There is an enormous amount of misinformation in this thread. I will do my best to set things straight, but let me begin by introducing myself: I am a BTL-holding T14 graduate who is currently employed as an associate at a V10 firm. I will go through each post in this thread and insert my comment(s) as I feel necessary.
not that he is bragging or something rather it is only worth it in todays market if you go to a top 14 law school
If you are either: 1) interested in biglaw or 2) taking out significant loans to pay for law school (think $50k+, which requires biglaw to pay off in a timely fashion), this is correct. If you need support for this statement, google Law School Transparency and poke around.
It is ridiculous to plan for law school before taking the LSAT. It is like planning how to become a NFL player before ever picking up a football.
Although you may be more informed than many others in this thread–probably the case if you’re a TLS regular–your posts are often unnecessarily hyperbolic to the point of being misleading. Assuming one takes the relatively standard route of sitting for the LSAT ~3 years after high school, he will have already accumulated the majority of his college credits (and grades) by that point. Due to US News pandering, GPA counts for ~50% of your overall admissions cycle (the other ~50% is your LSAT score). Thus, there is reason to “plan for law school” in the form of taking GPA-maximizing courses even before taking the LSAT. I suppose the ideal situation would be to take the LSAT prior to even beginning college. However, because LSAT scores only last for five years, and might be a waste if you change your mind about law school during the intervening years, this isn’t generally the practice.
Go to a real college and get a real degree. Nothing can take the place of a real education.
I don’t know what this means.
But perhaps a good education will help in this person’s future. A strong GPA may mean something in regards to getting in graduate schools, but a strong education gives a person even more advantages.
Maybe this is what the previous person was trying to say, I don’t know, but this actually has some validity. The downside of going all-in on the BTL is that you may change your mind about law school (or do poorly on the LSAT) three years into the endeavor. At that point, you’re stuck, because outside of law school (i.e., for getting any other professional position) a BTL is pretty much worthless. If this is what is meant by “more advantages,” then there is something to this post.
If he wants law school, a strong law school will give him way more than a weak law school and a strong liberal arts education.
If you meant “If he wants biglaw,” (or pretty much any legal job), then you are correct. But again, this strategy (going BTL to maximize GPA and get into a T6) is risky for the reasons mentioned immediately above.
A strong undergraduate education will give a prospective graduate student a leg up when taking the LSAT and in law school. Although it is totally possible to succeed at a prestigious law school without it, a proper undergraduate education will make it a whole lot easier and will give skills that a BTL simply cannot.
No, it will not.
You are wrong
I daresay I know more BTLs who have gone to top law schools than you do.
…And this is where the conversation devolves into inanity. The problem is that each of you are speaking from either 1) first-hand experience or 2) anecdotal information. For obvious reasons, neither can be trusted to inform a sound opinion, and thus none of your posts are anything beyond utter speculation. PBA, out of curiosity, do the people you know tell you their actual grades? Or are you basing this off employment outcomes/honors/law review? Any of the three can be misleading for reasons I won’t go into here. Suffice to say that, for lack of any credible evidence, I don’t think there is any reason to think that BTL-holders would fare any better or worse than your average law school matriculant. Unless you can summon data to the contrary, I think presenting anecdotal evidence as anything even resembling fact is disingenuous and a disservice to the OP.
My preference would always be for a non-BTL because it gave me background knowledge which proved very helpful in studying for the LSAT and the first few months of law school.
I have no idea what you would study to help you with the LSAT (formal logic?) or the substantive material taught in law school, but whatever it is certainly isn’t a necessary condition to doing well in either.
If the goal is admission to an elite national law school and finding employment in “Big law”, a BTL is not the best way to go.
Au contraire (or, if you prefer, aderaba). See above. Your statement does hold true, however, for pretty much any other professional employment.
Big firms who come to interview at top schools look foremost at grades, then somewhat at personality and presenation. They almost never even ask where you went to undergrad unless you are trying to go into a science heavy field like patent law.
