Advice for a career switch from teacher to lawyer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My friend's dad became a lawyer in his 50's. My high school friend's mom became a lawyer in her 40's.

Education law? Ummm ... like you want to represent kids whose IEPs aren't being met or something?

I know of one law school in Maryland that lets you do law school in four years.

Hmm, that's interesting, since law school is only 3 years if you do it full-time. Do you mean part time?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
How realistic is it to gradually take some courses while still teaching full time? Going to law school is not just about taking some courses here and there--it is a lifestyle choice. You'd be required to take several core areas of law during your first year (or first few semester if part time)--torts, contract, crim, civ pro, property, constitutional, crim pro. Theoretically, the rest of your career lies on how well you perform in those courses as you'd be graded on a scale with the rest of the students. However, since you already have a specialty area in mind, it won't matter as much, but you'd still want to do your best. Next comes the law school activities, the most prestigious ones being moot court and law review. Again, you may forego those opportunities if you already have an area in mind, but you'd need to hustle and bustle your ass off to network with potential employers.

I just want to address this point - there are a lot of PART-TIME law school options. My own part-time law school class had several teachers in it who seemed to manage pretty well. You can indeed "just take a few" classes. The first year is the hardest, because the part time program will be a structured curriculum to get you through your 1L year -- at my law school, this meant 4 nights a week from 6-9 pm with three substantive classes each semester (e.g. con law, torts, contracts, etc.) plus legal writing and then two classes over the summer. Once you got through that you had completed the same "1L" as everyone else, and then had more control of your class selection for subsequent years. If you wanted to stay on track to graduate in four years, this meant keeping up the rate of about 3 evening classes per semester, and 1-2 classes in the summer. But you don't need to graduate in four years, you can pace it and take less. You might find a better schedule for you -- for instance 1-2 classes each semester during the regular year and more classes in the summer (beware though summer can be limited), also some schools offer an intersession class which would be one week of 8-hour classes offered over spring break or Christmas break which would align with your time off teaching. I worked full time as an engineer during the day and found it very manageable to take 3 classes at night, even with pretty regular work travel requiring me to miss class. I just had to be organized and not buy into all things full-time law students did with their time. I didn't have kids, so that's a whole separate thing, and I would make sure you have sufficient spousal support for that, but people in my program did have children and did make it work.

You have to take advice like this with perspective, people who went to law school full-time talk about it like its a 40-60 hr a week job that shuts out the whole rest of the world for them for three years otherwise its impossible to succeed. It does not have to be that way. Yes, class rank absolutely does matter. But the students in my part-time program held their own against the full time students, and when ranked against them for graduation, were proportionally members of the top ranks of the class as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:hmmm. it depends on what you want to do of course. your best bet is to seek out people whose jobs you think are interesting and ask them. this isn't my area, but know many different kinds of lawyers that touch on "education" law.

- lawyers representing kids with IEPs or other kids who don't think they're getting a fair shake. good work, not a lot of money in it. small and solo practitioners tend to do this as part of their practice. you may well have an "in" to the system and be a real asset to work like this, but its not lucrative, and might not be a good option if you would need to incur a heavy debt load
- institutional lawyers at schools, school systems, etc. This seems like good work too, and steadier. and bigger lawfirms will represent private schools and universities as well. In any such role, you're dealing with a wide range of things beyond "education law"
- lawyers at teachers unions, advocacy organizations, thinktanks, etc. Not wellpaid, and not strictly "education law"

anyway, I don't know that I could really recommend any of this unless you had the money end figured out - ie, could get scholarship money or other funding or have money set aside for which this would be a good use. it might be!

I wonder about the lawyers representing kids with IEPs - there are non-lawyer advocates who did this and I presume they cost less. How often are lawyers required in this process?

OP - if you went the institutional route, you'd be going against kids ands parents. How would you feel about that? You have to represent the school district's interest above all. Ideally, it's a collaborative effort, but I know people with special needs kids for whom the process was highly adversarial (Fairfax Co). It can be extremely unpleasant. Not sure it's more unpleasant than being a middle school teacher.

Surely there are cheaper law schools around here than Georgetown. Usually there is some school that offers night classes for working people. George Mason?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
How realistic is it to gradually take some courses while still teaching full time? Going to law school is not just about taking some courses here and there--it is a lifestyle choice. You'd be required to take several core areas of law during your first year (or first few semester if part time)--torts, contract, crim, civ pro, property, constitutional, crim pro. Theoretically, the rest of your career lies on how well you perform in those courses as you'd be graded on a scale with the rest of the students. However, since you already have a specialty area in mind, it won't matter as much, but you'd still want to do your best. Next comes the law school activities, the most prestigious ones being moot court and law review. Again, you may forego those opportunities if you already have an area in mind, but you'd need to hustle and bustle your ass off to network with potential employers.

