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Law school will take three years of your life and a lot of money. Before you commit to this, consider what else you might do. Here is just one possibility (there are an infinite number of others).
Start by going to Central America to learn Spanish. If you live in a private home and are tutored individually for five hours a day, you will go from zero knowledge to absolute fluency within a year. (Price: about $700 per month, including room, board, and tuition)
After that, do a three-month cooking school course in Italy during the summer. (Price: about $10,000 for an expensive course, room and board included) Then, do a master's degree in economics at The London School of Economics and Political Science. {Price: about $30,000, including room, board, and tuition)
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Last, do another degree, perhaps in politics (The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, for instance), perhaps in marketing (at HEC, the leading French business school, for example) (Price: maybe another $30,000-$40,000).
The net result of this odyssey: three years of exploring the physical world (Latin America, England, France, Italy); three years of exploring the intellectual world (fluency in Spanish, knowledge of Italian cooking, an outstanding master's degree in economics, and an outstanding degree in politics or marketing). The price: about $75,000, minus any earnings along the way. (Note the savings this represents compared with the total tab for law school.)
If your parents are going to sponsor your law school effort, by the way, perhaps you should have them read this and consider what they could buy you for a lot less than law school might cost them. Whoever pays, are you sure that going into law—and working hard for three years at law school as a preliminary to working very hard as a lawyer—is your only option?
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