off higher interest debt.
So, now, just waiting to hear back from financial aid on whether this is their final answer on a scholarship, then to wait to hear from CWRU. From what I remember about CWRU, though, they give precious few scholarships.
We'll wait and see.
If I don't get one, now, I can always try to compete for one later, but I think I would need something like a top 10 class rank to get one later in the process. It would give me something to work for, though. $20,000 isn't the biggest amount of money in the world, but it's real money.
The way I look at it, if my business recovers and I start making money again, it's only a matter of time until I buy a Corvette or Escalade. Instead, Law School will be my Corvette.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Accepted! The Numbers Game
I got my acceptance to University of Toledo. So, this law school thing is one step closer to being a "go". I got my LSAT results on Friday, completed my electronic application later that afternoon. Today, is Wednesday. So, really, a total of 3 working days and I got the decision.
I imagine that for the vast majority of folks applying, this is a pretty straightforward process. Schools can talk all they want about evaluating this or that, but ultimately, it comes down to undergrad GPA and the LSAT. I'm sure a small handful of students are selected who didn't line up, numbers-wise, but other than the truly elite and highly selective schools, the important questions are: can you fill out a FAFSA and did you meet our minimum requirements?
The guys at the Barely Legal blog make a great point. The reality is that for most reasonably intelligent people, there is a law school, somewhere in the country, that will accept you. If you want to examine the numbers a bit more analytically, I figure it this way:
Half the population is below average intelligence. Figure most (though not all) of those folks will probably not go to college. The odds of them graduating are really poor.
Roughly 30% of youngish people have bachelor's degrees.
Throw out the ones who went to University of Phoenix, or schools that give you college credit for "life experience" (seriously, what the hell is that all about? We all gain life experience. So, are they saying that basically, eventually, everybody has at least a BA's worth of life experience? Fair enough, but that doesn't mean they should get a BA. The whole point of a college degree was supposed to be that you learned something, not that you were alive. Really, that's what a baccalaureate is supposed to signify? That you are alive?)
Throw out the ones who barely scooted by and got out of school by the skin of their teeth yet managed to meet the minimum qualifications for a degree.
So, that leaves, what, maybe 15% of the population? 20%? The pool of people who are even thinking of applying to law school pretty much already eliminated the bottom 80% of the population. So, if you're thinking you want to go to law school, you're going to get accepted somewhere, in all likelihood.
Basically, being "good enough to get into law school" is really not that different than "good enough to get a bachelor's degree". If by "bachelor's degree" we mean schools where you go to class, take tests, etc.
Which brings up another thing that's been happening since I got my LSAT score: I've been getting e-mails from law schools all across the country. The schpiel is basically the same, "We notice you have a pulse. Wouldn't you like to go to school here?"
Well duh... OF COURSE I WOULD. I wish I were in a position to pick up and move to Ave Maria Law School on the Gulf Coast of Florida. I could spend the next 3 years getting an amazing tan, and oogling young, scantily clad women on the beach. It's not like I think it's appealing to live in the industrial midwest, snort sinus medicine from quart bottles every day and have to spend each day looking at a bunch of overweight, pasty-skinned midwestern troglodytes that are nearly as homely as I am.
Which of these schools sounds cool to me? All of them. The one in Portland, Maine, the ones I've heard of like Vaparaiso and Temple? All of them.
However, Toledo is going to be a perfect fit for me. I'm glad they accepted me and this is going to work with my life better than a lot of other options.
In any event, I doubt Toledo looked at much beyond my grades and LSAT. The applications as much as say so these days. A lot of schools only want a minimal number of letters of recommendation. Seriously, how many people can't find 4 guys who will say that the person is wonderful? Especially if the recommendations are from professors, you're going to know a lot more about what kind of student the person was by his GPA than by a couple of letters.
It does make me wonder about biglaw hiring, though. They're churning and burning a lot of associates. In a lot of ways, they are like the military: lots of new recruits, but their business model is based on most of those new associates either getting burned out and leaving, finding less-demanding work elsewhere, or not quite making the cut and getting the boot. Not everybody who joins the firm ends up as a partner making $700K a year.
