Should I factor in state of Bar when deciding on law school Forum

[chance79]

Hello everyone, I have recently been offered admission into St. Johns, Stetson,& American JD program. I want to accept the St. Johns offer but my long term goals are to work in my home state of Florida. I understand that the Florida bar has both a multi state portion and a Florida centered portion. My main questions are :

1. will i be able to apply for the Florida bar( or any other state for that matter) with an out of state JD?
2. If I can take the fl bar with an out of state JD, will I be at a disadvantage to students who have a Florida degree?

I have no idea whether law schools pay attention to state/case law that might be featured on the bar for their respective states.

Thank you for your answers

[guynourmin]

you would be able to sit for the FL bar from any of these schools.
I don't know anything about the bar, but I know people study for it (that is, they don't just graduate and go on vacation for a week then come home and take the bar). IF there is anything FL-specific you need to know, you can get that in on your review (and, seemingly, would need to study those things whether or not you went to a school that covered those things).
I don't believe the FL bar is going to be easier for an FL JD than an OOS JD, no.
You likely will be disadvantaged in the job market, though, at least from the OOS schools you are considering here. conventional wisdom is that if you know what market you want to work in, you should go to school in that market unless X. I don't see anything in your post that would lead me to believe there is some X factor here such that you should go to school out of state. Go to school in FL if you want FL.

Also, St. Johns is notorious for reducing or eliminating scholarships, DON'T GO THERE! In the last 3 years over 300 students have seen their scholarships reduced or eliminated. Many here guess (or know - I don't, though) that they "section stack", which means that they put a lot of students with conditional scholarships in the same section so some of them HAVE to be at the bottom of their class. These are rough numbers, but say a class has 240 students and they divide them into 4 sections of 60 students each. One of those sections has 60 kids all with full rides conditioned on them being in the top 75% of the class. That means automatically you KNOW 15 students will lose their scholarships because of the way they stacked the section. SJU's section stacking is seemingly even worse than that scenario, though, because they reduce or eliminate over half of the scholarships they give out.

[cavalier1138]

No, you shouldn't, but you're asking the wrong question. The right question is, "Should I be paying money to go to any of these schools, especially when only one of them is in my target market?"

And the answer is, "No. No, you should not."

[Specter1389]

If you want to work in Florida, Stetson is the only school you should be considering on this list and even then only if they offered you a full ride. You'd be much better off going to FSU or UF. Florida is a very insular market and most attorneys in the state I have spoken to have stated it's difficult even for T14 students with Florida ties to land a job there.

[chance79]

Thank you everyone.