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Perhaps you named a distinguished law school with a national reputation or a law school known to be strong in the specialty you want to study. Or perhaps you named the school that one of your parents attended. But you came up with a name, right? If you're like most applicants, you've given a great deal of thought to this question. You've read through that law school's catalog, you've spoken to some of its students and alumni, and perhaps you've even visited the school.
Now, what school will be your second choice? Did you find it harder to come up with a name? List your third and fourth choices. And your fifth, sixth, and seventh. If you're like most applicants, you quickly run out of names. You've given very little thought to other schools that you might have to fall back on.
Many applicants don't know what they will do if they don't get accepted by their first-choice schools. They wind up applying to a local law school with a night program, or whichever schools their friends are applying to, or schools chosen at random. These schools, about which they know little, often don't have the programs and features they want.
If this is your attitude, you're taking a big risk. You may have to settle for a school that is not your first choice. You may have to settle for your last choice. This means, first of all, that you'd better have a last choice. One reason candidates fail in gaining admission is that they don't apply to enough law schools. Your application list should include some schools that you're pretty sure will accept you, as insurance.
But if you're going to have a productive and enjoyable law school experience, these insurance schools need to be as carefully chosen as your top choices. You can have a happy and productive law school experience at a local school that has the programs and specialties you want and is situated in a comfortable location, even if the school doesn't have much of a reputation. But you won't be happy or well educated if you wind up at a local school that offers few programs, has poor quality instruction, and is located in an unpleasant, inconvenient, or dangerous setting.
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You should attend the most selective law school you get admitted to that has the particular combination of programs and qualities that you want. You can be confident of attending a compatible law school only if you make sure before you apply that all the law schools on your application list- insurance schools as well as top choices-have the programs and qualities that you want. Or most of those programs and qualities. Or, at the very least, your top priorities. You should know in advance that the things you will need to have a good law school experience are present at all the schools to which you apply.
Here is the best method to use to decide which law schools to apply to: first, go through all your information and make a list of all the schools that have the programs and qualities you want. Consider as many schools as you can. Work from the Official Guide; it contains the names of all the accredited law schools. When you make this first list-call it your preferred list-don't worry about which of these law schools you have the numbers to get into. And don't worry if your preferred list is very long. You're not going to apply to all of these schools. Just list the schools you'd be happy going to. Prune your preferred list into your application list. You'll wind up with five to fifteen schools at varying levels of selectivity, all of which you'd be happy attending.
Almost all law schools are located in big cities or state capitals. Even when their parent universities are in the suburbs, law school campuses are usually downtown. Law is intimately connected with the community's business and political life and is best studied where those activities are carried on most intensely. In big cities, law schools find it easiest to raise funds, recruit professors and adjunct faculty members, locate guest speakers, and schedule internships, clinical work, and part-time jobs for their students.
Big cities have drawbacks, however. They're noisy, dirty, and crime-ridden. Traffic, parking, and security precautions can make big-city life extremely burdensome. Some people are unable to accustom themselves to the conditions and the pace.
If you've never had the experience of living in a big city, I urge you to give it a try before deciding that you can't adjust to it. A summer job or a month at an urban summer school, perhaps after your sophomore year of college, should be an adequate test. If you can decide to live for three years in the heart of a downtown area, you will find that you have many more opportunities, both career and personal, than if you decide you can't.
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But if you can't, you can't. I know one young man with severe asthma who couldn't cope with city pollution. For him, a rural campus was preferable to permanent lung damage. I know another who simply wasn't able to adjust to nighttime urban noises, even after a whole summer of trying.
Few law schools are actually in the boondocks, however. If you want a slower pace, the best choices will be state universities located in relatively small, though not necessarily tiny, communities. The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and the University of Iowa at Iowa City are examples. Both of these excellent law schools are part of very large state universities that are located in dynamic smaller cities.
Or you can look for smaller schools in even smaller towns. The Vermont Law School is located in South Royalton, Vermont, "a typical New England village" located about 35 miles from the state capital, Montpelier, and a somewhat longer car ride from Burlington. Accentuating its smallness, the school advertises an emphasis on teaching and creativity that makes it seem more like a liberal arts college than a law school.
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