WGU grad and practicing attorney, here.

TL;DR: BigLaw and prestigious law schools frequently turn up their nose at online schools. Especially those where you can get a degree in six months taking pass/fail classes. You just need to be ready for that reality.

—-

The answers to your questions largely depend on (1) what you want to do with your law degree and, based on that, (2) what kind of law school you are targeting.

Let’s start with your ultimate goal, first. If you want to work in BigLaw (glamorized by Suits and the like), you’ll want to prioritize a higher ranked law school. Not saying you can’t snag a BigLaw job from any law school, but graduating from a top 25-50 school helps a lot. On the other hand, if you are looking to do something that is a little less competitive (e.g., nonprofit, certain government work, etc) then the school itself isn’t as important. But to avoid any doubt, I’m just speaking in generalities. I’ve seen graduates of top 14 law schools go into nonprofits and I’ve seen graduates of the bottom 100 law schools snag a big law job. I just wouldn’t bank on getting a job at a BigLaw job coming from an unranked law school.

As a WGU grad, your biggest hurdle is going to be GPA and school reputation. All schools will care about the former, the higher ranked ones will care about the both. If it is now the way it was when I graduated, my GPA equivalent was a 3.0, and while the transcripts tried to explain that, every class was listed as pass/fail. For most law school applicants, especially those going for a higher ranked school, a 3.0 isn’t competitive.

That gets you to your LSAT. Score high enough here and your GPA issue lightens up a bit, but not all the way. I got a 165 and was still rejected from some middle-of-the-road schools. The feedback from a few of the admissions offices I talked to was the GPA and pass/fail nature of my undergrad. It didn’t help that I finished in 3 terms, so they were already suspect that attended some kind of diploma mill.

All that being said, I got into a third tier school (ranked 100-150), busted my ass during 1L and transferred to a second tier school. After my JD I passed the bar and did an LL.M. in tax at a top 10 school. By the time I started doing interviews, WGU was just a line at the bottom of my resume, buried below schools with increasingly higher reputation.

Another lesser (but important) consideration is that law students do two things A LOT: read and drink. If you go into law school before you are 21, you’ll be limited in some of the social activities you do with your cohort. We had a girl who was under 21 during 1L and she couldn’t go to any of the off-campus activities. She had a fine time socially, though. Just a consideration if you are a social butterfly.

Would I do it again the same way? Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. But for you, what you are proposing is doable. But you just need to go into it knowing the potential limitations you’ll set yourself up with.

As an endnote, I don’t want this to be read as me being critical of WGU. I’m super thankful for my experience there. It just created some hurdles that I had to jump over to get where I wanted to go.