I've known two women who worked biglaw. Two of the smartest, most organized, most ambitious people I had ever met. Really, you knew from spending about 10 minutes with them that they were a cut above. If they were new-hires in a fortune 500 company, they'd be vice presidents within a decade. They were that sharp. One of them lasted 2 years in biglaw. The other lasted 4.
They also aren't hiring much right now. So, their pipeline has been interrupted. If the economy picks up, my graduation year could be a good time to be trying to get a job because they'll need to reload and make up for a few years where they didn't throw enough bricks under the foundation of the pyramid.
I'm not the ideal biglaw candidate because of my age, but I am starting to wonder, how much do they care about that? I mean, they can't ask your age, and technically, they can't use that as a hiring criteria. (We know they do, but they can't do it overtly.)
I bet it's pretty much a numbers game for them, too. They probably have thresholds. If it's this school, they need to be in the top 20%. If it's this second tier school, they need to be in the top 10%. If it's these other schools, they need to be in the top 2 or 3 graduates. (That's just a personal WAG. So, don't think there's any actual data behind those numbers.)
Granted, they probably don't hire everybody they interview, but frankly, if you've seen the personality of a lot of top law school grads, you know they aren't hiring based on interpersonal skills, either. I bet the bulk of their decision comes down to just class rank and the school you went to, period.
In any event, I'm in at my #1 choice. It's also my stretch school and my safety, too. If I had not gotten accepted, I would not be going to law school, period. So, I'm happy.
They have a new student orientation next week. I don't know if it's required, but I think I'll go. After that, I need to start writing checks for deposits.
Barring some unforeseeable calamity, it looks like this is going to happen. Though I take nothing for granted these days since a lot of unforeseeable calamities seem to have happened in the past couple of years.
I imagine that for the vast majority of folks applying, this is a pretty straightforward process. Schools can talk all they want about evaluating this or that, but ultimately, it comes down to undergrad GPA and the LSAT. I'm sure a small handful of students are selected who didn't line up, numbers-wise, but other than the truly elite and highly selective schools, the important questions are: can you fill out a FAFSA and did you meet our minimum requirements?
The guys at the Barely Legal blog make a great point. The reality is that for most reasonably intelligent people, there is a law school, somewhere in the country, that will accept you. If you want to examine the numbers a bit more analytically, I figure it this way:
Half the population is below average intelligence. Figure most (though not all) of those folks will probably not go to college. The odds of them graduating are really poor.
Roughly 30% of youngish people have bachelor's degrees.
Throw out the ones who went to University of Phoenix, or schools that give you college credit for "life experience" (seriously, what the hell is that all about? We all gain life experience. So, are they saying that basically, eventually, everybody has at least a BA's worth of life experience? Fair enough, but that doesn't mean they should get a BA. The whole point of a college degree was supposed to be that you learned something, not that you were alive. Really, that's what a baccalaureate is supposed to signify? That you are alive?)
Throw out the ones who barely scooted by and got out of school by the skin of their teeth yet managed to meet the minimum qualifications for a degree.
So, that leaves, what, maybe 15% of the population? 20%? The pool of people who are even thinking of applying to law school pretty much already eliminated the bottom 80% of the population. So, if you're thinking you want to go to law school, you're going to get accepted somewhere, in all likelihood.
Basically, being "good enough to get into law school" is really not that different than "good enough to get a bachelor's degree". If by "bachelor's degree" we mean schools where you go to class, take tests, etc.
Which brings up another thing that's been happening since I got my LSAT score: I've been getting e-mails from law schools all across the country. The schpiel is basically the same, "We notice you have a pulse. Wouldn't you like to go to school here?"
Well duh... OF COURSE I WOULD. I wish I were in a position to pick up and move to Ave Maria Law School on the Gulf Coast of Florida. I could spend the next 3 years getting an amazing tan, and oogling young, scantily clad women on the beach. It's not like I think it's appealing to live in the industrial midwest, snort sinus medicine from quart bottles every day and have to spend each day looking at a bunch of overweight, pasty-skinned midwestern troglodytes that are nearly as homely as I am.
Which of these schools sounds cool to me? All of them. The one in Portland, Maine, the ones I've heard of like Vaparaiso and Temple? All of them.
However, Toledo is going to be a perfect fit for me. I'm glad they accepted me and this is going to work with my life better than a lot of other options.
