Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

 Part 2 - Checking out going to law school

 As I sat and talked with the Gulfport plaintiff attorney in the late winter of 1989, I told him I had recently thought about becoming a lawyer, but didn't know anything about it or how I could do it, if I did.

He said he was a graduate of Loyola School of Law in New Orleans and that at Loyola you could work during the day and go to law school at night, completing the degree in four years instead of three.  You could also take the "Common Law" curriculum, in addition to the "Civil Law" curriculum for those who intended to practice law in Louisiana, which is under the Napoleanic Civil Code.  The other 49 states practice law under the English based Common Law.

I was intrigued and began asking more.  And there was a lot more.

You first had to take and pass the LSAT - Law School Admissions Test - used by law schools to determine who they accepted as students.  Some schools required higher scores than others.  I'd never heard of it. 

So, the next weekend, Tom & I went to a bookstore and checked out the big fat heavy graduate study guides for tests such as LSAT.  As I read through the LSAT book about the kind of testing it covered (see the LSAT link above), I told Tom "This sounds just like me!"   The book also listed tons of ABA accredited law schools, had acceptance dates and had five long comprehensive practice tests to take.  I bought it.

I spent my 44th birthday, March 2, driving over to Loyola in New Orleans to talk with the admissions counselor.  He told me that since I had a 4.0 GPA undergrad if I made a certain score on the LSAT I would be entitled to a full tuition scholarship at Loyola.  For each single point off that score, I would still be granted a scholarship, but only 3/4, 1/2 or 1/4 tuition.  Below that - no help.

He also said that most law students clerked in the summers after the first year for law firms and made good money.  The counselor advised against working during the school year itself, but many students did it.  You could also borrow money to go to law school if you met the requirements, which weren't that hard to meet at that level (I didn't think).

 Tom & I talked until late that night.  It was a hard decision to make with lots of variables still looming, but we decided to go for it.  We decided, based on all I'd learned, that the thing to do was to jump in full time and get it over with in 3 years.  The opportunities for funding and making connections sounded good.

 I really wanted to start law school that August, which Loyola would allow if everything else fell in place, but that was less than six months away.  The biggest obstacle was taking the LSAT and passing because there was only one more testing time left - in early June in New Orleans.

 I signed up for it and to have my score sent to both Loyola and Tulane Law School.  I also ordered some more practice tests from LSAT itself and began studying hard for the test every spare moment I could find over the next three months.  I was determined to not only pass it, but to do well enough to get full tuition scholarship.

I did pretty well on the practice tests, scoring a little higher each time, but not as well as I thought I should be doing.   When I actually took the LSAT, I felt pretty good about it, but had no clue about what my score would be.  I just kept praying about it, but didn't have time to really think about it a whole lot.

You see, a couple of weeks later I had to have a hysterectomy, had major complications and spent 12 days in the hospital over in Slidell, four of them in ICU.   I was off work seven weeks - the entire summer - recuperating and checking the mail every day for my LSAT scores.  It seemed forever, but I finally got them the 8th of August.  I passed!  Not only that, I did well enough that Loyola would give me a 1/2 tuition scholarship if they accepted me into their program.  But, time was running out.  Fast.

It was another week and a half before I got the acceptance letter from Loyola to start law school - in less than two weeks.  I hadn't even been back to work yet and would need to turn in two weeks notice.  Plus, I had to have a student loan to be able to register for school.  I had a lot to do.

I went back to work for the first time the next Monday (school events were to start later that week!) and turned in my notice.  Thankfully, which I'd been hoping, they told me to go ahead and clear all of my things out right then and they would send me my last two weeks pay.  

Tom and I started looking for inexpensive rentals in Slidell, where we would be 35 miles northeast across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans for me and 20 miles south of Picayune for him to go to work.  I also applied for a student loan because Loyola is a private school and expensive.

We found a little duplex with paper thin walls, but couldn't move in until the first of September.  So I registered for school in the Common Law program (we fully intended to come back over to the gulf coast of Mississippi), bought over $500 worth of books, and started while still living in Long Beach, which was about an hour and a half away.  At the same time, Mark left to start his second year at Mississippi State.

I got my first semester's student loan just in time to pay for what was left of my tuition with enough to spare  to help with frugal living for a while and we got moved to Slidell after the second week of school.

Thus began my odyssey through the years of my life totally immersed in the law.

 To Be Continued . . .

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