Am I too old for law school?

The question comes up in almost every admissions conversation, usually apologetically, and it is almost never the right question.

Law schools have older students in every cohort. People who ran a business for twenty-five years and enrolled after selling it. People who retired from one career at fifty-five and wanted a second one that used their head.

What age actually gives you

Life experience is not a consolation prize in law. Contract doctrine is easier when you have signed contracts that went wrong. Tort is easier when you have carried insurance and made a claim. Criminal procedure is easier when you have any adult understanding of how institutions behave under pressure.

Older students also tend to arrive with a network. Twenty years of professional relationships is a referral base a twenty-three year old spends a decade building.

What age actually costs you

Time and energy, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Four years of evenings and Saturdays is four years. The examination requirements do not soften and the reading does not shrink.

The people who finish are the ones who worked out in advance where the hours were coming from, and who had a reason strong enough to survive the second year.

The questions worth asking instead

Not "am I too old" but: can I protect four evenings a week for four years? Do I have a reason for this that will still be true when it stops being exciting? Can I pay for it without borrowing against a retirement I am closer to than my classmates are?

If those answers work, age is a detail.

How the format helps

CDTA meets on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings and on Saturdays, so the work does not have to stop. Students living fifty miles or more from the Indio campus may complete most of their studies through the Distance Learning Option, with the platform available around the clock.

And instruction happens in a real courtroom with practicing attorneys and judges in the room, which suits someone who has spent a working life learning by doing rather than by lecture.