Any part timers?

[kennedyposter]

How does summer employment work for people in part time programs? can you get a job after your first year in part time? I'm trying to decide if I want to go to American part time or not. Thanks!

[LawSchoolAuthority]

I was in the part time program during my 1L year, and I did not have trouble obtaining summer employment after my first year due to my part time status. 

One issue may be your summer class schedule. Fortunately, my part time program held evening classes during the summer, so working was during the day, just like the rest of the year, was not a problem. 

Another issue may be what to do with your current employment.  If you are planning on working your current job during the academic year, but obtaining legal employment, i.e., SA, during the summer, you will need to figure this one out.

[Matthies]

How does summer employment work for people in part time programs? can you get a job after your first year in part time? I'm trying to decide if I want to go to American part time or not. Thanks!

Depends on if you’re working FT or not. If you’re just going PT you can get a job anytime and work year round if you wish. Many of my classmates took law related jobs FT or PT after the first year (some after the first semester) to get experince and make $. Many of them have gotten permanent offers from the jobs they took while in law school. Some have stayed with their old jobs (non law related) they had before law school, and will look for law jobs after they graduate or wait to retire then practice law.

[TheDudeMan]

I have a full-time career and I still did summer associate gigs while a Part-Time Student at GW.  During my 2L Summer I worked BigLaw and the same During 3L summer.

Most PT students work their regular jobs 1L summer and many actually do so during 2L summer as well.  Going to into 3L OCI you are on the same field as Full-time 2L's so it works out.

Very few 2L PT students will land firm jobs.  I got lucky because of my background.

[kennedyposter]

How does summer employment work for people in part time programs? can you get a job after your first year in part time? I'm trying to decide if I want to go to American part time or not. Thanks!

Depends on if you’re working FT or not. If you’re just going PT you can get a job anytime and work year round if you wish. Many of my classmates took law related jobs FT or PT after the first year (some after the first semester) to get experince and make $. Many of them have gotten permanent offers from the jobs they took while in law school. Some have stayed with their old jobs (non law related) they had before law school, and will look for law jobs after they graduate or wait to retire then practice law.

Nice...good info...well the other thing I've been wondering is how class rank pans out in part time programs. I know it has so much to do with employment prospectives. Are you just ranked within the part time division?

[LawSchoolAuthority]

How does summer employment work for people in part time programs? can you get a job after your first year in part time? I'm trying to decide if I want to go to American part time or not. Thanks!

Depends on if you’re working FT or not. If you’re just going PT you can get a job anytime and work year round if you wish. Many of my classmates took law related jobs FT or PT after the first year (some after the first semester) to get experince and make $. Many of them have gotten permanent offers from the jobs they took while in law school. Some have stayed with their old jobs (non law related) they had before law school, and will look for law jobs after they graduate or wait to retire then practice law.

Nice...good info...well the other thing I've been wondering is how class rank pans out in part time programs. I know it has so much to do with employment prospectives. Are you just ranked within the part time division?

It depends.  You should check with each school to determine how their part time students are ranked.  My impression is that for the most part, part time students are eventually ranked with their full time counterparts, however some schools wait to compile rankings until the part time students acquired a certain number of hours to put them on par with the rest of the full time class.  Also, some schools keep the part time and full time rankings separate, which might hurt during the employment search. 

[TheDudeMan]

You are ranked with everyone else eventually.  It's based on class year usually.

[Matthies]

You are ranked with everyone else eventually.  It's based on class year usually.

Not at my school, we have day/evening rankings even for your grad year. Check with the schools your looking into to see how they do it.

[TheDudeMan]

You are ranked with everyone else eventually.  It's based on class year usually.

Not at my school, we have day/evening rankings even for your grad year. Check with the schools your looking into to see how they do it.

Wow, that must be nice.  Generally would make it easier to do well as it sucks being PT and being ranked with people that don't have jobs.

The thing is though, even if you aren't ranked as a whole, you still are on a forced curve with everyone unless your school completely segregates FT and PT students, which most don't.

[Matthies]

You are ranked with everyone else eventually.  It's based on class year usually.

Not at my school, we have day/evening rankings even for your grad year. Check with the schools your looking into to see how they do it.

Wow, that must be nice.  Generally would make it easier to do well as it sucks being PT and being ranked with people that don't have jobs.

The thing is though, even if you aren't ranked as a whole, you still are on a forced curve with everyone unless your school completely segregates FT and PT students, which most don't.

Actually, at least for my class, the GPA for first place in PT is higher than that of first place in FT. There are some damn smart folks in my class, thanks god most of them graduated a semester or two early so I can move up in ranking with little actual skill/work.

I’m not sure what you mean by graded against each other on the curve. Our school has a 3.0 curve for day or night students. If you take mostly night classes then you will be curved in those classes against mainly night students, if you take mostly day, then mostly day students (we can take day or night as PT or FT, but PT get preference for night class and FT preference for day classes). When ranking come out we have 1-xxx rank for day students and 1-xxx rank for night students, so there is a number 1 in the class for day and a number 1 in the class for night (your status determined by majority of classes taken day or night, ie if 75 of your credits were night, your night. But if you transfer to fulltime day, then you get ranked with day students from that point on).