Choosing a Law School
I've been thinking about a move to New Hampshire for a couple of years, and the new mandatory health insurance legislation in Massachusetts will probably put me over the top. Massachusetts is one of a handful of states that drove self-employed people from the ranks of the insured to the uninsured around fifteen years ago by passing bit of lobbyist inspired legislation that banned insurance companies from selling genuine major medical policies. Fondly known as the "HMO Bill" by insurance insiders, it forced anybody in the state who wanted health insurance to buy into an expensive HMO type policy. Whether you call it insurance company welfare or simply another classic piece of Massachusetts social engineering, it's not my idea of Democracy. Rather than be coerced, I've gone without any health insurance the last fifteen years, and my attitude is I'll be damned if I'm going to get forced into it now. Live free or die.
So, when I started looking at potential choices for a law school, I started with New Hampshire. To my surprise, there only appears to be one major law school in New Hampshire, the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, NH. I was sure Dartmouth would have a law school, but they don't, which is just as well since they probably wouldn't have accepted me. Taking liberties with a Marxism (Groucho), I can state with 100% certainty, "I wouldn't attend any law school that wouldn't accept me as a student." Googling "New Hampshire Las School" also turned up a page from the US News and World Report that ranks law schools, and which lists the Franklin Pierce Law Center as a Tier 4 school. There doesn't appear to be a Tier 5, so Tier 4 may be the bottom of the ranking barrel. I noticed that our local law school, Western New England College, was also listed as Tier 4. My impression of Western New England, growing up a mile or two away, was that it primarily functioned as a night law school, drawing working students from all over Western Massachusetts, Northern Connecticut, and even Eastern New York.
I've been aware for some years that there was such a thing as school rankings, but I never gave it any thought. My own criteria for choosing a law school are pretty different than those of a fresh-out-of-college or twenty something kid. I gather from popular culture that young law students are obsessed with getting into a top ranked law school so they can get a summer internship in a ritzy law firm, and go on to work for the Mafia. OK, I’ll admit that everything I know about law school is based on two movies, “The Firm” and “The Paper Chase”, and of the two, I saw “The Firm” more recently. As a self-employed writer and publisher, I don’t see myself chasing after summer internships, and I sure don’t want to end up getting caught between the mob and the FBI.
My interest in law school is learning something new and enjoying the process, not in getting some degree that qualifies me to earn X dollars a year or prepares me for yet another professional exam. Having attended some night classes in both my undergraduate and graduate engineering studies some years back, I’ve seen the limitations of night school. Frankly, everybody including the professors are tired, the students have other compelling worries in life, and the main thrust is to put in the hours and grind out the degrees. It’s an admirable way to better oneself and move up the economic chain in America, but it’s not any fun, and it’s mainly about short-term memorization.
The question I’ll need to answer for myself is whether Tier 3 and Tier 4 law schools function in the mode of adult education, essentially providing a professional qualification in return for tuition dollars paid and classroom hours accrued. If that’s the case, I’ll be stuck applying to the better schools, which not only narrows the geographic options, but also gets us into the realm of political agendas and high cost communities. From the outside, some law schools appear to be hotbeds of activism, and I’m too old to serve as ego fodder for a rouge lecturer. I think after I take the LSATs I’ll have to try to visit a few law schools with classes in session and see if I can’t get a better idea of what actually goes on.
So, when I started looking at potential choices for a law school, I started with New Hampshire. To my surprise, there only appears to be one major law school in New Hampshire, the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, NH. I was sure Dartmouth would have a law school, but they don't, which is just as well since they probably wouldn't have accepted me. Taking liberties with a Marxism (Groucho), I can state with 100% certainty, "I wouldn't attend any law school that wouldn't accept me as a student." Googling "New Hampshire Las School" also turned up a page from the US News and World Report that ranks law schools, and which lists the Franklin Pierce Law Center as a Tier 4 school. There doesn't appear to be a Tier 5, so Tier 4 may be the bottom of the ranking barrel. I noticed that our local law school, Western New England College, was also listed as Tier 4. My impression of Western New England, growing up a mile or two away, was that it primarily functioned as a night law school, drawing working students from all over Western Massachusetts, Northern Connecticut, and even Eastern New York.
I've been aware for some years that there was such a thing as school rankings, but I never gave it any thought. My own criteria for choosing a law school are pretty different than those of a fresh-out-of-college or twenty something kid. I gather from popular culture that young law students are obsessed with getting into a top ranked law school so they can get a summer internship in a ritzy law firm, and go on to work for the Mafia. OK, I’ll admit that everything I know about law school is based on two movies, “The Firm” and “The Paper Chase”, and of the two, I saw “The Firm” more recently. As a self-employed writer and publisher, I don’t see myself chasing after summer internships, and I sure don’t want to end up getting caught between the mob and the FBI.
My interest in law school is learning something new and enjoying the process, not in getting some degree that qualifies me to earn X dollars a year or prepares me for yet another professional exam. Having attended some night classes in both my undergraduate and graduate engineering studies some years back, I’ve seen the limitations of night school. Frankly, everybody including the professors are tired, the students have other compelling worries in life, and the main thrust is to put in the hours and grind out the degrees. It’s an admirable way to better oneself and move up the economic chain in America, but it’s not any fun, and it’s mainly about short-term memorization.
The question I’ll need to answer for myself is whether Tier 3 and Tier 4 law schools function in the mode of adult education, essentially providing a professional qualification in return for tuition dollars paid and classroom hours accrued. If that’s the case, I’ll be stuck applying to the better schools, which not only narrows the geographic options, but also gets us into the realm of political agendas and high cost communities. From the outside, some law schools appear to be hotbeds of activism, and I’m too old to serve as ego fodder for a rouge lecturer. I think after I take the LSATs I’ll have to try to visit a few law schools with classes in session and see if I can’t get a better idea of what actually goes on.
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