| Topic Name: |
choosing a law school |
| Message Name: |
your call |
| Date Posted: |
07/15/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
I know this is late in the game...but i was dropped from the Harvard waitlist last week and i now have to make an actual decision. between Michigan with in-state tuition, chicago, and nyu or don't go. i have a master's degree from u-m in industrial engineering, and was laid off from a fortune 500 company in march. have been traveling and planning on going to law school since, but am having second thoughts reading this board, as BIGLAW (as you call it) seems to have all unhappy associates working in it, and i don't want to incur a bunch of debt to end up making what i could be making anyway...also, does anyone know about the deferment policies of those schools, especially with regard to scholarships (comparable at all three)... |
| Message: |
With law it's simple--if you don't want to be a lawyer, then don't go to law school.
It's a profession that has enough demands that you need to be interested in it before you go. But, contrary to message board postings, not all BIGLAW associates are unhappy, and not all good law jobs are BIGLAW.
Here you are in MI, a great school (the fact that it is not HYS should not deter you--this is a more than fine place to go), with in-state tuition. If you want to go to law school, and you do reasonably well at MI, then you'll have reasonable debt and great job prospects (even in a legal market downturn).
If you do poorly at MI, you're still apt to get a perfectly workable job. An argument can be made for (or against) NYU or Chicago instead, but as we head into recessionary times, the reputation difference (if any) seems even less likely than it ever was (and it was never very likely, in my view) to make it advisable to take on extra debt when you're in a great school with in-state tuition.
Being a lawyer is rewarding,
although the 3 years in law school require some work, and your first few years as a law associate have a hard work/apprentice training feel to them at many firms. Once you get through school and the first few years of practice, it can be fascinating stuff. People vary on law school--I found it fun, some find it much less interesting than practice.
But if you could make the same money in another field,
and you don't want the stress and the hassle of the new,
and you don't have a burning desire to be a lawyer, why bother to go?
I guess it all comes down to what you want, more than any positive or negative spin from a message board posting.
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