UMass Pre-Law Advising

The primary purpose of law school is to train lawyers — that seems to make sense. But recent data indicate that a surprising number of law school graduates do not end up practicing law straight out of school. Prof. Brian Tamanaha, who writes frequently about legal education, portrays these numbers in stark fashion:

[F]or the class of 2009 (nine months after graduation), at 30 law schools, only 50 percent or fewer of the graduates obtained jobs as lawyers. At nearly 90 law schools, one-third or more of graduates did not land jobs as lawyers nine months after graduation.

Click through for more elaboration on the numbers, as well as a list of the schools with the lowest lawyer-employment rates.  (Prof. Tamanaha based his analysis on number provided by Law School Transparency, which in turn got the numbers from US News);  Prof. Tamanaha casts this situation as a failure of the law schools to adequately place their students in the kinds of jobs for which they went to law school.  He makes the very reasonable assumption that students attend law school solely to become lawyers.

In the comments to the blog post, several people (including myself) question this assumption, but his basic point is valid: far fewer law grads become lawyers than most people assume.  Those who don’t become lawyers fall into three categories: those who never intended to become lawyers, but went to law school for another purpose; those who initially thought they’d be lawyers, but changed their minds while in school; and those who would like to be lawyers, but can’t find work in the field.  The critical (and unanswered) question is how many people fall into each of these groups?

Prof. Tamanaha assumes that those who can’t find work are the biggest group, and there are many reasons to agree with him.  Without doubt, we know the job market for new lawyers is not as good as it once was.  But just how many law grads are still actively looking for lawyer work nine months after graduation remains an open question.

I asked representatives of two of the schools listed in Prof. Tamanaha’s post — New England Law / Boston, and Western New England University School of Law — to respond to the report, since they are such popular schools for UMass students and alumni.

Michelle L’Etoile, the Director of Admissions at New England, had this to say:

·       While the legal employment market has been challenging for several years, it is important to remember that the worldwide financial crisis has impacted almost every sector of the economy, and hiring numbers are down in almost all fields.

·       Employers who hire New England Law graduates report a very high level of satisfaction with their training and skill level.  New England Law graduates are well-prepared for the work place, as evidenced by the July 2010 bar pass rate of 94% and the extensive practical skills experience most have during law school.

·       Not all individuals who graduate from law school intend or want to practice law.  Jobs for which a J.D. is the preferred degree and where the work is connected to the legal field are a good match for many graduates.

·       New England Law is very aggressive in building connections with employers and supporting its graduates in finding employment.  It is the only law school in Boston to offer its graduating class complimentary memberships to the Boston Bar Association to assist with their networking.

·       For the Class of 2009, 63.7% of graduates were in jobs that require or rely on their law school training.  Of these, 52.9% were employed in bar passage-required jobs (e.g. practicing attorneys, law clerks), and 10.8% were in J.D.-preferred jobs (e.g. accounting firm, management consulting firm, or law school or law firm administration).  An additional 7.1% were in other professional jobs, in which their legal training may be an asset.

·       We anticipate that as the overall economy improves, more job openings that require bar passage or rely on legal training will become available.

·       Increased transparency in reporting employment data and claims is an important goal for legal education.  With that information available, it is the responsibility of each prospective student to determine whether law school is a good career decision.

Prof. William Childs, the Associate Dean for External Affairs at Western New England responded as follows:

The data is what it is, and we pride ourselves on providing our outcomes in a straightforward way.  You can in fact see the full look at our 2010 data at:

http://www1.wne.edu/assets/14/Employment_Stats_2010.pdf

We wish it was a better picture for our grads and for grads of law schools all over the country, but we think it’s important to provide that information (and have done so for several years).

A couple of comments on the post itself.  First, it’s of course not entirely true that everyone who attends law school does so to become a lawyer.  Some students (including some I’ve had) come in with the plan of getting the background to be helpful in an already-existing career (insurance, etc.).  Others decide while in law school to go another route.  For those students, law school was a benefit, not a disappointment.  But certainly, more of our graduates want and need jobs than have them.

Second, I’ll observe that we already did exactly what he suggests immediately after the data — we intentionally reduced (significantly) the entering class and expect to continue to have smaller classes for the foreseeable future.

I expect you already give your students the advice I’d give: don’t go to law school because you can’t think of something else to do.  Go only if you really want to be a lawyer (or have another purpose for that degree).  Examine the finances carefully — remember that most schools have robust scholarship programs (including ours), and that there are a lot of income-based repayment options.  But also remember that law is a lifelong career, and the JD is relevant not just nine months after graduation, but for the rest of your life.  We do firmly believe the market will turn around.

