How difficult is the first year in a top law school?

Question

These questions are for anyone who has attended top Tier 1 or 2 law school. How difficult was the school, subjects being taught, exams? Did professors clearly explain concepts? Do they really put you on the spot to answer questions? I just wanted a description of the reality of going to a top law school and what I should expect.

Answer 1

You'll almost certainly spend the first week of your law student existence immersed in a fairly comprehensive orientation process. Schools will invariably announce that attending orientation is mandatory even though - just between us - it isn't. Still, there are several reasons why it's a good idea to show up.

Law school orientation is basically a day camp designed to facilitate your transition into the academic and social life of a law student. It provides some valuable illumination concerning the challenges that lie ahead. Just as importantly, orientation provides opportunities to schmooze and mingle with the classmates, professors, and staff members you'll spend the next three years with.

You will sit through speeches, panel discussions, and more speeches. Your orientation will probably include a session on debt management. You'll almost certainly receive instruction on how to read and brief cases and survive law school generally. Some law schools provide entire mini-courses complete with authentic reading assignments, class lectures, and mocked-up law school exams.

There will be optional programs on topics like "Law School and Relationships" (i.e., saving your marriage while you are a law student). In the evenings during orientation, you'll be encouraged to attend social activities like "Jazz in the Park" and "Dinner with the Faculty." Student bar associations often organize less formal alternative events that you can attend as well such as the always popular "Booze Cruise" and "Pub Crawl."

As a first-year law student at virtually every law school throughout the United States, you don't get to choose your classes. Instead, you'll be assigned to something called a section, which is a good-sized group of students who have all the same classes with all the same professors at all the same times. Those classes will include Torts, Civil Procedure, Contracts, Property, Constitutional Law, and probably Criminal Law.

In addition, you'll have another more hands-on class called Legal Writing (or Legal Methods, or Legal Research and Writing, or whatever it may be called at your law school) with about a dozen other students. Legal Writing is usually only a two-credit course each semester and may even be pass/fail. Nevertheless, it requires a substantial, time-consuming amount of fairly tedious research and writing (and, perhaps, a few fleeting moments of oral argument). Even though it will be worth the fewest credits, you may spend more time on Legal Writing than any other single class.

Law school professors want you to be prepared for class and they set up elaborate schemes and scare tactics to ensure that you've done your reading. The most common and long established of these involves "getting called on," a.k.a. the Socratic Method. Throughout your law school career, you will from time to time face this awkward rite of passage. The classic method - and the clear favorite among especially sardonic, old-school law professors - involves randomly calling on students throughout the semester. New age, touchy-feely professors ask for volunteers or proceed through the seating chart in a democratic and more predictable fashion.

Whatever the method of selection, it will eventually be your turn to be a victim. Your task will be to summarize the issues presented and the essential facts of a case the professor has assigned for reading. You'll probably be asked about the holding of the case as well. It doesn't really matter what you say. Regardless of the accuracy and thoroughness of your response, you'll be grilled on the details you didn't notice and the weaknesses of the court's decision. If you are doing well, the professor will often keep you on the hot seat by manipulating the facts of the actual case at hand into hypothetical cases - "hypos" - and ask you to "rule" on the new facts and to explain your reasoning.

Law reviews are student-produced, student-edited periodicals. They come in two flavors. There are the top-shelf legal journals - like Yale Law Journal and Harvard Law Review - that legal types mean when they refer to "law review." Membership on these law reviews is very difficult to obtain and highly coveted. Students become members of these premium journals through a writing competition, because of their first-year grades, or some combination of the two. In addition to the law review, most law schools sponsor other journals devoted to a specific area of the law, such as international and comparative law, intellectual property, or environmental law. Competition for a spot on one of these journals is usually not as fierce as it is for a place on law review and the experience is comparable.

Top-shelf law reviews are prestigious, stuffy academic legal journals that contain overly footnoted articles by law professors, judges, lawyers and law students. Hardly anyone ever reads them. As a member of your school's law review or one of its other law journals, your job will be to edit the text and check the accuracy of each and every footnote (and, later, to decide exactly which articles no one will read). Despite all the tedium and triviality, becoming a member of law review is like a ticket to a high-paying job out of law school and a great career. You should try with all your might to be one the privileged few students who are selected for a spot on your law school's law review.

Writing competition usually begins at the very end of your all-important first year (when you must make mostly As and few Bs), or at some point during the summer between first and second year. You'll get a packet of information involving an actual court case - probably a case pending before the United States Supreme Court. You might also get an editing test.

The mammoth task before you will be to take only the information in that packet and create your own Case Comment, which is a student-written law review article. Expect to spend about 10 days stuck in a study carrel. You'll submit your Case Comment completely anonymously to ensure that your writing is evaluated on legal writing and form only (and not something else like how totally cool you are). The current members of the law review and perhaps a professor or two then grade all the Case Comments.

More often than not, if your grades are among the very highest in your class, you'll make law review automatically. If your grades are somewhere in between mediocre and stellar, you must excel in the dastardly annual ritual that is the writing competition. If your grades aren't so great, you still have a shot at law review at schools that have completely democratic writing competitions. Assuming you write a "publishable-quality" comment all by yourself, you could have the worst grades in your class and still make law review. At many schools, though, if your grades are mediocre or worse, there's a good chance you won't be eligible for law review membership at all.

Moot court is an extracurricular activity designed to simulate courtroom practice. Think of it as the legal writing club. Second only to law review (or perhaps another very distinguished journal sponsored by your law school), becoming a member of a moot court team is about the best thing you can do for your resume.

The first thing you'll probably have to do in order to make moot court is audition. The tryout consists of a very short oral argument (probably in front of faculty members and a few current moot court members) and a written brief - probably the final paper from your first-year legal writing class - on a bogus case.

