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It is essential that you really get to grips with both sides of this equation. Your reasons for getting a JD will help pinpoint which schools are right for you. You are likely to opt for the right program if you carefully analyze your own needs. By the same token, you are likely to choose the wrong program if you do only a cursory analysis of the different programs, depending largely upon their slick brochures or one-size-fits-all rankings.
Know Yourself and What You Want From a Law Degree
Your decision to go to law school represents a milestone, and few decisions will equal this one in significance. You want to get it right. The starting point to know what you want to accomplish by getting a JD. What are your reasons for getting a JD? Do you want to become the ACLU's leading appellate lawyer? Do you hope to become a specialist in New York Stock Exchange rules and regulations, as well as securities law, so as to help countries adopting American-style stock exchanges? Do you want to be a commercial litigator for a major corporate law firm? Do you want to teach constitutional law at a leading law school?
Your reason for getting a JD will color your choice of schools. Your relative ability—your strengths and weaknesses where law schools are concerned—will also help you narrow your choices. If you are among the country's top 5,000-10,000 candidates, you will probably focus your attention on the top 10 or 20 schools.
Research the Schools
The process of choosing schools is likely to be an iterative one. As you understand better what you are looking for in a JD program, you will be able to choose programs that better meet your needs. As you research schools and learn what they have to offer, you may also change what you are looking for from a JD and thus what you will demand in a program.
Step 1: Develop General Knowledge about JD Programs
Before narrowing your search to a handful of schools, you should become acquainted with what the various JD programs have to offer.
- Discuss several dozen possible criteria for choosing a school. This will introduce you to the wide range of factors that might be relevant to your choice of schools.
- Read several of the publications devoted solely to the question of which school to choose.
- You should also read the rankings produced by such publications as U.S. News & World Report to get a rough approximation of the reputation of the different schools.
Step 2: Start Getting Information about Specific Schools
Your initial efforts should have generated a preliminary list of schools that might be appropriate for you. Now you should start to investigate these schools more seriously.
- Start to determine which criteria are most important to you. Two criteria should weigh heavily in your thinking at this point. What type of learning environment is best for you? Some people need to get their adrenaline flowing through competition and fear. If so, there are a number of programs that should be ideal. For other people, these programs would be disasters because they learn best in collegial, supportive environments. If one of these environments would be much better than the other for you, be sure you know which schools fall in which category. What subject(s) do you intend to focus on? If you intend to focus on civil litigation, you may be safe going to any leading school, since they all offer numerous courses in it (although some of the leading schools are more famous for it than are others). If you intend to focus on international taxation, however, some schools will offer many relevant courses whereas others will offer one or none. In addition, you must consider what additional criteria are particularly important for you. The most likely criteria include location, size, teaching quality, mission, and cost.
- Get information from the schools themselves. Have each send you its brochure, which will explain the school's philosophy, what it seeks in applicants, and what makes it noteworthy. (Do not, however, believe all that you read.) Ask for any recent newspaper and journal articles about the school that it has on file. Examine any additional material the school provides, such as a CD/ROM. Visit the school's Website to gather further information. Either the brochure, the Website, or both should list what courses are currently on offer as well as detailed information about each member of the faculty.
- Learn when you can meet the schools' representatives. They will travel to law school forums, which are gatherings held at cities around the United States and the world at which schools set up booths and relay information about their programs. The forums are convenient affairs for meeting representatives from a large number of schools, but they are sometimes too crowded and hectic to provide good opportunities for lengthy questioning of any one representative. Schools also send their representatives around the country, especially to leading undergraduate colleges, to do "dog-and-pony shows" to sell the programs to potential applicants. These sessions are often less hurried than the law school forums, thereby providing the opportunity to question representatives at greater length.
Step 3: Focus On the Schools You Find Most Appealing
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By the time you have finished the first two steps, you should have a good understanding of which schools are most likely to meet your needs. It is now time to investigate these schools carefully.
- Talk with each school's alumni to learn more about the schools. Schools are generally glad to give you the names of alumni living near you who have volunteered to discuss the respective programs. Recent alumni, in particular, can be good sources of information about the atmosphere of the school, its academic strengths and weaknesses, the ease with which they did (or did not) get a job in their chosen field, and the types of students who seem most pleased by their selection of this school.
- Talk with a school's competitors to learn what the weak aspects of a school might be. (Take these comments with at least one grain of salt.)
- Visiting the school is an important part of your research. There are a host of things you are unlikely to find out in any other way. Schedule your visit with the admissions office. They will make it possible for you to sit in on classes and meet students. You should by all means do this. You should also talk with a representative group of students. If you attend this school, you will soon be spending all of your waking hours with people just like them, so be sure they are people with whom you would be comfortable. Do not limit yourself to those students the admissions office arranges for you to meet, because those who volunteer to do so may not be entirely representative of the student body. You can meet plenty of students just by going to the school's cafeteria and joining a group of students who will certainly remember when they were going through the same process, making it quite likely that they will spend whatever time they can with you.