So, as I’ve urged you before, look at these numbers, take them seriously, but also inquire further — of the law schools themselves, and of new watchdog groups like Law School Transparency. Research this decision to go to law school the best that you are able.

UPDATE: For more of the conversation about transparency, check out the UMass Pre-Law Advising Facebook page.

Monday, September 26th, 2:00pm
E23 Machmer

Interested in immigration and/or family law?  Come meet with UMass alumni-lawyer Sean Chen (Communication ’03, Suffolk Law School) in an informal talk about legal careers, immigration and family law, and more.  Light refreshments will be served.

1. LSAT prep. These last few weeks are critical, and study and practice for the LSAT must remain your number one priority.  (But don’t forget to taper during that last week — no practice tests after 9/27!)  If you haven’t taken a full-length timed practice test yet, you’re behind and you should do so immediately.  Remember that you want the entire test experience to be very familiar to you when you walk in the door on October 1st. If you’re considering rescheduling until December, let’s talk — email me for an appointment so we can discuss your options.

2. Get some things off your plate and onto someone else’s. In particular, get your recommenders working on your letters of recommendation and get your transcript request into the Registrar’s office. (IMPORTANT: You CANNOT request your transcript on SPIRE — you MUST request it in person or by mail.)  You can keep studying for the LSAT while your recommenders and the Registrar’s office are working for you.

3. Review the Application Check List to get a sense of what’s ahead in October. It’s all manageable, but it’s good to know ahead of time what you’ll be working on after the LSAT is over.  Do not worry yet about your personal statement and other materials — you’ll have time for those after the LSAT.  Keep your focus on the LSAT right now.

4. Schedule a meeting with the Pre-Law Advisor. If you haven’t met with me yet, a meeting might help reduce some of your stress.  If you just have a few questions, don’t hesitate to email me.

Are you planning to apply to Georgetown Law this year?  Then you’ll want to take advantage of a group interview with the Dean of Admissions scheduled for October 4th in Boston.  Here’s what the Georgetown Law Admissions Office has to say about it:

The format is 15-20 students around a table for 50-60 minutes.  Dean Cornblatt introduces a topic for discussion and encourages the students to talk amongst themselves while he observes and moderates the discussion.  No prior knowledge or research is necessary – he tells them everything they need to know to be able to participate in the exercise.  He pays attention and takes notes and then, when the students apply during this application cycle, Dean Cornblatt’s observations of their performance during the group interview become part of the application.  We will hold 2 back-to-back sessions at 10am and 11am, respectively, on October 4th at the offices of Goodwin Proctor in Boston.  Participation will be open to any seniors or alums of your school who have applied or will be applying for Fall 2012 admission.  Group interview slots will be filled on a first-come first-served basis until the two sessions are filled.

[Applicants] should rsvp directly to us so we can keep track of attendees, and we’ll send an email confirmation to them for their time slot.  This is meant as an additional way to reach out to applicants, to personalize the admissions process at Georgetown and to get to better get to know some of the people who are applying.  Although we think it’s a great opportunity for students who can and are willing to participate, students will in no way be disadvantaged if they can’t attend or for any reason they don’t wish to take part.

Additional information is available on the attached flyer (.doc).

So you just arrived on campus (welcome!) and you’re trying to figure out this pre-law thing. Law school seems like a distinct possibility for your future, or you’re kind of thinking about a legal career, or you just always thought you’d be a lawyer. What’s next? What should you be doing to get on, or keep on track? What is the track, anyway?

The answers all depend in large part on whether you just arrived as a freshman or as a transfer student. Let’s start with the first years.

Freshmen, the most important thing you should be doing right now to further your lawyering aspirations is . . . focus on college. This is a big transition you’re making, and too many students underestimate just how tough it can be. One of the most common conversations I have with law school applicants is the one that starts off with, “So, my GPA really suffered my first year of college….” I’d like to not have that conversation with any of you.  Remember: there is little you can do this first year of college to either help or hurt your law school admission chances. For a few more tips, review my Welcome Class of 2015 post from earlier this summer.

Transfers, your main order of business is to get to know your professors (and let them get to know you).  Participate in class.  Visit office hours and engage with your instructors about their topics.  In as little as a year from now, you may need letters of recommendation for law school, and those professors will be the ones to write them.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re in big classes or small ones — seek out your profs, especially those in your major(s).

For all of you new to campus, visit the pre-law website for answers to all of your questions. “Like” the Facebook page (that’s where you’ll find all the news about law school, law-related events on campus, the legal profession, etc.). Check out the regularly updated Events page of this blog. And stop by my office to introduce yourself.  During the fall semester, I prioritize appointments with current applicants, but I’m always happy to welcome new students.  And whenever you have a question, don’t hesitate to email me.

