Is it worth going?

RazorSharpBanana

I have some T30 acceptances already and one of them gave me full tuition+stipend. I was thrilled when I got the offer– it's in a region where I want to work, and I can graduate almost debt-free. It looked like an amazing deal at the time, but after a month of scrolling the web, my excitement is gone.

I'm getting negative vibes from online fora about that school, along with every other regional school. Looking around on Reddit/TLS, people are saying mean things about law schools outside the T20– terminally low salaries, high risk of unemployment, no prospect for career advancement, and being "stuck" in that region "for the rest of my life". Based on these posts, it looks like no one should go to law school if it's not a T20 or a T14 school. Is what they're saying true? Should I throw an ED app to a T14?

Career-wise, I don't want biglaw/federal clerkship. I'm thinking about criminal defense for a little while, and then going into politics in some legal capacity (e.g. legal advisor for a public official, or running for office myself). Is a prestigious degree necessary to make that happen?

noonawoon

You can definitely have a successful career with a non-T14 degree. I think something to keep in mind is you might have to hustle a little harder in law school for it. For example, someone who goes to Emory posted on reddit how you can't get an interview with the office of career services there unless you are in the top 1/3 of the class. Everyone else (aka the majority of the class) has to do their own job hunting on Indeed, Glassdoor, cold emailing law firms, etc. And their office of career services is apparently not the best (this is school-specific, maybe other T30 places are better). Then I'd compare this to a UVA student on a webinar who said he feels comfortable being a median student and knowing he'll still get the job he wants, and it's basically unheard of for a UVA student to not get a job they want because of class rank or whatever.

So essentially, if you are at a higher ranked school, you will have a lot more success (or at least, easier to achieve success) in job hunting because you won't have to worry about your law school GPA/rank being "good" enough to get law firm interviews. People worry about this because law school is graded on a curve and basically everyone there is smart and talented. A "median" student in law school isn't in the top 1/3 but they're probably still incredibly smart.

Full-tuition and stipend offers in the T30 sound pretty excellent though. I think a lot of the worry about job prospects outside T14 is related to debt and not being able to repay it if you can't get a job that pays well enough. If you take debt out of the equation, I think you'd have a lot less to worry about.

noonawoon

Also you can look up employment stats for the specific schools you are interested in and talk to current students! A lot of employment stats might just be self-selection (being "stuck" in a region) so that's where it'd be helpful to try to talk to current students. Ask them what steps they have to take to get a job outside the current market and how much their school helps them with that

lexxx745

@noonawoon said:
You can definitely have a successful career with a non-T14 degree. I think something to keep in mind is you might have to hustle a little harder in law school for it. For example, someone who goes to Emory posted on reddit how you can't get an interview with the office of career services there unless you are in the top 1/3 of the class. Everyone else (aka the majority of the class) has to do their own job hunting on Indeed, Glassdoor, cold emailing law firms, etc. And their office of career services is apparently not the best (this is school-specific, maybe other T30 places are better). Then I'd compare this to a UVA student on a webinar who said he feels comfortable being a median student and knowing he'll still get the job he wants, and it's basically unheard of for a UVA student to not get a job they want because of class rank or whatever.

So essentially, if you are at a higher ranked school, you will have a lot more success (or at least, easier to achieve success) in job hunting because you won't have to worry about your law school GPA/rank being "good" enough to get law firm interviews. People worry about this because law school is graded on a curve and basically everyone there is smart and talented. A "median" student in law school isn't in the top 1/3 but they're probably still incredibly smart.

Full-tuition and stipend offers in the T30 sound pretty excellent though. I think a lot of the worry about job prospects outside T14 is related to debt and not being able to repay it if you can't get a job that pays well enough. If you take debt out of the equation, I think you'd have a lot less to worry about.

perfectly said! for reference, my cousin graduated from GW and found a job in big law. However, she worked her ass off and was at the top of her class. She talked about how if you werent top 1/3 of the class, it was really hard to find a job in big law.

I think if you are already not considering big law/clerkship, rankings shouldnt be a huge deal. BUT, going outside the t14 will make it harder to find a job in another region. That's a given.

As far as ED, id stray against that. Unless you are perfectly find with 200k+ debt, dont do it.

I agree with noonawoon.
If you are OK with debt, then ED to T14 wouldnt hurt.

if you aren't ok with debt, dont ED no matter what.

if you dont want big law/clerkship, id for sure take the full tuition deal, unless regionality is a big thing to you. If you go outside t14, make sure you would at least be content with staying around where you go to law school.

