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A Guide For Choosing A Low-Ranked Law School

If you plan to attend a low-ranked law school, here is some advice for your consideration.

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3. Make Sure Your Plan Works Even If You Don’t Finish In The Top Ten Percent.

Everybody thinks they will finish in the top ten percent of their law school class. It turns out that 90 percent of law students are wrong about that every year. DO THE MATH. Showing up on campus with the plan of “working hard and finishing in the top of your class” IS NOT A PLAN. Hard work is (or should be) necessary to success, but it is far from sufficient. The vagaries of class rank are sometimes beyond your control, and you shouldn’t put yourself in a position where getting an A instead of a B+ in a random second-year course if the difference between you having a job and being unemployed.

For students who are seriously considering the diploma mills of legal education, banking on top-level academic success is foolhardy at best. Obviously, something has gone wrong academically before for you to be in a situation where you are looking more at Quinnipiac than Yale. It’s foolish to just assume that nothing will go wrong again, over the course of three years of life, that might also trip you up.

This advice is especially true for all the kids out there who intend to go to a diploma mill, “kick ass,” and then transfer to some better institution. Everybody has that plan. If your “plan” is to transfer, you need to have talked enough with your target school to know exactly what kind of grades you will need in your first year to successfully do it. You need to know if your target school even accepts transfers from your starting school, and what their success rate is. Maybe your target school values work experience more than one random year of law school. Maybe there’s some other credential that would distinguish you in their eyes. Maybe your target school will tell you “yeah, it’s never gonna happen,” and you can move onto more realistic plans.

You should know exactly what you need to do in order to accomplish your goal. Saying you are going to “work hard” and “do well” isn’t going to work out for at least nine out of every ten people at your school.

4. Do Your Research; Don’t Just Listen To What The Law School Is Selling You.

Researching law schools doesn’t take days, it takes months. And researching law schools should not be confused with “thinking about law schools” while you sleep, skimming some rankings (whether U.S. News rankings or Above the Law rankings), talking with your mom about whether you should go to law school, or going to a sweat lodge and waiting for a vision about which law school is right for you.

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You are not buying a car; going to law school is more like buying a house. And when smart people buy houses, they don’t just listen to the information provided by the seller and then hand over a wad of cash. They bring in independent third parties to assess the house; they find out everything they can about the neighborhood, the school system, the crime rates. They talk to neighbors. They buy insurance. They get home improvement estimates. They don’t just show up to live there because they got a really good feeling at the open house.

Prospective law students should discount everything a law school says about itself in the same way people naturally do when somebody is trying to sell them something. They should discount every current student they meet (kids who are already there are invested in not feeling like an idiot for going there), and they should discount the chosen alumni the school points them to, since again it’s just part of the sales process.

You don’t just have to take the law school’s word for what they are: you can talk to others in the community. Contact recent graduates, local employers, judges if you see yourself as a trial attorney. Don’t spend a day taking the guided tour of campus; spend a week in the community. Where do students live, how much does that cost, how are they able to network? You can look at a school’s NALP or LST numbers. When somebody makes up a figure, you can call them on it and see how they respond. Is the school trying to hide the fundamental weakness in the legal employment market, or do they have a plan for attacking it?

And if for some reason you started the process late and you don’t have “time” to become an expert in the law schools you are thinking about attending, wait a year. They’re not going anywhere (and if they do, boy didn’t you dodge a bullet).

Most of what lawyers do is research. If you can’t do that research for yourself, why would anybody trust you to do it for a client?

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5. Pay As Little As Possible.

Look, you didn’t get into a really good school. Sorry. But if you have done all of the previous four steps — maximized your LSAT score, identified specific employment options, prepared for not being at the top of the class, researched schools thoroughly — and actually getting the law degree is the last step of your job search, then you should really be able to find a cost-effective option to pursue legal education.

That’s because you’ll have put yourself at an information advantage over law schools and most of your fellow classmates. You’ll know what you want and what you have to do to get it. From that position of strength — especially in this market, where lower-ranking law schools are scrambling to fill their seats — you’ll be able to take advantage of silly fluctuations in the U.S. News Rankings to maximize your scholarship money at a law school that gives you everything you need.

You’ll know the value of staying in-state, or you’ll only leave the state for a very specific opportunity that will be waiting for you three years later. Your employment research might set you up with an internship or summer job that you can use to offset some of your law school expenses. You might find that four years of night school while you work is a much better deal for you than three years at regular price. You won’t get a “JD/MBA” just because it has more letters. You won’t get an LL.M because it took you three years to realize that you can’t get a job.

The bottom line is this: going to a low-ranked law school is a huge risk. It’s much harder to make the risk pay off than for somebody who gets into a top school. Therefore, you have to do a lot more work than some frat boy who goes to Phuket for a week to meditate on whether to go to Duke or UVA Law. Following these steps will allow you to mitigate that risk as much as possible.

Every law job everywhere for all time always is just an exercise in risk management. So consider “picking a law school” your first project.

Earlier: Law Professor Defends Law Schools; Blames Media, Students, Advisors, Everybody But Himself
Actually Useful Studies About The Value Of Going To Law School
Another Garbage Study Offering Misleading Statistics On The Value Of A Law Degree

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