Whether you work on a multibillion dollar deal or are working to exonerate someone who is wrongly accused of a crime, you will be tasked with an immense responsibility as well as opportunity to zealously advocate for your client. In those times, one may feel like they are not enough or worthy of the task. You need to be able to give a good faith effort in whatever you do as a lawyer and not let your client nor your opposing counsel see your imposter syndrome , even if you feel it. Essentially, you need to fake it till you make it in terms of the confidence. Take faith in yourself, studying for the LSAT over months and years is no simple task and many give up.

Unless you goals in academia or unicorn PI, stick with michigan. Even if you enjoy law, servicing a six figure loan is never fun and can take a serious toll on ones life.

Despite whether or not he is urm, he is quite an inspiration. I came from a similar place as him and while I am sure I didnt make as much improvement, i realize how difficult it is to make a 20 plus improvement coming from a low diagnostic. Like him, there were many times where I doubted my skills and where my friends thought I should just apply. I was fortunate to have parents, especially my father, who motivated me to strive for my best on this exam and retake as necessary. He was the one who first told me that an exam like this one will probably take at least a good year. Enough about me. @ ignore the all the comments about URM. This story overcoming plateaus through guided and diligent practice should not be overlooked by comments that appear to undermine one's achievements by mentioning urm status

Retake and reapply is nor brainer. Even for good schools that have good outcomes, fit matters alot because you want and need to be able to do your best work

Great job! You have been having an awesome cycle!!

BTS

Signed my first apartment lease, which will be near by the law school. Also came back from visiting Korea and now planning 0L prep!

Especially with cycles becoming more competitive, you should be focused on the LSAT. The only hypothetical you should think about is how can I attack that oddball game or reading comprehension passage. Take things step by step. As this cycle has proven, there are no gurantees. And the best thing you can do is just focus on mastering the LSAT. Come back to us after you get a score on file if you have questions on which schools to choose.

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Gaps aren't good, but they're not going to make or break you either. I recommend that you fill your resume with something, anything. I spoke with the admissions reps from a few T14 schools and they all said the same thing - "we don't care what you do, just do something"

Try to fill your time with something that is meaningful to you and looks good on a resume. This can be volunteering for like 10-20 hours a week or working a part time job.

wait is this true? i'm under the impression that law schools don't care THAT much about gaps ... especially for newly grads... instead they care about your LSAT and GPA.

For example, if someone takes a year off to study full time on the LSAT and ends up getting a 180, yea there will be a gap of 1 year but i would assume most law schools know the LSAT is hard and that some people even spend some amount of time to study for it full time.

In addition, studying full time for a year and getting a 180 is WAY better in my opinion than perhaps finding a 9-5 job as a paralegal for one year and studying part-time -- only to score like a 165 bc your job was too demanding and took away time from LSAT prep.

thoughts?

I had over a year gap but it didnt seem to effect my cycle. That being said, i didnt really apply to t14 schools besides a couple, and they were a long shot already based on my numbers

Anecdotal. But i had numerous professors who graduated from harvard law but none practice law. They all have great jobs in think tanks but their aversion for the law probably speaks to their personality/lack of fit rather than the school itself. Harvard law is great if you want the prestigious PI jobs or get into academia. Keep in mind that six figure loans can pose a life altering burden. If you have the skills to get into harvard, you probably got into a lower t14 with money, which may be a better option depending on your risk aversion. Even though harvard has a nontraditional grading scheme, the high honors, honors, pass system lends itself to its own competition for the competive PI jobs as well as biglaw.

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Look up their generic admissions email address and say

"I am withdrawing my application from consideration. I sincerely appreciate the offer and wish the law school all the best.

Sincerely,

John Smith

LSAC #"

I needed this template. Thank you

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@ I'm considering it, especially since I still performed at the low end of my PT range on my retake and think I could hit 175+ in June. The lower T14 I did get into offered me $$$ and is highly ranked in my area of interest though, so I may commit and attend even though it isn't really my first choice.

Hmm. Since you got money at a T14, you cant go wrong. There is always is a risk of not improving, so attending this upcoming year will still be good too.

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Are you KJD?

Kind of. I graduated last spring, but don't have any full-time work experience (just lots of part-time and volunteering).

