Career Center, Career Files, Pre-Law

The Right Way To Do Law School

Ann K. Levine shares some insights about the right way to approach law school and the law school application process.

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There is a lot of information right here on ATL that would dissuade most people from applying to law school. But, since readers keep coming back to read these posts year after year and month after month, I have a hunch that there are a lot of you insisting on going ahead and applying to law school anyway. In which case, for those individuals, I want to share some insights about the right way to approach law school and the law school application process.

Articulate Your Reason & Goal

First, if you practice telling someone, “I plan to apply to law school,” you must be prepared to answer the follow up question, “Why?” State your career goal in a clear, concise sentence. Put it in writing. Struggle with the wording. Your goal can change, morph and adjust as you learn more about the law and about yourself, but you shouldn’t apply to law school until you can articulate what you hope to do and how a law degree will help you achieve it. For example, let’s say Pre-Law Person A comes up with this goal: “As the child of divorce, I want to be a family law attorney who helps couples act in the best interests of their children.”

Then, Pre-Law Person B comes up with this goal: “I majored in finance and worked on Wall Street, where I saw the need for companies to be aware of the ever-changing landscape of financial regulation and I want to help businesses navigate this.” Persons A and B will then make other decisions accordingly.

Choose A Law School Accordingly

Only apply to those law schools with track records of graduates who have accomplished goals similar to yours. Person B is probably going to need a law school that will funnel her to Biglaw, but Person A is more likely to desire a small-firm environment in a community where she has contacts and can build a practice. Person A probably doesn’t need to go to Columbia Law School, but person B very well might.

Look up the bios of attorneys in the community where you hope to live. Where did other family law attorneys attend law school? Where did the SEC attorneys and Biglaw M&A lawyers attend? Look especially for the attorneys who have graduated within the last 5 years. This will help you build your schools list. Of course, the next step will be evaluating whether you can get in to those schools, but that’s a whole different blog post.

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Know How You’ll Pay For It

If your student loan debt will outpace your salary (with a rule of thumb that you shouldn’t take out student loans in an amount more than your expected first year salary – ouch!), you should consider that schools may offer you scholarships, you may choose to live as cheaply as possible, etc. These are the choices that will impact the next 10 years of your life: after all, it’s hard to buy a house and support a family when you have a hefty student loan. It’s even harder to decide to be a stay at home parent. By attending a school where you qualify for scholarships or pay in-state tuition, you can make this choice a lot easier.

Do Well In Law School: Whatever This Means to You

Traditionally, success after law school largely depended on grades, class rank, and journal and moot court participation. Law schools are fighting this by not disclosing class ranks and adding law journals. But there are other ways to use your time wisely, and – depending on your stated career goal – perhaps on more worthwhile endeavors.

For example, you can engage with professors in your field, especially those adjunct faculty who teach for the fun of it and are actually out there in the world as practicing lawyers. You can interact with bloggers on the subjects you’re interested in, and you can contribute to these blogs and forums in a meaningful way. Maybe you’ll even find yourself some great internships by building relationships this way. You can even start your own blog and begin the process of branding yourself now.

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You can get to know your classmates, invest time in them, build trusting friendships by being the person who helps others out. Believe in karma. Attend meetings for more than just the free pizza.

Think about who you would want your very first client to be, and who would be able to refer you to that person. If you’re our future family law attorney, maybe it would be another family law attorney who has a conflict, or maybe it would be an accountant who works on personal income taxes since people often seek referrals from other professionals. Think outside the law box: if you want to do business law, reach out to entrepreneur groups.

Go For It, Or Don’t Bother

If you’re going to do law school, prepare to hustle the whole way through. Don’t just ride it out with your highlighter and commercial outlines. Sink your teeth in. Roll up your sleeves. (Insert your own “commit” metaphor here). See every day as one in which you can build yourself up for your future career. That will make you less likely to expect someone to just hand you a job with your diploma, and more likely to actually have a job when you get your diploma.

Ann K. Levine is a law school admission consultant and owner of LawSchoolExpert.com. She is the author of The Law School Admission Game: Play Like an Expert (affiliate link) and The Law School Decision Game: A Playbook for Prospective Lawyers (affiliate link).

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