Law School Discussion

In an ideal world I’d be able to practice all day long to the point I’d be able to give lectures on the LSAT, but realistically I work two jobs, can’t afford a prep course and can only study a few hours a week on a borrowed book from my local library.  I have no problem understanding LSAT concepts it's the time factor that I struggle with

1. Even though CBE schools are less expensive than ABA, attending a CBE school is an expensive proposition. Law school wants money every time you turn around. If you can't afford an LSAT prep course, you're going to have a rude awakening once you enroll somewhere - anywhere. Not that prep courses are critical, but a serious student would find a way to get into one, especially if he's already received a score in the low 140s on a formal administration of the test (versus self-testing).

2. You can buy study guides from LSAC and elsewhere for $20-$40. If you're limiting your preparation to a few hours a week with a book borrowed from the library, you aren't approaching the LSAT with nearly the energy, dedication, and determination that you need to apply to it. You should be tackling practice exams every evening and all weekend for months before the next LSAT. Not a few hours a week.

3. Part-time attendance at law school is a second full-time job. If you don't devote the time to it, you'll waste your time, their time, and your money.

Just some food for thought. Law school success demands that you be all in, or not in at all.

I agree. This illustrates one of the problems I have with unaccredited programs. Unaccredited programs accept almost everyone and have little in the way of prerequisites. Bachelor's degree not required, good UGPA not required, LSAT not required. In other words there's no "weeding out" process previous to matriculation and many unqualified applicants are admitted. Not surprisingly a huge number fail the FYLSE and bar exam.

Certainly there are smart, successful graduates of unaccredited schools. I've had the pleasure of meeting several. Statisically, however, these graduates are the exception, not the rule. If someone hasn't demonstrated that they can succeed academically or on a standardized test (LSAT), I'm not sure what criteria (if any) is used to determine that they'll be able to pass the state legal exams.

Hi, Maintain. Good, thoughtful post. I have mixed emotions about unaccredited law schools. One the one hand, they may serve a purpose for the right person. On the other, that purpose is probably something other than putting a J.D. on one's resume in furtherance of applying for jobs as an attorney. I attend a CBE school. My decision to enroll required a balancing test similar to that which students of unaccredited schools would have to apply, even though my school is accredited in California and the school enjoys local respect. With an unaccredited school, you get the education, for whatever it's worth. A CBE school is only a few notches above that, since outside of the local legal market, the J.D. is pretty well meaningless, except maybe to non-attorneys. But I understood that when I enrolled. For me, the goal is less about enhancing my resume for job hunting and more about developing my capacity to analyze risk as an attorney. Once I've passed the bar, my mission will be accomplished. I already have an established career in insurance underwriting. A killer degree from a ranking ABA school would be suh-weet, but I don't believe it would advance my career much further than my blue collar J.D. will. Not enough to justify the hit that my retirement savings would take, at any rate. I'm in law school because 15 years into my career, I felt like I'd reached an insuperable plateau. I work with other lay underwriters who have been doing the same thing now for 35 years. My only shot at rising above my lay peers is to become underwriting counsel. With a CBE education and a bar card, I'll rise well above my colleagues and I won't have to spend 35 years in the business to do it. The license makes all the difference. And my company is completely behind me. My mentoring attorneys have all said, "Just get the license." Fifteen years ago, when I had no experience and no industry contacts, the advice would have been different. But my law school alma mater won't matter as much once I pass the bar because my position and reputation within my company are already firmly established. That said, I'll never run the legal department. But that's not my goal, anyway.

I think unaccredited schools can serve a niche market of people who just want to learn how to apply the law, but don't intend to become BigLaw attorneys. On a more basic level, they also provide people who would never be accepted by regular law schools with a chance to ride the bumper cars, as it were. Maybe their chances of success are slim, but inasmuch as the law applies to everybody, I believe everybody should have an opportunity to take a stab at it. If they get a hard dose of reality, well... That's life. But with unaccredited schools, at least giving it a try doesn't come at a ridiculous, crippling cost. And if they succeed against the odds, they'll do with the license whatever they can.

Personally, I would not not attend any institution of higher learning that wasn't at least accredited by my state. The statistics are scary enough for evening students like myself for passing the bar, so students of unaccredited institutions really need to weigh the realities. But accreditation itself is a competitive field, and the higher the accreditation value, the higher the cost of enrolling. Prospective law students need to identify the point where the cost-to-value ratio satisfies their goals and investment-backed expectations.

Here's another reason so many people fail the Baby Bar: Most of the people taking it are complete morons who don't belong anywhere near the law.