Are you planning to take time off? Build up the resume and save money before reapplying? @

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I'm a bit late to this party :) As others have said, it's just speculation. We've been lucky three years in a row so maybe this is the year our luck runs out...I do wonder though (and maybe it is helpful), where is the supporting evidence that next cycle will be up or more competitive, beyond the one piece that this cycle was? We looked under a lot of rocks and didn't found that much, other than the early cycle reapplicants should be up.

Why exactly did you think this cycle would be more competitive? I know you didn't get it perfect. For example, I think you said that admissions standards would remain about the same because schools would use the extra LSAT takers to boost class size. Even if they are boosting class size, I think it is clear that it has become more competitive.

Nonetheless, you did say ahead of time that we would have more applicants and I believe also forecasted that the growth would be concentrated among high scoring applicants. What was the basis for that prediction? Is it supported by how things actually turned out?

My main concerns with predicting that it will regress toward the mean are the following.

I don't think that random chance can be the source of this big of a bump. I think statistics basically bares that out.

I doubt year to year fluctuations bouncing up and down every other year can be the source of this big a bump either. You would know the normal size of these effects better than me, but I doubt that they are this big.

I don't think a Trump bump explained the rise since a Trump bump wouldn't be concentrated among 175+ scorers. Anti-Trump supporters might be slightly smarter than the average, but not that much.

Possible alternative explanations:

The economy. Maybe for some reason it is becoming harder for highly talented young people immediately out or recently out of college in non-stem fields to get good jobs or advance. This would make law school more appealing to them. This would only hold for those who could score highly on the LSAT because people don't want to trade bad economic options for debt with bad economic options and the Top Schools place the best in things like Big Law. (I don't know if this economic change would be a one cycle thing or longer.)

The internet: Maybe the ultimate effect of scamblogging, the internet, TLS/Law school life/reddit/7sage has not just been to convince people that lower ranked law schools are bad economic options. Maybe it has also convinced a lot of people that the Top 14 or 13 or whatever are a relatively solid route to economic prosperity through big law or meaningful employment through their LRAPs. In this case scoring highly on the LSAT which is an increasingly straight forward process using the internet is seen as the surest way to a good job. (This would seem to be a permanent change)

Finally, maybe it is some sort of combination of factors. For example it could be a Trump bump making more people want to apply to law school across the board combined with research on the internet being easier and showing clearly that unless you could get a high LSAT score it wasn't worth it. (In this case the concentration of high LSAT scores may last, but may be being magnified by higher current interest in law). I'm a little skeptical of this though. I don't see any compelling reason why people motivated by an increased interest in law because of Trump would be more likely than others to heed the advice of the internet not to go unless you can get into a Top 14.

TLDR:

We don't know what is going to happen. It seems rather strange to just close our eyes and pretend that the current cycle didn't happen when predicting the next one. I think the most natural prediction in the absense of a compelling rational is to assume the next cycle will be similar to the current one. I also think medians will probably generally keep rising until law becomes clearly and dramatically less desireable as a profession again like it did for a while after the recession when schools in the Top 14 were struggling to place students in jobs.

+1 to this explanation. This is completely anecdotal but most of my peers who majored in humanities are attending grad school. My STEM peers all have decent jobs and dont see the need for grad school. Some even questioned my decision to attend law school haha

I read some research articles that said personality types tend to be inaccurate since they rely upon generalizations that can apply to anyone depending on the context

Mobility, increased access to competitive jobs and solid alumni network. A T14 degree is neither sufficient nor necessary for a rewarding legal career but it is very useful.

Harvey specter

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For Big Law the top 14 and the top 6 or so in particular are unrivaled. Market paying Big Law jobs in New York the biggest market pay $180,000 a year to start and go up from there. In lower cost of living cities Big Law pays a little less, but probably affords a better quality of life. Chances of getting those jobs are usually higher than 50/50 in the Top 14 and quickly drop off afterwards. In the Top 6 or so almost everyone who wants Big Law gets it. However, Big Law itself isn't a guarantee of job security. About 50 percent make it through the first 3 years and at least 90 percent are pushed out before partnership decisions are made. Usually they give you some time to search for a job and it is often easier to find a job with a couple years of Big Law experience. So if you get this option, you better pay back debt and save fast while you can.

The interesting part is usually deciding whether to go to a lower ranked school with a substantial scholarship or a higher ranked school with better odds at Big Law.

