Scholarships for low GPA/high LSAT? Non-traditional students?

[rm09]

Are there scholarships available for people who do well on the LSAT but have a low undergraduate GPA?  I think my UGPA was like a 2.78 and I've been consistently scoring in the top 10% on all my practice LSATs.

How about for non-traditional students?  I'm married, have kids, have a mortgage, and have been working in social services since i graduated college (related to my degree).

[Hamilton]

I will give you my take as it sounds similar to yours (working, non-trad, family, part-time school, UGPA).  I did well on LSAT and got great scholarship from a T4 based on the LSAT only.  Graduated in top 20% of class and passed bar first time.  I do not speak from a disgruntled perspective - I have a great job and great family, and paid very little for my JD - I just look back on it as a waste all things considered.  You can read my other posts on this subject.

My schpeel on law school - ask yourself 'why?'  Do you have a burning lifelong desire to be a lawyer or does this seem like the thing to do lacking any other ideas?  Unless you get a great scholarship and can go to school without wracking up unsustainable debt I advise against going - unless it is your dream to be a lawyer and you get into a T1 school.  The job market for lawyers is brutal, especially for non T1 grads (yes Bigs, its tough on everyone and no job is ever guaranteed, hard work, luck, all of that stuff...).  Do your homework and truly know what you are getting into if you pursue this - there is a growing community of anti-law school blogs (linking main-stream media articles) that give a lot of reasons to consider.

Law school is a brutal time drain - plan on substantially missing 3+ years of your kids lives while you go to school.  That time away takes a huge toll on the kids, jacks the household stress level up 10-fold, and places a huge burden on your spouse to raise the kids.  You are either gone at school, need to sudy, there for a limited amount of time b/c you have to study or go to class, or you are there but not THERE.  Think about it and ask whether it is worth it.

[bigs5068]

Yes they probably will give you a scholarship if you score a 160 or 170 on the LSAT. Lawschoolnumbers.com can give you an indicator of how much each school gives for certain numbers.  As Hamilton said it will be really hard on your family I would imagine, because law school takes a lot of time. Also as Hamiltion said there are a lot of lawyers out there, but as I always say there is a lot of everything out there. Life is competitive and generally those blogs that he speaks about are written by people who take absolutely no accountability for their inability to get a job and go on to write about how hard everything is and how nothing is their fault. Rather than work on making themselves more marketable or look for a job they spend hours on the internet blogging about how unfair everything is. Those kind of things you can't listen to, because those types of people will blame anything and everything, but themselves no matter what the situation is.

Anyways, yes you can get a scholarship with a high LSAT score. Should you go if you get a scholarship? The answer is maybe , it could be a terrible decision or it could work out amazingly. Considering you have a job, family, mortgage, etc you have a lot more to lose than a 23 year old with no attachments does. However, if you really want to be a lawyer then you should probably go for it. You only have so many years in your life and you might as well try to do the things you want to do. It might go horribly wrong there is no way to know, but in regards to all these bloggers etc don't listen to them, and don't leave your common sense at the door. I am sure getting your current job was not easy and you were not handed anything when you graduated from college, maybe you were, but I imagine you are aware that finding jobs especially your first one in a field is difficult.