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[quote=Anonymous] :P [quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Does it really matter where your DC goes for pre-law if they’re bright enough to get into a top law school for their JD?
I'm looking for insights from professionals in the field. I'm really conflicted due to the peer pressure of sending my DC to a prestigious undergrad school.
JD is 125k per year. It's a no brainer to me to pay for JD  instead of undergrad so that DC has no student debt. They're likely to get a full-ride at a T50+. I'm ok to pay the difference if it's not a full-ride. 
Please don't talk about alumni benefit if you haven't personally experienced it. Looking for non-hypothetical views.[/quote]

I graduated from a top 10 undergrad, and went to a top 5 school within the last five years, and currently an associate at a firm that's ranked in the top 10 by Vault.

Law school admissions is mostly GPA + LSAT. However, it's also much more holistic than people make it out to be, especially in the past few cycles where it has gotten much more competitive compared to the 2010s when people were regularly getting into places like UVA Law with a 160 LSAT.

Going to an elite undergrad does not inherently increase your chances to getting into an elite law school, but the boost comes from mostly the intangibles that boost the soft factors that law school admissions officers look at when determining who to admit. Law schools nowadays give more weight to work experience, so if you've worked a few years in tech, IB, consulting, and other jobs that elite schools feed into, that's going to be a plus. If you've studied on an elite postgraduate scholarship like the Schwarzman, Marshall or Truman (again outcomes that elite undergrads feed disproportionately into) that's going to also be a plus. Because Ivies and Ivy Plus school have lower faculty to student ratios, students can often develop meaningful relationships with the faculty, and have them write strong, individualized rec letters, another plus. Elite schools also have pretty rampant grade inflation, which is going to be another plus factor.

Moreover, certain undergrads are perceived as feeders into certain law schools. At my law school, I would guess that around 20% of the law students also did their undergrad at the same school (an Ivy). At Yale Law (widely considered the top law school in the country) the majority of their students come from the Ivies, Ivy Plus, and top liberal arts colleges. However, my law school classmates also came from schools that I've never heard of, but were definitely the valedictorians or summa grads of their respective schools.

However, if your child is self-driven, they should be able to maintain a high GPA at a state school, get a high LSAT score, develop strong meaningful relationships with professors, and maybe get a few years of meaningful work experience, and be able to get a T14 law school acceptance.

The legal field is notoriously prestige driven, however, and some firms and judges looking for clerks have been known to also be cognizant of where their applicants did their undergrad. So there's also that intangible in going to an elite undergrad if your child is looking to be a lawyer. [/quote]

100% true and have direct experience with it. Undergrad matters for the intangibles. [/quote]

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