I sort of frequently get asked about going from teaching full-time in a public school to enrolling in law school. Obviously, I did it and I know a lot about it. I always sort of feel bad telling people about being a lawyer and law school as I know that anyone brave enough to think about law school probably was a pretty decent teacher and we need to keep our good teachers in the classroom. But, nevertheless, it is something that happens for a variety of reasons so I wanted to share an e-mail with you that I wrote to a friend of mine that is considering that transition right now. He seems pretty set in his decision and just finished taking the LSAT and was seeking my advice about how and where to apply. I have embedded a few hyperlinks for you.
I would get all [my application materials] ready and send it to LSDAS or whatever that entity is that assembles all the application information right away. Then I would get the application procedures for all the schools you think you want to go to. There is an LSDAS process and then a separate process for each school's application and you have to do both.
In order to choose what schools to apply to, use this resource: http://officialguide.lsac.org/
That guide will tell you pretty clearly which schools you will get into if you apply. For instance, just looking at UK's page, the LSAT range is between 155 and 165 with their median at 160. So, when you get your scores back, you will pretty much know if you fit what they are looking for. Then, once you get your scores back, you might want to put in another couple applications. If your scores are high, maybe you try for a big-time law school. If your scores are lower, maybe you send off another couple of lower-tier applications. The scores will pretty much tell you what to do.
Now, once all your applications are in, I would take a few visits. If UK interests you, I would come down to Lexington to meet with the Ed. Law professor here (by the way, you can find out which schools have ed. law professors by using this resource: http://www.aals.org/services_directory.php -- you will have to go to your local law school to find it, though). If Ohio State is an option given your LSAT scores, I would take a trip there and visit their ed. law guy. You get the idea. It depends on how heavily you are tied to this idea of specializing in a particular field. Any law school can get you a job in a personal injury firm. Not every law school can get you a job in an education firm. If you are heavily invested in getting an educational law job after you graduate, then you need to make sure the law school has the resources that can help you with that and the most important resource is an ed. law faculty member with some decent connections. Also, it depends on the area of the country you want to live in. If I were you and you were comfortable with this, I would ask your principal or assistant sup. who the law firm is for your school district and would ask to meet with them over lunch or something. They would certainly meet with you (it is in their interest to keep their client happy) and they could give you very specific information about the major firms in [Insert Your State Here] and what job paths are most likely to land you a position at one of those firms.
Anyway, do your homework on this. It is a pretty big commitment and your law school will highly dictate the opportunities that are available to you when you finish.
So, that is the text of the e-mail. I am sure I will have more communication with this friend over the coming months, but I wanted to post this one because of the advice it gives about picking schools. The choice of school is an extremely important one in the legal field, much more so than any other field, perhaps. Certain jobs will simply not be available to you if you do not go to the right law school. Education law is still sort of niche field so they can be pretty highly selective on candidates. In order to get your name at the top of the list in education law, it is still sort of imperative to "know someone" and you are not going to know anyone unless you go to a law school and work with faculty that can help you make those connections.