Law School Advice

This is a duplicate of a blog I wrote for WCU's Pre-Law Club.

Hello all,

My name is Nathan Marshburn. I am a graduate student at Western Carolina University, and I also received a B.A. in History from WCU.
Dr. Todd Collins, faculty advisor to the Pre-Law Club at Western, has been an enormous help to me as I prepare for law school. He also provided some questions for me to think about for this blog, the answers to which I hope will prove useful to my fellow students considering law school. The questions are as follows:

1)What do I know now about the process of getting into law school that I would have liked to have known when getting started?

Well, if I had done some research I would have discovered that having a Master's degree does not mean much when applying to law school. The two most important factors are your LSAT score and your undergraduate GPA. After I learned this information at a LSAC forum in Atlanta, I went ahead and applied to several schools and received multiple acceptance letters. I plan to leave the M.A. program at WCU and go ahead and enroll in law school for the fall 2008.

I certainly do not feel like I wasted a year here, though. When I came back, I was undecided between law school and pursuing a Ph.D. in history. My experiences both inside and outside the classroom in Cullowhee this year have made me a more prepared person for the practice of law. I established some great relationships with professors who wrote vital letters of recommendation to law schools. And I was happy this year, a year that went by faster than any in my life.

Also, I probably would have taken the LSAT a little earlier than I did. I took it twice, in December 2007 and February 2008. I scored higher on the February test, but a couple of schools that rejected me closed the application process before the February test and only used my December score for evaluation. If I had taken the September 2007 and December 2007 tests with the same subsequent results, I might have been admitted to these two schools.

2) What should I have done earlier in my college career that would have helped me get into law school?

I can not stress enough the importance of good grades. Like I said, undergraduate GPA and the LSAT score are the two heavy hitters, and a good performance in both of these areas will get you accepted more places than a great personal statement or letters of recommendation. When I was 19, I goofed off for a couple of semesters. This put a dent in my GPA that as an immature sophomore I did not realize would be so influential. I am happy and fortunate to receive many acceptance letters, but who knows what results might have occurred (say, with merit scholarships) if I had given my all to academics for all four years of college. It is okay and even important to have a good time in college and learn the art of socializing, but never let it interfere with your academic work.

3) Was there one or a few pieces of advice that someone (lawyer, professor, family, etc.) gave me that really helped?

Dr. Collins has given me some great advice on where I should go now that I've been admitted to schools and have some choices. As far as the application process, though, one of my best friends, Heather Loveless (who went to WCU with me as an undergraduate) proofread my five page personal statement for a law school and made some suggestions for changes that I now view as very important in where I got accepted. While no two personal statements I wrote for law schools were the same, I used elements of this five page statement that Heather edited for all of them. After you write a personal statement, get someone you trust, has good common sense, and can read and write good English to proofread it. They will catch things you never would have realized needed to be changed.

4) What was most surprising about the process?

Honestly, not much has surprised me about the process. I did a lot of research in applying to schools, and had a fair idea of where I might be accepted or rejected based on my LSAT and GPA. An unfortunate surprise is the amount of debt law school students graduate with. I believe $90,000 is the average, and it is not uncommon for students to finish with well over six figure debt. Right now, $90,000 in debt means a monthly payment of about $1100 for the next 10 years. Going to law school can be like mortgaging a house, and this has weighed heavily on me in my decision about where to attend school. It is an enormous risk to accrue debt like that for three years with the hope you will get a high paying job when you graduate. A lot of things have to go right- a lot of things I do not necessarily have any control over.

I'd better pick an area of law that I like, because I can't quit once I've signed master promissory notes for that much money! But WCU has given me a great opportunity not available to many people. As Dr. Collins has reminded me, though the process can be stressful, I am very fortunate to have options like this.

Until Next Time,

Nathan Marshburn