If you haven't tried this YOU SHOULD!

So lately I've been really into researching the area of the schools that my husband has applied to. Right now our biggest dilemma is deciding if we want to go to a mediocre law school with a fabulous scholarship or an awesome school with no scholarship. With the economy right now it seems like such a gamble to bank on a good job to pay off your hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Maybe a scholarship to a mediocre school just seems safe so we can graduate with under 100k in debt. Graduate school with a family is a little different than a single student when it comes to living expenses. What is the economy going to be like in a couple years when we graduate?? Are jobs going to be even more scarce?

So I have an awesome way of getting info on an area, if you haven't tried this you should! It's called the J. Rueben Clark society. The society has several chapters around the world and many US law schools have their own student chapter, so it's super easy to find contacts where you are going. Last month I had my husband email the president of the Michigan State society. He replied super fast and even called us to tell us all about the school and area from his perspective as a 3L (third year law student). He was very helpful! I'm gonna do this for all the schools we have narrowed it down to. We will have applied to 11 schools as of the end of this week.

How to contact the J. Rueben Clark Society Student chapters

1. go to http://students.jrcls.org/

2. Click on the 'Student Chapters' tab in the box in the middle of the page

3. Find the school you are looking at by the region it is in and click on the school name

4. On the school's page you should find the name of the leadership to the right of the school logo. Some schools don't have leadership posted or there isn't a society that is active there. If you are lucky enough to find leadership on the schools page you can click on the little envelope next to the name and send them an email. Hopefully you'll get a response.

If you are interested in becoming part of the JRCLS you can join as either a pre-law student, a law student, or a practicing lawyer. Its a wonderful network filled with people interested in forwarding the societies honorable mission statement (see the website).