Vital advice about the collapsing employment situation
With the economy in the tank, it is more critical than ever for prospective law students to meet the requirements for admission to a top-quality law school. Because of the implosion of the overall employment situation, law schools are seeing a profusion of applications.
Law schools can be (and are) pickier about their precise law school requirements than they have ever been in recent memory.
At the same time, the employment situation for lawyers is horrible. Law firms are exhibiting higher degrees of snobbery in the hiring process than they have exhibited in recent history.
When I graduated, during the late 1990s technology boom, which was a incredible day, the average starting salary for members of my class in electrical engineering was $50,000.00. Yes, this was long ago. So, there was some real risk that I was about to spend 3 years of my life and a small fortune for a graduate education that was less valuable than the existing degree that I already had. Fully a third of the licensed attorneys in Texas do something other than practice law. There just isn’t enough legal business to go around.
For every kid making $165,000.00 a year straight out of school, there are 10 new lawyers making $40,000.00 per year. Now, if you have an English degree, you may here $40,000 per year and think, “Wow, that’s a huge step up!” But wait, that $40,000 per year is after you sink $100k in loans and lose the opportunity to make a respectable wage during the years that you are in law school. Going $100k into debt for a $40k/year job is not a good decision. You don’t need a business degree to see that this one is backward.
The law is two career ladders. If you’re lucky, and you get good grades at a good school, you can come out making $150k/year.
The difference between being well-prepared and turning your life into a living Hell is going to a well-ranked law school. The difference between getting into a good law school and having to accept a bad law school is your performance relative to the law school admission requirements. They are:
* Your LSAT score
* Your Undergraduate GPA
* Your Race
* Your Admissions Essays
* Your Letters of Recommendation
* Your Resume (this means everything else)
* Your string pulls
Now, there are some of these factors that you can, in fact, control. And there are some that you can’t manipulate. Your goal needs to be to concentrate on the factors that you can adjust in a way that changes the outcome.
For advice on how to do just that, you’re welcome to visit: http://www.lawschoolrequiements.org.
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