Jesse Gonzalez, first year student at the Nashville School of Law, said taking night school classes has taken the anxiety out of understanding the law of the land at an affordable price.
The Nashville School of Law, previously known as the YMCA Night Law School, is a private non-profit law school founded in 1911 that offers affordable law classes held exclusively at night.
Graduates of the school are eligible to take the Tennessee bar examination.
Students are able to earn a Juris Doctor degree after attending the Nashville School of Law for four years. First and second year students attend classes two nights per week while third and fourth year students attend classes three nights per week.
Gonzalez, as a 46-year old student attending the school, said he is taking the classes with the goal of becoming an attorney and using the degree to assist him in real estate advocacy.
In general, Gonzalez said the school is a useful tool for the general public as a way to take the anxiety out of learning the law of the land at an inexpensive price.
“When people hear the law, they will get heart palpitations, hands get sweaty, all the anxiety comes over them, but, if you have a fundamental understanding and it’s affordable, it’s something that you can manage, you put to rest a lot of those fears,” Gonzalez explained on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“For me, I’m going into Nashville School of Law with the idea of ultimately becoming an attorney and doing some real estate advocacy but at the end of the day, for those people who are looking for regulatory type jobs that require that Juris doctorate, the Nashville School of Law is affordable. We have really good professors,” Gonzalez added.
Gonzalez said “one of the biggest assets” of the classes is having professors who are deeply integrated in the Nashville legal community.
“I think Nashville School of Law’s professor roster is what really pulled me up,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez also noted the cost difference in attending the Nashville School of Law as opposed to other four-year institutions.
“Obviously being in real estate, I have a lot of relationships with attorneys and I had a few ask me, what school are you going to go to? You have to get a good LSAT score, and I had a good score and they were like, ‘Oh, you could go to Vanderbilt and you could go to Belmont.’ Of course I could, but I would pay out the nose for those schools. It’d be ungodly,” Gonzalez added.
Four years’ worth of enrollment at the Nashville School of Law costs $45,600, according to its website.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
