| Topic Name: |
choosing a law school |
| Message Name: |
Lots of Questions |
| Date Posted: |
07/14/2001 |
| Message: |
I'll try to answer two of them:
(1) As far as whether you should go to law school, only you can answer that question. You have learned from these boards that there are many, many unhappy law school graduates. This does not mean that you will be unhappy. I have found that people who have had a career prior to law school tend to have more perspective about the legal profession and are less dissatisfied than those who came straight from college (whose ranks are many). OTOH your comment about making money suggests that you may be about to feel one of the drawbacks of the profession--it is not the highest paying career choice available. In fact, for the stress and the hours of BIGLAW, the payscale is relatively low. So if you are in it solely for the money, do something else.
(2) School Choice. You have been accepted to three excellent schools, about which there are three schools of thought. The first school of thought is to go to the highest ranked school available, which would be Chicago. If you subscribe to that school of thought, don't go to law school. You will always be miserable that you are not at Harvard.
The second school of thought is to go to whatever school is cheapest. You may have comparable scholarships, but the COL in NYC is far higher than Chicago, which in turn is higher than Ann Arbor. Many great students turn down NYU, Chicago, and other tippetty-top schools for public schools with in-state tuition and lower COL (Berkeley, UVA, UMich). you would be in good company attending Michigan.
The final school of thought is that you should go to whatever school you think you would enjoy most. If you've always wanted to live in NYC, for example, now is your chance. The theory goes that you should maximize your happiness while in law school, which will undoubtedly take its toll on you in so many other ways.
A final point is that you should probably NOT defer. Why would you? The best time to be starting school is when the economy has tanked, i.e. now. By the time you are ready to look for jobs, things will likely have turned around.
Good luck with your decisions.
|
|
