any former "older" law students out there? need advice...

Thinking I was doing what I always wanted to do, I applied to a few law schools last winter and lo and behold, "careful what you wish for", I did get accepted to a couple and plan to start in, oh, 3 weeks.

I think I made a huge mistake and started reading some discussion boards online. The feedback I'm seeing is "law firms frown upon law school grads from part-time/evening programs", "older students, especially older women, are ignored by the faculty, male and female professors alike", "if you are currently working outside the legal profession while in school you will have a hard time finding a job", etc.

Maybe these are all psyche-out statements or sour grapes, I can't tell. I know that my experience will be different than another's but if there is a good chance I might be wasting time and money just to confront age and sex discrimination at the end of all this, well sheesh, I don't know what to think. Just getting paranoid I guess.

Any of you DUers have any experience as an older law student??

will find a job. That job will require you to work 60+ hours a week for the possibility of partnership in several years. If you are not at the very top of your class in a middle or lower tier school you likely will have trouble getting a job under any circumstance, and the job you get may not be any fun at all. Most of an ordinary practice can be pretty dry stuff.


Why are you doing this?

many of the same reasons other people go I'm guessing. Anything I say in response to this question will sound like a lot of b.s., but since i am politically involved I opted for this route rather than a master's. So, we'll see...

Since you are in DC and want a political job remember that there aren’t many jobs for Democrats there right now. There are quite a few Clinton refugees and lobbyists with experience who would be considered before a recent graduate with no resume in politics.

Political jobs are hard to find and people get them because of involvement with different candidates. Start as a volunteer and work your way up. Unknown and unconnected people are almost never hired regardless of the sincerity of their convictions.

Finally, DC has more lawyers per capita than anywhere else. The few jobs that are out there for lawyers go to the cream of the crop. Do not go to a middle tier school in anticipation of finding a job as a lawyer in the DC area.

William Kunstler trained and I think was a real estate lawyer before he became a radical lawyer, and one of the most respected lawyers ever. Does any one ask what law school Kunstler went to.

I am not a lawyer.

William Kunstler may have had a real estate practice before he went on to public interest law, but his notoriety was exceptional. Most public interest lawyers are paid about what clerks at Wal-Mart are paid and get no recognition, they do it because it is the right thing to do and that is their reward. Even at that public interest jobs aren’t easy to find.

I'm a male, so the only law school anecdote I can share with you involving an older female who attended law school is about my friend Diane, who upon graduating from law school found no shortage of jobs. She worked both in the law and outside of it. She's now retired.

High performers will have no problems finding a job with a firm if that's what they want.

Graduates who are going to law school for a particular purpose (immigration law, bankruptcy, housing, public defender) will also have relatively little problem finding a job.

And people who choose to go to law school just to have more education will also enhance their skills accordingly, whether they use them to write a book or start their own business or whatever.

As long as you can afford law school without building up a huge amount of debt, your options won't be that limited. And as lawyers are licensed to practice "individually" upon certification by the state, you're really only as discriminated against as you let yourself be. If no one hires you, you can always hang out a shingle, or enter into an office-sharing arrangement, and do your own thing.

Dan Brown
Hamline Law '93
Saint Paul, Minnesota

St. Thomas ended up bring a SUBSTANTIAL dean's scholarship to the plate, so it's off to UST I go. Starting classes next week - very excited and very scared all at once.

A toast to you at our next DU gathering!

:toast:

Took the June LSAT and now I'm off to school in next Thursday!
I turn 31 tomorrow, so I'll be older than a lot of my peers, but I still have decades of career time ahead of me.

I've decided that now that I'm committed to my path, I'm just going to ignore the nay-sayers and sour grapers. Actually, all the professionals I talk to say that those of us who come to the law with a little bit of real world "seasoning" are infinitely better than some college kid who watched a couple episodes of The Practice and decided to go to law school based on that.

Good luck to both of us!
:-)

I started law school when I was 40. I had to work really hard the first year - like all the students did - and some didn't make it. I was in the top ten percent of my class. As an older student, I wasn't intimidated by the professors. There was one who studiously ignored me - our then Dean, who was white Italian-American male -think Scalia, only without the brains - a guy who was proud of the fact that he was anti-intellectual. Anyway, he seemed to favor white male jocks, preferably also Italian American. But hey, we had blind grading on exams and I got an A in his class anyhow!

There are all kinds of law firms out there. What they seem to have in common is that they hire people from the partners' old law schools. My law school, was about 60 percent day students and 40 percent night/part-time students. The smaller firms in town tended to have partners from the night program, and they hired graduates from the night program.

Give it your best shot for one year - the basic law you learn will always stand you in good stead, even if you quit at that point. And if you find, like I did, that the law is endlessly fascinating, like a chess game where the rules can always be challenged and changed (at the Supreme Court level) and if you can accept that justice is at best only an accidental by-product of the legal system - you'll know you took the right chance in going for a law degree/career.

As to jobs, it is certainly a head start to get a part-time clerking job with a law firm, a government agency or a corporate legal dept., at least in your last year - lets you see what a particular area of law is like and gets your foot in the door. Consider taking out enough of a loan in your last year to go full time and clerk part time.

You're off on a roller-coaster ride! I've said this before on this board, but when my older students (I've taught undergraduates, graduates and law students) say , Gosh, I'll be 40 (or 50 or 60)
when I finish (whatever certificate, degree they're working on), I always said, well, in five years you'll be 40 anyway (or 50 or 60)
Would you rather be 40 with the degree or without it?

So anyhow, I was a civil trial lawyer for six years, taught at a law school for two years and then took a pay cut to avoid the long hours at a firm, to work for state government. In a couple of months I'll retire, do some occasional relief work and travel and scuba dive. Sure beats what my life would have been like without the law degree.

P.S. First thing, look for some bright part-time people to form a study group. If you're taking four classes, you need at least four people in the group. It will really help you to keep up with the work load.
P.P.S. -
I've ended up working in an area where I help a lot of elderly and poor people - I have actually rescued a three year old boy whose mother was selling him for sex, and got the Florida child/family services to release him to his grandmother - we got him into good therapy and he seems to be doing all right - and there are other people whose lives I literally saved, like by threatening HMO execs who were denying life saving treatments. Of course, all jobs are pain-in-the-ass boring at times, but there have been some wonderful moments. Anyway, remember do so some pro bono work along the way - in today's world, there are an awful lot of people who desperately need legal help and have no money to pay for it.

I really appreciate it. I think with less than a month before D-Day, I am getting some severe cold feet and just needed to hear something positive.

Talk about feeling "alone", this is probably the worst time I've had it.

Thanks again!!!!

and I've practiced for many years now. I am old, I am old, I wear the bottoms of my gap khakis rolled. Sigh.

Anyway, if it is your desire to work in a silk shirt law firm 60 hours a week, you are not what they are looking for. They want them young and naive, from top law schools at the top of their class. If you want to actually practice law, a lifetime of experience helps, in my opinion.

But the only reason in my opinion to go to law school is if you want to be a lawyer in the worst way possible. (Hee hee)