Law School Discussion

You should still read at least in your first year. When you get to the real world you will have to read full cases so you might as well get used to doing it in school. Sometimes these briefs leave out important issues as well and in your first year you have nothing to do, but study so you might as well do the reading. Then use sources like this one to confirm what you read is correct.

I think every law student has this same feeling after an exam. I should have done this, I didn't talk about that, I forget this, and it happens to everyone. I have gotten the highest grade in the class on a few occassions and had the same feeling of sh** I forget this issue or that issue and I did, but there are usually 16-20 issues and if you miss only one you are doing pretty well. As long as you wrote something coherent you should pass and generally law schools don't give out F's or D's if you really blew it you might get a C or C-.

Well the Whittier curve is extremely tough and there is an 80% chance you won't keep your scholarship there. Nothing against you, but pretty much anyone at an ABA school thinks they will be in the top 10-20%, but you don't need to be a math major to figure out 80-90% of people won't be in the top 10-20%.

Now I don't know what Western State's curve is I tried to look at their handbook http://www.wsulaw.edu/pdf/student-handbook.pdf, but I didn't see the curve. Generally speaking at an ABA especially one that gives out scholarships based on you maintaining a certain GPA it is very difficult to achieve the GPA. I am just speculating that it will be difficult to maintain a 2.6 at Western, but I would specifically ask them what Western State's curve is.

The schools are about equal, but I might give a slight edge to Whittier, because it has been ABA approved for much longer than Western State, which just received accreditation. I would also e-mail some practicing attorneys from those schools and see what they have to say.

Either way good luck.

Numerous schools will give you academic scholarships with those numbers. Check out lawschoolnumbers.com and you can get an idea of how much you will get with your numbers.

Nice I really liked the response by concurring opinion. It was a rebuttal with actual facts that offered some analysis to it. Politicians and a lot of lawyers could learn from this kind of thing.

In regards to Robert's I don't think law review is really an indicator of legal education. It contains 10 to 15% of law school students. Many of them are writing on something they find interesting and law review is just one of the many things a law professor does. There may be a disconnect between legal education and the practice of law, but addressing problems with law review is not where the problem is.

Even if law review were to be a perfectly run fluid system 85% to 90% of law students would still have problems. The problem to me is that you are not required to ever hold a job of any form before attending law school or becoming a member of the bar. Furthermore, law school doesn't teach you how to be a lawyer and it seems to be a widely acknowledged fact that law school doesn't teach you to be a lawyer. Obviously it teaches you a lot, but in regards to the actual work unless you take specific classes you would not know the who, what, when, where, and why of how to file a complaint. You would not know how to prepare a proof of service, just many of the pure basics are not taught.  Maybe they could at least make you specialize in something because you can put in a decent effort get through law school and pass the bar. Then still have no idea how to do the most basic thing.