Law Students

Choosing a Law School

By cgrant

Law school is as much about receiving an education as it is about networking and making connections, both in the intellectual and in the career-building sense. Going to a brand-named law school will open doors by name alone. However, are these doors, traditionally ones that open and close for men on men?s terms (see any number of writings about the glass ceiling or pink ghetto), the doors that women want to travel through?

In my own law school application process, I visited about ten schools prior to applying (ranging from top tier to bottom tier). Those visits inspired me to drop schools off my application list or place others at the top. Traditional rankings were not that important to me. Rather, I was most concerned with the percentage of female professors and female students. This worked for me; reflecting in my third year of law school, I got everything out of law school that I was looking for.

My advice to women applying to law school? Determine what is important to you. Do you want professors to be accessible? Do you want to participate in class on par with your male counterparts? Do you want to find a mentor at law school? When you visit law schools on your application list, ask other students what their experiences have been like. Ask women, ask men. Knowing this information might be more useful than standard rankings.

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Full post as published by Ms. JD on February 18, 2008 (boomark / email).