I just want to address this point - there are a lot of PART-TIME law school options. My own part-time law school class had several teachers in it who seemed to manage pretty well. You can indeed "just take a few" classes. The first year is the hardest, because the part time program will be a structured curriculum to get you through your 1L year -- at my law school, this meant 4 nights a week from 6-9 pm with three substantive classes each semester (e.g. con law, torts, contracts, etc.) plus legal writing and then two classes over the summer. Once you got through that you had completed the same "1L" as everyone else, and then had more control of your class selection for subsequent years. If you wanted to stay on track to graduate in four years, this meant keeping up the rate of about 3 evening classes per semester, and 1-2 classes in the summer. But you don't need to graduate in four years, you can pace it and take less. You might find a better schedule for you -- for instance 1-2 classes each semester during the regular year and more classes in the summer (beware though summer can be limited), also some schools offer an intersession class which would be one week of 8-hour classes offered over spring break or Christmas break which would align with your time off teaching. I worked full time as an engineer during the day and found it very manageable to take 3 classes at night, even with pretty regular work travel requiring me to miss class. I just had to be organized and not buy into all things full-time law students did with their time. I didn't have kids, so that's a whole separate thing, and I would make sure you have sufficient spousal support for that, but people in my program did have children and did make it work.

You have to take advice like this with perspective, people who went to law school full-time talk about it like its a 40-60 hr a week job that shuts out the whole rest of the world for them for three years otherwise its impossible to succeed. It does not have to be that way. Yes, class rank absolutely does matter. But the students in my part-time program held their own against the full time students, and when ranked against them for graduation, were proportionally members of the top ranks of the class as well.

Oh, also I might add, online is not an option. We part-time students CLAMORED for this. But outside unaccredited California schools, this is not an option. The ABA insists that you attend in person. Some schools have begun allowing up to 12 credits online transfer. My law school experimented with live classes via video for days that you could not attend in person. But those are things for your second, third, fourth (if part time) years. You'll most likely have to take your 1L year in person, live and in a classroom.

[Anonymous]

If you are in Virginia, you are still allowed to "read for the law." Basically, an apprenticeship with a lawyer, and then take the bar exam. I'm not sure what the jobs prospects are for that, maybeif your mentor would be willing to offer you a job...

[Anonymous]

Why not become something like an educational consultant? Wouldn't require law school...

[Anonymous]

If you are willing to commit to public interest/ public service work after graduating, check out American's full-tuition scholarship:

https://www.wcl.american.edu/impact/initiatives-programs/publicinterest/pipsscholarship/

[Anonymous]

You might consider UDC, which has a great public interest program and lower tuition!

[Anonymous]

Just don't. Honestly, don't do this. It's a terrible idea. -- public interest lawyer

[Anonymous]

Two Words = "Opportunity Cost"

Only even consider it if you can get into a top school and they give you a full ride. Otherwise forget about it. The odds are very much against you, for a variety of reasons.

[Anonymous]

Unless college for both of your kids is full funded, I don't think you have the luxury of the expense of going back to school for the job prospects for what you have mentioned.

[Anonymous]

Ok, here is my theory on how non-lawyers see this.

Reading about the law, watching lawyer shows, movies, thinking about the law is all really intellectually stimulating and makes someone dissatisfied think "wow, this is a really intellectually challenging and interesting job where I can help people and that is also lucrative."

Becoming an actual lawyer dissolves those ideas very, very quickly. You are mired in debt, unable to find a decent job, bored to death by your law school classes, and eventually bored to death in your job that pays an income you could have gotten doing, I don't know, HR or some other white collar job but with less suffering. That's if you're lucky. If you're unlucky you are either unable to find a job at all or you are trapped in golden handcuffs in a job that takes over your entire existence.

[Anonymous]

My sister did it at 55 yo, after she took early retirement from her school system. She was an English teacher and did well on LSAT. She paid cash for her tuition at state school. Got a job in her Midwest home town for $40,000 per year and a million hours expected every week .... she hated it and quit after 1 year. She did wills, estates, trusts.

Now she takes a few projects from home, but is mostly retired.

Her biggest gain was settling our parents estate/trust for which she charged (at a discount) $150,000, which for me as co-trustee, I charged nothing and had to take several weeks off at work, fly to her town, after I had cared for my sick mom the last three years of her life, and had already consolidated most of her finances for ease of management and disposition at the time of her death.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My sister did it at 55 yo, after she took early retirement from her school system. She was an English teacher and did well on LSAT. She paid cash for her tuition at state school. Got a job in her Midwest home town for $40,000 per year and a million hours expected every week .... she hated it and quit after 1 year. She did wills, estates, trusts.

Now she takes a few projects from home, but is mostly retired.

Her biggest gain was settling our parents estate/trust for which she charged (at a discount) $150,000, which for me as co-trustee, I charged nothing and had to take several weeks off at work, fly to her town, after I had cared for my sick mom the last three years of her life, and had already consolidated most of her finances for ease of management and disposition at the time of her death.

Who gets paid 150,000$ to settle an estate? Are you a Rockefeller? You would need to be to have an estate so large its 150,00$ charge to settle. Odd she was an English teacher and then worked for 40k per year...

[Anonymous]

I'm a public interest lawyer in DC. I graduated law school with zero debt (thanks to my DH) nearly 20 years ago. I earn mid-80s. Benefits suck (fortunately DH's employer provides excellent benefits).

Don't go to law school unless you get a free ride and you are confident that your spouse will support you (and won't leave you or get hit by a bus)...and your spouse's benefits are better than your teacher benefits.