Fully agree with everything posted - just wanted to note that some T14 schools have generous loan assistance programs to help low-income graduates in public service fields pay back their law school debt. Examples include Harvard’s LIPP (https://hls.harvard.edu/sfs/lipp/) and UVa’s VLFP (FAQ's about the Virginia Loan Forgiveness Program).
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Yes, and there is also Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) which requires working for 10 years after graduation in a qualifying non-profit job, at which point the remainder of your loans are forgiven. It’s difficult to cross all of the T’s and dot all of the I’s to be eligible, but for someone who is dedicated to a public interest long-term career, it can be a financial lifesaver.
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More importantly, the T14 have generous merit aid. (well, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale are all need-based aid but the other 11 will pay big bucks for a high GPA and/or LSAT score).
Another reason why many students choose to apply after graduation from undergrad. Another semester of straight A’s can boost the GPA, and therefor tax-free merit money.
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Are you saying it’s easy to save money if one applies right after undergrad?
No, saying that applying once you have graduated and are working means that the law school adcoms will evaluate all 8 semesters of your college experience, not the 7 you will have if you apply senior year.
no it’s the math of calculating a GPA. One extra semester of grades, hopefully all 4.0 factored in the GPA calc for law school. A higher GPA and/or LSAT means more merit money.
(Other than the smaller Yale, Stanford and Chicago, admission is primarily based on two numbers: GPA & LSAT.)
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What are the good sources for a high school graduating Student explore more about Law careers during the Summer 24? MyD24 is very much interested in Law but sometimes she expresses that she likes Law but she doesn’t want to be in court something like that. I don’t know what she exactly means by that. I am looking for free summer programs that can explain her that Law is not just court, not everyone has to be in the court. I want her to understand there many other legal careers too.
Your D doesn’t need to figure out her ultimate career while she’s in high school!
Seriously. Just reading regularly (NY Times, WSJ, Financial Times, Economist) will highlight dozens, if not hundreds of lawyers who never appear in court.
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Maybe you can find something on line - or perhaps have your student write a “cold call” letter to some local law firms and ask.
Perhaps some hire for the summer…or allow shadowing.
I’m sure the types of law - from criminal to tax to environmental to everything - there’s likely something for everyone.
Likely more lists like this on line (these don’t seem free).
Also - when you get to colleges, many majors have law or law adjacent classes - like I had communication law. Sociology seems to have some, etc. Poli Sci too - maybe not about law work tehmselves but about the law.
9 Amazing Legal Programs and Law Internships for High School Students (prepscholar.com)
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Counterpoint. If you have a 4.0 already, there is zero chance an extra semester can increase your GPA and could quite literally only lower it.
I got almost full tuition in scholarships for law school, and I finished college in 5 semesters, and had applied after 4.
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I go back to this. Does your D24 like sitting in a room, reading and analyzing hundreds of pages of dense, really dry and (sometimes) boring text?
If not she may not like law school, especially the first year.
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When I was in grad school, I dated a Georgetown Law grad in Phoenix. She was a first year at a law firm.
She spent all her time in law libraries - reading, writing, and writing some more…late late nights.
That was 25 years ago. Maybe the world has changed with all the IT infrastructure.
Here’s a question for lawyers - besides things like Wills and Trusts being automated - how much of the “research” etc. needed can now be done via automated sources - or with Chat GPT and other things becoming more common - how impactful is that to the legal profession in terms of needing less people?
Is there a significant impact - or potential for those who graduate today or choose to go in four years from now?
fair point, but the OP does not have a 4.0.
btw: don’t forget, that LSAC computes A+'s as a 4.3, even your college does not. So, if you have some senior seminars that earn an A+… (I knew some professors that awarded an A+ for the course even tho the college policy was only to count that as a 4.0 in the college’s calc of GPA. Regardless, LSAC recomputes GPA’s based on their rules, and an A+ is a 4.3)
Yes!
Another thing that can help is working for Big Law firms during your summers to make some serious bank, even if you never end up working for one. Play your cards right with a clerkship and you might even be able to do that three summers, and then federal clerks make OK money too (particularly if you avoid super HCOL areas).
Of course the problem is these are in their own way selective ideas as well. But if you are very strategic about monetizing the credentials you likely need anyway, you can make these paths more viable.
I’d strongly suggest working whatever connections you have to see if you can get her some sort of summer job in a non-criminal/non-PI law firm (basically, nothing you might see advertising on a bus stop bench). Doesn’t have to be a fancy one. Doesn’t have to be a lot of pay, indeed could be no pay. But I really think there is no substitute for actually seeing what a law firm looks like from the inside.
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She could start out by just asking for an informational interview, in which she asks the attorney a bunch of questions about their career, what was law school like, what do they love about their job, what do they NOT like about the job, what advice would they have for somebody who’s interested in pursuing this type of career.
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My sister did this and lived on the cheap during the summer, saved up her summer paid internship earnings from Big Lawfirm and used that for all of her living expenses during 2nd and 3rd year of law school. Helped minimize loans a bit.
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There isn’t any line. At the tier 2/3 level, you should be choosing a law school based on geography/regional clout, merit money, and potentially your area of specialization if you have one. You can’t make any generalization about what the tier 3 schools lack compared to the tier 2s other than a few LSAT points.
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So, a cautionary tale, maybe? On picking majors and course loads.
I talked about it earlier in the '23 thread, but for posterity’s sake in this thread: Kiddo’s GPA after 1 semester at Bama is 3.8.
He is doing a double major in philosophy/poli sci and a double minor in Spanish and Blount honors, which is, at least in the first year, a brutal amount of seminar-style classes & mountains of writing.
I can’t see him getting a 4.0, maybe not in any semester, because Bama does the thing where an A- is 3.67. (I realize this is fairly normal, but it still dismays me.)
An A+ is 4.33, sure, but I’m not sure they’re handing those out like candy in these subjects.
Unfortunately, with his current degree path, he has no time for any easy courses to boost his GPA. The credit requirements for all 4 of the concentrations equal 90, and then his AP course credits are another 28, and graduation is 120, so 
GPA aside, it is amazingly good prep for the LSAT and law school. While I hope for his sake that there’s some closer examination of the course load when it comes to evaluating applications, I doubt it.
Anyway, this summer he has a paid internship with a state senator for our area of PA. Not law, but not McDonald’s either, so he’s happy.
As I’ve learned from many many years of watching our kids go through the process (two stepkids, two of my own), they do end up finding their way. There might be detours and compromise and some unhappiness, but it is life and there is value in all of it.
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Yeah, the “right answer” in terms of optimizing law school admissions is probably to drop one major and at least one minor.
But is that actually the right answer for life? Not the same question and it is their life to lead.
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