Fast track law school options

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_JD_program

Some colleges have 3+3 programs - 3 years UG + 3 years law school. They're listed in that article.

Columbia, Iowa and Fordham are the only places where that MIGHT make sense. Columbia is the only slam dunk. Unlike colleges, law school choice is ruthlessly about rankings.

[Anonymous]

This is a terrible idea. What people really hire lawyers for, ultimately, is their judgment. Knowing how to research the law is not that hard. But being able effectively to counsel clients about how to use the law to achieve their goals requires some seasoning and maturity. No one will hire a kid for that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a terrible idea. What people really hire lawyers for, ultimately, is their judgment. Knowing how to research the law is not that hard. But being able effectively to counsel clients about how to use the law to achieve their goals requires some seasoning and maturity. No one will hire a kid for that.

This. College is for finding who you are -- and a job -- maybe. You do not know enough to practice law after just a few years. In the UK you do undergrad and then need to get a job as a trainee for two years. They call the status NQ for non-qualified. You largely do grunt work. If the firm likes you you get an offer to come back as qualified. But in my experience, British lawyers that come up this way are crap until maybe there 5th year past qualification. US associates get there (if they do) about 2-3 years after law school. So I think the US is actually faster. By the way, until recently NQs did not get paid that much by US standards.

[Anonymous]

There are almost no schools that do this and the ones that do are not good. If you want to get a US law degree, you need to graduate from college first and then apply to a three-year law degree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a terrible idea. What people really hire lawyers for, ultimately, is their judgment. Knowing how to research the law is not that hard. But being able effectively to counsel clients about how to use the law to achieve their goals requires some seasoning and maturity. No one will hire a kid for that.

This. College is for finding who you are -- and a job -- maybe. You do not know enough to practice law after just a few years. In the UK you do undergrad and then need to get a job as a trainee for two years. They call the status NQ for non-qualified. You largely do grunt work. If the firm likes you you get an offer to come back as qualified. But in my experience, British lawyers that come up this way are crap until maybe there 5th year past qualification. US associates get there (if they do) about 2-3 years after law school. So I think the US is actually faster. By the way, until recently NQs did not get paid that much by US standards.

As a dual qualified UK/US lawyer, I just want to correct this. English lawyers do undergrad (could be law, or could be anything else), and then either 1 or 2 years of law school (depending on whether they did law undergrad or not) and then 2 years of a training contract, which is on the job training at a law firm. The training contract is a structured process - you absolutely do grunt work (similar to a US first year associate) but there is a lot of training, including classroom based training, built into it too, and you have to spend 6 months in 4 different practice areas learning different areas of law. In my experience, and I’ve seen many NQs and many US trained attorneys, an NQ (who, if they worked for a US firm, would be paid as a 1st year associate) is far, far superior to a US first or second year associate, who usually has literally no idea what they are doing. It evens out after a few years, of course. Essentially, it is the same time period in each country though - after undergrad it is 3 years (or 4 in the UK if you did not do law undergrad) before you are a first year associate. It’s just that in the UK, two of those years are job-based learning (they are paid, but not as highly, although most have no law school debts because their firms will have paid for law school too).

[Anonymous]

European law is very different as they have a civil code.

If you have a ton of AP credit, some state schools sill let you graduate in 2 years. I know people that did that. But you have to really crush it to then get into a decent law school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What you should do to minimize costs is attend the cheapest undergrad possible (state schools, schools that give you a scholarship, whatever), choose a major and classes that will maximize GPA, and ace the LSAT (170+). It’s a really learnable test and can be done with enough studying. If you can graduate from undergrad in 3 years without compromising GPA, that’s an additional option to save money. Law school admissions are unlike undergrad admissions - they’re based on GPA and LSAT, not much else. Pretty much every top 30 law school (except Harvard, Yale, and Stanford) offers significant merit aid packages, up to and including full rides, to people with high numbers, and these can be negotiated if you have better offers. It’s a numbers game and there’s no bump based on the name of your undergrad. If you attend a T14 school, you will very likely get a biglaw summer associate position after your second year, which pays $40k - this can be used to cover tuition and living expenses in the third year of school.

