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Wednesday, June 13, 2012

What Advice Do You Give Prospective or Admitted Students?

Law faculty often hear from prospective or admitted law students, and law school administrators often ask faculty members to play a part in meeting with admitted students. This has occasioned some recent talk. The post here seems to treat this as a revelation, and the comments seem to assume that faculty actually go along with the request. In my experience, it's not an unusual or revelatory practice. But there is a difference between getting the request and what, if anything, faculty members actually say or do.

So I thought I'd check in with readers. May I ask those of you who are professors:

1) Do you receive such requests, either directly from prospective or admitted students or through your administration? If so, do you talk to these students?

2) What do you tell them about whether they should go to law school at all? Do you try to dissuade them? Encourage them? Ask about their particular circumstances, including their financial condition?

3) What do you tell them about whether they should go to your law school in particular? Do you give a neutral account, play up your own school's strengths, emphasize its weaknesses, or none of the above? Do you ask them what other schools they've been admitted to and with what financial inducements? Do you ask them in what geographic region they want to end up practicing (if they know) and in what practice area (if they think they know)? Do you ever advise them, at least as between competing schools (see #2 above), to go to another school rather than yours?

For what it's worth, these days I tend to ask prospective students about their circumstances and wishes, offer blanket advice that they should not go to law school unless they strongly want to end up as practicing lawyers, and encourage them not to think of law school and legal practice as an easy or guaranteed route to financial security. I ask them what schools they've gotten into, with what scholarships if any, and what they want to do and (especially) where they want to live after law school. If I think another school is a clearly smarter choice for them, I'm happy to say so; I'd rather they be happy with their choice of school than bitter about it. I discuss the strengths of my own school to some extent, but I try not to overplay it. Doubtless I could do and say more; perhaps I ought to give them Jim Chen and Herwig Schlunk's recent articles. Any omissions on my part are not the result of some coverup or desire to deceive. But I'm curious what others do and say. 

 

Posted by Paul Horwitz on June 13, 2012 at 08:44 AM in Paul Horwitz | Permalink

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Comments

You should send them to Law School Transparency for the latest and clearest employment info.

Posted by: guest | Jun 13, 2012 6:21:03 PM

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