When Choosing a Law School, Think Regionally!

One sound bite I use a lot when counseling prospective law students is to "put the end at the beginning." Before thinking about program specialties and clinical opportunities and academic profiles and acceptances rates and anything else that might determine your selection of law schools to which you will apply, think about the end game. Picture graduating, taking the bar, and going off to work. Seriously, do it, even if it feels weird.

The reason it might feel weird is because the law school process is very insular, especially compared to other graduate professional programs like medical school and business school. Just look at the applications: MBA and MD programs ask students specifically about their career goals and prospects, while law schools simply present a personal statement that allows you to write about whatever you want (and in most cases, you should be writing about something besides career goals). Even the process by which law schools admit students is focused entirely on what will make for a good law student - almost no thought is given to whether the candidate will make for a good lawyer one day. So law school applicants can be forgiven when they lose sight of the end game (the legal profession), choosing instead to focus entirely on the law school part of the equation.

Part of putting the end at the beginning is understanding career prospects and the recruitment process that while occur while in school. Law school is very hierarchical in the sense that attending a top school can lead to an easier path to prestigious job opportunities. Attending a truly elite school can often take some of the pressure off of finding a BigLaw job and it has the added benefit of creating a truly national job search. Virtually everyone attends on campus interviewing processes at programs like Harvard, Columbia, and Chicago, and while some firms are cutting back on their level of recruitment, graduates of elite institutes can still expect to meet with recruiters from law firms based all over. A Chicago grad will not only receive the opportunity to meet with Chicago-based firms, but also firms based in other cities, major market branches, and even satellite offices. When I interviewed during OCI (on campus interviewing) at Chicago in the fall of 2005, over 25 L.A. firms were on the docket.

However, the harsh reality is that most law students will not have the chance to attend a top five, ten, or even "T-14" law school and the even harsher reality is that the current legal recruiting climate is narrowing the options available to students and graduates. All of which puts a premium on planning ahead and thinking about which city you want to work in when you graduate. If you can't go to one of the truly national law schools (a group that is growing smaller every year), then you simply have to consider the regional recruiting implications of your school selection process. Emory is a fine law school but you won't find 25 firms from Los Angeles on campus for recruiting and you won't even find that many from New York. D.C., sure, but expect a heavy dose of Atlanta. Students at Texas can expect to see a lot of firms from Texas. George Washington grads are going to get most of their offers from D.C. area firms. This is just the way things tend to work when the job search becomes more regional in nature.

Once students understand this basic consideration, the next question becomes obvious: "What region of the country do I want to live and work in?" For many, the answer is easy - they want to be close to family, to return to their roots, be near a spouse's job, and so on. For other students, however, the possibilities are endless. They can and will go anywhere for the "right" opportunity. Usually, that means going to the school they perceive to be the best. However, let me offer another regional consideration, one that puts the end at the beginning: think about the value of law firm employment.

Assuming you go on to study law at a regional school, have access to regional recruiters, and land a job with a law firm in that region, you are going to be looking at some basic factors that speak to the value of that work experience. For instance, practicing law in New York is known to pay the biggest bonuses, but also demand (often by far) the longest hours. It is not uncommon to hear of junior associates billing 2,400 hours a year. And while the bonuses may be bigger in the Big Apple, the base salaries are often similar to those in other major markets. Consider that cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and D.C. all pay "New York salaries" yet have cultures with lower billable hours. There are certainly still sweatshops in those cities and you must pick a firm carefully, but billing a lot of hours in L.A. or Chicago looks more like 2,100 than 2,400. And the pay is just about the same. So those cities start to look pretty good. And to take it a step further, you can easily research cost of living and see that Chicago is an absolute steal compared to Los Angeles (and, of course, New York).

