Categories: Advice, Career, Law School Resume Tips, Practicing Law, Salary Trends
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On Wednesday I’ll be hosting a Blog Talk Radio Show with advice for getting hired as a rookie attorney. Whether you’re about to graduate from law school or you haven’t even started yet, I promise you insights from people responsible for hiring. They will be sharing their suggestions for maximizing your chances of finding a good job after graduation. Please tune in live – you’ll be able to chat questions and add to the discussion. Here is the link to “Advice for Getting Hired as a Rookie Attorney.” Spread the word!
Here’s an article I wrote about the disgruntled Boston College Law Grad who asked for his tuition money back.
Here’s a link to a great article about all the buzz with trends in legal hiring.
Categories: Advice, Financing a Legal Education, Salary Trends, Scholarships
Tags: cost of law school, financial aid for law school, law school debt, law school tuition
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I know this isn’t my usual style post, but I have a brilliant idea – not for law applicants, but for the law school administrator who may be secretly reading this blog.
Lower Tuition.
If you’re a private school with a considerable endowment and you’ve been trying to break into the top 50 or top 20 or top 10 for a while, seriously discount tuition.
Applications would flood in. Rankings would soar. Students would be fighting to get in, and wouldn’t be negotiating scholarships. You could actually avoid playing the rankings game and still benefit from the rankings game. You’d get better students knocking on your door. People submitting deposits would be more likely to actually attend. Students would be less disgruntled, and might actually have warm and fuzzy feelings about the school upon becoming alumni.
To the law school applicants out there – to me, more than ever, choosing a law school is about money. It’s a financial decision, and one that will impact a law student’s life for years and years and years to come. I’m 35 and I make a very nice living, but it’s still a 5-year goal for me to pay off my student loans. I chose a private school (and one I felt offered a fantastic education, by the way) instead of a public school. I’m able to pay my loans, and 10 years post-graduation I really don’t feel the payments, but that wasn’t always the case.
I was in line for BigLaw jobs, and clerked for BigLaw, but BigLaw didn’t agree with me. Instead, I took a job offering $35,000/year. A year later my salary doubled, and it continually grew from there. I share this information with my readers because I want you to remember that the $160,000 or even $100,000/year job probably isn’t going to be there for you when you graduate from law school. You need to make decisions right now that prepare you to start making $50,000 and then going up from there. It will go up, and you will have to hustle for every salary increase and bonus, but being a lawyer is hard work. Know that going into it.
Someone gave me sage advice (too late) when I was in law school: “If you live like you’re a lawyer while you’re in law school, you’ll live like a student when you get out.”
Some helpful and interesting links:
The Financial Aid Blog at CUA
The Law School Debt Trap
Loan Thread
Tuition Secret: It Pays to Be Above Average (read the comments on this one!)
Categories: Career, Financing a Legal Education, Law Careers, Salary Trends
Tags: law career, law school student loan debt, tuition debt
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As if you didn’t already know that it’s better to keep student loan debt under control, here’s an article pointing to the realities of pay trends for BigLaw Jobs.
Categories: Advice, Career, Law Careers, Law School Admission Trends, Law School Location; Law School Rankings, Reasons for Going to Law School, Salary Trends
Tags: law school and the economy
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Two stories of note today for law school applicants/hopefuls in the WSJ:
New loan from Sallie Mae.
Best Defense? Seeking a Haven in Law School
Applications are up as people hide out from the economy in law school. The best schools are becoming even more competitive and this article offers some tips for making yourself more competitive as a law school graduate.
Categories: Law School Rankings, Salary Trends
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Here are 2 more posts I came across today:
U.S. News provided some insight into salary and specialization trends.
Here is one George Washington University Law student’s take on the important considerations in rankings.
Ann K. Levine, Esq., former director of law school admissions for two ABA approved law schools, is a law school admission consultant and owner of Law School Expert,