In any event, I doubt Toledo looked at much beyond my grades and LSAT. The applications as much as say so these days. A lot of schools only want a minimal number of letters of recommendation. Seriously, how many people can't find 4 guys who will say that the person is wonderful? Especially if the recommendations are from professors, you're going to know a lot more about what kind of student the person was by his GPA than by a couple of letters.
It does make me wonder about biglaw hiring, though. They're churning and burning a lot of associates. In a lot of ways, they are like the military: lots of new recruits, but their business model is based on most of those new associates either getting burned out and leaving, finding less-demanding work elsewhere, or not quite making the cut and getting the boot. Not everybody who joins the firm ends up as a partner making $700K a year.
I've known two women who worked biglaw. Two of the smartest, most organized, most ambitious people I had ever met. Really, you knew from spending about 10 minutes with them that they were a cut above. If they were new-hires in a fortune 500 company, they'd be vice presidents within a decade. They were that sharp. One of them lasted 2 years in biglaw. The other lasted 4.
They also aren't hiring much right now. So, their pipeline has been interrupted. If the economy picks up, my graduation year could be a good time to be trying to get a job because they'll need to reload and make up for a few years where they didn't throw enough bricks under the foundation of the pyramid.
I'm not the ideal biglaw candidate because of my age, but I am starting to wonder, how much do they care about that? I mean, they can't ask your age, and technically, they can't use that as a hiring criteria. (We know they do, but they can't do it overtly.)
I bet it's pretty much a numbers game for them, too. They probably have thresholds. If it's this school, they need to be in the top 20%. If it's this second tier school, they need to be in the top 10%. If it's these other schools, they need to be in the top 2 or 3 graduates. (That's just a personal WAG. So, don't think there's any actual data behind those numbers.)
Granted, they probably don't hire everybody they interview, but frankly, if you've seen the personality of a lot of top law school grads, you know they aren't hiring based on interpersonal skills, either. I bet the bulk of their decision comes down to just class rank and the school you went to, period.
In any event, I'm in at my #1 choice. It's also my stretch school and my safety, too. If I had not gotten accepted, I would not be going to law school, period. So, I'm happy.
They have a new student orientation next week. I don't know if it's required, but I think I'll go. After that, I need to start writing checks for deposits.
Barring some unforeseeable calamity, it looks like this is going to happen. Though I take nothing for granted these days since a lot of unforeseeable calamities seem to have happened in the past couple of years.
Economics of the Law School Decision for those with Careers
As I sit here hoping to get accepted to a law school, the obvious question of "why didn't I do this sooner?" becomes even more obvious.
A little bit of it is basic economics. In fact, most of it is basic economics. I graduated in 1993 with a degree in Information Systems, which, at the time, was pretty much the hottest undergrad degree you could get. We were making better money than petroleum engineers.
I do remember being about halfway through my MBA thinking I should go to law school. Trouble was, I was making 30-ish or 40-ish grand a year at that point. So, taking 3 years off to pursue a law degree would have had an opportunity cost of six figures. Then, throw in the actual cost of attending and sustaining myself while I attend, which would probably be another six figures, and the result is that getting a law degree would have been exceptionally expensive. Probably on order of $200,000 or more when both opportunity cost and direct costs were considered.
I finished my MBA part-time in 1997. At that point, I was making $60-ish a year. So, the cost of a law school education at that point would have been $300,000 or more.
Not such a big deal if I finished high in my class from a really good school. An absolute disaster, however, if I were to finish mid-pack and get out to a job that might only pay $60,000 a year.
There were part-time options. However, I met my future wife in 2000, and we started a family immediately after getting married. We were fortunate and our son was born in 2001.
My career was also humming right along until about 2002. There really wasn't a good reason to get a law degree. All but the very best law jobs would have paid less than what I was already making.
Though, I do remember in 2004, thinking, "I could have gotten a law degree these past four years." I was in the same place the entire time. I could have done it, but it would have placed additional stress on my family since my wife was getting a degree part-time as well.
I would also have missed out on a huge chunk of my son's childhood. I can't tell other people how to feel about parenting. I think it's an intensely personal experience and some people view it differently than others. However, I have LOVED being around a baby who became a little boy, who is now on the brink of being a fine young man.
