Top Law Schools

Long story short, I sucked at life when I was younger. I have an overall lsac 2.8 gpa. I have about 200 semester hours from 2003-2010 that is killing me, I was young, immature and trying to work. I took 5 years off from school, worked, traveled, etc. I went back to school in 2015 at a different state university and completed basically 120 more semester hours, getting a B.A. and a B.S. and a minor. My last 120 hours, 106 hours were A's or A+, and the last 14 were B's. Most semesters I took 21+ hours all upper division. I finished with a 4.0 in each major and made the dean's list each semester from 2015-on and graduated with honors, since they only calculate gpa earned at that school for honors. I'm not trying to go to a T14, I took Dec LSAT, so I do not have a score yet, but I was scoring 174 on proctored practice exams. Worse case if I bombed it, I got a 160. How much do schools take into consideration a strong upward trend? I want to go to my local state school- I have a house where I live and I'm established in the community, but it is in the 25-35 school rank range. Average softs, lots of volunteering, non-law related work experience. I'm in my 30s. Money is not an issue, so not super concerned about scholarships.

Hard to say what your chances are without knowing 1) what state school you're talking about and 2) what your LSAT score ends up being, but a 2.8 probably isn't fatal for the schools you're looking at, especially given that you'll appear to be a much stronger student on paper than somebody who got straight B-s through college.

Once you have an LSAT score you can put your numbers into MyLSN to get a better idea, but even assuming conservatively that your LSAT score ends up in the mid-160s it looks like you have a decent shot at the UGeorgias and UWashingtons of the world.