And keep your eyes open for completely revised and redesigned Pre-Law Advising website, coming in just a few weeks!

Interested in joining the successful and competitive UMass Mock Trial Team?  The first meeting will be held

Wednesday, September 7th at 7:00pm
Room 125, SOM
Food will be served!

All interested students are welcome to attend.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the annual pre-law advisors’ conference is hearing law school admissions officials share their craziest application stories — personal statements, follow-up emails and other applicant encounters that are so unimaginably outrageous that the panel is titled “You’re Not Going to Believe This.”  The behavior described is truly beyond the pale, so I’m not really worried that any of you — reasonably sane UMass Amherst students and alumni — would actually engage in anything remotely approaching this nuttiness. Rather, the panel is revealing for another reason: it makes clear each year just how much information the admissions officers are gathering about you.  You’re no doubt planning to make your application package as convincing and respectable as possible.  You may even be double-checking the privacy settings on your Facebook profile just now.  But the admissions officials go well beyond this low-hanging fruit.  You should assume that every encounter you have with anyone affiliated with the law school, every online uttering you publish, every step you take, every move you make… well, you get the idea. They’re watching you.

So what does that mean for how you conduct yourself over the next year of application madness (and beyond)?  I’ve got a few tips.

Be professional. Getting the runaround from some bored low-level staffer in a law school admissions office?  Remain calm and polite.  Any venting you might engage in will no doubt be noted in your file.  This is good practice for being a lawyer — it’s a remarkably small law world out there, and lawyers have long memories. (And low-level staffers — in courts, law firms and elsewhere — wield a tremendous amount of power.  Much more than law students and new attorneys.)  This is really easier than you can imagine: just be a good person.

Google yourself. How’s that internet profile looking? Drunk party pix and curse-filled twitter rants?  They can’t all be attributed to that girl in Iowa who has your exact same name.  Law school admissions officers only need a few more details about you to narrow the search anyway (and, thanks to your application, they possess a LOT more details about you).  Clean up your online persona.  (After you google yourself, try googling “clean up online profile” for endless links to helpful tips.)

Don’t assume you’re anonymous. So my favorite story at the conference this year came from the admissions director at a “top law school.”  He revealed that his office monitors references to his law school on the forums of  “top law school dot com” (a site I refuse to link to, due to the copious amounts of misinformation found therein). When a series of posts by one “anonymous” user were brought to his attention — posts maligning his own institution with any number of misrepresentations — he did a little sleuthing.  Based on the information the individual had posted about himself in the forums, the admissions director was able to easily match the poster to one of his applicant files. You can guess the rest.

Remember that you never know who you might run into.  In real life, I mean.  Offline.  As in the virtual world, be professional, don’t assume you’re anonymous, and don’t assume that person you’re talking to isn’t affiliated with a law school you hope to attend.

Congratulations to the UMass alumnae who were named 2011 Top Women of Law by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly:

• Marsha Kazarosian (English, Suffolk Law), Partner, Kazarosian Law Offices, Haverhill
• Stacy Malone (Political Science, Boston University Law), Executive Director, Victim Rights Law Center, Boston
• Mary Thomas Sullivan (Psychology, Northeastern Law), Segal Roitman, LLP, Boston

What an impressive and accomplished group of alums!

An unprecedented amount of attention is being paid to the job prospects and salaries for new attorneys, changes in the legal profession, and changes in legal education.  Much of it offers a bleak assessment of the job market for newly minted attorneys, and an even dimmer view of the cost-benefit analysis of going to law school, with the occasional more upbeat set of anecdotes.  If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I think this attention is overdue, and that prospective applicants should be very cautious when deciding whether law school is the right choice.  But the sheer number of articles and opinion pieces — much of it a mix of truth and exaggeration — can leave you wondering what to believe.  How do you sort out the analyses grounded in reality from those too deeply influenced by, say, the disgruntlement of a single unemployed law grad?

If you’re considering law school, you should be taking in as much of this information as you can.  But it’s so important to read it all critically: what is the basis of the author’s assertions?  Are there hard numbers cited or merely anecdotes? Do the numbers come from legitimate sources, or is there reason to be skeptical?  Is a lawyer in a big law firm who graduated from a highly selective law school generalizing about her experience, even though 90% of lawyers did not attend “Top 20″ law schools?

Even when you have hard numbers from legitimate sources — like the widely touted Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers of jobs for lawyers — you need to dig deeper and ask what they’re counting exactly, and whether it’s relevant to what you want to do as an attorney.  (BLS counts employees, but not the self-employed, and the latter category includes a significant percentage of practicing attorneys who are either solo practitioners or partners in law firms.)