Some things, you just can't put a price on. This is one of them. Besides, a law degree, despite what people say, is really only good for one thing: a career in the law. Using a chunk of money, and all my free time to get a degree that I didn't anticipate I'd ever use (because my business career was going so well) would have been odd, to say the least.
Now, I own a business. Most of the years of the business, it's been very profitable. 2010 is an exception, but with normal weather patterns, the biz should return to its normal profitability. This will allow me to attend school full-time. Granted, full-time school usually means classes in the morning, then lots of studying whenever you can fit it in.
The main difference is that now, there's not an opportunity cost. There's still the direct cost, but the direct cost was, at the most, half the cost and usually much less. It was the opportunity cost that kept me from attending.
Right now, the business isn't doing so well. It's profitable, and even if it did no better than this for the next 3 years, it would make sense for me to keep doing it. However, I anticipate that business will improve substantially.
If it does, then I will be able to attend law school with relative ease and comfort. If it doesn't, then I need to get a law degree all the more because the business won't sustain me for much longer if things stay like this.
So, in a very, very strange way, the time is right for me to go to law school now. In fact, there has never been a better time for me. I don't recommend this to anybody else, by the way. I'd advise something more like knocking out your undegrad with the easiest major and highest GPA you can manage. Then, going to the best law school you can find and hitting the work-world at about 25.
I don't think there's a lot to be said for the "spend 30 years joining the army, futzing around getting a degree, working a different career to get money to start a business, then use that business to support yourself while going to law school" plan.
However, it's what my path appears to have been. It's the hand I was dealt, and the hand that I played, for better or worse. I'm too old to be embarassed by the idea that I didn't do things in my life the right way. I have seen enough to know that until somebody refuses to let you do something, you're virtually never too old to try something new.
Of course, that's really going to be put to the test if I continue down this path.
A little bit of it is basic economics. In fact, most of it is basic economics. I graduated in 1993 with a degree in Information Systems, which, at the time, was pretty much the hottest undergrad degree you could get. We were making better money than petroleum engineers.
I do remember being about halfway through my MBA thinking I should go to law school. Trouble was, I was making 30-ish or 40-ish grand a year at that point. So, taking 3 years off to pursue a law degree would have had an opportunity cost of six figures. Then, throw in the actual cost of attending and sustaining myself while I attend, which would probably be another six figures, and the result is that getting a law degree would have been exceptionally expensive. Probably on order of $200,000 or more when both opportunity cost and direct costs were considered.
I finished my MBA part-time in 1997. At that point, I was making $60-ish a year. So, the cost of a law school education at that point would have been $300,000 or more.
Not such a big deal if I finished high in my class from a really good school. An absolute disaster, however, if I were to finish mid-pack and get out to a job that might only pay $60,000 a year.
There were part-time options. However, I met my future wife in 2000, and we started a family immediately after getting married. We were fortunate and our son was born in 2001.
My career was also humming right along until about 2002. There really wasn't a good reason to get a law degree. All but the very best law jobs would have paid less than what I was already making.
Though, I do remember in 2004, thinking, "I could have gotten a law degree these past four years." I was in the same place the entire time. I could have done it, but it would have placed additional stress on my family since my wife was getting a degree part-time as well.
I would also have missed out on a huge chunk of my son's childhood. I can't tell other people how to feel about parenting. I think it's an intensely personal experience and some people view it differently than others. However, I have LOVED being around a baby who became a little boy, who is now on the brink of being a fine young man.
Some things, you just can't put a price on. This is one of them. Besides, a law degree, despite what people say, is really only good for one thing: a career in the law. Using a chunk of money, and all my free time to get a degree that I didn't anticipate I'd ever use (because my business career was going so well) would have been odd, to say the least.
Now, I own a business. Most of the years of the business, it's been very profitable. 2010 is an exception, but with normal weather patterns, the biz should return to its normal profitability. This will allow me to attend school full-time. Granted, full-time school usually means classes in the morning, then lots of studying whenever you can fit it in.
The main difference is that now, there's not an opportunity cost. There's still the direct cost, but the direct cost was, at the most, half the cost and usually much less. It was the opportunity cost that kept me from attending.
