Law School Discussion

I think I just responded to this post in a different thread, but as I said before you need an LSAT score. Being in model UN and having a research proposal etc is great, but most law school applicants have similar experiences. The soft factors are of minimal help in law school admissions from what I saw when I attended law school although I have never worked in a law school admissions office. However, you can imagine when 5,000 or so applications come in a guy who worked in college, participated in model U.N., and did a research project is not going to jump off the page at anyone. It is all good stuff, but if you have a 140 LSAT your not getting in anywhere.

It sounds like your doing well academically and involved which is all you can do at this point. Next step is the LSAT and practice is not the real thing until you have an official LSAT score you cannot know what your options are. Back in my OL days my practice tests ranged from 154-163 and I noticed one of the four books I was using I always got a higher score, but when real test day came I got a 157. With my 3.3 & 157 I got into numerous schools, but not Harvard-Yale-Stanford surprisingly : ).

Anyways take the LSAT and keep doing what your doing.

Good point Groundhog after being admitted don't particularly care how tight they make the admission rules for others kind of selfish, but the way it is. 

Philosphically I think if someone can meet all the standards for admission to the bar they should be able to practice law, but selfishly I am more than open to less competition for jobs.

Don't think your doomed  with a  3.7 GPA numerous school will look very favorably at that number. Class rank might make a difference and more importantly than anything is your LSAT score when dealing with law school admissions. Take that test and see what your options realistically are and once you have your UGPA & LSAT you can check out lawschoolnumbers.com to give you a realistic sense of your options.

 I want to point out that getting into a T14 school is tough and you will need to score roughly in the top 5% of test takers on the LSAT to even have a shot and there is a 95% chance you will not be in the top 5% of test takers. I think it is important for any 0L to understand that before starting law school. I remember on my first day of law school 100%  even at my non T14 school were convinced they would in the top 10% sounds like your major involves in some math and I think you can figure out 90% of people were disappointed. The same goes for law school admissions everyone when they start studying for the LSAT is considering Berkeley, Harvard, Yale, Georgetown then reality sets in once the LSAT score comes back .

Furthermore, do not simply set your sights on T14 schools there are lot of factors to consider when choosing a law school other than what some for profit unregulated magazine thinks.

Well there are quite a few jobs out there I have found for my friends if you know where to look. Here are some places I know that are very actively trying to hire recently law barred lawyers.

http://www.westcoast-atty.com/ 

http://www.lflm.com/careers.htm

and if you can Handle Alaska my friend was getting called day and night to come work here and he went to a Tier 4 school. I think they have a huge need for judicial clerks and it pays 70k. 

For more information, visit http://www.state.ak.us/courts/recruit.htm and select “Information for Prospective Law Clerks.” They are very eager to fill Bethel Alaska and are actively hiring clerks.

Another resource to find entry level jobs is the BYU intercollegiate Job Bank it has basically every law school's career service website on it and there are thousands of jobs to apply for. Below is the username and password.

Username: Jobfind
Password: Fall2012

From reading your post it sounds like you are one of the recent graduates that is not valuing themselves enough. Never and I mean never work for free after you have passed the bar unless you are doing pro-bono work and have a paying career.  If you fall for the work 60 hours a week for free and do not have anytime to apply for jobs etc you are shooting yourself in the shoot. I personally have a ton of errands you could do for free and I will give you a glowing letter of recommendation, but I would not take your application seriously for a real attorney job. If your an attorney you need to bill and make money if your working for free that doesn't show lot of business sense.

I know plenty of grads working for free, but they would all be much better served spending 8 hours a day drafting detailed cover letters and scouring the intercollegiate job bank for positions. I graduated and passed the bar without people flocking to me, but after a few months of searching I was offered several paying attorney positions. I personally turned down numerous unpaid internships when I passed the bar and I truly thought about taking them, but am very glad I did not let something like that take time away from my job search.

Again I know how depressing and awful it can be to look for a job, but keep going you have a long legal career ahead of you. Good luck.

I believe Bobol makes a good point get your LSAT score and see what your options are. You can putz around getting A's in frisbee golf for years and end up wiht a 3.8,  but with a 154 LSAT or something NYU is not accepting you.

In regards to your specific situation I don't think schools look down on GPA padding I inadvertently did it myself playing sports in college and my numerous A's in the sports I played got me a lot of scholarship money to law school, but to spend a year of life your doing that without even knowing your LSAT score is probably not a good idea. If you come away with a 170 then it might be a decent plan, but as Bobol says your putting the cart before the horse it will truly be a waste if you spend a whole year in college getting A"s in joke classes and come away with a 154 LSAT and end up in the schools you would have ended up in anyways.

Also you do not have to go to NYU to succeed as a lawyer. I myself did not go to Harvard or a T14 school, but I passed the bar and work as a lawyer now it happens.

A final thing I noticed is that your dream is to live and work in NYC. Now I might be reading into this, but have you ever lived in NYC? I have personally and there was a lot of great things about it, but a lot I did not like and if you have not lived there I think you would be much better served spending a year living in NYC getting the lay of the land and seeing if you can handle it before making a 3 year commitment in the most expensive city in the world.