I live in Atlanta and am likely to attend GSU PT.
City of Atlanta:
For a big city, COL is really cheap. $800K buys you a MTV Cribs quality house in a country club. $350K buys you brand new one bedroom high rise condo in Midtown. Compared to Manhattan, L.A., and Chicago, it is cheap. Gas price and foods are relatively cheap. Atlanta and its metro area is quite large with plenty of things to do in various neighborhoods.
Many Fortune 500 cos. are located in Atlanta (Coke, Home Depot, UPS, Suntrust, Newell Rubbermade). Also, many biglaws are in operation in Atlanta.
GSU Law School:
It is in an urban setting in middle of downtown almost next door to state Capitol. Campus is comprised of many buildings (not a traditional college building but rather like an office buildings) scattered across downtown Atlanta. However, the law building is in the heart of the campus. GSU absolutely is a commuter school. There really is not much of sense of community at GSU (I got my undergrad at GSU 3 years ago so this is strictly based on my own experience).
It is my understanding that top GSU grads get jobs at big firms (Alston & Bird, King & Spalding, etc.) I am not really sure what happens to the others. However, I know many GSU grad attorneys working for large corporations, big 4 accounting firms, and small to mid size local law firms. Many in-house counsel at the company I am working for (fortune 100 co) are GSU grad.
GSU law is really underrated IMHO. GSU places its top grads to biglaws, LSAT ranges are only 2 points or so below UGA (ranked 36th), its bar passage rates are usually higher (or on par at times) than UGA and Emory (see
http://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/). Maybe this is because the law school is relatively new (since 1982) and GSU undergrad program as a whole is still ranked as 4th tier national university.
GSU law just acquired a large building from Suntrust and this building will be occupied by the law school and the business school (well respected even to USNWR's standard)
http://law.gsu.edu/news/view.php?id=208I have been told that this year's entering class won't be taking classes in the new building. However, by the time I graduate, I would imagine that the new building will help GSU climb up in the ranking. Currently, GSU sits at 82nd, up from 97th in 2007 rankding.
Plus, tuition for resident is really really cheap. it is less than $8K per year.