Right now, the business isn't doing so well. It's profitable, and even if it did no better than this for the next 3 years, it would make sense for me to keep doing it. However, I anticipate that business will improve substantially.
If it does, then I will be able to attend law school with relative ease and comfort. If it doesn't, then I need to get a law degree all the more because the business won't sustain me for much longer if things stay like this.
So, in a very, very strange way, the time is right for me to go to law school now. In fact, there has never been a better time for me. I don't recommend this to anybody else, by the way. I'd advise something more like knocking out your undegrad with the easiest major and highest GPA you can manage. Then, going to the best law school you can find and hitting the work-world at about 25.
I don't think there's a lot to be said for the "spend 30 years joining the army, futzing around getting a degree, working a different career to get money to start a business, then use that business to support yourself while going to law school" plan.
However, it's what my path appears to have been. It's the hand I was dealt, and the hand that I played, for better or worse. I'm too old to be embarassed by the idea that I didn't do things in my life the right way. I have seen enough to know that until somebody refuses to let you do something, you're virtually never too old to try something new.
Of course, that's really going to be put to the test if I continue down this path.
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.
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.
Monday, March 7, 2011
When did I first decide to go to law school?
The first time I remember wanting to go to law school was in the Army. Being an attorney seemed like a pretty sweet gig. It was clean work, mostly indoors. There seemed to be some money involved.
Some time during my undergrad studies, I got dissuaded. Perhaps part of it was seeing the other students who were saying their goal after graduation was to go to Law School. I know this is a harsh assessment, but by and large, they were an unimpressive lot. It was very hard to tell whether they were doing it because they really wanted to be attorneys, or because there just weren't a lot of jobs for political science and sociology majors.
I also heard a statistic about the pay that some attorneys were getting. Apparently, for some, being an attorney wasn't a path to wealth, but was, instead, a path to a crappy job in the public defender's office or some other equally dreadful career.
I also got a taste of the absolute bile and hatred that society seems to have for attorneys. So, I really didn't give it much thought. I was going to major in computer science, and computers were going to change the world and make me and a bunch of other nerds rich in the process.
Unfortunately, my academic performance was spotty at best and it took me six years, 4 changes of major and one change of university to graduate. I was lucky to graduate at all. Though I did finish with a marketable degree: a BBA in Information Systems. Thus, I was able to look down my nose at sociology and political science majors just a little while longer.
During my first few years working in business, I met a woman who was a law school student at Case Western Reserve University. CWRU is Cleveland's top academic institution and is basically on-par with Ohio State in quality of graduate programs.
Her performance landed her a job at Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue, the nation's largest law-firm, which just happens to be located in Cleveland.
She was the daughter of a famous litigator, and spent her entire law-school experience talking about what it took to get into a top law firm. Sure enough, she had both the brains and drive to make it happen.
To know a person at Jones Day was, to me, about like knowing a person who plays for the Cleveland Indians. You know it's possible to do it. You hear of people doing it all the time. You just also, deep down, know that you're not the kind of person who gets there.
The folks who work at firms like Jones Day are what are known as "biglaw" associates. They work for big law firms, representing big clients, making big, big money. Even in the 80s and early 90s, biglaw associates might make six figures in their first year of employment.
Society may hate lawyers, but there aren't many professions where 25 year olds can make six figures in their first job that doesn't involve athletic skill with some sort of ball.
I stayed on the business side of things. Business people were the good guys in my world. They wore the white hats. They saved the day. They created jobs and wealth and products and services. The lawyers were the guys tying the local school marm to the railroad tracks. Business people were the guys who rescued the damsels before train arrived.
Even so, after a couple of years of my MBA program, I started looking at the law school rankings. I wondered, what schools would accept me? Could I do well enough to land a biglaw job? I didn't have any money and frankly, I almost always had some debt. Granted, these days, I think back on my "debt" back then and laugh, but the idea of owing a thousand or two thousand dollars back then was mortifying to me. The idea of taking out, say, a hundred thousand dollars in loans was just crazy.
I was also starting to see the way this puzzle fits together, too. It's not generally enough to graduate from any old law school. I was still in my 20s, but I already knew a handful of people who had taken their law school experience not quite seriously enough and were not in biglaw, but did have bigdebt and worked at crapjobs.
