- Hey legal eagles, aah the age old question of how
to choose the right law school.
Currently there are over 250 different law schools
in the U.S. alone and choosing between them can be daunting.
But today we're gonna go over the main concerns
that you should consider when deciding
between law schools so stick around.
(upbeat music)
There are a number of factors to consider when choosing
between law schools and no one size fits all
but the first consideration is what job do you want
when you graduate from law school?
Certain jobs require a pedigree and others not so much.
There's no way around it
but sometimes law school rank matters.
Lots of people pay attention to it.
If you want to be a supreme court clerk
and then parlay that clerkship into a big firm
litigation job, well that requires the highest
law school pedigree that's out there.
You need to go to a top law school.
Other jobs, on the other hand, like working
for a small or medium sized law firm often don't
require as much pedigree or a top law school rank.
Some jobs don't require really any pedigree at all
and in fact sometimes you can get into a district attorney
job or a public defender's job without the same kind
of pedigree of a top law school that would be necessary
to become a big firm litigator or a supreme court clerk.
So before you think about how you want to get there
think about where you want to go.
It's important to know the destination
before you choose the right path.
If your ideal job requires a top law school, well then
you'll want to aim for a top law school.
The next factor I would take into consideration
is the geographical location of where you want to practice.
Certainly it's no surprise that top law schools
probably open up the most options but often
if you want to work in a specific geographical region
there are certain regional law schools that are considered
just as good as many of the better ranked law schools
for the purposes of that particular geographical location.
Certain regional law schools punch way about their weight
for the region that they're located in.
If you know you wanna end up in a particular location
you might go to a law school in that area.
The alumni network might be well connected in that area.
You might be able to get more networking opportunities
in that city or that state so in certain circumstances,
a regional law school can have advantages
over a higher ranked law school.
So for example, if you knew you wanted to practice
in Los Angeles, California, you might consider going
to Loyola or Pepperdine in the LA area and while they're
not the top ranked law schools in the country,
they punch above their weight in the Los Angeles area.
By the same token however, going to a much higher
ranked law school might open up even more opportunities
in a wider geographical location and frankly
if you go to some of the top law schools then it shouldn't
be too difficult to get a job in any particular location.
But that's always something to consider especially if
different law schools offer different financial packages
and financial aid as well.
Sometimes going to a regional school can save you
a lot of money but you have to weigh the pros and cons
versus going to a better ranked school that might
open up more doors outside of just a particular
geographical location and sometimes people decide
that they don't wanna stay in a particular city or state
and they wanna move to somewhere else.
Going to a higher ranked school can sometimes open up
those kind of opportunities which brings me
to the next factor that you should probably
consider when deciding between law schools
and that's how much are you willing to pay?
Unfortunately there's not much difference in terms
of the public or rack rates that you see
from different law schools and the amount that you pay
doesn't really correlate to the rank of that school.
In fact it's often inversely correlated where the
better schools actually charge less than some of the
lower ranked schools and some of the for profit schools
charge the most out of everybody but there's really not
a huge amount of variation between the published rates
of the highest ranked schools and the lowest ranked schools.
But that doesn't mean there's no difference at all.
Generally speaking, public law schools are going
to charge less, often tens of thousands of dollars
less per year than their private counterparts but the
biggest difference comes in the form of financial aid.
Just because the published tuition is high doesn't mean
that students are actually going to pay that much.
There's often a huge amount of competition amongst
law schools to attract the best and brightest law students.
So different law schools offer a huge variation
in financial aid which can sometimes result in scholarships
from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars
or even full rides and full ride pluses.
It can result in a huge difference
in the amount that you pay at the end of the day
when you go to law school.
So often you have to make a decision between going to a
higher ranked law school or going to one that's going
to pay you more money to go there and when you're talking
about law school where tuition alone can cost $50,000 a year
not to mention living expenses, it's not surprising
that law students often graduate with over $200,000
in law school debt alone.
So getting a large financial aid package
can have a huge effect on your quality
of life when you graduate from law school.
Another factor to consider is do you want to go
into a specialty in the law?
What most people don't know is that law schools
teach basically the same thing especially
in your first year and usually into your second year
and unfortunately no law school really prepares
you for practicing as an attorney.
No one feels ready to practice when they graduate
from law school and that's true whether you go
to the number one law school in the country
or the number 100th law school in the country.
It's shocking but they all teach basically the same thing
but a handful of schools really excel in a few specialty
areas like tax or entertainment law or law and economics.
So if you know that you wanna go into one of these
specialty fields, generally the kind of fields
that require an LLM or a masters of the law
then you might consider going to one of those schools
that really excels in that area but outside
of those really specialty areas, I would not assume
that any law school is going to teach you anything different
from another law school and unless you're going
into one of those LLM type areas, odds are you're gonna
get the exact same education as anywhere else.
There aren't that many areas in which this
specialty applies, tax is the one that really comes out.
So if you know that you wanna go into one of these
specialty fields that requires an advanced law degree
then you might consider going to a law school
that has a very high ranked specialty program in that area.
The next big consideration when thinking about law schools
is whether you want to go into big law.
Most students think that they want to go into big law
when they start law school whether it's actually
the best thing for them or not and while it's certainly
not the route for everyone, it is the route that I took.
I've been a big firm lawyer for over 10 years.
I've recruited, I have mentored summer associates
and here's what I think are the most important
takeaways if you wanna go into big law
when you're deciding between law schools.
If you wanna go the big firm route you
generally need to go to one of the best schools
in the country, the most prestigious schools.
