philosophy, politics, or economics major and law school success

[Pittman2]

Any philosophy majors out there? History majors?

[unlvsin]

A quick message to the writing majors:
I had to grade writing competition submissions for my law journals.  Some of them were full of unnecessarily verbose "creative" writing; essentially useless crap that must have proven successful in college.  Only a minority of the entries came from these kinds of fools, and I don't know if these were the creative writing majors.  However, whether you agree with me or not, I had to smack them down.  I expect that the other journals did, too.  Be careful.

Definitely true for law school.  The "creative" writers, (the ones who were "good" at writing before law school) usually don't do too well because they can't give up their flowery BS.  My best friend in law school is a great personal statement/story type writer... but really sucks at legal writing.  You basically have to take out all the flower adjectives and "creative" sentence structures and write like you did in 6th grade... (Basic sentences --> Subject + verb + object.  "Jon threw the ball" etc.) 

[Pittman2]

Does anyone think that being able to view BLL, legal theory, and the legal system through the lens of either history, politics, econ, or philosophy is ideal?

[LostMyMonkeys]

A quick message to the writing majors:
I had to grade writing competition submissions for my law journals.  Some of them were full of unnecessarily verbose "creative" writing; essentially useless crap that must have proven successful in college.  Only a minority of the entries came from these kinds of fools, and I don't know if these were the creative writing majors.  However, whether you agree with me or not, I had to smack them down.  I expect that the other journals did, too.  Be careful.

Definitely true for law school.  The "creative" writers, (the ones who were "good" at writing before law school) usually don't do too well because they can't give up their flowery BS.  My best friend in law school is a great personal statement/story type writer... but really sucks at legal writing.  You basically have to take out all the flower adjectives and "creative" sentence structures and write like you did in 6th grade... (Basic sentences --> Subject + verb + object.  "Jon threw the ball" etc.) 

Ain't that the truth. I think one of the hardest things to overcome at the beginning of legal writing class is to be able to get used to "The defendant will argue XXX. The defendant will also argue YYY. The defendant will also argue ZZZZ"

Boring, but its what they want.

[lincolnsgrandson]

Don't neglect the point - a lot of you think you are good writers, but you're not.

[/quote]
Boring, but its what they want.
[/quote]

[shao2007]

People with a science backgroung will initially have a good grasp on writing for law school because scientific writing is very technical and involves laying out the steps of how you got your results, kind of like legal writing.
Personally I was an poli sci and english major and I have to forget about the success I had with writing before and remember that their is not too much room for original thinking in legal writing and it's all about applying the BLL

[Pittman2]

Learned Hand, I second that - I would major in philosophy, econ, perhaps minor in history or polisci, and take a legal writing course. Since I'm not in law school, this is what I plan to do; I may focus more on politics than philosophy, however.

[Texas]

Any philosophy majors out there? History majors?

Graduate research degree in theology - 45,000 word thesis -

Analyzing theology written by PhDs and DThs makes Supreme Court Rulings read like Mark Twain...Top 5% in my class, and finished with the high grade in one class and the 2nd highest in another...

Plus, all that argument building in my thesis has really helped me to communicate legal arguments...

[Pittman2]

Texas,
To what extent, if any, do you think the degree helped your chances of admission to law school?
And, wow, 45,000 words - I wrote about 20,000 in college which ended up at about 75 pages. Good work.

[Texas]

Texas,
To what extent, if any, do you think the degree helped your chances of admission to law school?
And, wow, 45,000 words - I wrote about 20,000 in college which ended up at about 75 pages. Good work.

Thanks...

I don't if it helped that much - simply because it was still "in progress" last year during the admissions cycle.
However, I think it will help my odds at transferring this year...