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| More law school questions for Voiceguy2000 & law experts |
paulcporter |
02/05/04 |
Hi there,
My long march towards law schools continues. You may recall I asked many questions a few months ago about the intentions of law schools sending me invitations to apply. Well, Columbia was my dream school, and I did not get in. I applied on the early decision program, and their early decision was a flat denial without even a hold for further consideration.
In the meantime, Harvard, Yale and Stanford sent me similar letters asking me to apply, which I did, but the results are still not in yet. So far, I have been accepted into the following (with US News Rankings):
* University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (7)
* George Washington University (22)
* University of Notre Dame (22) $8k fellowship
* University of California at Davis (31)
* American University (55)
* Brooklyn Law School (59)
* University of San Francisco (97) $20k fellowship
I am still waiting for responses from
* Yale
* Harvard
* Stanford
* Berkeley
* Pennsylvania
Now the problem is trying to decide where to go. Are rankings important?
Most of the law schools give nice statistics about the percentage of students going on to private practice, government, etc., but this tells me really nothing about the whether the opportunities will be much better at Michigan as opposed to Brooklyn.
One criterion that I have looked at is whether law school X has ever produced a Supreme Court Justice...
Most of the lawyers I have talked to work in big law firms doing corporate transactions, so I haven't sufficient visibility into the legal profession to help me decide where to go. The following facts about me apply:
* The last thing I want to do in a job is sit alone in an office; I've done enough of this as an engineer. I want to have a job where I can travel and meet people.
* A topic that interests me a lot is the development of rule of law in countries having underdeveloped legal systems. Hong Kong's efforts to maintain rule of law under Chinese sovereignty has facinated me endlessly. If I could somehow work in an area like this, it would be a dream come true.
* However, something I can see coming is people latching on to my engineering background and pushing me down the Intellectual Property path, which would be a siren song of good pay, but I never enjoyed engineering so I fear it would be a boring life in exchange for good pay.
American University offers a semester abroad in Hong Kong, which sounds great, but their ranking is low. I wonder if higher ranked law schools would allow me to craft my own study abroad programs.
To summarize, law schools all basically tell me the same things in their promotional materials, and I find myself gravitating to Michigan just based on its ranking (they also are ranked well for International law). Is this folly, and are there other things I should consider?
Thanks,
Paul |
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