You should also take into account the author’s point of view and frame of reference.  If the argument assumes something along the lines of, “law school used to entail a guarantee of a high paying job in a large law firm,” you need to know right away that it’s been at least 50 years since there was any truth in that statement for any but a tiny number of law grads.  Grads of the most selective schools who wanted jobs in BigLaw generally had a relatively easy time of it, certainly.  Those who went to the other 90% of schools, and those who had no interest in the small slice of lawyering that is BigLaw (but which is absurdly over-represented in the mainstream media) have always had to work hard to obtain the kind of jobs they wanted.   Nothing has ever been simply handed to the overwhelming majority of law grads.

If you’re interested in a small general practice in your hometown, or a job in a state agency, or a mid-sized firm specializing in insurance defense in a small city, or becoming a staff attorney in a public interest organization, then the job market in big law firms is at best tangentially related to your job prospects, and more likely, not related at all.  Research the types of jobs in the the types of locations you’re actually interested in.  Talk to  grads of the schools you’re most interested in attending.  It’s critical that you anchor your research in the realities of your particular interests, and not in generalizations.

So, keep your eyes on these changes in the profession as a whole, and in legal education — they’re significant for all of us who are, have been or will be lawyers.  But when it comes to making decisions about your own future, narrow your research to what’s most relevant to you.

(And if you’re sitting there reading this, thinking “But I don’t know what kind of lawyer I want to be, I just know I want to go to law school!” — keep your eyes out for a future post on what you need to know about the law before you decide to go to law school.)

You’ve just received your June LSAT score, and it’s not what you’d hoped.   What’s next for you — a retake  in October or December, applying with the June score, or putting off law school for another year?

To seriously answer the question of whether you should retake the exam, it’s important to first honestly assess what happened with this test administration:

• Did you prepare as well as could have been expected, given all the other constraints on your time — learning the exam inside out, repeatedly practicing individual sections, and taking several full-length practice tests?  Or did you kind of blow off your prep, what with end-of-semester demands and whatnot?  Can you realistically expect to prepare substantially differently in the months remaining before the October 1st test?
• Did anything happen around the time of the test that would adversely affect your performance — a breakup, illness, family crisis, extraordinary lack of sleep, a monumental hangover?
• Did you face serious unexpected test anxiety, unlike anything you had experienced in prior standardized tests?  Shaking hands, inability to focus, paralyzing nervousness?

In the absence of obviously inadequate preparation, an unforeseeable disaster, or unexpected serious test anxiety, you are unlikely to increase your score by more than the 2-3 points that is the LSAC average for retakers. More sobering is that, historically, as many as 25-30% of retakers who scored 140-159 on their first test received either the same or a lower score the second time around. (More detail on the retake statistics available here.)  Also note that your last month of preparation coincides with the first month of the semester (if you’re still in school) — can you realistically maintain your focus on LSAT prep at that time?

Beyond the questions above, you need to consider how law schools regard multiple LSAT scores.  Some schools average the score (as LSAC used to recommend, until about 5 years ago), while others give you the benefit of the higher score.   So a 4 point jump, at some schools, becomes only a 2 point jump. All schools see all scores.

Next you should weigh the potential benefit of a higher score against the potential cost of getting your applications in later in the admissions season.  This is not a big concern if you take the October LSAT, which is still early enough in the admission cycle not to make much of a difference (although you should double-check the LSAT deadline for schools’ early admission programs). If you postpone your retake until December, you should take into consideration that most law schools make decisions on a rolling basis, and earlier applications are, in general, more successful than later applications.  If you take the December test, your score will be available after the holidays, so your application will not be reviewed until January (assuming you complete the rest of your application by then).  With your current (June 2011) score, you can apply right at the beginning of the admissions season.

Finally, take a minute to step back from the consideration of this one facet of your application process to think again about why you are applying to law school in the first place, and what you hope to get out of the experience (and investment).  Your LSAT score has an impact on where you to go law school, certainly.  But it rarely has the power to determine whether you go to law school at all, and it says nothing about what kind of lawyer you will be.  Yes, some schools are more selective than others, at least as far as that can be measured with median GPAs and LSATs.  But the 200+ ABA-approved law schools are far more similar than they are different, and all will prepare you well for legal practice.  A less selective school is not a lower quality school, not by any meaningful measure: a school’s median LSAT has nothing to do with the quality of instruction, the rigor of its clinical programs, or even its reputation among hiring attorneys.

In short, your lower than expected LSAT score might send you to a different law school from the ones you’d been contemplating, but it has no necessary relationship whatsoever to how successful you’ll be as a law student or lawyer.

If you want to talk through your particular situation, please feel free to contact me personally.