Law School Discussion

I think this is quite common for anyone attending law school or any new commitment. Whether to attend law school or not is a life altering decision and you there is no guarantee it could go great it could go terribly. When I was a 0L I can tell you I was freaking out the summer before I started it was a mixture of excitement, anxiety, hope, dread, and everything in between. However, most people in their mid twenties have the feeling of "what I am doing with my life" and if you attend law school you are taking a significant step in one direction it is a 3 year 100,000 commitment that will change your life.

It does sound like you have done a good amount of research into it and worked in a law firm and were not scared off. As for having a possible false vision you might have one, but there is no exact picture to being a lawyer it is a diverse field much like anything else really.

As for the JD/MBA what do you want to do with both of those? You shouldn't simply get more education because you don't know what to do and personally I think a law degree is far more valuable than an MBA, but I could be biased. You need to go to law school to be a lawyer you don't need an MBA to be a businessman.

I am sure you would like to hear everything will work out and this is a great decision or maybe it is horrible and you should not go, but this is your life and your decision. There is no way to know if law school is the right decision and like any big decision there is a bit of uncertainty. Whatever you decide I wish you good luck.

I see this question posed by many prior to taking the LSAT and I think you are putting the carriage before the horse.  There really is no point on wondering what your options are until you have a real LSAT score.  Once you have that score it is real and you will know what your options are. Therefore, I recommend you do everything you can to succeed on the LSAT and once the results are in then you can realistically weigh your options. Thinking about what law schools you can get into prior to having a score is frivolous in my mind.

If you really are curious about what numbers will get you into what school websites lawschoolnumbers.com or simply using the LSAC website are great resources.

Not to discourage you, but I am an attorney and worked briefly in law school admissions and  I cannot tell you how many people tell me they score between 165-175 on the practice LSATs, but somehow they never end up getting a real score. I do not know what the reason for this is I know when I was doing practice LSAT's I gave myself a little leeway maybe gave myself an extra minute or two or who knows what else. Not to mention the real pressure of test day makes a significant difference on performance. Therefore, even if you do not get a 165 it is not the end of the world if you can get into an ABA school you have a chance at a successful legal career.

With that said I sincerely hope you get a 180 that would be awesome.

Good luck on the LSAT.

Thanks for qualifying your lack of sarcasm and I would say your second representation of what lawyers "do" is probably more descriptive than your first... but perhaps that's just my interpretation. To an extent, all service-oriented professionals serve (or represent) a client. I do that in my current occupation, but I am not an attorney.

If I was forced to define what lawyers "do" I would probably end on the classic answer of "it depends". On what? The discipline of law you plan to practice. And ideally (depending on time, which I am somehow always short on...) include an example or two. Just like not all engineers use CAD and create schematics -- some advise design teams on what is feasible from an engineering standpoint for manufacture or service delivery and they may never directly engineer at all. Our general counsel does that. He advises us what we can and can't do, and rarely creates anything on our behalf (such as a service agreement) -- he mostly just documents his recommendations and their legal substantiations in order to make his recommendations defensible. Meanwhile, friends of mine who are attorneys spend their time buried in paperwork, research or else living from courtroom to courtroom. So, in sum, it depends.

But yes, you are correct -- I did originate the concept that perhaps you were being sarcastic. Much like I hope that a dangerously reckless driver is drunk in hopes that his/her wanton disregard for human life is not 24/7 status quo but instead the product of alcohol and an isolated event (overall reduction in risk exposure). Often I wish people *were* sarcastic, because it would offer an excuse for their otherwise poor reasoning and restore some fraction of my faith in humanity (yes, some sarcasm there...).

Your answer did not convey (in my opinion) an understanding of the intent behind asking the question to begin with. I don't want to speak for IrrX, but it would appear to me that s/he asked the question to hopefully guard against the increasingly myopic tendencies of many law school students and hopefuls. And to instead elicit some forethought into the post-law-school workload (ask yourself -- What would I be doing everyday? Would I like that? Would I like it enough to want to spend 80+ hours a week doing it? Is it worth sacrificing my hobbies or even family time? What would my long-term career path be? How would a law degree catalyze that or not?) All of those questions are questions that hopefully you've already asked yourself.

It's unfortunate, but many people today have an entitlement mentality. They think A-->Z (where "A" is go to law school and "Z" is get rich). And forget to include the hard work and sacrifice it takes to make it through the necessary steps of B through Y (where "B" is go insanely into debt, "C" is work like I'm insanely in debt [oh wait!] ... etc ... intro to formal logic, right?).

Finally, please don't misconstrue my generalizations about the naivete of *many* (e.g. "not all") students as an assertion that they necessarily apply to you. Simply those who feel a sense of personal responsibility to help guide others to help them make good decisions often try to help them think of the less favorable aspects of a decision, in order to better help them weigh the pros and cons.

In the end, it's all your decision. Regardless of your choice, I wish you the best of hard work (there is no luck!), commitment and sacrifice. And above all, the courage to make the difficult choices to succeed in whatever way you define it. (And there is not a hint of sarcasm in that!

Quote from: IrrX on April 11, 2013, 03:30:36 PM

Quote from: student79 on April 10, 2013, 10:16:34 PM

Quote from: IrrX on April 10, 2013, 01:45:59 PM

1) Can you explain to me what lawyers do?

