Re: Re: Re: law school - day or evening

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: law school - day or evening

Comments:
: I've been struggling with how to address the "Second" for a while, and of course there's no easy answer, especially without knowing more of your financial situation (objective) and your personality (subjective). : (1) The money question. Being an engineer, you can probably run some rough cash flow projections on Excel in your sleep. Will you be better off with Option A (keep working + 3y night school) or Option B (stop working + full time 2.5y) in 1 y, upon graduation, and 5y after graduation. Adjust for optional summer school. Figure in current income (with expected raises), law school costs (with expected rises), bar review costs, and then your living expenses (with spouse? kids? more on this later). : You'll also want to talk to the Financial Aid Dep't at your school - - they have programs that run monthly repayment projections for any debt load. They'll be delighted that you're asking for the estimates ahead of time, instead of when you're walking out the door. : The tricky part is guessing your estimated income after graduation. Run one scenario at your current income (assuming you don't get hired right away), one at the low end of patent attorney pay scale in your area, and at the middle of the scale. To be safe, let's not project you land a big firm job at top salary right away. : How do you get these numbers? I'm afraid you're going to have to ask around for small and medium firms in your area. Let's assume 4% raises each year. Off the top of my head, let's say the range is 50K (low) to 80K (middle), not using high (120K), but you'll want to tweak these for realistic local figures. You can also run a weighted guess: no law job (20%), low pay law job (30%), med pay law job (40%), high pay law job (10%). : How do the numbers look? Are you better off with Option A or B? And are the Options even in less than 5 years after graduation (seeks ok to me) Or in 10 years (I might reconsider)? Use Excel to keep tweaking the numbers until you understand the limiting conditions. Sometimes you realize the dream is actually doable (this happened to me), and sometimes you find that there's just no way. This concludes the objective part of the test. : If you thought that was work, let's talk about subjective factors. One is your personal life. Most of the people I know going to night law school have families, and it's hell on everyone. But they can't pass on the security of an income stream and benefits. If you have no family obligations, that weighs in favor of going fulltime. On the other hand, if you've got lots of personal support (and a second income), maybe full time could work. : Your hirability. Man, this depends so much on your technical field: what your engineering chops are and how much demand there is for that field. The third-tier school and average grades aren't going to help your resume here, so I'd have to give a lot of weight your engineering skills and your writing skills (here's where a writing sample helps). : Your personality. As you've figured out, full time students can get a lot more out of law school than just the minimum of classes. There's clubs and journals and moot court and debates in the hallways, things that may be harder to participate in with night division. So much of legal education is osmotic. If you're passionate about these things, then I'd weigh more toward full time. On the other hand, lots of people get through law school on classes alone (whether by choice or necessity) and do fine careerwise, but I think they miss out on the intangibles. : Your limits. You know what your limits are. Did a fulltime engineering job + night classes test them? How much more do you have in reserve? On a 0-100% burnout scale, Option B was a 95% for the last 2 years, coming within 5% of burnout; I KNOW that I couldn't do Option A. Only you know the answer to this for you. : What's left to say? There must be dozens more factors to think about. I'll leave it to others to fill in. Good luck with your decision.

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