Once again, I am a paralegal not a lawyer, also when a lawyer gets involved your problem of concern becomes an issue.
Okay let’s pick up where I left off with the all important L.S.A.T. or national law school admission test. Like I said last week the better you lawyers score the better the school s/he can apply for. So a lot lawyer wanna bee’s spend any were from $300 to $2000 on study material just to get ready for L.S.A.T. Some have spent up to another $2000 on an out and out practice test. The people who set up these tests locate and rent the hall where the L.S.A.T. will be given. In addition they set things up, even going so far as hiring mock test takers trying to make their test virtually identical to the real L.S.A.T. All this is just getting ready for that test because like I said before, the better your lawyers score the better quality school your lawyer can apply too.
You see there are 5 levels of law schools. Level 1 is of course Harvard or Yale, level 5 is often the online law school no one has ever heard about.
Side-Note: Your life time G.P.A will also come into play as to which schools will look at your application. The online schools will get your lawyer qualified to take the Bar Exam barely, but h/his practice will be limited to one state. Usually the home state of the online school s/he attended. Moving to or opening a practice in another state may prove difficult.
The cost of attending a good law school could run anywhere from $30,000 to $300,000 by itself. This depends on level of school which accepted your lawyer. Your lawyer may have sidestepped some of that debt with grants and scholarships. That’s if s/he doesn’t eat too much during their time in law school.
Your lawyer has now graduated with anywhere from between $90,000 to $150,000 in student loan debt. Depending on which level of law school accepted h/him. So after law school your lawyer now has $1500 a month in student loan payments for the next 10 years. Please GOD! believe me student loan companies do not play when it come to collecting on that debt.
Now the Bar Exam. The Bar Exam is so blindingly important that many law school graduates go up another $10,000 into debt getting ready for it. To make it simple your lawyer doesn’t pass the Bar s/he doesn’t work period end of story. 18 states have limited how many times someone could take the Exam. The actual Exam itself can cost up to $600 depending on what state your lawyer took the Bar Exam. Like the L.S.A.T. the Bar Exam is only given a few times a year. Finely there is a $50 fee, (depending on the state) just to get a copy of the certificate to hang on the wall!
Now your lawyer is $170,000 in debt and s/he hasn’t even found a job or hung out a shingle yet.
To be continued