I’ve never been into gambling. Even the thought of throwing away money brings back the traumatic memory of losing all my slammers playing Pogs in the 6th grade and then crying about it for a week. I feel equally wary about the crypto investment world, and though I didn’t become a Bitcoin billionaire, I also didn’t lose any money chasing the imaginary meme coin craze.
When it comes to long term planning of any kind, especially financial planning, there of course is no such thing as a sure thing. In preparing for the decades ahead of you in your legal career however, there may be nothing closer to a sure thing than investing what you have to in both time and money in order to raise your LSAT score as high as possible.
I’ve taught the LSAT now for over eighteen years. In that time I have aged, though not necessarily matured, but I have had the unique privilege to work with thousands and thousands of prospective lawyers. As both an LSAT Tutor/Instructor and a Law School Admissions Consultant, I have helped countless students gain entry to Ivy League law schools. I have also helped an innumerable amount of students reach their goals at more local, lower-ranked institutions. There is no one goal or dream result for every LSAT student in either their future law school or future field of law, but there remains one lingering trigger that pains me more than anything else a student or client of mine could ever say.
“I don’t care where I go to law school, I just have to go. I’m too ‘old’ to wait any longer.”
With the semi-sage perspective of someone barreling toward a 40th birthday within the next year, the idea of a 25 year-old shorting their future for the sake of an immediate entry to law school is unfathomably dangerous.
Law school is a several hundred thousand dollar game, and that barrier of entry has of course been tragically out of reach for so many potential future lawyers. In the face of the mountain of debt staring down most every potential law school applicant, your absolute best pathway toward lowering tuition via merit scholarships as well as gaining a return on that investment is improving your LSAT score. Five points could easily make a six-figure difference, and the caliber of school you attend has a direct correlation to the potential salaries you hope to earn down the line. For example, if you consider the LSAT medians of a higher-ranked institution such as UCLA (170) compared to a lower-ranked option nearby such as Pepperdine (164), you have to consider so much more than the school’s ranking. The median salary for private law firms for UCLA Law grads is $180,000 a year, whereas for Pepperdine the corresponding number is significantly lower at just $75,000.
Giving anything short of absolutely everything to your LSAT study approach is a decision that has ramifications into the millions of dollars when you consider not just the tuition cost but the potential career-long salary afterward. Given the scale at stake, do your future self the best favor you ever could by investing the time, effort and money you need to in order to raise your LSAT score to the highest possible score before choosing the school of your dreams, never choosing to settle.
You still are very unlikely to ever find me in a casino, but as a non-betting man, I would bet the proverbial house that you will never regret the lifetime benefit of investing into your LSAT prep. In this unpredictable world full of risky investments, if you are certain that a career in law is in your future, then investing into increasing your LSAT score just may be the closest you’ll ever get to that sure thing.
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