This was something where you had to either go big or stay home. I figured I would stick with my business career. I had no real way to go to law school without going deep into debt, and I had a decent career. Giving up 3 years of earnings, after having worked that long to get to that point, just seemed like too great a sacrifice.
The business career went mostly as I would have liked, until 2004, when I decided to be an entrepreneur. That, too, went about as well as I would have liked, right until the point when the wall street guys drove the economy off a cliff and made us pay so they wouldn't get hurt when we hit bottom.
The business guys were no longer the guys in the white hats anymore. The guys getting bailed out were just as wholly evil as the most unscrupulous ambulance chasers.
Any moral objection I had ever had to practicing law as a career went right out the window.
I also really don't see how I could track back into a business career, and if I did, I'm not sure I'd know what I want to do. I haven't worked for anybody else for six years, now. My Information Systems degree is 18 years old. Technology has moved pretty far in the time I've been gone, and the last 7 years of my corporate career were as a project manager and department manager.
So, when you see a job for an entry-level computer programmer at $45,000 a year, I can get that job. Provided that nobody else applying got his degree more recently (because sorry, they're probably more hip to the computer languages that are being taught today. I learned pascal, assembly language and cobol. I doubt they even teach those anymore. Kids today come out of school knowing how to program Ruby on Rails and honestly, I don't even know what that is.)
And provided that everybody else will be as iffy as far as committment to an entry-level job as I will. Let's be serious: an employer will be thinking I'd leave that job the minute I could get back into a management-type job. And they'd be right.
My credentials are stale. They're not desireable. Much like the giant bald spot on the back of my head.
Being an entrepreneur is awesome because it never goes stale. All you need to do is come up with a profitable business idea, raise the capital and make the bank. Yep, that's all. It's so simple a caveman can do it, provided the caveman isn't part of the 95% of cavemen who try to do it and end up in bankruptcy within 5 years.
I need to do something different with my life. Owning a business has been mostly great, somewhat sucky, but the sometimes the suckiness can last a while. I think I'll navigate my business through this awful downturn, which is more than a lot of businesses will manage. However, there will be future downturns. I don't like having all my eggs in one basket. Also, my franchisor has really changed the game lately, and the upside in my current business just got a lot more limited.
So, I'm looking for a change and this one makes sense at the moment. I've been kicking around this idea for a quarter of a century, and frankly, if I don't do it now, I'll never get around to doing it at all.
I am relatively sure I will be doing this. I wish my business were doing better. That would take a lot of financial pressure off. However, if my business doesn't do well, that makes this all the more imperative.
The rest? I have some ideas, but in I really won't know for sure until I'm in it. Now is a tough time to try and be a prosperous attorney, but frankly, right now is a tough time to be a prosperous anything.
Some time during my undergrad studies, I got dissuaded. Perhaps part of it was seeing the other students who were saying their goal after graduation was to go to Law School. I know this is a harsh assessment, but by and large, they were an unimpressive lot. It was very hard to tell whether they were doing it because they really wanted to be attorneys, or because there just weren't a lot of jobs for political science and sociology majors.
I also heard a statistic about the pay that some attorneys were getting. Apparently, for some, being an attorney wasn't a path to wealth, but was, instead, a path to a crappy job in the public defender's office or some other equally dreadful career.
I also got a taste of the absolute bile and hatred that society seems to have for attorneys. So, I really didn't give it much thought. I was going to major in computer science, and computers were going to change the world and make me and a bunch of other nerds rich in the process.
Unfortunately, my academic performance was spotty at best and it took me six years, 4 changes of major and one change of university to graduate. I was lucky to graduate at all. Though I did finish with a marketable degree: a BBA in Information Systems. Thus, I was able to look down my nose at sociology and political science majors just a little while longer.
During my first few years working in business, I met a woman who was a law school student at Case Western Reserve University. CWRU is Cleveland's top academic institution and is basically on-par with Ohio State in quality of graduate programs.
Her performance landed her a job at Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue, the nation's largest law-firm, which just happens to be located in Cleveland.
She was the daughter of a famous litigator, and spent her entire law-school experience talking about what it took to get into a top law firm. Sure enough, she had both the brains and drive to make it happen.
