Engineers in Law School

[rapunzel]

I agree with much of the above.  The more rigourous your previous training the easier it will be to assimilate to LS.  Engineers are problem solvers and I often appreciate the methodic, logical way my classmates who are engineers approach a legal issue.  They also usually have the gift of being concise.
My husband is an EE (I have a grad degree in theatre, so we hit both ends of the spectrum).  He has observed that I now use language in a much more mathematical way.  Whatever that means.  Law requires a more structured way of thinking, and to that extent you will be in good stead.  But you will be called on to be more expansive in you communication than most engineers I know are comfortable with. 

[lawgirl21]

I graduated with an EE degree and worked as an engineer before law school.. I think that the subject matter and the application of the law is much easier than engineering..  In fact, I sometimes sit in class and wonder how people are not picking up the concepts.. 

The issue I do have is with the grading system in law school...  In engineering, if you got it and could do the problem then you usually could bank on getting a good grade on the exam..  In law, your grade is dependent on whether or not you can apply the law better than everyone else..  For me, this is a complete departure from what I'm used to and very hard to get used to.. 

I'm a 1L who just finished by first round of exams, I was wondering if any older engineering/law students had incite into how they did on exams and how their grades compared to engineering grades

[Senior Belding]

Well if you spelled it "incite"...

What school are you @

[unlvcrjchick]

I find it quite odd that the engineers here are stating that engineers excel in law school, whereas at my school the engineers and other science majors are doing very poorly.  Case in point, my good friend has her electrical engineering degree (she has a masters), and she has her MBA, and yet, her grades are significantly lower than mine. 

To do well in law school does not, for the most part, require extremely diligent working habits.  My grades are better than average, and I have never briefed a case in law school, nor have I ever constructed an outline.  And for this past semester, I studied, at most, 10 hours for each class, and even that studying time was spent on brushing up on commercial outlines (I'm a 2L, by the way).

It is so humorous to see the 1Ls in my school sweat it out come final-exam time, asking to see other people's outlines, and memorizing the fact patterns of the cases we've read.  I just want to scream to them, "the amount of work you put into law school doesn't mean *&^% come grade time."  This is a hard pill to swallow for a lot of science majors and others, but it's true.

[Burning Sands]

I graduated with an EE degree and worked as an engineer before law school.. I think that the subject matter and the application of the law is much easier than engineering..  In fact, I sometimes sit in class and wonder how people are not picking up the concepts.. 

The issue I do have is with the grading system in law school...  In engineering, if you got it and could do the problem then you usually could bank on getting a good grade on the exam..  In law, your grade is dependent on whether or not you can apply the law better than everyone else..  For me, this is a complete departure from what I'm used to and very hard to get used to.. 

I'm a 1L who just finished by first round of exams, I was wondering if any older engineering/law students had incite into how they did on exams and how their grades compared to engineering grades

You hit the nail on the head. The grading system is night and day.  I should have been clear about this in my last post when I advised attacking law school like engineering.

What unlv chick says is true which ties into the grading system.  As an engineer, please do not equate studying long hours with success in and of itself.  It worked in engineering, it does NOT work in law school.  I sorta had to find that out the hard way.  Like somebody said earlier, the object in engineering is the end result.  You study the formulas and scenarios, plugging in numbers for variables, and presto chango, the answer is 1.21 Giga-Watts.  So, as an engineer, you might be inclined to intuitively attack law school by studying all the rules of law so that you can plug in all the facts and, presto chango, the answer is liable.  Not good.

Nobody really tells you that your success walks hand in hand with your ability to write a law school exam, and by that I mean, your ability to perform complex legal analysis.  The "A" in IRAC, if you will.  The "C" is not where the points are.  The few engineers/science background people that I know who did not make this distinction did have a hard time.  For those of us who by the grace of God did make the distinction, law school then became a little more like home.  You can attack law school like an engineer, you just have to make sure you are attacking the right area. 

So to answer lawgirl's question, once I was able to beef up my analytical skills on the exams, I and the few other engineers I knew in my class did very well.  At the conclusion of 1L, a couple of the engineers transfered to T14 law schools and I ended up making the Law Review at my school.

[lipper]

what Burning Sands says is golden.

What up Burnin - its Bubbazzz from the pre-law side, glad to hear you are doing well.

[Senior Belding]

Burning Sands:

It seems to me that in tier 1 schools basically, Engineers have an easier time finding jobs outside the top 10%. Is this true?

[lincolnsgrandson]

Big law firms love students with engineering degrees. If you did well in undergrad, you can expect that you'll be an attractive candidate even if your first year in law school isn't outstanding. 
Many IP firms ask for your undergrad transcript.

[slacker]

I had a couple firms tell me that they only look at EE's for summer associate positions. Other firms similarly restrict to a certain background. Having an engineering degree, if going into IP, can be a strong advantage for the job hunting.

[lawschoolmama]

My best friend at school has an undergrad in engineering - I think electrical.  She ended up being the star in the class and got a 3.9.