It’s a given these days that a law school education is expensive, just about any way you look at it. As you begin to draw up that list of law schools you are considering, you just can’t afford to ignore how cost affects your analysis. That issue came up as we prepared our show, Choosing the Right Law School: Understand the Factors That Will Affect Where You Want To Go To School.
Law School Podcaster Host Bonnie Petrie spoke with Linda Abraham, Founder, Admissions Consultant and Editor at Accepted.com. Accepted.com guides and advises applicants on gaining acceptance to law school. While Abraham says that the undergraduate GPA and LSAT score is the starting point to determine which law schools you’ll want to consider, there also “has to be a weighing up of cost and benefit.”
Abraham advises applicants to calculate the cost/benefit of attending a particular law school. “Look carefully at where graduates of [a] school are going and getting jobs and what is the typical salary they get when they graduate vis-a-vis what’s it going to cost you to attend.” If you go to an expensive private school and it’s not going to get you a job, you’ll have a lot of debt to pay back and not the means to pay it back.” She gave us the basics on how to approach this calculation.
Petrie also interviewed Wendy Margolis of the Law School Admissions Council(LSAC), the non-profit corporation that provides admission-related services to legal education institutions and also administers the LSAT. Margolis also suggested that applicants research thoroughly the placement rates from particular law schools and dig a little deeper at those schools and see what type of placements those are, what kind of jobs people have gotten after graduating from those law schools.” Given the current economy, placement rates are likely to be down, so this type of research may be more important than ever.
In this show, we also hear from Hewlett Askew, Consultant to the American Bar Association (ABA) on Legal Education. Askew gave us the low-down on the ABA accreditation process and what it means to attend an ABA accredited law school as well as when it might make sense for an applicant to consider a non-accredited law school or a non-accredited online school.
Tune in to the show to hear the full discussion of the factors to consider when choosing a law school.