For most people best to worse case is going to be Get Big Law with minimal debt, Get Big Law with Big Debt, Miss Big Law with minimal debt, miss Big Law with Big Debt. So it's going to depend on what you value. If you just want to ensure you get through law school into a legal job without debt you take the scholarship. If you want to maximize money you can either gamble one way going deeply into debt for a great shot at Big Law or the other way hoping for Big Law without the debt with a higher risk of not getting Big Law.

I'm strongly debt adverse so I choose a scholarship at a mid Top 14 over acceptances in the Top 6. I also don't care that much about Big Law. I see it as a nice safe way to get a job and know I have it if I get good grades(Big Law hires for the second summer jobs at the end of your first summer mainly on first year grades and school ranking and then keeps most of the second summer people for good), a way to get good training, and a way to improve my financial position before they inevitably kick me to the curb and I start doing whatever I want to taking whatever job I want to/can get hired for regardless of pay while using my savings from Big Law growing in the stock market as a retirement plan. I figure I'll try to use my law degree to do at least as much good as I figure I did bad in Big Law. After that if I like what I'm doing I'll keep doing it, but if not I'm free to do anything that keeps me fed and insured while my retirement saving grows(PhD, Peace Corps, open a store selling Petoskey Stones, work at a Taco Bell or a Waffle House, Juggle on the streets, save up a little during the winter and hike the Appalachian or Pacific Coast Trail, become a stay at home parent, go back to school and get certified as a high school teacher, tutor the LSAT or Econ, work for a political campaign, ect.) If I miss Big Law, then I skip right to step two and worry a little more about my salary and saving up for my retirement and therefore probably stay a lawyer longer hopefully with some sort of government job(probably state or local) even if I turn out to not like it, but don't have to dedicate a few years of my life to working long hours for a Big Firm working for Big Corporations.

But with the big picture in mind we still need to go one step at a time. For me that is the first year of law school. For you it is deciding if you want Law as a career and if you do then studying for and taking the LSAT. If you can crack 170 you'll probably have a decent shot at the Top 14 accepting you or a full scholarship at schools like Washington University in St Louis and Vanderbilt. If you can't get into the Top 14, I'd probably mostly focus on minimizing debt rather than chasing Big Law since outside the Top 14 the chance of Big Law isn't worth the debt of law school at full cost to most.

190k now

I just want there to be Big Law firms that are still hiring when I get out of law school. Haven't they ever considered cutting back so they will be able to weather a future recession? Expansions don't last forever.

I recall reading an article stating that biglaw firms have restructured to better weather recessions.

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For Big Law the top 14 and the top 6 or so in particular are unrivaled. Market paying Big Law jobs in New York the biggest market pay $180,000 a year to start and go up from there. In lower cost of living cities Big Law pays a little less, but probably affords a better quality of life. Chances of getting those jobs are usually higher than 50/50 in the Top 14 and quickly drop off afterwards. In the Top 6 or so almost everyone who wants Big Law gets it. However, Big Law itself isn't a guarantee of job security. About 50 percent make it through the first 3 years and at least 90 percent are pushed out before partnership decisions are made. Usually they give you some time to search for a job and it is often easier to find a job with a couple years of Big Law experience. So if you get this option, you better pay back debt and save fast while you can.

The interesting part is usually deciding whether to go to a lower ranked school with a substantial scholarship or a higher ranked school with better odds at Big Law.

For most people best to worse case is going to be Get Big Law with minimal debt, Get Big Law with Big Debt, Miss Big Law with minimal debt, miss Big Law with Big Debt. So it's going to depend on what you value. If you just want to ensure you get through law school into a legal job without debt you take the scholarship. If you want to maximize money you can either gamble one way going deeply into debt for a great shot at Big Law or the other way hoping for Big Law without the debt with a higher risk of not getting Big Law.

I'm strongly debt adverse so I choose a scholarship at a mid Top 14 over acceptances in the Top 6. I also don't care that much about Big Law. I see it as a nice safe way to get a job and know I have it if I get good grades(Big Law hires for the second summer jobs at the end of your first summer mainly on first year grades and school ranking and then keeps most of the second summer people for good), a way to get good training, and a way to improve my financial position before they inevitably kick me to the curb and I start doing whatever I want to taking whatever job I want to/can get hired for regardless of pay while using my savings from Big Law growing in the stock market as a retirement plan. I figure I'll try to use my law degree to do at least as much good as I figure I did bad in Big Law. After that if I like what I'm doing I'll keep doing it, but if not I'm free to do anything that keeps me fed and insured while my retirement saving grows(PhD, Peace Corps, open a store selling Petoskey Stones, work at a Taco Bell or a Waffle House, Juggle on the streets, save up a little during the winter and hike the Appalachian or Pacific Coast Trail, become a stay at home parent, go back to school and get certified as a high school teacher, tutor the LSAT or Econ, work for a political campaign, ect.) If I miss Big Law, then I skip right to step two and worry a little more about my salary and saving up for my retirement and therefore probably stay a lawyer longer hopefully with some sort of government job(probably state or local) even if I turn out to not like it, but don't have to dedicate a few years of my life to working long hours for a Big Firm working for Big Corporations.

