One of the reasons that I was interested in Catholic is that it had the highest average age of an evening cohort in D.C. Hearing of the brutality of the law school grading curve, I convinced myself that this was a good thing, since it meant that I would be competing against people with similar, age appropriate pressures, including jobs, family, kids.
Turns out, Catholic does not require any certification that you’re actually working. (Quick calls to Georgetown, George Washington, and American confirmed that they don’t follow this policy either.) The upshot of all this is that if you have a job, and have genuine obligations, you should know that you’ll be competing against a bunch of people who have neither.
Here’s the “Official Fight the Hypo Guide to Identifying Employment Status” among evening students:
No Job at All – these “part time/full time” students tend to be younger, and have the express intention of transferring either to the day program or somewhere else as soon as possible. They probably didn’t pull the LSAT scores they needed to get right into a day program, or decided that they wanted the time to intern during the day, or work part-time. You’ll be able to pick them out by their flip-flops and relaxed expressions.
People Who “Sort of” Have Jobs – these folks cover a wide variety of professions, ranging from federal employees to those who initially seem to have real jobs. You’ll soon discover that this is garbage however, when you discover that these jobs don’t have performance requirements, deadlines, and they start babbling on about how they were able to “close the door to the office and study” during the work day without fear of repercussions. Also look for self-satisfied grins and lots of patting themselves on the back for how “hard” they have it.
People Who Have Real Jobs – turns out that this is a surprising minority among evening students. These people have jobs, with deadlines and performance requirements. You can easily spot them based on their scowls, weight gain, and look of rank frustration.
On a serious note, how is this fair? I know the law schools do it for the cash, but why does the ABA allow this to continue? If they can prevent full-time students from having employment during their first year, can’t they mandate that evening students have a job?
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In short, its not fair. But from a practical note, I’d just like to say that while I have only been practicing for a couple of years now, the same thing goes on in private practice. A lot of times one party of the litigation has a tremendous advantage simply by having a lot more time and personnel to dedicate to the case. So while it is not fair, it does give you a taste of what it can be like to litigate in real life…maybe you can take comfort in that?
On a side note, and to give Big Show a chuckle, I find a bit of irony in the fact that Dr. Bombay is complaining about federal employees doing jack shit….but I won’t delve further, as I don’t want to highjack the purpose of this post, which is to highlight yet another problem with the CUA administration.
I’d be happy to share a story or two from my time there to pile on…just let me know
I would just like to say that, as a full time law student, the full time/part timers piss me off as well. At most schools (and definitely at my school), at the end of the day, the part timers get thrown into the same rankings as the full timers.
So some jerk that has the same amount of study time as I do takes 1/4 or more less credits and I’m competing directly against them. How is this fair? If the person could not get the numbers to get into the full time program, they can use this to outcompete their full time counterparts with no repercussions?
It really screws the legitimate part timers, but full timers are hurt by this douchebaggery as well.
For the record, I do not believe the ABA prevents first-year law students from working. I believe it is a restriction to 20 hours per week, and that this is for all three years, not just 1L’s.
I worked 20 hours a week (or so) my whole first year and from the looks of it, will be doing it again my second.
Mojo,
I don’t mean all federal employees. Some (like are beloved Sally Proust) are doing yeoman’s work at places like Homeland Security and the SEC. Some, however, spend their days organizing football pools. Varies by person and by agency. I’ll also note that some of the more absurd instances I’ve seen have been people claiming to work in non-governmental capacities.
Christopher,
I was mistaken, and there is not a hard and fast rule prohibiting working for first year, full time students. The ABA “strongly discourages” work through a number of articles on the site, but it is not expressly prohibited.
I am just saying that in general, it will never be fair…especially not at catholic. I spent the better part of my third year locked away in the law review office pumping out papers to professors for a measley 1 credit a semester, leaving me all of a week to make up all the work and prepare for exams. Meanwhile, those that took trial advocacy hung out with Barracato for most of the semester, took 9 credits of A, and had three times as much time to study for a third of the number of exams as me. Yes my ranked dropped. And no, CUA could not care less.
Mojo – I’d love to hear the stories. We can exchange them. We’ve got some serious pains in the asses.
This was an issue of contention in my evening section at the University of Houston for a while, though it didn’t seem to be a significant advantage in the long run – nearly all of the top performers also had demanding careers.
It seems that these people (who are slacking) are going to have their comeuppance when they actually start working and can’t deal with the workload you’ve gotten used to in school.
You’re right. It isn’t fair. Sadly, many things in law school aren’t fair. If they did mandate evening students had to have jobs, what standards would they judge that by? People would just get some token, “sort of” job and skate by the same way they do now. The only solution I can offer is if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Quit your job. I don’t know if this is feasible in your current life situation, but you can get loans for living expenses. It may seem expensive, but if you’re serious about becoming a lawyer you should do what it takes to maximize your career possibilities. Perhaps you should transfer to the day program to finish quicker, too. Or maybe if you can’t afford to quit, you could quit and get an easier job or transfer to an easier job at your current employer.