Well look at that, I finally found a topic that forced me to sign up for CF.
If you are considering law school, you really need to figure out what is important to you, and why you want to enter the legal profession in the first place.
Some lawyers make excellent money. The most prestigious firms currently start associates at $160K + bonuses. There are many problems with this reality, however. The jobs that pay the most are typically big-business, and my understanding is that the work involved, especially in the first few years, can be mind-numbing. Additionally, these jobs are becoming increasingly hard to come by, particularly for those who decided to not go to Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, etc. The sad truth is that the higher ranked your school is, the easier time you will have getting your foot in the door when it comes time to find a job.
There are also a lot of low-paying jobs for lawyers, and oftentimes these are the most rewarding. If you are passionate about helping people in dire situations, and that is the reason you are entering the profession, don't expect to rake in the big bucks. This includes jobs entailing public interest and government work. Additionally, these jobs aren't exactly easy to come by either. Employers are growing increasingly wary of hiring 'Big Firm dropouts' (those who expected jobs that would pay a lot, didn't get them, and are now resorting to public interest even though they don't give a damn about the work).
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that law school is a bad move if you don't think you will be passionate about the law. As several people have already said, take as many classes from Dirk Deam as possible. You also need to realize that law school can truly wear down on your soul. The work is backbreaking, and competition is fierce. Because everything is graded on a true curve, there is no graded homework (with the exception of legal writing courses), and the only test is usually a final, it all comes down to how you can perform under pressure. Right now I'm trying to prepare for finals in Copyright, Patent Law, First Amendment law, and Securities Fraud, and I am incredibly cranky.
All-in-all, here's a checklist I would recommend completing before you choose to go to law school.
1) Are you prepared to take on $150,000+ of debt, and if so are you willing to risk the possibility that you end up with a job that only pays $40,000 a year?
2) If you are lucky enough to land a big-paying job, are you willing to work 60+ hour weeks performing work that can often be mind-numbing and thankless?
3) Are you passionate about the law (or as passionate as you can be before entering law school)?
4) Do you think you can succeed in an ultra-competetive environment?
5) Are you willing to make sacrifices (such as having to miss a good friend's wedding that conflicts with finals)?
6) Finally, what fields of law would you be interested in? As was already mentioned, IP law has a number of jobs availalbe. Constitutional law is fascinating, and what got me into law school in the first place, but jobs are hard to come by. Criminal law by its very nature is often considered a 'dirty' field (even though the issues that can come up are fascinating).
Anyway, that's the perspective of a current 2L who goes to a T-20 school in L.A. and who was fortunate enough to find a high-paying internship this summer in IP.