If you are selected for one of the handful of moot court teams sponsored by your law school, you and your teammates will write two appellate briefs in response to a legal problem that doesn't really exist - one for the fictional plaintiff's side and another for the fictional defendant.

Moot court teams attend moot court competitions held across the United States by various groups (e.g., bar associations). You'll use your legal research and argumentative writing skills to write briefs designed to convince a bogus court of the merits of your arguments. After submitting your briefs, you'll spend a great deal of time practicing and honing your oral argument for the actual competition. You have to be prepared to argue both sides of their case. Ideally, you and your teammates will have responded with a quick, concise answer to every conceivable question that could possibly be asked by a bogus judge during the competition.

It is worth noting, that at some law schools, there is a mandatory moot court competition for all students. This is usually separate from the inter-school moot court competitions that require auditions.

Provided you survive the rigors of the first year of law school, you'll need to do something with yourself for the summer. There are lots of options (and combinations of options).

Many law schools offer summer classes. If you can, it's a pretty good idea to take one or two of them (particularly difficult ones like, say, Evidence) in the summer when you don't have four or five other classes to worry about.

If you thought studying abroad was something that only carefree undergraduates get to do, think again! The summer between the first and second years of law school provides a tremendous opportunity to study law in dozens of other exotic places all over the planet including South Africa, Egypt, China, Rome. And get this: financial aid is available. Check out the related article (Study Law. See the World.) above to find out more about some of our favorite study abroad programs for law students.

If you go to an elite law school (on par with, say, Northwestern or Cornell), and your grades are good, you might have the opportunity to work at a gigantic, swanky, oak-walled law firm. Keep in mind, however, that even for these students, opportunities like this are limited for first-year students. The benefits are clear: You'll make several thousand dollars over the course of the summer. Lawyers at firm will take you to lunch at chic restaurants, lavish you with perks, and generally treat you like royalty. However, if you don't attend a top-20 law school, this experience won't be in the cards for you until second year (and only then if your first-year grades are stellar).

Another option is to get a job clerking at a smaller law firm. The hours are flexible and pay is pretty good. Some of the work will be tedious but you'll get a lot of solid, hands-on experience with the actual practice of law.

You've got the rest of your life to roll in dough. Provided you have the financial resources, consider using this summer to do something noble. Work for the ACLU or the Institute for Justice or for some other virtuous cause that strikes your fancy. Volunteer to work for an organization that helps enforce the legal rights of the indigent. You get the idea. Help people! Alternatively, consider an internship with the State's Attorney or some other branch of the state, federal, or local government. The pay, if any, will be negligible but working for the government as a law student is great experience. It's also a great resume builder. And, if you would like to represent the city, state, or federal government when you actually practice law, there is probably no better way to get your foot in the door.

Answer 2

That was an excellent answer by brite tiger. I went to a first tier school as well. I'd just like to add a couple of things.

While the Socratic is still alive and kicking, even the top schools are adding more practical classes. But as a first year, it's pretty much all the same.

No one knows what the hell they're doing. You'll find plenty who stress over the most minute detail and sound like they've read far more than you have and understand much better. That's usually false.

Your grade rides on one test at the end of the semester. That's it. It's pretty much a crapshoot as to what you'll get. Of course, if you don't do any work, you will do poorly. However, there are many cases where you'll put most of your time in one class and just do the minimum in another, and find out you did bad in the class that took all the work and got an A in the class that didn't.

You'll also learn about IRAC. Issue, Rule, Analysis, and Conclusion. You're supposed to IRAC each case you're assigned to read. You'll likely do this religiously your first year, and then figure out how to minimize the work of it your second and third year. On tests though, you want to go through the IRAC process when discussing a case.

See if your school has clinics. It's where law students get to work on actual cases during the school year. It's a great experience. Something else to try instead of moot court and law review. For summer jobs, feel free to milk any connections you can. Your first summer's job can be the hardest to get since you have the least amount of experience.

Also, to earn extra money, you can look into being a TA for some undergrad classes. One of my law professors did some undergrad teaching as well so it made it real easy to find out if there were opportunities just by asking him, or being a TA for him.

Finally, I'd read the book "One L" by Scott Turow. It's not quite that bad anymore, but it gives you a very good idea of what to expect. I honestly think stuff was sensationalized a bit for that book because it's like a book version of ER (the TV show). Pretty much true, just a bit too outrageous (One L is much, much more representative of real life than ER is tho).

Answer 3

There is typically a difference between how law school and grad school admissions are run. Law School admissions consider primarily two factors: GPA and LSAT. LSAT is extremely important, probably the most important factor. The name of your undergrad school, your references, and your research experience do not matter much. The classes you took and your major also don't matter much. Simply put, the name of the game is getting a solid GPA, then studying hard for the LSAT and acing it. That's it. Graduate school is slightly different, as your GRE scores are important as far as hitting certain "thresholds," but they will not get you in alone. Grades matter a lot, but they are looking for grades in specific classes and whether you took the most challenging courses in the field you want to study. Your recommendations also matter a lot, as does undergrad research experience. Going to a top research university might give you better access to research experiences and top recommenders who are respected in the field. A student going to a lesser-known school might have to be far more proactive.

Answer 4

This is a great question, as I'll be attending a top law school next year myself. From the forums I've read, it really is that difficult, but with supplements and old fashioned hard work, you can pull yourself along. If you don't receive any stellar information from Yahoo! questions, try looking on lawschoolforums.com, or searching for law school forums. People are very eager to help. Also, I've been reading and others have suggested reading Planet Law School II, and One L, both are pre-law school books. Good luck to both of us!