1) Lawyers practice law.

This brief response conveyed far more than I'm sure even you wanted it to. Don't go to law school.

As a prospective student, I see the same thing you do here... that's like saying "engineer's engineer". I'm hoping this is yet another case of mistaken sarcasm, as I've already fell victim to once today. And, as well all know, sarcasm on the Interwebs is a piece of cake to detect

Vuarnet,

Thank you for your comment. I disagree with your remark regarding sarcasm though.

I was asked a very broad question as lawyers do many things. 2 best answers that I came up with were: 1 - practice law, 2 - represent a client. I decided on first choice because it seemed a little bit more broad.

How would you answer that question yourself? Keep in mind that if your answer will be very narrow such as "lawyer drafts patents", you could open yourself to a number of hostile comments claiming that you omitted this giant fields of other things that lawyers do and therefor you don't know what you are talking about.

Furthermore, there was no reason for me to be sarcastic towards user IrrX. He is spending his time here answering my question at no charge. Why would I want to make fun of him??? I was not sarcastic to him in my other replies as well, it would be very strange that all of a sudden I decided to switch gears and make some inappropriate comment here which wasn't called for. I was merely trying to give thoughtful answers which would prevent reaction comments such as: "oh, you clearly don't know what lawyers do because you omitted this giant field of duties"

Also, please note that IrrX did not accuse me of being sarcastic or hostile at all. This is something that you came up with on your own dear sir.

Disclaimer: I am not being sarcastic in this reply

P.S. I purchased 3 powerscore books, first one is almost done. I am planning to take LSAT in October this year and than go from there. So, this discussion will likely take 1 year. Thanks to all who will participate in this discussion.

Is it common to have this anxiety and not be sure that Law School is the right decision?

Thanks

It is charming that posters like "Duncanip" would have us believe that their CBA education qualifies them to be practicing attorneys but their antidotal stories, while interesting are not supported by facts.

Their CBE education and bar passage does, in fact, qualify them to be attorneys.

Again, I think you're missing the point. The CBE and ABA schools are filling different market niches and serving different demographics. It doesn't make sense to compare apples to oranges. CBE grads won't be competing for Biglaw or federal jobs, and many ABA grads aren't interested in small insurance subrogation firms or going solo.

Obviously, the bar pass rates are usually lower and a CBE grad is going to have to hustle more than an ABA grad to get a job. But you have to remember, as Duncan pointed out, that most CBE students are not 25 year-olds who lack experience and are relying on their academic pedigree to land a position. Many possess other experience and connections, and just need to pass the bar.

Lastly, I'm not convinced that any ABA grad is necessarily in a better position to get hired than any CBE grad. I worked at an office where a huge premium was placed on the ability to hit the ground running. A clueless, inexperienced ABA grad would not have automatically beat out an experienced, personable CBE grad. This is especially true of grads from lower-tier ABA schools.

I'm not saying that the opportunities are always equivalent, they're obviously not. I would simply urge you to take the CBE student's goals into account when evaluating the utility of the program.     

 

My GPA is a 3.75 cumulative, and I am currently averaging, on true practice LSAT exams, a score range of 165-170. I plan on improving my score range by at least 5 points at each end before I sit for the test in October.

Let me first say that the LSAT is a difficult test, and simply can't assume that you'll score in the top 2-3%. Practice test are good preparation, but there is no guarantee that your practice scores will be replicated on the actual test day. Thus, until you get a real live LSAT score on the board everything is pure speculation.

That said, take a look at the admissions profiles on LSAC and you'll get a very good idea as to your chances given certain GPA/LSAT combos. Assuming that you score 165, Harvard would almost certainly be out. Even if you scored 175 it wouldn't be guaranteed. You'd have a shot at BU, and the other schools you mentioned would be near shoe-ins, possibly even with scholarships. Again, check out LSAC. The have far more detailed info than I can provide. Good luck!

The information you provided is too scant to draw any conclusions. Do you mean that you failed some classes, or just didn't do as well as you'd like?

It is charming that posters like "Duncanip" would have us believe that their CBA education qualifies them to be practicing attorneys but their antidotal stories, while interesting are not supported by facts.  The hard cold reality is that many CBA never pass the California Bar exam and fewer enjoy profitable legal careers.

Uh, for future reference, the word is anecdotal, not "antidotal" there, "bobol." Your observations on CBE grads are fair commentary, although my anecdotes are based upon personal knowledge. There is a cold, hard reality that many CBE grads never pass the CA bar exam. But you ignore the fact that many of them do and go on to have good careers in law, albeit, not on the Supreme Court. There is also the cold, hard reality that thousands of ABA grads have absolutely astronomical debt and cannot find jobs anywhere. Some have even filed lawsuits against their ABA schools. Some of those who do manage to find meaningful work, especially in BigLaw, burn out after a brief couple of years, or decide they don't like working as an attorney after spending a fortune to become one. It just seems myopic to me to dismiss one path with a cavalier wave of the hand in favor of the other, taking no account of the individual and his or her station in life. Not every college grad can go to Harvard. But does that destroy the value of getting a college degree from whatever institution is available to the student? No. The education is its own reward. What you do with it afterwards is up to you.

Just received my grade and in dire need of some advice.  Just received my grade and I didn't do well thus, wondering if I should withdraw from my law school and come back later.   Any advice?