At the top of the 250 law schools in the country
there are three at the very top that are
always changing in position for number one
and that's usually Yale, Harvard and Stanford.
Which one of those three schools is ranked number one
in a particular year largely depends on who you ask
but generally those three schools are considered
the top three schools in the country.
If you're able to get into the roughly top half
of your class at one of the top law schools
in the country, you stand a very good chance
of being competitive with the top firms in the country
and getting a big firm job.
Now apart from the top three law schools
there are what people generally refer
to as the top tier of law schools, often called
the tier one law schools or T14 law schools.
Those are also almost universally considered the
top law schools in the country, roughly the top 10%.
You'll hear people talk about the top 14 law schools
in the country, sometimes it's the top 15
and sometimes it's the top 20.
Really there's not a whole lot of difference
between those top tier schools.
Those top 10% of law schools are schools like
NYU, Berkeley, UCLA, Georgetown, Michigan, Duke,
Columbia, I'm also leaving out a whole bunch
of those top tier schools but they're generally
considered the top schools in the country.
Even though you're in one of the top law schools
of the country you still need to do reasonably well
in your class in order to get a big firm job
but if you're safely in the top third of your class
at a tier one school, you stand a very good chance
of getting a big firm job or a clerkship.
After that, I would say that there is sort of a
second tier of law schools.
The law schools ranked generally between 20 and 100.
If you go to one of these schools and you want
to go the big firm route, generally you have
to be in the top five to 10% of your class.
You have to do very well at these tier two schools
in order to get the most competitive jobs
because you're competing with thousands of people
that went to the top tier schools and you have
to demonstrate that you are above the rest
of your class so it can be very difficult.
If you want to go to a law school that is outside
the top 100 and you still wanna go the prestigious
big firm route, well it's still possible
but you're really going to have to differentiate
yourself from the rest of your class.
You really have to excel and be roughly the top
one or two people, maybe the top five in your class
in order to get the kind of ranking that would allow you
to get the big firm jobs.
These are the kind of rankings and grades that are also
going to let you transfer to a different school
if you wanna go that route but keep in mind that
big law is not all there is.
There's all kinds of jobs in law and you shouldn't assume
that big law is necessarily the right one for you.
You've gotta work thousands of hours and it can
really burn you out so don't just assume that big law
is the one and only route in law school.
There's lots of different careers in the legal field
and you may not want to go into big law in particular.
Additionally, when you're thinking about different careers
in law check out the data that the ABA puts out
on different law schools.
The ABA publishes information on each school that will tell
you how successful their graduates are, what states
that those graduates practice in and it will also tell you
the average income that graduates from that particular
law school make so don't just rely on generalities
but really dig in and see if graduates from the law school
that you're considering are going into the kind of jobs
that you really want to go into.
So that being said, while everyone's situation is different
and there's never a general best law school for everyone,
I do wanna give you some general tips.
All things being equal, I would say go
to a higher ranked law school.
The higher ranked law schools, especially when you get
into the top tier of law schools really open up many
different options for you and maybe a year from now
when you're a two L or three years from now, what you
want out of your legal career might be completely
different than what you want when you start out
so going to a higher ranked law firm, often if there's
a big difference in the ranking, can really open up
some different options if not now then
perhaps later down the line.
So all things being equal, you might consider
a higher ranked law school.
Also again all things being equal, you might consider going
to a school that offers more financial aid.
If you're deciding between schools within the top tier
or within the top three in the top tier and one school
gives you a full ride and another school gives you
zero financial aid, I would probably choose the one
that gives you more financial aid despite the fact
that there might be a 10 rank difference between
school number one and school number 10.
There's probably not going to be that much
of a difference in terms of your employment prospects
and certainly very little in terms of what's actually
taught at the law school.
So you can do yourself a huge favor by taking money
for these slightly lower ranked schools if that comes
with more financial aid and you'd probably be very happy
to graduate debt free from a top tier law school if the
alternative was to go to another top ranked law school
with a ton of debt.
Often that can be the difference between zero debt
and $250,000 worth of debt and when you graduate
if you don't go into big law and you go into a
legal career that pays, you know, 70 or $80,000,
which is the median salary for an attorney,
having or not having $250,000 worth of loans to repay
over a 10 year time period can make all the difference
in your quality of life.
Again all things being equal, go to a law school
that is closer to the geographical location that
you know you want to practice.
If you know that you want to practice in Boston
then by all means go to a law school in Boston.
It's very helpful to be able to interview with a lot
of firms in the area in which you're going to law school.
Otherwise the alternative might be having to fly
across the country in order to do the same number
of interviews or to interview with the same type of firm.
What law schools don't tell you is that at the beginning
of your second year, you're going to be doing a ton
of interviews with firms and governmental agencies
to try and line up the job that you have when you graduate
from law school and it is so much easier to be able
to take on campus interviews with the type of firms
that you want to practice in the future because local
firms are more likely to hold on campus interviews
at a local law school.
It's just the economics of the situation.
So going to a law school in the city or the state
where you wanna practice can make all the difference
in your second year when you're taking interviews
for the firms that you wanna work for in the future.
So this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms
of what you should do before law school.
If you want more strategies and tactics for what
to do before starting law school, download our
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So did I miss any considerations that you have
about choosing your law school?
Are you choosing between law school right now?
Have you already decided?
Let me know in the comments below.
I would love to hear from you and until next time
at Legal Eagle, think like a lawyer and ace your exams.
(upbeat music)
Stella, aah the age old question of how to choose the right
law school but today we're gonna go over the main concerns
that you should consider when deciding between law schools.
So before you think about what you want
So before you think about
So before you think about.