Sorry if this is not the right forum for this, just wanted perspectives of people actively practicing law as the law admissions Reddit tends to be very rankings and big law oriented.
Summarizing my my main questions here, further background below:
- Is it feasible to get a union side job pretty early in my career from a T50?
- Is paying off 100-150k in loans doable in a reasonable time frame with labor law salaries?
- Would working full time and doing law school at night hurt my odds of getting a good job after graduating law school? (On the flip side if my job is in labor, could this help?)
Background:
I currently do labor related strategic research and would like to go to law school at some point to pivot to union side law. I would be interested in both labor side firms and working in house for a union long term. I’m open to other areas of public interest, mostly labor focused gov or nonprofit jobs, but I am not open to biglaw or management side L&E.
However, I am debating whether it makes sense to apply as I am very unlikely to get enough financial aid to afford a T20, and many of the people I know in labor law went to very highly ranked schools. Both because of the loan limits and because unions aren’t PSLF eligible, my number one priority is minimal debt. However, realistically it is likely that I’ll still have around 100k in debt, possibly more, if I attend a regional school in the T30-T60 range.
I want to stay on the east coast so thinking Cardozo, Temple, GW (possibly part time, more of a stretch in terms of scholarships) for example. This is largely based on schools where I could feasibly get funding with good regional rankings. If anyone has specific suggestions re schools I would love to hear them! One challenge with this is while NYC and Philly both have schools in the T50-60 range where I think I would get good scholarship funding and there are decent public interest/labor outcomes, I haven’t found a comparable option in the DMV, which is my preferred market. It seems like DC schools are either substantially above or below this range in terms of rankings, which could limit my merit aid odds or employment outcomes respectively.
I’ve been told you can have decent outcomes in labor from a variety of schools, but also many of the people I meet in labor law went to very highly ranked schools, so I’m wondering how true this is. At the same time it does seem true that labor cares a lot about demonstrated interest, and I have a very clear demonstrated interest in labor and would continue to focus on labor throughout law school.
Thanks so much for your input! If anyone currently works in labor law or is going to school for labor law would also love to connect via messages and learn more about it.