Good luck, I like the point-buy system a bit better than life paths, since I can custom tailor my character to skills and traits for the character and not be stuck with to many points to completely get rid of the skill, not to mention since I am going to put points into EDG anyway no point in having all the negative edge you get from life paths anyway.
Are you talking about the classic battletech RPG character creation? the old rules? then yes I agree, there was a lot of room for abuse in the lifepaths. and pretty easy to end up with a low edge score.
I'd strongly suggest however that you have a look at the character creation in 'A Time of War' the new 4th gen rules for battletech universe RPG. the character creation is a lot more streamlined, compared to MWIII/CBTRPG, and there's none of the random 'oh crud this character is toast now' rolls like in the old lifepaths.
I LIKE the new life modules a lot, and I think they present some good basic 'package deal' sort of arrangements that anyone going through that particular life phase in that place would end up with, along with enough flexibility and choice that each character can still be an individual. It also produced fairly well rounded characters, which is something you don't get on a points buy only system where anyone with a bit of munchkinism is concerned.
Some of the guys in our group who are not very good at coming up with character concepts, found themselves deciding what their character was about as they had to make the choices (as they went along) for how to spend the flex exp.. you could see the character growing in their mind.