Law School Discussion

What is with the homophobia on LSD? Is this what I have to look forward to in law school? Grr.

Good call on the hotness of plough boy. It gets me thinking, my boy looks good in green...

I haven't really gotten down to researching health plans yet. I know my school uses Chickering Group, and I found one scrap of information in a BU thread I think that said Chickering Group doesn't cover contraceptives--which SUCKS! But I don't like contraceptive hormones anyhow so it doesn't affect my individual health outlook.

My big priority is having medical/dental and vision if I can get it. I had six cavities this year and I don't fancy going it without insurance.

For comparison purposes I am going to look into ABA coverage I guess. I work for a small company and they only have to do COBRA for six months, so I probably won't do that. I will be checking out Blue Cross too if they offer a plan where I'll be.

What is everyone else coming up with for good health care that doesn't cost an arm and a leg??

I sent in two letters of continued interest, and my rejection letter was dated June 15 (I live on the west coast so it took a while getting here). Don't cry; there's still hope!

I just dreamed it was the second week of classes, my laptop had been stolen, and I'd apparently missed orientation and every class but one!

Isn't it early for law school anxiety dreams???

It is hard to keep everyone's LRAP straight; I agree. I helped myself (though somewhat chaotically) by keeping an outline for each school. EJW has a list of LRAPs http://www.equaljusticeworks.org/finance/index.php?view=detail&id=6176. I took the advice they put on this page http://equaljusticeworks.org/choose/5575text.php and used it to make my own outline for LRAPs and everything else I needed to consider. You're goingto be reading about schools anyway; so you can read it just once and save yourself a big hassle if you have an outline to plug info into. I wish I could go back and take this advice now! Also I believe EJW is putting out something like a ranking of PI schools that takes into account LRAP and summer funding and whatnot.

I also found it really helpful to imagine what my income would look like after law school under various LRAP programs. I had a basic table I would use listing different income levels ($25,000, $28,000, $30,000, $35,000 etc on up to about $50,000) and then I subtracted 20 percent for misc taxes and factored in what I'd have to spend given the workings of the LRAP. It was very helpful for me to see that if I went to UCLA I would be having an education that cost about $125,000 (I had some scholarships and aid), but UCLA's LRAP would cover a max of $60,000, leaving me with $65,000 to pay off. These numbers are approximate now; I did a big old post&poll with lots of numbers back when I was trying to make up my mind.

Things you will want to consider are whether you are allowed to save money or put it towards retirement or if the LRAP program will effectively force you to spend all your money one way or another. Often you ahve to email the schoosl and ask these questions. Also a big deal is what the LRAP cap is. You can't just assume the best schools will have perfect LRAPs. Penn, a top ten school, has a cap of $100,000, $10K per year per applicant. that doen'st really work if your education cost you $160,000 and you want to take a job that pays $25K. Columbia, another good school, had an LRAP I didn't love the looks of either (I have a post about it somewhere). You really have to compare and ask questions. UVA, a school I applied to while thinking I'd never ever wind up in rural Virginia again, turns out to have a well-funded and flexible LRAP program (full forgiveness of each loan every year, with no max award caps, and includes some private firm work and a variety of other jobs). I feel pretty lucky to have landed there!