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Love and Law School: Should Schools Advertise Salacious Successes?

By William Peacock, Esq. on February 20, 2013 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Our favorite non-FindLaw blog, Above the Law, had a hilarious take on one school's advertising of a law school love story. The school presented the story of a couple that met during orientation and fell truly, madly, deeply in love. ATL's Staci Zaretsky took issue with the law school, stating, "[W]e're completely "gobsmacked" that a law school would attempt to prey upon people's wallets vis-à-vis their lonely hearts."

But did the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's William H. Bowen School of Law really do anything wrong?

All other things being equal, isn't a school's social scene an important factor when deciding where to go?

For example, while UC Hastings and Washington and Lee may be similarly ranked, at one school you'll hurdle people with heroin needles in their arms on the way to class, shank a fellow student over a Federal Reporter, and spend three years in pressure-filled hell.

At W&L, we played flag football on the law school lawn while killing kegs. We also witnessed love stories that rivaled those famous fictitious flames conjured up by Shakespeare himself.

FindLaw has Hastings grads. It also has a W&L grad. We all ended up in the same place. While they have memories of over-competitiveness and a high cost of living, we had cow-tipping, Woods Creek Weasels' Hockey, and house parties.

The point is, nearly no one entering law school today is guaranteed stellar employment prospects, (unless, of course, his or her daddy is a partner in BigLaw). If you have a choice between two schools with similar employment prospects, rankings, and financial aid packages, lifestyle can be the perfect tiebreaker.

If a school chooses to advertise its lifestyle vis-à-vis an engaged couple that met through orientation, Godspeed. It's better to have loved in Little Rock than to have not loved at all.

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