To know a person at Jones Day was, to me, about like knowing a person who plays for the Cleveland Indians. You know it's possible to do it. You hear of people doing it all the time. You just also, deep down, know that you're not the kind of person who gets there.
The folks who work at firms like Jones Day are what are known as "biglaw" associates. They work for big law firms, representing big clients, making big, big money. Even in the 80s and early 90s, biglaw associates might make six figures in their first year of employment.
Society may hate lawyers, but there aren't many professions where 25 year olds can make six figures in their first job that doesn't involve athletic skill with some sort of ball.
I stayed on the business side of things. Business people were the good guys in my world. They wore the white hats. They saved the day. They created jobs and wealth and products and services. The lawyers were the guys tying the local school marm to the railroad tracks. Business people were the guys who rescued the damsels before train arrived.
Even so, after a couple of years of my MBA program, I started looking at the law school rankings. I wondered, what schools would accept me? Could I do well enough to land a biglaw job? I didn't have any money and frankly, I almost always had some debt. Granted, these days, I think back on my "debt" back then and laugh, but the idea of owing a thousand or two thousand dollars back then was mortifying to me. The idea of taking out, say, a hundred thousand dollars in loans was just crazy.
I was also starting to see the way this puzzle fits together, too. It's not generally enough to graduate from any old law school. I was still in my 20s, but I already knew a handful of people who had taken their law school experience not quite seriously enough and were not in biglaw, but did have bigdebt and worked at crapjobs.
This was something where you had to either go big or stay home. I figured I would stick with my business career. I had no real way to go to law school without going deep into debt, and I had a decent career. Giving up 3 years of earnings, after having worked that long to get to that point, just seemed like too great a sacrifice.
The business career went mostly as I would have liked, until 2004, when I decided to be an entrepreneur. That, too, went about as well as I would have liked, right until the point when the wall street guys drove the economy off a cliff and made us pay so they wouldn't get hurt when we hit bottom.
The business guys were no longer the guys in the white hats anymore. The guys getting bailed out were just as wholly evil as the most unscrupulous ambulance chasers.
Any moral objection I had ever had to practicing law as a career went right out the window.
I also really don't see how I could track back into a business career, and if I did, I'm not sure I'd know what I want to do. I haven't worked for anybody else for six years, now. My Information Systems degree is 18 years old. Technology has moved pretty far in the time I've been gone, and the last 7 years of my corporate career were as a project manager and department manager.
So, when you see a job for an entry-level computer programmer at $45,000 a year, I can get that job. Provided that nobody else applying got his degree more recently (because sorry, they're probably more hip to the computer languages that are being taught today. I learned pascal, assembly language and cobol. I doubt they even teach those anymore. Kids today come out of school knowing how to program Ruby on Rails and honestly, I don't even know what that is.)
And provided that everybody else will be as iffy as far as committment to an entry-level job as I will. Let's be serious: an employer will be thinking I'd leave that job the minute I could get back into a management-type job. And they'd be right.
My credentials are stale. They're not desireable. Much like the giant bald spot on the back of my head.
Being an entrepreneur is awesome because it never goes stale. All you need to do is come up with a profitable business idea, raise the capital and make the bank. Yep, that's all. It's so simple a caveman can do it, provided the caveman isn't part of the 95% of cavemen who try to do it and end up in bankruptcy within 5 years.
I need to do something different with my life. Owning a business has been mostly great, somewhat sucky, but the sometimes the suckiness can last a while. I think I'll navigate my business through this awful downturn, which is more than a lot of businesses will manage. However, there will be future downturns. I don't like having all my eggs in one basket. Also, my franchisor has really changed the game lately, and the upside in my current business just got a lot more limited.
So, I'm looking for a change and this one makes sense at the moment. I've been kicking around this idea for a quarter of a century, and frankly, if I don't do it now, I'll never get around to doing it at all.
I am relatively sure I will be doing this. I wish my business were doing better. That would take a lot of financial pressure off. However, if my business doesn't do well, that makes this all the more imperative.
The rest? I have some ideas, but in I really won't know for sure until I'm in it. Now is a tough time to try and be a prosperous attorney, but frankly, right now is a tough time to be a prosperous anything.
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