Did anyone go to law school after 40?

[NeverEndingUpgrade]

Date: 2/10/2010 7:19:54 PM
Author: Pink Tower
Never ending,
Have you taken the LSAT?
I had a friend who took it in her 40''s, and she scored really high. Apparently law schools find older candidates who score very highly quite attractive. I recall she was offered a scholarship at Cornell and turned it down because she wanted to stay close to home.

Pink Tower,
I am planning on taking the LSAT in June. My undergrad GPA was high. I don''t have grades yet for my grad. program as I just started. I am going to go step-by-step. Take the LSAT and see how I do. Make good grades in my grad. classes. Apply to the new public law school in the fall and see if I get in/get scholarships. I don''t have the ability to move, so it''s going to be the new public law shcool or nothing.

I know someone who''s husband just graduated from the local private law school with $120K in debt. His payment is $1200 per month. I refuse to get involved in something like that. It is said that going to that school gets you "in" at good firms, but he was only able to get a public defender job making $60K. She is not happy to say the least.

Whitby,
I am considering a career in Mediation, but am not sure how I will apply the skills I am learning. It is my understanding that local mediators are still feeling a lot of competiton from attorneys who don''t think that non-JD''s can mediate. The university I am taking the classes through does help you with job-hunting (yes, it is a US school). As I progress through the program, I am going to utilize the services for career-grooming, and I joined the Network group for ADR that I can post my info on. I guess that the current economy and our own money problems have skewed my thinking toward the non-optomistic side! I am trying to change that by taking classes and developing a new 5-year plan!

 

[whitby_2773]

hi neverendingupgrade

i was probably about 15 years ahead of you, and perhaps that was a time when qualified mediators were less readily available and mediation was a newer model of dispute resolution.

however, through my degree, which was with all others who had a number of years in their professions, were already working doing some degree of mediaiton, and who were working full time at the time they did this masters course, i met a number of lawyers who were interested in working with me, for me, or hiring me to work for them. this was contract work, so was on a case by case basis, but i didn''t find it difficult to supplement my own practice with straight mediation work - both family and corporate. i found most lawyers with some experience in mediation were keen to work with psychologists who also had mediation training, as the results tended to be more long lasting and it resulted in more signed agreements. my course was not large - around 50 in total - and so we all networked a lot and got to know what each other was doing. i cant encourage you too much to do this. also, i did very well in my course and was offered the exchange program with my Australian university''s US sister university, so this tended to raise my profile within the course. i would encourage you to do as well as possible; doors always open to students, even adult ones, who perform best. my course did a huge amount of role playing with experienced mediators (generally crisis negotiators), so people got to see your style and work out whether you were any good pretty quickly. i''m not sure if disp res courses are like that now, but it definitely helped us network and figure out who we''d like to work with. if anybody ever saw me mediate in a role playing situation and expressed complimentary interest, i simply asked them straight out if they had any interest in working with me in the future. most of my work with lawyers going forward was through doing this.

i had a number of articles published that i wrote while doing this course, and made a number of contacts with federal police networks. they were looking, at that time, for all sorts of external consults, and i would advise you to network in this direction if you decide you wish to go the full time mediation route. i didn''t go on to take the scholarship offered to me to do my PhD, but i can tell you that my thesis was in defining the crisis negotiation as a crisis not only for the subject, but also for the negotiator, which then put the negotiator at risk of PTSD. while cold debriefs are the norm in the field of crisis negotiation, i wanted to develop a standardized hot debrief that could be administered by a non psych professional in the field. my PhD thesis was to test this in the field to see if indeed a hot debrief could be an effective tool in decreasing PTSD for crisis negotiators.

all that to say, this drew a degree of interest with my peers and led to many open doors. to go into professional mediation you need a great deal of push. but it''s possible and it can be very lucrative.

do you have a career ''behind'' mediation such as psychology or law enforcement? if you do, it may well be possible to parlay that into mediation within your field.

either way, i hope you''re successful in what you do,

 

[NeverEndingUpgrade]

Thanks, Whitby,

No, I don''t have a background in anything ADR related, which is part of my problem I guess. At this point, I don''t think that going through the grad. program is a bad idea. I started out getting an MBA but the classes I took were too boring. Certainly ADR skills apply to many fields.

You are echoing my professor by saying that at this point, it is kind of a make-your-own-career type situation which involves much creative PR and networking capabilities. I just started the program 3 weeks ago, so maybe I am worrying about too much too soon. The Negotiation professor gave us all personality tests and I scored very high on competitive, adversarial type negotiating, which led me to believe that I might be better off in the field of law.

 

[whitby_2773]

hi neverendingupgrade

disp res tends to be a specialist training that is added to a basic profession, as you''ve no doubt already gathered. this is why it''s difficult to move into successfully, as one''s clients tend to come through whatever the initial profession is. if your strengths are in competitive, adversarial negotiating, your thinking about doing well in legal practice is no doubt correct.

have you thought about training as a paralegal through a BA or MA program? this could probably be combined successfully with disp res if you wanted to do straight disp res with more professional credibility. you could also parlay that into a law degree if you decided you wanted to, and could perhaps work part time while doing so.

anyway, just a few thoughts - my apologies if you''ve already thought of all these things - i do wish you lots of success in finding your way forward in your career.

 

[NeverEndingUpgrade]

Whitby,

I am considering going to law school. I''m only just beginning to think about it since I had to enroll in a law class for my DR program and found out that I really like it. In fact, I have a separate post going in order to get advice!! I had not really thought about becoming a paralegal; that would certainly be a cheaper option than law school since I could complete a program through the local community college. But I would not be able to litigate without a JD.

Regarding my background, I spent several years in education which is why I would most likely pursue family or education- related law. I also wouldn''t mind moving into Humas Resources, where many DR jobs are, but I have not been able to secure employment in the field, probably due to there being so few jobs right now and competing with people who already have experience in the field. I was self-employed for many years so I have basic HR skills like hiring, training, etc. but nothing that has made it possible for me to convince a prospective employer to hire me.

 

[NeverEndingUpgrade]

OK, I just got an email from the public law school that the committee in charge of recruiting the dean and staff is going to move the opening date from Fall 2011 to Fall 2012. Which means that if the program is 3 years, I would graduate from law school at the ripe old age of ..... 50. I would graduate the same year that my son will graduate from high school.

What are the job prospects for a 50-year-old law school grad?

 

[Octavia]

Honestly, it depends on your market. The opportunities in New York City aren't going to be the same as opportunities in a 10,000-person town (which is true regardless of age, but particularly true for older grads). If you're planning to stay in the area where you live, your best bet is to get out there and talk to some lawyers, find out what they say. DON'T rely on what law school deans or career services people say -- they want people to enroll in the school so they have an interest in giving you rosy scenarios. Practicing lawyers have no such incentive and will be more likely to tell you how it really is.