- Most important, if you know what field you intend to enter, contact the leading employers in it. Be sure to include the organizations you would most like to work for: Ask their human resource people (those responsible for hiring) which are the schools where they actively recruit. Have them explain why they choose these schools, their impressions of strengths and weaknesses of the respective programs, what types of people they choose from each (to the extent that this differs by school), and how many individuals they generally hire from each school. Ask them from which other schools they would be particularly happy to receive resumes. (They might not recruit at some schools for logistical reasons, but would be glad to hear from students at those schools. Similarly, they might be glad to hear from the best students at certain schools that they feel produce strong graduates, but in too small a number to warrant proactive recruiting efforts.)This is a critical step to finding the right school for yourself, but the one most frequently skipped because it involves a bit of honest effort. By the way, the connection you make with these firms' human resource people should be viewed as an advance marketing effort, so treat these folks well and keep in touch with them.
- Do not start your law school research efforts with the human resource professions, because you will be imposing upon their time as it is, and to do so with out knowing anything about schools will prove embarrassing. Approach them for such a favor when you have some reasonable idea of what's what in JD programs and can thus use their time efficiently.
- Do not overreact to the online chat room discussions in which applicants discuss their concerns and opinions. The ratio of ignorant statements and misconceptions to helpful comments is very high.
Determine How Many Schools to Apply To
Some people want to go to a specific school and would not even think about going to one of its rivals—perhaps due to geographic constraints, such as a spouse attending medical school in the location of the law school. Those who feel this way do not face any problem in determining how many schools they should consider. On the other hand, you should be content to attend one of a number of schools. If so, you must consider how many applications to file.
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This will depend upon several factors:
- Are you determined to go this year? If so, you must apply to enough schools to be sure of getting into at least one of them.
- What are your chances at the schools you favor? If your credentials are better across the board than those of the average student accepted at these schools, and you can present yourself very well, you need not do a great number of applications. (Do not limit yourself to consideration of just the quantitative credentials, though.
- How many applications can you do without sacrificing the quality of essays, the visiting of schools, the interviewing opportunities, and so on?
Choosing a Part-Time Program
Choosing a part-time JD program is necessarily somewhat different from choosing a full-time program. Your choice of program will probably be limited to those within your immediate area. Therefore, some of the criteria used for determining the most appropriate full-time program, such as available housing, will no longer be relevant because you will probably not be moving. Some of the other criteria may be less important than would be the case if you were to attend a full-time program. The career services office may be unimportant for you if you intend to remain with the same employer after you complete your degree. Other criteria are likely to become more important. A program's schedule may not fit within your own, thereby eliminating it as a possibility. In spite of these differences, choosing a part-time program still resembles the selection process for a full-time program. The courses must be of value to you, with an academic atmosphere suited to your desires. When you are choosing among several schools that offer what you want, reputation is still likely to be the most important criterion. (Remember, of course, that a part-time program often does not command the same reputation as the university's full-time program.)
Avoid the Likely Pitfalls in Choosing a School
Some warnings to keep in mind as you go through the search process;
- Start the process early. You need to gather a lot of information and you should give yourself time to reflect on what you learn at each step
- Do not take the rankings too seriously. They are no better than rough proxies for a school's quality and reputation. They obviously do not take account of your specific set of key criteria. Look for high-quality programs that will satisfy your needs.
- Be wary of schools with learning environments that are not hospitable to you. Do not put yourself through months of hell and the disappointment of performing poorly due to a bad match between you and a school's learning environment.
- Be aware that your interests may change as you go through both the self-evaluation and search processes. You can alter what you want to do and better understand what would help you. As a result, your criteria for schools should change to reflect your changed interests.
- Do not be swayed by spiffy school brochures. The quality of a school is not directly related to the quality of the pictures in its publications.
- Do not be swayed by warm (or cold, or inefficient) admissions people. They are not the ones who will be teaching you or helping you to get a job upon graduation.
- Do pay attention to the quality of the careers service. Your job fate can be dramatically improved by a top-notch department.
- Remember: Eliminate schools that do not offer the program you need. —Eliminate those with inappropriate learning atmospheres.—Eliminate those with other important negatives for you, such as location and size. —Include the highest quality schools you believe you can get into (and, yes, pay attention to the consensus views of the rankings).
- Ultimately, any number of schools can give you a great learning experience and help your career prospects dramatically, but it is up to you to take advantage of the opportunities afforded you.
Final-Decision Criteria
The most important criteria for each applicant will, of course, differ substantially. Some applicants will be greatly cost-constrained, leading them to choose schools that have lower tuition or offer financial aid. Others will choose schools only in a given area. Others will look for the school with the best course offerings on taxation they can get into.
No matter which criteria are relevant to you, it would be highly appropriate to determine which schools will give you the courses you most want, in an atmosphere in which you think you could thrive (collegial versus competitive, faculty open door versus isolated, etc.), and in a location that is appropriate to your current circumstances and future goals. Having taken account of these and the other criteria most important to you, the final choice should generally come down to the school's reputation. If you were intending to do international corporate law and were admitted to both NYU and Miami, for instance, it would be peculiar to choose Miami. Although Miami is a fine school with a substantial international program, it is not generally regarded as one of the top half dozen or dozen schools in the country, as is NYU. Reputation is not everything, but among schools that do not differ dramatically in their ability to deliver what you are looking for, reputation should ordinarily be the critical factor.
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