So if you are a law school applicant considering "regional" schools in New York, L.A., and Chicago, you also want to consider the value of your job when you graduate. For pure return on investment, Chicago blows the other two cities out of the water. This analysis also extends to somewhat smaller markets like Portland, Dallas, and Denver - firms don't pay quite the same salaries, but the billable hour requirements are usually far lower and the cost of living is a fraction of the bigger markets.

Obviously, the ability to secure employment in the first place and to do so at a firm that allows for interesting work and a good environment for professional development is all necessary for any sort of value calculation to do any good. But when you are looking at regions of the country to practice law, don't just think about the schools themselves or which city you might want to live in for three years - really think long and hard about where you can get the most value out of your legal practice once you graduate. Where you go geographically will make all the difference when it comes to maximizing the return on your significant investment.

Adam Hoff is the Director of Admissions Consulting and Research at Veritas Prep. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and Pepperdine University, where he served as the Associate Director of Admissions. Adam oversees Veritas Prep’s law school admissions consulting services to ensure that Veritas Prep clients are successfully poised for admission to their select law schools. You can hear more from Adam on strategic tips for your law school application in the Law School Podcaster episodes, Law School Application Strategy: What You Can Do Now To Help You Get Accepted and "Law School Personal Statements and Letters of Recommendation: Where to Begin?"

Due Diligence and Reasonable Expectations Before You Apply to Law School!

There’s been a lot of attention focused recently on whether a law school education remains a worthwhile investment, given the ever-increasing rise in law school tuition combined with challenges newly minted law school grads face in today’s job market. Much of the discussion follows the release of a recent LexisNexis survey, revealing that “one fifth (21%) of law school students say that based on the changing legal marketplace, they regret attending law school.” The National Law Journal’s recent article, “Going to Law School? Proceed with Caution” adds to the debate by reporting that “[o]n the Internet and in academic circles, debate is flaring over the value of a juris doctor, and whether the degree is a wise investment for many of the thousands who flock to law schools each year. Law schools have always had detractors, but the rising cost of legal education and the dearth of jobs available to new graduates is prompting more people to urge prospective law students to think twice before they write their first tuition check.”

The irony, of course, is that all this debate seems not to have slowed the stream of applicants to the growing number of ABA-approved U.S. law schools. The National Law Journal noted that “applications to law schools accredited by the American Bar Association increased by 5 percent for this year's incoming class, according to the Law School Admissions Council, and the number of people taking the Law School Admission Test this October shot up by nearly 20 percent.”

So, what’s someone considering law school supposed to make of all this?

We share some words of wisdom from guests on recent Law School Podcaster segments. Their collective message is worth hearing. It’s not all bad, but applicants can no longer head to law school blissfully uninformed about what their career options might be after graduation, while simultaneously taking on enormous debt. Gone are the days when law school is the default graduate degree for those unsure of what it is they want to do or for those seeking a stable, comfortable living. Whether you choose law school, which law school you choose and how much debt you can afford to take on in light of potential job prospects has to be evaluated before you go.

Listen to what recent guests have to say on this topic:

•Johann Lee, Dean of Admissions at Northwestern Law: Those considering law school must “do some due diligence about whether a career in the law and a law school education is really for you and, if that’s what you really want to be doing, there’s a place for you in the profession.” He reminds applicants that “law school is a professional school, it’s very similar to medical school but no one ever goes to medical school without thinking about what it means to be a doctor. Well, a lot of people go to law school without thinking what it means to be an attorney. They don’t go through that particular due diligence. So I think, as an applicant, definitely I’d think about what it means to go to law school.”

•Assistant Dean of Enrollment Services at Fordham School of Law, Stephen Brown: Law school is an investment and you should treat it as such. “It can be a good or bad investment, depending on what you’re looking to do with your life, depending on your choices. So pay attention to this as you would at any other investment. You find people to do more research on cars than law school, so that’s important.”

