Discussion
Resources
11
General Board / Re: Questions pertaining to law school - advice and insight very much so appreciated
« on: June 26, 2011, 01:14:58 AM »
Admission to law school is based off of your GPA and LSAT scores and usually requires a bachelor's degree. If you managed a high enough score on your LSAT, there might be a few law schools you could get into, like Cooley. But it can be difficult to get a job after graduating from a tier IV school.
It sounds to me like you feel bad about how your undergraduate studies have gone and want a fresh start because you know you're capable of more if the conditions were right. But rather than signing up for law school and telling yourself things will be different this time, in my humble opinion I think you need to make sure that the conditions preventing you from succeeding in college are not going to be repeated, or if some of the conditions do repeat, that you would be able to exercise enough self discipline to keep up a good work week .... i.e. going to bed early and getting up every morning on weekdays to go to class or study and having an honest work day even when you're feeling down or whatever. I'm not sure signing up and just telling yourself it'll be different this time is the best idea.
Also, grading at law school for most courses is based solely off a final exam score. There's a lot of temptation to slack or put things off for people prone to such things because of this. And much of the work is self study. You need to read a casebook for class and be ready to be called on for cases, but this is only part of what you have to do. The other half (arguably the more important half if you want to pass your exams) is self-directed study on your own where you go through hornbooks or other materials to learn the law itself, and do practice essays and multiple choice. By the time you factor in time spent in class, time spent reading cases, time spent going over outlines, and the fact that you have to know it all for one single exam at the end, it really ends up being a lot of work for the average person. On top of that, if you're going to one of the tier iv law schools, it's important to do better than the average student there.
Last and not least, it's enormously expensive to go law school.
It sounds to me like you feel bad about how your undergraduate studies have gone and want a fresh start because you know you're capable of more if the conditions were right. But rather than signing up for law school and telling yourself things will be different this time, in my humble opinion I think you need to make sure that the conditions preventing you from succeeding in college are not going to be repeated, or if some of the conditions do repeat, that you would be able to exercise enough self discipline to keep up a good work week .... i.e. going to bed early and getting up every morning on weekdays to go to class or study and having an honest work day even when you're feeling down or whatever. I'm not sure signing up and just telling yourself it'll be different this time is the best idea.
Also, grading at law school for most courses is based solely off a final exam score. There's a lot of temptation to slack or put things off for people prone to such things because of this. And much of the work is self study. You need to read a casebook for class and be ready to be called on for cases, but this is only part of what you have to do. The other half (arguably the more important half if you want to pass your exams) is self-directed study on your own where you go through hornbooks or other materials to learn the law itself, and do practice essays and multiple choice. By the time you factor in time spent in class, time spent reading cases, time spent going over outlines, and the fact that you have to know it all for one single exam at the end, it really ends up being a lot of work for the average person. On top of that, if you're going to one of the tier iv law schools, it's important to do better than the average student there.
Last and not least, it's enormously expensive to go law school.