Perspectives on Law School at the End of 1L
Today is my last day as a 1L, unless you count the summer session, which I’m not going to. In many ways, my experience of law school has turned out very differently than I had expected. Off the top of my head a few of these differences include:
- Law school was much harder than I expected. I thought it would be easy to cruise by with B’s. It isn’t.
- I thought I’d make it through on raw brain power and not have to work too hard. Instead, my raw brain power got me very little. What few successes I’ve had so far have been through hard work.
- My fellow students are very bright, hard working and dedicated. I expected this, but the extent of their brightness, work ethic and dedication is more than I thought it would have been.
- There is way too much emphasis on grades. I figured that in law school, like any other type of school I’ve been to, grades would be a just a rough proxy of intelligence, ability and hard work. This is true, but hiring firms seem to put so much emphasis on grades that the law school do so as well with ridiculously severe curves.
- Having said that, my fellow students are pretty non-competitive bunch, which is a welcome relief.
- In law school the professors don’t teach, they profess. The students teach themselves the material.
- By far the best and most useful classes are legal writing and research. Grades in these classes are what hiring firms should look at.
- The time commitment for a part-time law student is enormous. It is easily a 30-40 hours a week on average. (Says the guy who spent 90 hours on his appellate brief.)
- For the most part, the law is reasonable, rational and fair. Also quite intellectual. The stereotype of lawyers being fast-talking scam artists is so wrong. Thankfully, those types are few and far between.
- The classroom and the textbooks do not prepare you for exams. However the study guides, hornbooks and online materials do.