That said, as someone who went to law school, I don’t recommend going straight through. Getting some work experience after college is good for you as a person, and gives you perspective that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Also, I wouldn’t recommend committing to a 3+3 program - keep your options for law school open. Law is a snobby profession and your law school matters. The name can open doors throughout your career as a lawyer, not just to get your first job.

+1 any benefit from one year less tuition comes at the cost of foregoing the very real opportunities of merit aid or higher salaries you can get from beaten strategic in law school application process. I’m not aware of any top law schools offering a program like this and think it’s worth it to angle for a top program. All schools outside HYS offer merit aid based primarily on LSAT/GPA.

[Anonymous]

+!

The market recognizes both the experience and education level of the fresh graduates. In the other countries where law is an undergraduate degree, the fresh law grads are paid like folks with undergraduate degrees (with limited exceptions, of course).

[Anonymous]

The adolescent brain keeps maturing till age 25+. Better to start a professional career around that time rather than earlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The adolescent brain keeps maturing till age 25+. Better to start a professional career around that time rather than earlier.

I don't agree. When you finish your university studies, you generally enter a professional career in a graduate level position. Nobody is going straight into a high level management role if they have no practical experience. A 25yo who already has 2-4 years of work experience under their belt generally is much more useful and adept at working in an office than a 25yo fresh from their studies. I'm sure it evens out at some stage.

[Anonymous]

I thought law schools don’t require a college degree. Abe Lincoln didn’t have one, I believe. There’s what’s called bachelors of science in law (BSL). It appears to be some type of a certificate program designed for HS grads. Some law schools allow them to apply this cert program towards a JD degree. So the BSL doubles as a college “degree” and a JD degree. Not really certain of the exact mechanism or even if this is correct. There are some CA judges who went this rout - meaning we have HS grads working as judges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought law schools don’t require a college degree. Abe Lincoln didn’t have one, I believe. There’s what’s called bachelors of science in law (BSL). It appears to be some type of a certificate program designed for HS grads. Some law schools allow them to apply this cert program towards a JD degree. So the BSL doubles as a college “degree” and a JD degree. Not really certain of the exact mechanism or even if this is correct. There are some CA judges who went this rout - meaning we have HS grads working as judges.

There are exceptions to everything. No lawyer in this thread recommends this route.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The adolescent brain keeps maturing till age 25+. Better to start a professional career around that time rather than earlier.

I don't agree. When you finish your university studies, you generally enter a professional career in a graduate level position. Nobody is going straight into a high level management role if they have no practical experience. A 25yo who already has 2-4 years of work experience under their belt generally is much more useful and adept at working in an office than a 25yo fresh from their studies. I'm sure it evens out at some stage.

Law is prestige-focused based on the law school attended. Most cost-effective route would be to attend an inexpensive undergrad, get the BA or BS with a high GPA, and try for a high LSAT for either T14 admission followed by BigLaw for a few years to pay off law school, or to a lower-ranked law school on big merit followed by local practice. Work experience in between undergrad and law school is also valuable. But, taking some fast path through law and starting in a law office at a young age will not get the student to the same place in the same amount of time. That's just not how the profession operates.

[Anonymous]

This seems like a shortsighted path to not making money. And a question that comes from someone who obviously doesn’t know the legal market here well enough to be advising a child to commit way before it would make any sense.

[Anonymous]

This is a terrible idea. Law is not a profession that likes people who do things off the beaten path. You’re supposed to do things as the lawyers before you did it.

However, I graduated college in less than 3 years by testing out of classes (CLEP) and taking very heavy courseloads. So I guess I technically finished in 5 years (also finished law school a semester early).

It didn’t save me money though. My law school charged for the degree not the classes, so I had to pay for the semester I skipped. And my biglaw employer wouldn’t let me start earlier so I didn’t make more money either.