The importance of meeting the requirements for admission to a top-tier law school cannot be overstated. Put another way, if your credentials are not good enough to meet the requirements for admission to one of the top 100, or maybe even the top 50 law schools in America, you should seriously consider another line of work. Going to a bad law school may still allow you to become a lawyer, but it may also buy you some forms of debt-driven misery that you can’t imagine or understand.
The truth is that most law students fund their educations with debt. Lots of debt. Much of the debt comes in the form of student loans. Unlike most other loans, student loans generally have to be repaid. Student loans are extremely difficult to discharge in bankruptcy.
So, there are these loans. These loans are pretty huge. As an example, the sum of the out-of-state tuition and fees at the school in the town where I practice is $44,000.00 per year. That’s tuition and fees. This does not include the cost of simple things like eating and a place to live.
Now, if Daddy has $150,000.00-$200,000.00 lying around and wants to send you for a legal education, it really doesn’t matter whether you meet the requirements to get into a good law school or you are going to a bad law school. If you are going to law school on somebody else’s dime, it’s all good. You get to be a lawyer. It’s not going to cost you anything but your time. That’s great. Go for it.
But most of us don’t have a Daddy who has $150,000.00-$200,000.00 lying around. Most of us take out these loans. Lots of them. And when the loans come due, you have to pay them. The problem is that most lawyers don’t make much money, especially not right out of school, and paying back loans is insanely difficult if you don’t make much money.
I’ll give you an example. I went to a top-100 law school. A buddy of mine graduated with a job paying $30,000.00 per year. He had $100,000.00 in loans to pay when he graduated, and it broke his back for a long time. He was paying nearly half of his paycheck out in loan payments every month for the first few years of practice. He stayed thin by living on Ramen noodles. It wasn’t much fun.