Choosing a law school.
Choosing a law school is something that should be taken very seriously. After all, it does determine one's future in the legal profession (assuming, arguendo, that Dr. Emmett Brown "Doc" in the Back to the Future trilogy was mistaken when he surmised that the reason why Marty McFly Jr. could be tried, convicted and sentenced within two hours of his arrest was because lawyers have been abolished in the future).
Some will tell you to simply go to the highest ranked school you get in to. Solid advice, but overly simplistic, if you ask me. Let's assume that the ranking of choice is the U.S. News and World Report ranking of law schools. Now, assuming that you are choosing between a top-ten school and a school outside that area, the advice above is likely to be dead-on. While I have known some folks who chose lower-ranked schools in that situation (due to scholarships offered, or the type of program at the school, or the professors, or students, or geography), without some sort of personalized extenuating circumstance, the general advice is to take the higher-ranked school..
However, the choice becomes much less clear when you are choosing between two schools that are ranked somewhere in the "top tier" of 100 schools, but outside the elusive top-ten (or even top-fourteen). The differentiation between schools ranked in that range can be so small as to make a decision based solely on the ranking seem rather arbitrary. Would it make sense to go to a school ranked #50 over one ranked #80 if the lower-ranked school was in the geographic location you wanted to practice after graduation and the higher-ranked one was not?
Some folks will instead tell you to visit every school and go to the one that "feels right." This is simply dangerous advice. A school might feel great, and might be a great place to spend the next three years of your life, but it might not prepare you for practice. It might limit your career options -- both geographically and in terms of the types of jobs available to you at graduation.
Some will argue that if you have an interest in a particular area of law you should seriously consider schools that are known to excel in that area, regardless of their rank. However, what happens when you get to school and realize your assumption was wrong? Instead of wanting to focus on environmental protection for the three-legged-swamp-rat-of-upper-Vermont you now are more interested in labor law? Worse yet -- what happens if you go through law school only to find out that there is no job market for protectors of the poor swamp-rat? If you specialize your education from the get-go, you leave yourself few options.
So, what will I tell you? That is a difficult question to answer. Perhaps it is easier to start with what I will not tell you. I will not tell you to come here. It's not that this is not a wonderful school -- in some ways it is. It's that the decision is a deeply personal one, and a one-size-fits all answer simply won't do. I chose this school because, given my options, I thought it would give me the best opportunity to get where I wanted to be when I graduated. Almost two years into this process, there have been highs and there have been lows, successes and failures, disappointments and pleasant surprises, but in the end -- I still think I made the right choice. Assuming, of course, that Doc was wrong about that whole abolishing of lawyers thing.
Good luck with your choices -- and if you have any questions you think I can answer -- feel free to drop me a line. If you don't want your comment published (just want a question answered), let me know, and it won't end up on this site.