VerdantZephyr

Coming from NC, I can tell you that if you look at top politicians/judges/lawyers in the state it is not Duke that dominates positions but UNC. They're only a few miles apart right in the middle of the state. If you do not mind being in the region of the unnamed school, and it sounds like you know that you actually want to be in a certain region, there is nothing to worry about. It is, presumably, one of the top schools in the region.

If you decide you want to move later on in your career the success and recommendations you come with from you employers/bosses will be more important for most jobs, especially those outside of BigLaw, than the school you went to. Schools like Iowa, UNC, Notre Dame, or George Washington also do place grads nationally as well as locally. The majority might be regional but they have a national footprint. It isn't like you are talking about a choice between Penn and Widener, you are still going to a very good school. Many people are pretentious online, and plenty of people that are T14 or bust are only that way because they are status oriented already. It is a well known fact that a fair number of people go into law because it is a prestigious career, indicating that prestige is something valued by many applicants. Plenty of the T14 or bust crowd will also be rejected from all their target schools. I don't say this to demean the T14 or bust crowd, and T14's have a lot to commend them besides prestige, I am applying to almost half of them, but there is far more emphasis on T14's online than there should be, particularly if clerkships/BigLaw are not a priority.

There is an excellent article from a while back on 7sage by someone that graduated from Emory and went on to be both an admissions officer and someone in charge of hiring for New York City. She has a lot of perspective on the issue that I think is valuable.

https://7sage.com/does-attending-a-t14-law-school-matter/

EagerestBeaver

Coming to you from a T30 school in the midwest with a scholarship that will allow me to graduate debt free. I cannot state strongly enough how freeing it is to not have to worry about debt hanging over me and the need to succeed hanging over me everyday. The biggest advantages of T14, as I understand it, is the big law placement and higher ratio of federal clerkships. If those two things are not your priority, then the gap narrows substantially. If this acceptance comes from a region you want to be and their employment placement is high in that area, you are in a great position. Are your options a little bit more narrow as opposed to a T14? Probably, yeah. Is it worth 150k to 200k and the knowledge that you have to plan your life around paying of those loans? Up to you. People online who are T14 or die are annoying. I was where you are about a year ago. You have a great option in front of you.

EveryCookCanGovern

I'm also going into Criminal Defense, got some acceptances from T14 schools this cycle but am seriously considering taking up full-ride offers from my local universities. If you're not going into Big Law then the T14 is definitely not necessary. Criminal defense will have you working as a PD for a few years until a firm is willing to invest in you or until you go solo, and PD work is always in demand everywhere in the country so you wont have to worry about employment. Where you went to school stops mattering really fast in the criminal defense market. Clients don't care if you went to Yale, It's about how good you are in court and how many cases you've won. Most of law school is theory to prepare you for the Bar, and won't improve your litigation skills. Only actual court practice will do that.

Also the general public skeeves criminal defense attorneys for defending murders, rapists, pedophiles, etc, despite the fact that they're defending the public's right to a fair a trial every time they do so. So it might not be a good idea politically to go from a criminal defense attorney to running for public office as it will be used against you, although it's still possible to win of course. If you want to run for office you will likely benefit more from the connections made at an elite institution in one of the T14.

I think you need to make a decisive decision about what you want to do, and depending on how you answer, that in itself will tell you what schools you should aim for.

TimeIsMoney

don't get caught up on the whole T-14 stuff. I know several very successful lawyers and judges who came from local schools. It's about connections and networking. Besides that, you have a full ride and stipend, really not much risk there. Don't overthink this, it's a great opportunity.

abryer6

Sometimes posts like that on the internet can be extremely discouraging and almost toxic (I'm guilty of reading them myself)! I am from NYC and have worked in multiple law firms in Manhattan and most of the attorneys there went to schools waaaay below T14 and are the most successful and smart people I know. There are associate's making six figures (at a small size firm) only a few years out of law school. It's what you make of it. In the grand scheme of things, graduating debt free and earning a salary a couple thousand dollars lower than someone coming out of a T14 school (which eventually you'll reach) is better than incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt making a few grand more. You have an amazing opportunity in front of you that I wouldn't give up because of a few posts online.

Good luck

noonawoon

@TimeIsMoney That's fair that you know successful lawyers from local schools, but for how many of these successful people from local schools are there equal or greater numbers of people who graduated from the same school underpaid, unemployed, or unable to find work in the field? OP has a full-ride and stipend at a T30 school, so I'm not speaking about them, but someone considering taking out loans for a T50/T100 school should definitely consider whether there will be a return on the degree and the loans. That's definitely not overthinking IMO Definitely always worth it to look at ABA required employment disclosures and speak to current/recent students about their experiences with things like employability and ability to find work in specific locations