Law School

[TrulyStashin]

^^^^  Brilliant.  Well said, Lentils.

Plus, OP has been a paralegal for a while now and likely has a good sense of his/her aptitude for "thinking like a lawyer."   Study your  buns off for the LSAT (I loved Powerscore prep books).  Maybe even take a Powerscore prep class -- check prices first, maybe take the LSAT once, first, and see how you do.   If you can get 165 or better and your LSAC-adjusted GPA is strong, then you will likely get scholarship offers from strong regional schools.  If you can get a 170, then they'll fall over themselves chasing you.  Stupid, but true.

To pick your "strong regional schools"  look for schools that meet the following criteria:
1) in or very near a capital city (e.g. Albany, Richmond)
2) multiple courts (at most you'll see:  city, state trial, state appellate, federal trial, federal appellate, bankruptcy -- the more, the better)
3) notable federal agencies or the like (an EPA region office; Fed Reserve; SEC?; HUD?; SBA? etc)
4) lots of clinical experience options offered by the school -- this gets you out of the classroom into the local legal community for practical experience and networking

[cynthia1848]

Ditto re: regional schools.  For example, in Boston, BU, BC, Suffolk, Northeastern.  HOWEVER, if you go to a regional school you will need to be top of your class, whereas in T14 there is a bit more wiggle room.  You need to know which schools are considered the best where you are (prob can get that from the lawyers you work with).

If you can take practice LSATs before taking the real one, you will get a better idea of where you stand and what schools might be realistic for you.

[SF Semi-Mustache]

OTOH, T14 Biglaw MMM lawyers should be able to knock the typical $150k law school debt off in 2 years' time and bank $150k for another 2 years before switching to the slow lane (or bank even more by staying).

That's a bit ambitious in an expensive city in a high-tax state, even using MMM principles.  Actually, some MMM principles (roommates/biking/transit) are par for the course for people making even healthy incomes in San Francisco because even a room is pretty expensive. 

Perhaps I'm not mustachian enough, but I'm on schedule to pay off somewhat less than $150k in 3.5 years.  And then I'll bank $150k (or a bit more) the next couple of years, which is easier due to salary increases.

No doubt that you're making a bet on yourself that you can pull it off, but someone with the smarts to get into Yale, Harvard, NYU, Columbia, Stanford, UChicago, UPenn, UVA, Berkeley, Duke, Northwestern, UMichigan, Cornell or Georgetown should be able to count on themselves to excel at a school ranked a bit lower if they have the drive to succeed.

You don't even have to dip that low.  While I loved my school at the higher end of the T14 spectrum, I turned down a full ride to a school somewhat lower down the T14 spectrum to accommodate a significant other's career (and then we broke up).  I don't really regret it -- regret isn't the right word -- but I think about it when that student loan payment comes out of my bank account every month.  Very small USNWR ranking differences can mean big differences in money.

[TrulyStashin]

If you can take practice LSATs before taking the real one, you will get a better idea of where you stand and what schools might be realistic for you.

Note:  my score on the practice LSATs was terrible.  I did well on the real thing.  In the past, if you took it more than once, LSAC would average all your scores.  They no longer do that and schools now use the highest score you achieve.  So, there is no harm in taking it several times (aside from the mental anguish, but that's nothing compared to law school itself!).  YMMV

[Daleth]

Type of firm is key.  You say you want to be a lawyer, but what is that based on a Big Law lawyer, a prosecutor, or a solo practioner?  All are very different. 

Absolutely true. And not only are they very different, but there are different routes into them. It makes no sense to spend the $$ to go to a T14 school if your goal is to be a prosecutor or solo practitioner or to work at a smallish firm on things like estates and trusts.

Bottom line, if you want big law and the starting $160,000 salary go to a T10 school preferably top 5.  Anything else I would generally recommend an affordable (Under $20k a year) regional school that places well in the market you want to live. 

$160k as a starting salary only exists in a few firms in a few major markets--NYC, San Francisco etc.--cities which are all highly competitive with very high COL, and are awash in well qualified law school grads so it's very hard to stand out from the crowd, and the big firms in those markets tend to be much harder to work at (higher billable hours requirements and a firm culture of slaving away at all hours) than firms in smaller markets. The firms that pay $160k in NYC, SF etc. pay less in other markets, on the order of $130k, but it works out the same or better because the COL is much lower in cities other than NYC, SF etc. And also, as far as work/life balance, the culture may be less brutal than in NYC, SF etc. even within the same firm.

And you don't have to go to a T5 or T10 or T20 school. I got a Big Law job by going to a regional school in the same city as the Big Law firms where I wanted to work, and doing all the other stuff that you do need to do: getting good grades, being on law review or another journal, etc. Before making my decision I looked at the websites of the local Big Law firms to confirm that they had a lot of lawyers from the regional school and that they interviewed there. I got into some T10 schools but turned them down because they all wanted basically the price of a house as tuition, whereas the regional school gave me a partial scholarship (making my TOTAL tuition cost over 3 years less than $20k) due to my high LSATs and GPA.

Here's how that worked: the GPA's and LSAT scores of admitted students are part of the metric that US News and World Reports uses to rank law schools, so if your GPA and LSAT are noticeably above those of most of the students admitted by X school, X school will typically offer you money to come there--it boosts their rankings. This can work even in the T10 level schools; I know two people who got into Harvard with no offer of financial assistance but also got into other top 10 schools with a *complete* tuition waiver. One of them chose Harvard for the prestige factor and thus found herself locked into a soulless high-paying job for many years to pay back her student loans. The other chose Michigan, graduated with very little debt, got a Big Law job and saved TONS of money, and is now rich.

[TrulyStashin]

Cleaning off my desk (grin) and I found a PR flyer featuring all the Summer Associates at my BigLaw firm.  Below are the schools represented.  I have no clue about current ranking, except that UVA is perpetually a T10 school and my alma mater, URich. is currently 51st (based on recent letter from them):

Fordham U.
Univ. of Richmond
UVa (total of 5 Assoc from here)
UNC (total of 2 Assoc from here)
Univ of Tenn.
Northwestern Univ. (total of 2 Assoc from here)
George Mason
Loyola Univ. Chicago
Tulane Univ.
Wake Forest

[La Bibliotecaria Feroz]

I used to be a university office manager and could have gone to law school in the evenings almost for free. So that's the Mustachian way: Get an administrative job at a university and take the free tuition benefits! (Caveat: This makes it harder to get experience. I was actually in a law school office, so at least I would have had networking chances.) In my position, I would even have had time during the day to do homework (and was explicitly told that I could do so--they often hired graduate students as the office manager, apparently.).

[ZMonet]

I know you plan/want to go to a top tier law school, so this might not be all that relevant to you, but I read this interesting article on the "Law School Scam" in The Atlantic.  One thing I found especially interesting that the article points out, and it holds true from what I've seen, is that salary range is $40k-$50k or $130k+ -- one or the other.  The myth is that there is an abundance of $80-$90k legal jobs out there. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-law-school-scam/375069/