Ireferny

As I approach retirement I look back through my life and see a few things that really amaze me.

One thing I know is that if I fell into step and did not break the pattern of family tradition I would be non-educated, non-productive and most likely view life with the expectations of handouts and entitlements. I find it so strange that I can easily remember so many circumstances where one little turn or decision would have made a huge difference in my life.

My mother left me with her girlfriend (my surrogate mother) after I was born. So for the first four years of my life I was in a loving family environment with a mother, father and grandparents. At least that is the way it appeared to me. At the age of four I remember this women, my biological mother, taking me away in a taxi cab. I recall crying for my mother and her slapping me saying she was my mother. I did see my surrogate mother again about 10 years later. She offered to pay for my high school and college education but my mother declined.

I wonder now how my life would have differed with a private high school and college education. I struggled in school and had to work so long and hard to get above average grades. Years later I discovered I had a reading disability, hence the struggle. I had no academic support at home as it stood once I made it to the sixth grade I had surpassed my mother in education. My brothers and sister fell way below grade level and gave into family tradition and quit school as soon as they could.

So proudly, but silently, I graduated from high school and went onto full time employment. I endured a couple more years with my mother as she drained my paycheck weekly announcing her entitlement as I was not legal adult age and could not leave home. At the age of 21 I moved out of her house forever.

I never realized how miserable I must have looked all those years until the Vice President of the company I worked for tagged me with the name Miss Sunshine. I quickly learned that I did not have a smiling face so I actually had to smile so people would know that I was not angry or sad. Smiling, hum that was a new found characteristic for me. Turns out, it is one of my best features .

As the years went by I found lots of things to smile about. I went on to earn my college degree at night and continued to climb the ladder of success in multiple careers. I still amaze myself. I accomplished so much and often wondered what was the motivation for me. Why was I so different than my brothers and sisters. I strongly believe that I discovered at an early age that I never wanted to be like My Biological Mother. Perhaps that is all it was, determination and survivorship. I am so grateful to my surrogate mother and her family for the good foundation they gave me in the beginning of my life.

With the job market crippled, it is more important than ever for prospective law students to meet the requirements for admission to a top-quality law school. Because of the collapse of the overall job market, law schools are seeing a profusion of applications.

Law schools can be (and are) pickier about their precise law school requirements than they have ever been in recent memory.

At the same time, the economy for lawyers is horrible. Law firms are exhibiting higher degrees of snobbery in the hiring process than they have exhibited in recent recollection.

When I graduated, during the late 1990s Internet boom, which was a good day, the median starting salary for members of my class in computer engineering was $50,000.00. The median lawyer in Texas was, at the time, earning $45,000.00, and this average of lawyer salaries was taken across all ages and levels of seasoning. So, there was some real risk that I was about to spend 3 years of my life and a small fortune for a graduate education that was less valuable than the undergraduate degree that I already had. Fully a third of the licensed attorneys in Texas do something other than practice law. There just isn’t enough legal work to go around.

For every kid making $165,000.00 a year straight out of school, there are 10 fresh lawyers making $40,000.00 per year. Now, if you have an history degree, you may here $40,000 per year and think, “Wow, that’s a huge step up!” But wait, that $40,000 per year is after you sink $100k in credit and lose the opportunity to make a respectable wage during the years that you are in law school. Going $100k into debt for a $40k/year job is not a good decision. You don’t need a accounting degree to see that this one is upside-down.

The law is two career ladders. If you’re lucky, and you get respectable grades at a respected school, you can come out making $150k/year.

The difference between being lucky and turning your life into a living Hell is going to a good law school. The difference between getting into a good law school and having to accept a crappy law school is your ranking relative to the law school admission requirements. They are:

* Your LSAT score
* Your Undergraduate GPA
* Your Race
* Your Admissions Essays
* Your Letters of Recommendation
* Your Resume (this means everything else)
* Your string pulls

Now, there are some of these factors that you can, in fact, control. And there are some that you can’t control. Your goal needs to be to act on the factors that you can adjust in a way that changes the outcome.

For advice on how to do just that, you’re welcome to visit: http://www.lawschoolrequiements.org.