Cumberland School of Law in Bham --- Any Thoughts?

Can't get into Bama, can you?

Unless you 100% want to go to law school and do nothing else with your life, don't go. Seriously. The job market is atrocious, law school is expensive, and it's a pretty soul crushing experience filled with terrible terrible people.

Don't go to some no name school unless you already have connections and just need a degree.

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Doesn't LSU also teach common law?

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They teach both. In the first year, you take the following common law classes:
Contracts I
Torts
Administration of Criminal Justice (mostly about illegal searches and rights to an attorney)
Constitutional Law
Civil Procedure I & 2

You also take the following Civil Law classes:
Obligations
Property
Criminal Law
Legal Traditions

After that, the only real required classes are Evidence (teaches both Federal and Louisiana) and Legal Professions (teaches the MPRE exam). You can take all common law classes after that if you want.

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From what I understand, it's way easier to get into LSU than Bama because Bama is ranked a whole lot higher by USNWR.

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Absolutely true. LSU also has really cheap out of state tuition (relatively speaking) and is MUCH easier to get into for out of state students than in-state students (actually a major point of contention for alumni).

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I know it's some urban myth that you can't practice out the state if you go there

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It's mostly B.S., but there is some truth to it. LSU is one of the most rigorous law schools. Their hours requirement is far higher than any other law school AND their hours last an actual hour, not just 50 minutes like most law schools. That equates to an extra year's worth of class time. It's super competitive and there is ZERO grade inflation. If you get a 2.75, you're doing really well. Most other law schools give you a 3.0 as long as you show up and pay.

That means employers who aren't familiar with how LSU grades are often turned off by the low GPA's of LSU graduates. With that said, LSU has a reputation as being somewhat "exotic" due to our weird (but vastly superior) civil law system. Some folks love it, some don't. LSU law has a ton of alumni in Texas and overseas in the Civil Law world (France, Spain, and their former colonies), but not too many elsewhere in the U.S.

Where are you wanting to practice?

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Bama is ranked a whole lot higher by USNWR

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This is true. LSU has a whole lot going against it for those rankings. There are a lot of metrics that go into those reports like starting salaries for graduates, graduation rates, bar passage rates, endowment, and reputation. LSU Law still fails a lot of people, the Louisiana Bar exam is still the toughest in the nation (which hurts our bar passage rate), Louisiana doesn't rank that high for pay for graduates, our endowment is crap (because alumni of the older "weed out" decades of the law school hate the place), and our University President (for the whole campus, not just the law school) F. King Alexander made some incredible moronic statements in the media basically stating that the University would go into financial exigency (bankruptcy) if the
state legislature cut higher ed by the worst case scenario. All of that was a complete bold-faced lie, but the media ran with it and it caused LSU (and LSU law's) ratings to collapse overnight.

Go to Southern. A lot of their grads are here. Seems like they just dick around on the Internet all day, so maybe it will work out.

I didn't mind BR, but I just moved back up here and I have no intention of moving south of Mason Dixon unless Cuomo/de Blasio do something absolutely stupid (which is possible).

Go wherever you get the most money with the least amount of restrictions on your scholarship. I regret going to LSU and going into 100k of debt when I couldve gone to Ole Miss on a 90% Scholly,or Miss college and Cumberland on a full ride. For someone that just wants to work at a small firm and not super competitive about grades, LSU was a bad choice for me. Only benefit, I guess, is I'm confident about the bar exam.

If I could do it over again, I wouldn't go to law school. The cost is outrageous and the market is already oversaturated with lawyers. Plus, 80% of my law school class were terrible human beings.

Just realized I confused posters. Happy to talk about Cumberland off line if interested in my thoughts. I didn’t go there but am very familiar with it.