Selecting the Perfect Law School

By Inactive User in LLMbyM on Mar 18, 2014

Hello my dear readers!

This post will be dedicated to how I selected a law school, which I happily attended last year. Why is it absolutely crucial? Because whether you like it or not, you will spend up to 90% of your time in that law school - studying (and sleeping:)) in the library, snacking at a law cafe, attending various events... so trust me when I say that you want to make sure you select a good fit. LLM is hard, and you don't want any extra misery there!

Here are some tips for those of you who are currently selecting.

Tip #1. Narrow Things Down.

They say, narrow down your choices. I say - select a continent at least. The globe isn't just a little ball with markings for 6th grade geography lesson - use it! When I first sat down to look up law schools, I got honestly lost. Do you know how many educational institutions are there in the world? A lot. It's good when you are narrowed down to one exact country (for instance, I quickly realized that I wanted to pursue a degree in the United States based on my field of study). But if you aren’t, things may get very complicated.

Tip #2. Let Go of the Advice Books.

If you are applying anywhere, I bet you have read (or maybe you even have in stock!) books and brochures which promise "to get you to educational institution of your dreams" or that tend to "select what place is better for you." (Something like “How to Get Into a Top Law School of Your Dreams.”) I had those too, a bunch of those actually; and eventually I found them completely useless to myself, mainly because their authors seem to know very little about international students. They disregard the difference in backgrounds and tend to make everyone use same criteria when selecting a dream school. Here I will take most popular of those criteria and explain how those can be useful (or useless) to prospective LLMs.

a. Location.

Many begin with location. You need to find a comfortable place to live! - they say. Ok, that's true. But how on earth can one know, whether an exact place would be a perfect fit? Impossible. You may love Southern lifestyle (watch Heart of Dixie much?), but hate the absence of real winters. You may adore skiing in Bogus, Idaho, and yet dislike the little town life typical for that state. You maybe a socialite back home, a party person - and yet, is that a reason enough to go to New York or L.A.?

So that's the first catch - you are blindly dating your future in regards to it's location. What I realized during my search is that location isn't that crucial - eventually, good friends will add color to any place. A friend of mine attended college in a city somewhere in suburbs of California. For the first year she dreamed of transfer, but a Christmas party made her reconsider - and now she is a happy accountant in San Francisco with a great friends to meet with every weekend or so. And isn't that what most of us eventually want?

b. Costs and tuition.

Yep, that's important. But don't let it overwhelm you, it's not crucial. Also, its always going to be ridiculously high – that’s something we all know. Again, experience shows, that if one wants an education, one will get it one way or another. Personally I believed in scholarships and grants, and I turned to be right ;)

P.S. Seriously, Google grants for LLMs – there are quite a few depending on your qualification and background. But they usually have earlier deadlines then your regular law school admissions, so be aware.

c. Curriculum and Professors.

Professors. Yes and no. Knowing about professors turned out absolutely useless for me at the point of searching for the right law school. They were all just smiling faces on websites, and a Ph.D. degree doesn't make a person exclusively qualified. Yes, of course it's good to have an amazing professional to lead your class, but how can you tell how great is one or another person just by looking at their photograph and bio? Also, you may not even get into their class because of limited space or some unsatisfiable/unwaivable prerequisites! Of course you may search the web or find current students and talk to them (ratemyprofessors.com is one good resource), but that is a time consuming task which at the point of simply searching for law schools made no sense to me.

Curriculum. At the same time curriculum is crucial. Personally I found it the most important thing. It is easier when you are pursuing an LL.M. - you definitely know what you want to specialize in. And when you know what you want - you know where to find it. LLMGuide is a good resource to search various specializations.

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I don't see a reason to mention any other criteria. My personal experience shows, that these above are absolutely enough to narrow down a list of law schools from approx. 3000 to 8. This is how I did it:

Step 1. I knew I wanted to study in the United States and get a specialization in Medical (Health) Law. So I typed those two criteria in a search engine, and it returned with 68 law schools.

Step 2. I narrowed my choices down to 30 by selecting that I want to attend an LL.M. not a J.D.

Step 3. I narrowed it down even more by selecting NY or CA only – these are the only states that allow a foreign attorney to sit the bar exam, and if you are planning to do so, you really want to attend a law school where you can have access to studying state specific subjects.

Step 4. I crossed out those law schools that did not offer scholarships to international students - and VOILA! – I had exactly 8 educational institutions to try myself at.

Tip #3. Reach Out to Alumni.

It may sound strange to some, but reaching out to LL.M. alums is a very good idea. You can find them by going on the law school’s website, through LinkedIn or even Facebook. It’s a good idea to talk to people who have real insight on things all the way across the globe.

Alums are a great source of information on many things like general amount of support that LLMs get at a particular law school, rent issues, good student organizations to join and networking events to attend, general employment perspectives, and so on.

Of course, alums are busy people, and sometimes they don’t reply as fast as you would want them to. But then, more often than not they are very happy to talk to a prospective student and tell them the nuts and bolts of the program they attended.

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This is all at this point. My next post will be dedicated to all the paperwork that it takes to file an application.

Take care and stay tuned!