This is true, though you will almost certainly get questions about your yeshiva/BTL during on-campus interviews.
No, writing skills are not at all relevant to law school success except in one class. You can get an A+ without a single proper sentence on a law school exam.
Again, your penchant for hyperbole hurts you. The first sentence here (your conclusion) does not necessarily follow from the second (your premise), and is in fact wrong. Although you are correct that proper grammar is not necessary to get good grades, forming coherent arguments and forming conclusions is. So maybe the two of you are talking past each other by defining “writing” differently, but I can assure you that writing skills (of the latter variety) do matter. Also, as an aside, it’s entirely possible that your buddies got “A+s” despite their poor grammar, not that the poor grammar was “irrelevant.”
Also, yeshiva guys do have good connections. Often much better than their classmates.
Again, although the rest of the information in this post is largely correct, you need to rein yourself in to things that you can back up. Otherwise you jeopardize your entire credibility.
1. Law schools have A+. Perhaps not every one, but most do.
2. Writing ability is the least factor in a grade. I have been shown A+ exams from top schools with misspelled words, broken sentences, and horrific grammar.
Some schools have A+s. Many of the T14 have switched to either HP/P/F or have non-letter grades. Others use A+ as a replacement for CALI awards (best exam) but still count it as a 4.0. Bottom line: who really cares. Your second point suffers from the same issue mentioned earlier.
1. Law school does not have homework.
2. Law school does not have tests–just one final at the end of each semester for each class.
These are generally true, at least for non-seminar courses.
There is no question in my mind that being really proficient in Talmud, predisposes someone to having the type of thinking that does well in law school, too.
You should probably begin questioning more.
Not all Law Schools are the same, and if you are not looking to join a major downtown firm and work 2000 plus hours the first few years, it doesn’t make much difference where you go tgo Law School.
False. Getting a government and/or public interest job is far easier from a T14 for a number of reasons least of which is the generous loan repayment plans that they offer. I suppose your chances of success in hanging a shingle (near-zero) or joining your shver’s firm (100%) are similar no matter where you graduate from, but that’s about it.
There has been much false information posted above. Some professors teaching certain courses do give homework in Law School. A Law student should figure to spend 3 hours in outside study or work for every class hour. Thus a fifteen credit semester means 15 hours per week in class and 45 hours additional preparation.
I suppose that would technically be “homework” in that it’s work done at home, but it isn’t graded and thus I don’t think most would consider it homework in the meaningful sense.
It is also false that there are NO tests except for semester finals. I attended an Ivy League Law School and Property, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law and Ethics all had weekly tests as well as finals. Except for senior level courses all my law classes had midterm exams.
This is not the norm anymore. I hope you enjoyed Cornell in the 80s.
The classes I teach have midterm, final and 3 major research projects each semester.
I pity your students.
REMEMBER: When making application to take the Bar Exam the candidate must supply his/her College Transcripts as well as Law School Transcript. Out of town a BTL may not be recognized as a legitimate degree. Last year the Bar Committee contacted me to find out what it was. In the specific applicant’s case it really wasn’t equivalent to a 4 year BS or BA and he was not permitted to take the Bar Exam…and lost his $750 application fee.
I haven’t heard of this happening before, but given some of the stories I’ve heard (i.e., people going to an American yeshiva for a year or two after coming back from an Israeli yeshiva that certainly does not give any form of credits and walking out with a BTL) it makes sense. Interesting.
Okay, that’s all for now. I’m happy to discuss any of this stuff further. I guess my biggest peeve with all of the (many) BTL–>law school discussions on here is the prevalence of anecdote-based conclusions. Let’s all just admit that we don’t have any remotely convincing evidence relating to the relative success of a BTL getting into/doing well in law school and reduce the discussion to what we do know. The decision to eschew college in favor of a BTL–almost certainly a life-changing one–should be given at least that much respect.