Choosing a school and scholarships

esteerose

Which one do you guys look at, US News? There's that other site, "law-schools.startclass.com".

What are you looking at to decide which is best, bar passage rate? or employment rate?

Also, I've been offered some scholarships to local and lower ranked schools. They are not in the region that i want to live. How hard is it to move right after going to law school? Or is it a better choice to forfeit the scholarships and go to the higher-ranked schools in the State that I want to move? PS. my tuition is paid by the VA so the scholarship money would be extra money.

nessa.k13.0

Hi Esteerose!

The only ranking I look at/follow is U.S News. For more specific stats like employment rate etc, I like to look at the specific law school's site. (I do look at a Vault too -law firm ranking type site).

From what I know, moving to another state without a specific job opportunity could be tough---especially because the market is saturated with lawyers. I would go to the higher ranked school (provided you like the school etc). I think it's good to consider going to the school in your state that will give you the best shot possible at getting hired post grad.

Congrats on your acceptances!

stgl1230

Hey, congrats on your scholarships and acceptances!

Like Nessa said, US News is the most important law school ranking system. That's not to say that start class doesn't have good information, but for an "official" ranking, everything is US News.

You're going to want a school with high bar passage rates and employment rates, period. Not one or the other. Also, you're going to want to make sure that employment stats are relevant to you - if you decide to attend a school with 100% employment ranking, but it's 100% to big law and you want to do PI, that's maybe not the best fit for you. The only caveat I would add is that employment numbers between big law, PI, etc do fluctuate from year to year quite a bit because of self selection. So if you're picking between something like, Berkeley and Michigan, where BL numbers and PI numbers are pretty close, you don't need to necessarily choose Michigan because their PI numbers were higher last year. They're going to fluctuate all the time, but within a reasonable margin.

I think moving right after law school is hard. For people interested in working for law firms, often times where you end up practicing right after law school is dependent upon your summer jobs. So if you can't secure a summer job in your target market, you're likely to have a difficult time getting a regular full-time job there too. Also, if you're looking at schools outside the T14, it's even harder to find jobs without connections.

I would absolutely pass on scholarships to lower ranked schools. Attend a higher-ranked school where you want to practice. I would suggest looking at the websites of law firms in the city you want to live and see where their associates/partners went to school. Good luck!!

ETA: check which firms were at each school's OCI. Keep in mind, for lower ranked schools, many firms will only interview, like the top 5% of the class. At higher ranked schools they will interview more.