There were endless reasons not to, after all. It’s expensive. Prohibitively so. Most law students graduate with at least 130k in debt, and I already have student loans. A lot of student loans. Plus, I have a good job, one that pays well and that I don’t want to lose.
The last time I was in school I was hungry. Calfresh (food stamps) covered $193 worth of groceries a month and it wasn’t enough. I stopped buying bagels. I stopped buying fresh. I stopped buying toilet paper. Cleaning supplies became a privilege. Every meal was methodical so I tried to make it into a game – what could I make with this week’s almost (or perhaps already) expired food bank smorgasbord of canned tuna, canned beans, canned peaches, and spinach. Most of the time, I didn’t feel human at all.
The poverty mentality still haunts me. I can’t throw away leftovers. If it can still be eaten, I’m eating it. I grab the free sugar and creamer from my work’s coffee station. I keep wine corks (because I probably could make something out of them), rinse empty ziplock bags for a second or fourth or eighth use. I live in the same apartment with the same rats in the garage, ants in the walls, and with a ceiling so cracked it doesn’t seem like it will survive the next earthquake.
Most law schools mandate that students can’t work more than 20 hours a week. Going back to school would mean paying for tuition, would mean quitting my job, would mean hunger. I knew it would mean hunger.
Yet, every year, I inched closer and closer to applying. The problem was that I couldn't move in either direction. I wanted law school desperately, but there were just too many cons. During COVID, I decided to take the LSAT. It’s just an experiment, I told myself as I studied for eight hours a day and paid over a grand for a prep course (a huge investment considering I haven’t even bought myself a laundry basket). I won’t apply to law school, but at least if I take it, I'll know I can. Either way, how fun to randomly insert my success on the LSAT into a conversation with my hippy poet friends. To add something unexpected to the “what did you do during COVID” small talk. My sister sewed herself a corset, my mom tried the whole breadmaking ordeal, and I took the LSAT.
Most importantly, if I take the LSAT, I put a time limit on this endless back-and-forth game of should I go or not go? The LSAT score is only valid for five years, and I told myself this would give me an end date. A do this by 2025 or quit clause.
The thing is, I've always been drawn to the law. Or maybe, the law has been drawn to me.
In 2016, I moved into my first apartment post-undergrad. I rented a small room with my then-girlfriend and worked part-time at a local bookstore to pay the bills. I was struggling financially. I could barely afford rent, let alone dinner. I was trying to “pick myself up by my bootstraps,” but they seemed to keep breaking, and I couldn’t afford to replace them.
Our landlord was a cruel man. One day he texted me that he decided he “prefer[ed] renting to men” and gave us notice that he was ending the lease. I couldn’t fathom that this was legal. I was right; it wasn’t legal. I reported him far and wide. Nothing happened. I remember a conversation with a lawyer who was kind enough to talk me through the issue. He said, “Listen, you have a case, but what do you want at the end of the day? Do you want to live in this place? I’ll take your case, I’d do it pro bono, but you’d have to stay for maybe a year or more. You’d have to stay past your notice. You’d have to go to court. You’d have to fight him.” But I didn’t have time to fight him. I didn’t have money to take a day off of work to go to court. I was hungry and I was tired. I learned that the law was for those who could afford to enforce it. We moved and I never heard from the landlord again. It felt like he won.
The law felt like this revolving door of cruelty. It was supposed to protect me, but I couldn't find the entrance. I was so close but kept circling, continually unable to access the interior.
Then there was citizenship. My now ex-wife, then girlfriend, was undocumented, and soon after Trump was elected, we decided to get married. At 22, this was somewhat perplexing to my friends and family. They knew there wasn’t an unexpected pregnancy (i.e., lesbianism), and they couldn’t fathom why we were getting married so young. We hired a lawyer, and she charged us two grand (about three month’s rent) for wrap-around services. She would work with us through getting citizenship. We were hopeful. We had an attorney. That meant it would all be okay, right?
