If You Know Where You Want to Practice Law

Contrary to what you may have heard, you aren't required to study law in the state in which you will practice. If you graduate from any ABA-accredited law school, you are authorized to take the bar exam in any state. Nor do you need to go to a local law school to learn the idiosyncrasies of local law. True, you will have to know local law to pass the bar exam. But few law schools, even the ones at the bottom of the status rankings, spend much time on local law anymore. They are required to follow the ABA-prescribed national curriculum, and they emphasize legal concepts that are useful everywhere. After you graduate from law school, you'll get a job, relocate if necessary, begin work at your new firm, and then take a cram course in local law offered by a local proprietary school. You'll take the cram course even if you've gone to a local law school. Then you'll take the local bar exam.

Still, there are some advantages to studying law in the state in which you plan to practice. Simply by living in a community you'll learn a lot about its geography, history, and peculiar local customs. This knowledge will be useful when you begin your practice. Although top law firms tend to recruit nationally, most of the legal employers in any given city recruit only locally. Attending a local school offers a way in to the local status ladder and old-boy networks. The University of Texas, for example, has traditionally educated the Texas establishment that tends to dominate the state's commercial and political life. If you're sure that you want a conventional business or real estate practice in Chicago, you could do worse than to attend De Paul Law School, the alma mater of many of that city's most powerful business and political leaders. Temple University Law School has played a similar role in the legal life of Philadelphia.


The old-boy and status-ladder connections are becoming more important now that many law firms are hiring law students on a part-time basis for summer jobs and then choosing new full-time associates from the ranks of young lawyers who were former summer employees. Many more of these summer opportunities will be avail-able in the immediate community near your law school.

These advantages are mostly for people who want to work with established firms and who will do traditional kinds of business or government-oriented law. If you want some unusual specialty-entertainment law, for example-then studying where you intend to practice is less important. If you're going to study a still-emerging specialty, career patterns and employment patterns are much less fixed and affected by tradition. And if you have the numbers to attend one of the most selective law schools, you're likely to be able to secure legal employment anywhere.

If You Don't Know Where You Want to Live

If you aren't sure where you want to live and practice, don't despair. One strategy is to pick schools in growing, dynamic parts of the country. Although business lawyers aren't as dependent on the prosperity of their communities as, say, engineers (because business lawyers can always handle bankruptcies and liquidations when the economy turns bad), there are always more-and better-opportunities in a growing region than in a declining one.

Alternatively, you can pick an area where you believe you'll feel comfortable living. If your hobby is sailing, you'll want to be near water; if skiing, near snow and mountains. You probably won't get much chance to ski or sail while you're going to law school, but at least you'll have the opportunity. And by attending law school in such an area, you increase the likelihood that you'll be able to live there after you graduate.

Finally, you can choose a location that will help you maximize your chance of admission. Many state law schools are still legally required to give preference to residents of their states. But these law schools also offer a substantial financial saving; consequently, they attract so many in-state resident applicants that they're in a position to be very selective. If you're a marginal applicant, you probably won't get much benefit from your resident status. If you come from a less-populated part of the country and can afford a private law school, you're more attractive to regional and local schools out of your area that are seeking geographic diversity.

Learn the 10 Factors That Matter to Big Firms More Than Where You Went to Law School

Whatever you do, you aren't making a lifetime commitment. You can always leave a city or region when you graduate from law school. If you can't find anything in this discussion that seems important to you, you may as well indulge your wanderlust. One recent Bradley graduate decided to attend law school in an Eastern city, even though she didn't plan to spend her life there, so she could experience "a little Sodom and Gomorrah before I settle down."