I have a delimma and need advice. My daughter (look through other threads for her pic if you must) was accepted to a top 20 law school in DC, where she wants to work. No scholarship, 100k per year. Figure 250k in student debt upon graduation.
She was just offered a full scholarship to FSU law, no debt upon graduation. Without turning this political, she wants to live anywhere but Florida.
So do you take the free ride in FL then try for connections in the DC area or suck it up, go to top 20 law school and basically have the job of your dreams at your feet?
I know this is a great problem to have and ultimately it will be her decision. I just don't know what advice to give. I am not an attorney and have no clue how hard it is after graduation to move elsewhere and get a decent job. In medicine it's pretty simple. Any advice for this confused mom? BTW, I would love another 3 years of tailgates with her at FSU! My Buckeye boyfriend is willing to pay her a 50k yearly stipend to move🤷♀️ (he is over the 800+ mile round trip drives and sh!thole hotels)
I get this question all the time from parents and students and I always answer it the same. There are some general categories of law schools and I think it’s always worth paying extra to jump up a category, but NOT worth paying more to go to another school in the same category. In other words if you can go to Yale or Stanford, you should go regardless of financial aid and cost. But if you had to pay more than a couple of grand to go to Vandy over North Carolina…regardless of USNews and WR ranking it’s not going to really pay off. Maybe you should pay at most $5k difference per year to go to your preferred school within each category.
The categories are:
Elite Schools: It’s only these five schools which rotate around each other in rankings. It’s Stanford, Yale, Chicago, Harvard and Columbia. I used to include only four dropping Columbia but it’s now inching up and I think is now firmly in the Elite school category. Even bottom 10% students from these schools will frequently take jobs from the majority of Regional Plus schools and be competitive against all students outside of the top 10% or so from National schools.
National Schools: The next 10 schools including Penn, UVA, Duke, Georgetown, etc…. Bottom 10% can usually find a good to at least decent legal job anywhere in the country.
Regional Plus: The next 25-30 or so schools including my own William and Mary, Emory, Vandy, Texas, UNC, Notre Dame, etc… These schools will float around from 15 to 35 with a lot of movement from year to year for the most part. But in general while one may excel in one area over another, they basically place their students about the same. The top 10% here will compete with top students from Elite and National schools for top jobs especially in their own state or region, but the next 80% will always lose out to the other two categories middle 80%. The bottom 10% here almost always find real legal jobs but are limited to their region.
Regional: The next 50 or so schools including FSU, Miami, Fordham, Wake Forest, Maryland, Texas A&M, Penn State, Case Western, etc…. The top 10% here aren’t usually winning jobs against top 10% from Elite, National and Regional Plus schools (MAYBE in their region but definitely not outside of it), but they are getting quality jobs over middle 80% from the above schools. The bottom 10% usually don’t find real legal jobs.
State: The next 50 or so schools including Stetson, Louisville, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Michigan State, Brooklyn, St Louis, Ole Miss etc… The valedictorian and maybe a couple other students who are top 10% with Moot Court and Law Review creds will compete for top jobs in their state and maybe close surrounding area. Top 25% usually get good jobs in the state while Bottom 25% usually do not get real legal jobs just corporate nonlaw gigs and bottom 10% usually find themselves jobless.
The others: Anything below the State level I do NOT recommend students go to unless they already have family connections to real legal jobs. Because only maybe the top 20-50% depending on the school even get legal jobs and they’re usually far from ideal. A majority of students either flunk out or don’t find a real legal job. So sure…if the potential student’s dad is a judge or aunt is a partner in a local law firm then go ahead and go because as long as they pass the bar they’ll have a legal job regardless of where they go. But if the potential student has no close family connections they can rely on, there are far better and cheaper options to make money than going to a %*%+ law school and trying to fight your way to the top 20% to get a $40-70k job. I had a job offer for more than that just coming out of undergrad at FSU with Finance and Economics dual degrees.
And I will point out that I didn’t follow the advice I‘ve since learned. I could have gone to Penn and Cornell for just about $10k more per year than I paid at Bill & Mary. And Washington in St Louis offered me a completely free ride which I turned down. (Now hindsight is 20/20 because Washington in St Louis is one of the VERY RARE examples of a school moving up categories and that was because an Anheuser-Busch heir died and left a massive amount (from memory a quarter to a half a BILLION dollars). Very rarely do schools actually shift up or down categories. And as a result their law school vaulted from 50-70s to top 15 in a year or two. But this literally never happens, it took FSU multiple decades to move from state to regional category).