She was a terrible attorney. She would send us documents to sign that didn’t even manage to spell our names correctly, and when I would review them, I found error after error. She lied constantly. In the beginning, before we agreed to hire her, she promised us that she didn’t have paralegals and that she managed and handled all her cases, yet we seemed to only interact with paralegals. We received a notice in bright red from USCIS stating that our attorney had filled out a document incorrectly. We were terrified.
I wished I’d never hired her. I wished I could’ve done the work myself. I constantly berated myself that I could only almost protect the people I loved. That I could only almost protect myself. Every year or so, the law came back and followed me from room to room like a hungry dog.
So when I took the LSAT and scored high enough, in my mind, to actually go to law school, I froze. I was one barrier down (that pesky test), but again was petrified by all the others, mostly the cost. So I waited. And waited and waited some more. In a sort of law school limbo.
I waited so long it was 2024, and I had one year left before my score expired. It was February, and I already missed the deadline for some programs. Law schools have rolling admissions, so the later you apply, the less likely you are to get in. Each application costs around $80 dollars. I would have to choose carefully.
I knew I wanted to stay in LA so my choices were UC Irvine, Mount St. Mary’s, Loyola Marymount, and Southwestern Law (I missed the UCLA and Chapman deadlines).
I wasn’t too keen on Loyola or Mount St. Marys. Both were religious, and I was not. UC Irvine was a top contender, but I knew it would be a difficult feat with its 18% acceptance rate and with how long I had waited to submit my application. I hadn’t heard of Southwestern before applying. In fact, I only heard about Southwestern when they emailed me with a fee waiver. I decided that if any school sent me a fee waiver, I would apply. It couldn’t hurt, right?
I submitted my applications and waited. And waited. And waited. Two weeks passed, three, four. I got an email from UCI: waitlisted. I was so disappointed that I never emailed them to confirm that I wanted to stay on the waitlist. I got an email from Loyola: waitlisted. I figured law school probably wouldn’t happen after all. That at least I knew I tried. A part of me was relieved; I could still have a fresh salad, a Thomas bagel. I decided not to apply to Mount St. Mary’s, since I didn’t want to go there anyways. I knew I only had one more chance: Southwestern.
On May 3rd, I got an email with the subject line Congratulations, and I didn’t let myself be excited or even check the sender information. There was so much rejection, after all. Law school was expensive, and I would probably have to sacrifice so many things that mattered, like my job and time and eating three meals a day. I opened the email from Southwestern for the hell of it and read the words that changed everything: “Congratulations, we would like to offer you a full-ride to attend our inaugural part-time online program.” I read and re-read the sentences. It took me a whole day to process that law school could be free. That I could keep my job. That I could go to class from home. I didn’t have to commute. I could get a J.D. I could actually get a J.D.
I tried to find the small print—the loophole. I googled the school. It was ABA-approved. I reread the email. I didn’t find any small print. I contacted my boss, who is an attorney, to get her opinion on the school. I learned she got her J.D. from Southwestern Law.
It isn’t Harvard. It isn’t even UC Irvine. But I am a law student who’s able to graduate debt-free with a full-time job. I wonder, if I had applied the year I took the LSAT, would I already be an attorney? My fear of non-factors almost prevented me from doing something I’ve dreamed of since I was a child.
For the first time, I saw a future where I could actually be a lawyer. I went to the store and bought veggies, not in a can. I bought a ten pack of toilet paper and didn’t even check the price. I re-opened the email and signed over the next four years of my life to something that didn’t feel so risky anymore. I grabbed the bag of Thomas bagels and whipped cream cheese and popped one in the toaster. Somehow, I could have my bagel and eat it too.
1. https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/young_lawyers/2021-student-loan-survey.pdf
Cori Bratby-Rudd is a queer LA-based writer and co-founder of Influx Collectiv(e)’s Queer Poetry Reading Series. She graduated Cum Laude from UCLA’s Gender Studies department, and received her MFA in Creative Writing from California Institute of the Arts. Cori is a first year law student at Southwestern Law.
