T-minus 7 days until our first exam. Torts. I have the requisite intent of making it my b&%ch. The question is whether that intent will be transferred to a C or lower. Ugh.
Actually, during breaks from outlining and when I’m not working, I’ve been thinking more about what I want to do with the law. Not so much: “work at a law firm” or “get up on the Hill” or “make my current job even cooler”. But rather: what area of the law am I really interested in?
I’ll tell you one thing, it’d be a lot easier to answer this question if I would just quit my job like some who shall remain nameless, but who, nonetheless should be waterboarded and then beaten with my torts casebook. But seeing as I have 50(ish) fewer hours per week than my unemployed colleagues to ponder the future (and, oh yeah, study), I’ve returned to a question that helps me get past gut feelings and hone in on the choices at hand: what am I good at?
Continue reading ‘Choosing What You’re Good At’
They’ve been out for about a week already, but the US News & World Report’s 2008 Law School Rankings are out on newsstands today. Our school’s response is muted and focuses (correctly in this PR Guy’s view) on the school’s year-to-year improvement. (Am I reading it right that we’re not in the Top 10 for clinical programs???)
If you’re interested in methodology of rankings, we’re working on our own Value Ranking. We’re still working on the formula and tabulating results, so if you have thoughts, fire away.
Despite the fact that we’re just 1Ls, a lot of the folks in our program are concerned with job prospects after school. A friend of mine recently interviewed for a non-legal position at one of the top law firms in town here, and while I’m not surprised at what he found during the interview, it does make me question some of the facts of life in our profession.
Early on in the interview, the associate who was interviewing my friend made the comment, “You know, this firm would never recruit out of your school. What do you think about that? How do you distinguish yourself from your education?”
Now, one of the unspoken things at our law school is the fact that we’re not top-tier. Everyone knows it, but no one talks about it. So my buddy was taken aback by the fact that the associate came right out and said it, but he kept his composure. He replied that while he wasn’t happy hearing that, his experience outside of law school made him qualified for the current position etc. Anyone who knows my friend would be impressed with his credentials.
Continue reading ‘Your School Sucks - Why Should We Hire You?’
I just caught up with a good friend who graduated recently from my law school. She’s currently looking for a new career - not because she doesn’t love the law (she does, actually), but because her personality doesn’t take well to much of the work involved in being a lawyer (i.e. hours spent in an office reviewing contracts).
It makes more sense to hear my friend tell the whole story, but she said something interesting that she and several of her friends have realized: when you become a lawyer, no matter what you end up doing (teaching, business, doing PR, day trading, etc), you have instant credibility because you’re a lawyer who is doing these things. The idea is that having a J.D. and being admitted to the bar is, in and of itself, worthy of respect - it is, in a sense, a universal credential.
I’m not sure I’d endure law school because of that and I wonder if the same could be said of any graduate degree (because it sets you apart from the legions of other undergrad degree holders). But it’s an interesting way of looking at it.
Do you think that’s true? Perhaps it’s stating the obvious? Or maybe they’re off their rockers?
I wanted to offer a corollary to The Sherpa’s post about the “worth” of a law school education. To frame the debate, let my first offer a little background.
I went to graduate school at the University of Chicago immediately after I got out of college. Since I went to an undergraduate institution that did not have a stellar reputation in the Social Sciences and my academic record wasn’t off the charts, I paid my own freight for the degree. The program – a one year masters – was marketed as being a way to burnish your CV, and get into a doctoral program. Assuming you decided academia wasn’t for you, the claim was that you would be able to parlay the degree into a far more substantive job that would offset the cost. Incidentally, the total cost of this enterprise, counting tuition, fees, books, moving expenses, and credit card debt was probably on the order of $60,000.
Continue reading ‘Do the Math.’
WSJ’s Law Blog (highly recommended reading) has this post from a former BU Law student, Kirsten Wolf, who graduated $100K in the hole, assuming she would land an “average” job that would net her $85K/year upon graduation. Despite passing the Massachusetts bar, Kirsten wasn’t able to find the mythical “average” job and decided to simply do something she loved. The only trouble is, she’s still $85K in debt and not making Big Firm Associate bank.
Continue reading ‘Is Law School Worth It?’
So, our grades are trickling in… finally. Still waiting on two, though.
I’m still a bit miffed that I had to pay for my second semester of law school before knowing how I did in the first semester, but I guess I’ll just have to get over it.
Needless to say, I’ve had several discussions with people about how significant first-semester law school grades really are. Frankly, I’ve never put much stock in grades so long as mine were As or Bs. I did what I thought was the minimum I could do to get by and tried not to exert myself too much. Consequently, I mostly coasted through (i.e. squandered) undergrad and was fortunate enough to get by with decent grades. I don’t share that to toot my own horn. Quite the contrary - it was a terrible way to do it and I deeply regret the time and money I wasted doing it that way.
So, this whole “grades are everything” mentality is quite new to me - a) because I’ve never studied as hard as I have for law school classes and b) I’ve never before felt as though I was competing against my classmates. Grades were just what they were. Law school is different, so I’m told. Everything’s graded on a curve, so everything is “competing against your classmates.” I understand the concept; I don’t really like it.
When I try to detach from the whole thing, therefore, it’s difficult to get a good perspective. So, I’ve turned to some trusted sources (and some have turned to me) and here’s what I’ve learned and heard… Continue reading ‘Making Sense of First-Year Law School Grades’
