The Law School Transplant - If you don't find me helpful, hopefully you'll find me at least mildly entertaining.

In recent weeks I’ve noticed a sharp uptick in the amount of traffic coming to my blog, and to my transfer timeline post in particular. As much as I want to shove all the remnants of law school and practicing law to a dusty back corner of both this blog and also my life, I would be remiss not to do some sort of follow up to that post. While the timeline provides a fairly comprehensive answer to the question, How do I transfer law schools?, it doesn’t address the more fundamental – and in my mind, more important – question, Should I transfer law schools? Now that I have a little more hindsight, I am going to take a shot at answering the latter.

Decisions, Decisions

There are, on the face, a lot of compelling reasons to transfer: a better alumni network, a different campus environment, a more prominent school with better job prospects and perhaps even lower tuition (if you transfer from a pricey private school to a better, more inexpensive state school), to name a few. I didn’t like the ultra-urban environment of my first law school, and based upon the advice of several smart people, I felt like transferring would be a step up where my resume and job prospects were concerned.

I got accepted to an exclusive and excellent private school that had a well-established transfer program. Instead, I opted to stay in state and ended up transferring to a highly-regarded Tier 1 public school that was a fraction of the cost. Though I sometimes wonder if things would have been different had I made a different choice, I can say with certainty at this point that I don’t regret taking on a smaller debt load than I otherwise would have. I frequently encounter attorneys who are miserable, but feel trapped in their jobs because they have few other alternatives for paying off their enormous student loans. I’m truly thankful that I don’t find myself in that position.

Buyer Beware: The Undisclosed Risks

However, there were pitfalls to the decision I made, and I think some of that is because my school did not have the most well-defined procedures for handling transfer students. A lot of classes were closed by the time I registered, so my course load my first semester left a lot to be desired. I was told by one of the administrators that I would have the opportunity to write onto the law review, but once my transfer was complete, I learned that the law review “was not taking transfers this year.” I’d previously considered applying to clerk for a federal judge, but this effectively slammed that door shut for me.

Most importantly, because my transfer process happened so late, I missed out on Early Interview Week and was left to my own devices to try to find a summer job. By sending out letters on my own, I was able to secure first interviews with several large firms. However, by the time I interviewed, they had already conducted their callbacks from EIW and I missed the big-firm boat entirely.

Not being able to participate in EIW might have been a tipping point in my career, and I look back on it with an immense amount of regret. On the other hand, it is just as likely that if I had ended up with a big firm job, I would have been one of the casualties of the massive layoffs that occurred when the economy tanked less than a year after I graduated. But still, I have to wonder how differently my life would have turned out had I been able to interview on-campus during EIW.

When I did land interviews, both during and after law school, I frequently found myself in the uncomfortable position of having to justify my decision to transfer. Because I transferred in state, this was sometimes difficult to do without coming across as flighty and indecisive. It seemed clear to me that going from a Tier 3 to a Tier 1 school was a step up, regardless of the fact that I went from one public school to another in the same state. That never seemed to make sense to interviewers. Though I can never be sure, I have a feeling that if my transfer had been an even “bigger jump” to the elite private school to which I was also accepted, I never would have faced that question.

The Bottom Line

I am fully aware that my objectivity about my transfer decision is tainted by hindsight, as well as my general regrets about having ever attended law school in the first place. However, I also understand that transferring is a good decision for many people. Given that, here are a few things to keep in mind when making your decision about whether to apply to transfer:

• Jump big. Make sure that you are really “trading up” in a meaningful way that will resonate with prospective employers. I went to a much higher-ranked public school in the same state, but sacrificed the opportunity to be on law review and the ability to participate in early interviews. Had I gone to the even higher-ranked private school, my opportunities and experience would have looked much different (but on the flip side, so would the size of my debt).
• Look at each school’s transfer program. Does the school you’re applying to have a well-established process for dealing with transfer students and integrating them into the school? Or does the school take few transfers and deal with them on an ad hoc basis?
• Consider your law review and moot court opportunities. I walked away from a grade-on spot on law review and transferred to a school that told me I’d be able to write on. In reality, I was never given that opportunity. Make sure that the doors you’ve opened at your first school will also be open at your new school.
• Examine your job prospects. Does the new school place graduates better than your old school? This certainly makes sense if you’re able to transfer from a third- or fourth-tier school to a first-tier one. It also makes sense if you want to transfer to a school that is geographically closer to the area in which you want to work after graduation, or that has a highly-ranked curriculum in a specialized area of law (i.e., environmental or intellectual property).
• Get in on Early Interview Week. I simply cannot stress this enough: Make sure you will complete your transfer in time to have an opportunity to take part in on-campus recruiting. Getting behind the 8-ball on this one, as I did, can really throw you for a loop, possibly forever.
• Understand your debt load. As a transfer, you will likely be ineligible for any scholarships that the school may have. This means you’ll have to rely on student loans and whatever external scholarships you may have received. Is the ability to transfer to a new school worth the extra financial obligation you’ll likely incur? Do you want to practice law for as long as it is going to take to pay off that additional debt?
• Be able to clearly articulate your reasons for transferring. You’ll need to be able to explain to potential employers in a logical, respectful and convincing way why you decided to transfer. Chances are, if you haven’t sold yourself on the reasons you transferred, you won’t convince your interviewer, either. (And if you “jump big,” as I noted above, you might not even have to answer this question.)

Personally, I think I was looking for a silver bullet that would get me a great, lucrative job and rewarding law school experience. I realized too late that my decision had a fair number of drawbacks of which I was unaware. It is not useful for me at this point to get wrapped up in whether I should or shouldn’t have transferred, or whether I should have even gone to law school in the first place – it’s done and in the past. On the other hand, I also met lifelong friends and encountered amazing and inspiring professors at my new school, and I wouldn’t give those things up for the world.

I am fairly certain that I won’t change a lot of people’s minds if you’ve already decided to transfer (and if you fall into that camp, check out my FAQ page about transferring). Instead, my goal here is to simply help you evaluate the reasons for your decision and make you aware of certain factors that are not immediately obvious from the outset. Ultimately, you are the only one who will be able to assess the pros and cons and determine if transferring is right for you, and if so, which school will be the best fit. Whatever decision you make, I wish you the very best of luck.