Honestly, as a first-year law student, it seems like schools only look at GPA and LSAT. They might take into account other things you've done (like working or grad school), but I doubt they look at what courses you take. That being said, you'll need good logical skills to do well on the LSAT, and good rhetorical skills as well to do well in law school. And as far as I can tell, being an interesting person (beyond being a good goal in itself) is going to help a lot in making contacts. A lot of law students seem virtually identical. If you can talk a little about philosophy or literature or whatever, it's going to help you make connections in way that's not accessible to a lot of law students. If you have any specific questions, feel free to PM me.
Oh, and 1st tier vs. 3rd tier? It depends a LOT on what you want to do. Let me use my personal experience as an example. One of the careers I'm thinking about is prosecution, in particular working as a county prosecutor in Western Michigan. If I was sure about this, I think I might have been best off going to Cooley Law School. It's cheap, and they probably would have given me lots of money. But I'm not sure, and the better school you go to, the more options you'll have. I ended up having to choose between a higher ranked school on the East Coast and a somewhat well ranked school in the midwest. Since I'm most likely going to practice in the midwest, I decided to go to the less well ranked school. I guess the point I'm trying to get across is, where you want to try and go to depends a lot on what you want to do with your JD.
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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."
"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Last edited by asaris; 09-22-2005 at 02:44 PM..
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