But with the big picture in mind we still need to go one step at a time. For me that is the first year of law school. For you it is deciding if you want Law as a career and if you do then studying for and taking the LSAT. If you can crack 170 you'll probably have a decent shot at the Top 14 accepting you or a full scholarship at schools like Washington University in St Louis and Vanderbilt. If you can't get into the Top 14, I'd probably mostly focus on minimizing debt rather than chasing Big Law since outside the Top 14 the chance of Big Law isn't worth the debt of law school at full cost to most.

190k now

Suffer now so you can live like a king later. Also I actually read that trial lawyers are the most depressed lawyers. Think about it, losing a case can mean a life sentence for the person you are defending. The stakes are surely high in biglaw but you dont often arent dealing with life changing outcomes unless you are in a litigation group.

Saw your post on reddit. You can retake

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Thanks for posting this!

I'm really excited to see schools like Temple University kinda sorta up there in terms of employment outcomes.. Even though my dream is to go T14, schools like Temple are probably a more realistic expectation due to my less than stellar GPA. Not to mention, Temple offers some pretty solid financial aid. Given these ATL rankings, I'll definitely be applying to Temple this fall! Sad to see UC Irvine absent from this list despite their alluring USNWR ranking strides...

For sure part of the problem with UCI here is just how new they are. Part of the rankings formula here includes how many alums are judges and number of Supreme Court clerks. Not enough history to have anything in those areas.

ATL rankings are based on schools that they claim have national reach. Im presuming that irvine is absent because ATL doesnt think UCI has national reach.

I don't think that's the issue. I don't think they pick and choose schools to rank. The way their formula is calculated though, it would make UCI a lot lower. 30% of their scoring is "quality jobs", which ATL defines as biglaw and federal clerkships. I get the reasoning for that; those positions create the most lucrative careers. But UCI has significant PI/government placement. 20% of their grads went into those areas, which would be a big hit in this ranking formula. Also as I mentioned earlier, they weight 5% each on SCOTUS clerks and federal judgeships. UCI doesn't have the history there to produce those right now.

As for their biglaw numbers being low, UCLA and USC take most of those positions in the area. I wouldn't be surprised if UCI starts going up in those over the next 5-10 years, but it takes a while to build a reputation and carve out their place.

I believe ATL had that reasoning on the link, that the reason why certain schools didnt show up was because a lack of national reach. You do bring up good points though.

Not necessary but incredibly useful in case u want to practice in a different area of law and also for the alumni network

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Thanks for posting this!

I'm really excited to see schools like Temple University kinda sorta up there in terms of employment outcomes.. Even though my dream is to go T14, schools like Temple are probably a more realistic expectation due to my less than stellar GPA. Not to mention, Temple offers some pretty solid financial aid. Given these ATL rankings, I'll definitely be applying to Temple this fall! Sad to see UC Irvine absent from this list despite their alluring USNWR ranking strides...

For sure part of the problem with UCI here is just how new they are. Part of the rankings formula here includes how many alums are judges and number of Supreme Court clerks. Not enough history to have anything in those areas.

ATL rankings are based on schools that they claim have national reach. Im presuming that irvine is absent because ATL doesnt think UCI has national reach.

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How true do you think this mention is from the article?:

"It’s hard for me to look at these numbers and not see the invisible hand of #MAGA supremacy at play. As Trump and McConnell take over the federal judiciary, it’s interesting to me that more people from Chicago and UVA and Duke are getting clerkships, while fewer people from Harvard and Yale are. It could be a one-year blip… it could be a 25-year blip if the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation continue to have their way."

It could also be true that more people are deciding to opt for biglaw to service their debts. Especially with many biglaw firms paying a base salary of 180k, many are seeing that the trade off of losing that years worth of income isnt worth doing clerkships for.