For $50/Hr, You Can Help This Kid Ruin His Life (or Become a Lawyer)
It turns out that if you have extra time on your hands, you can hire out your services to 0Ls who want to apply to law school. About a week ago, a law school hopeful on Craigslist advertised that he'd be willing to pay $50 per hour for consulting services to get him into ... "cunny" law school.
Help Me Ruin My Life for $50/Hour. Any Takers?
Our guess is that this student is already working -- perhaps as a paralegal -- and is getting seduced into the idea that being able to append the letters "esq" after your name means guaranteed fame and success. As many a law graduate (and actual attorneys will say), be careful what you wish for. In fact, take the time to Google persons who regret ever having gone to law school. You'll find plenty who claim that law school ruined their lives.
Joe Patrice at Above the Law says it best. "Your transcript and LSAT more or less speak for themselves," and you have something to worry about if you can't write your own personal statement.
Patrice also had something to say about the student's goals in law schools. CUNY and NYLS are schools that don't have great brand cache -- especially not compared to Yale or Harvard. And for a lot of firms, that brand means a lot. BigLaw is a very exclusive club. Additionally, rankings had these schools fall below the top 100 in the U.S. News Rankings. Around this area, it's not uncommon for schools to lower standards in order to attract more applicants. CUNY and NYLS, for example, have their median LSAT scores around 152. For those of you who don't know, that score is ... not great.
If Ya Gotta Go ...
For students who are hell-bent on getting into law school, improving your LSAT is the most direct way to improve your chances. Shoot for at least 160. However, know that the LSAT opens the door, but as Brooklyn Law School President Nocholas Allard suggests, GPAs are much better indicators of how well you'll do in law school once you get there.
Related Resources:
- Act Now! (Inside Higher Ed)
- 2 Law Schools to Adopt ABA's LSAT Elimination Provision (FindLaw's Greedy Associates)
- Should You Go to the Very Best Law School You Can Get In? (FindLaw's Greedy Associates)