•Washington University Law School’s Dean of Career Services, Michael Spivey: Applicants should think carefully about what they want to do with a JD before they start signing loan papers. “Do they really want to work for a law firm, for example, or would they be more interested in prosecutorial roles, as prosecutors. The starting salary there is $50,000 a year. That’s the 2008 medium starting salary, but even that has grown 51% since 1996, and some people are much, much happier in litigation roles than they are working for large firms. Judicial clerkships, that’s another position where people, some students really are excited about, and that starts at $50,000. So we try to couple, keeping up on financial burdens. We try to couple how much financial debt they have with what sort of lifestyle they want to lead, whether they want to work for legal services or they want to work for a judge or they want to work what I would call nontraditionally or asymmetrically, and we counsel them what the lifestyle is at a big law firm. Some people love that, some people don’t want to jump on that boat.”

•Jim Leipold, Executive Director of the National Association for Law Placement (NALP): Students should carefully consider the amount of debt they take on and how they will pay off that debt after graduation – even if they do not land the job they might want after graduation: “I think the biggest problem for law students who are graduating right now will be figuring out how to manage their debt, among other things, until such time as they can find a job and enter the economy. So I think careful financial planning is going to be really important.”

•Mark Kantrowitz, Publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com says don’t just sign the stack of papers without knowing what you’re signing. This is important: Be meticulous. “A common problem that I encounter is students who figured that they’d worry about their loans after they graduated and ask them who your loan is with, what are the interest rates, how much did you borrow, and they just don’t know the answers. A mistake in which loan you borrow or how much you borrow can cost you severely after you graduate.”

•Johann Lee, Dean of Admissions at Northwestern Law: Students must combine due diligence with reasonable career expectations. “There was this thought that these huge law firm jobs were just growing on trees right outside the law school, you just go outside and you pick whatever job that you wanted. Now, it’s more like your regular job market. You have to work a little bit at it but still, the opportunities are still available. So in the end, it just means a little more due diligence is involved as a law school applicant but in the end, the careers are still out there. The sky isn’t falling really.”

Check out our full shows “The Current Economic Environment: What It Means for Law School Applicants and Students,” and “”Financing Your JD” to hear more on this topic.

Making Your Law School Wish Lists? Make sure To Weigh The Costs and Benefits!

It’s a given these days that a law school education is expensive, just about any way you look at it. As you begin to draw up that list of law schools you are considering, you just can’t afford to ignore how cost affects your analysis. That issue came up as we prepared our show, Choosing the Right Law School: Understand the Factors That Will Affect Where You Want To Go To School.

Law School Podcaster Host Bonnie Petrie spoke with Linda Abraham, Founder, Admissions Consultant and Editor at Accepted.com. Accepted.com guides and advises applicants on gaining acceptance to law school. While Abraham says that the undergraduate GPA and LSAT score is the starting point to determine which law schools you’ll want to consider, there also “has to be a weighing up of cost and benefit.”

Abraham advises applicants to calculate the cost/benefit of attending a particular law school. “Look carefully at where graduates of [a] school are going and getting jobs and what is the typical salary they get when they graduate vis-a-vis what’s it going to cost you to attend.” If you go to an expensive private school and it’s not going to get you a job, you’ll have a lot of debt to pay back and not the means to pay it back.” She gave us the basics on how to approach this calculation.

Petrie also interviewed Wendy Margolis of the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC), the non-profit corporation that provides admission-related services to legal education institutions and also administers the LSAT. Margolis also suggested that applicants research thoroughly the placement rates from particular law schools and dig a little deeper at those schools and see what type of placements those are, what kind of jobs people have gotten after graduating from those law schools.” Given the current economy, placement rates are likely to be down, so this type of research may be more important than ever.

In this show, we also hear from Hewlett Askew, Consultant to the American Bar Association (ABA) on Legal Education. Askew gave us the low-down on the ABA accreditation process and what it means to attend an ABA accredited law school as well as when it might make sense for an applicant to consider a non-accredited law school or a non-accredited online school.

Tune in to the show to hear the full discussion of the factors to consider when choosing a law school.