I don't think a pejorative term like "moron" is necessarily a fair or accurate way to describe those who fail the baby bar. Skill in any field is relative and people aren't morons simply because they aren't quite as adroit as others when it comes to applying the law to a set of facts.

However, there is truth in your statement. I've been maintaining this exact point for some time now, if trying to express it a little nicer. The reason the baby bar seems hard is because so many of the people who have to take it have already demonstrated that passing law exams gives them trouble. I've read some of the essay questions that appear on the baby bar. They look like ordinary law school essays to me. Nothing more difficult than the essay questions I faced with my first year final exams. It's all the same material. Contracts is contracts. Torts is torts. Crim is crim. It's easy if you know your outline and you've gotten some decent feedback on enough practice tests. There is no good reason to fail the baby bar unless you fail to prepare properly, you write at an elementary level, or you just can't think logically under timed constraints. My guess is that the majority of those who fail the exam do not prepare properly, or effectively. They haven't practiced writing about the law nearly enough. But most law students who passed their first year exams by a comfortable margin would have no problem passing the baby bar. It'd just be another exam to them. The BB's reputation for difficulty reflects only the perceptions of those who struggle to pass ordinary law exams to begin with.

Hi Nor-Cal. I attend a CBE school in Sacramento. My commute is an hour each way, but I work down there, so it's not like I have to make a special trip to get to class. Even though there are two ABA schools in the Sacto area, I never seriously considered either one, despite a solid UGPA from UC. The cost isn't justifiable when you're over 40. I spent four years in the Marines after high school, then another four years in college. For most of the past two decades, I've been forging a career in insurance underwriting, and at this point, the only meaningful prospect that law school holds for me is to get the license. Sure, I'd love to go to an ABA school, and after ranking very high after my first year, I toyed with the idea of transferring to McGeorge's night program. But the cost is ridiculous. Untenable. As it is, my CBE education is expensive enough, and like you, I have a mortgage. However, if I were 20 years younger, I wouldn't hesitate to apply myself toward getting into an ABA school. But at my age and station in life, the only goal is to get the license. I'm not going to be interviewing with local law firms when I pass the bar. Passing the bar will vault me out of the realm of laymen, regardless of which school I attend. There's a lot to be said for that. Granted, I'll never run my company's legal department, but my company has numerous in-house counsel who went to state schools. If you have expertise and existing contacts in a particular field, I don't believe having an ABA degree is quite as important as it is when you're 28 and you've never done anything in life but sit in classrooms. If the only thing on your resume is your law degree, then it should be the best degree you can get. On that point, I question some of my young classmates' decision to attend a state school. They're going to be at a disadvantage when they compete for jobs. (That said, my friends in class are all currently employed college graduates representing a wide array of fields of endeavor. They don't appear to be losing any more sleep than I am about their job prospects after graduation.) The fact is, as you get older, your ROI from having an ABA degree decreases. I don't see the point in saddling myself with exorbitant student debt 20 years into my career. I have no goal or interest in working for BigLaw. None. Just get the license. Once you've done it, you can say you've done it. And whatever rights and privileges that might attach become yours to cultivate however you can.

Wend3,
To succeed in law school takes extraordinary commitment. You're going to have a real balancing act on your hands between paying attention to your kids, paying attention to your husband, and paying attention to your studies. Not to mention making time for yourself. Especially in the beginning. And further, many of your friendships may begin to stagnate. This would prove to be the case even if you had only a 15-minute commute. Three hours a day in your car is an awful lot of time to kill with so many people pulling on you from all directions. That said, commuting doesn't have to be a complete waste of time. You can spend it productively by listening to law lectures and exam approaches. Still, sacrifices will have to be made on all fronts. Your younger kids will not have the attentive mom they want. Your husband will have to run family errands during and after work and monitor the kids while you're holed up in the den preparing for exams. Your studies will have to wait while you attend little league games or whatever. It'll be very tough to compete against the 20-somethings who have nothing to do but drink beer and study contract formation. I suspect the person who will end up sacrificing the most will be your husband. In the priority of interests, it's a natural thing to brush aside one's spouse when the children want attention. Only you can know your own situation, but his full commitment and support will be critical while you're in school. He needs to completely understand that he is going to be replaced by casebooks and "things the professor said" in your life. It'll be easy for him to feel abandoned, ignored, unappreciated and unimportant in your life. Law school is exciting and it's probably healthy not to let your own dreams fall by the wayside in the wake of having children, as often happens. But law school isn't necessarily all you think it's going to be. Here in my third year of study, the true result of law school is coming into focus. Coleridge said it the most eloquently: "A sadder and a wiser man he rose the morrow morn."

Just food for thought. Good luck.