With the economy hobbled, it is more critical than ever for prospective law students to meet the requirements for admission to a top-quality law school. Because of the implosion of the overall employment situation, law schools are seeing a tsunami of applicants.
Law schools can be (and are) more selective about their published law school requirements than they have ever been in recent history.
At the same time, the economy for lawyers is devastated. Law firms are exhibiting higher degrees of snobbery in the hiring process than they have exhibited in recent recollection.
When I graduated, during the late 1990s stock boom, which was a good day, the mean starting salary for members of my class in electrical engineering was $50,000.00. Yes, this was long ago. So, there was some real risk that I was about to spend 3 years of my life and every dime I owned and then some for a graduate degree that was less valuable than the undergraduate degree that I already had. Fully a third of the licensed attorneys in Texas do something other than practice law. There just isn’t enough legal employment to go around.
For every kid making $165,000.00 a year straight out of school, there are 10 fresh lawyers making $40,000.00 per year. Now, if you have an English degree, you may here $40,000 per year and think, “Wow, that’s a huge step up!” But wait, that $40,000 per year is after you sink $100k in loans and lose the opportunity to make a respectable wage during the years that you are in law school. Going $100k into debt for a $40k/year job is not a good decision. You don’t need a finance degree to see that this one is stupid.
The law is two worlds. If you’re lucky, and you get decent grades at a well-ranked school, you can come out making $150k/year.
The difference between being successful and turning your life into a living Hell is going to a good law school. The difference between getting into a good law school and having to accept a bad law school is your scoring relative to the law school admission requirements. They are:
* Your LSAT score
* Your Undergraduate GPA
* Your Race
* Your Admissions Essays
* Your Letters of Recommendation
* Your Resume (this means everything else)
* Your string pulls
Now, there are some of these factors that you can, in fact, manipulate. And there are some that you can’t control. Your goal needs to be to focus on the factors that you can adjust in a way that changes the outcome.
For advice on how to do just that, you’re welcome to visit: http://www.lawschoolrequiements.org.