Law School at Rutgers-Camden this fall. Life advice openly solicited.

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I just accepted admission to law school at Rutgers-Camden for Fall 2014 in large part to their financial generosity. I’m moving in <5 weeks and I’ve never been to Camden (or law school) before. I haven’t even really been to Philly outside of a 2 hr detour during a road trip to grab a Gino’s cheesesteak (underwhelming).

I guess I’m just trolling the Dope to see what advice you good folks have to offer regarding any aspect of this sizable life change of mine. I’m staying in graduate housing, looking to keep a car so I can be an Uber-x driver* for a part-time job, going to law school full time, and anticipate what little social life I can afford will be Philadelphia-centric.

I’m making a list of things I need to anticipate and prep and so far it’s unbelievably daunting.

*Tuition and room/board are largely taken care of and accounted for thanks to scholarships, wink-wink-nudge-nudge in-state tuition, and the generosity of my parents. I’m just looking to make spending money as far as jobs go. My first instinct was to bartend but I think that would be too large a time commitment and the hours probably would kill my GPA. I also considered tutoring - something I’ve had extensive experience with but I don’t know if the area I’m living in would be able to afford me the $50+/hr rates that I’ve become accustomed to in the greater DC area.

2

No, the area you’ll be living in will not be able to pay you $50/hr. The good news is that Camden is not DC, as far as cost-of-living goes. So forget about what you’re accustomed to and get your hustle on.

3

I got a hundred bucks an hour to tutor the LSAT in Philly when I did it.

Don’t listen to a word anybody else says as first years. Study your shit, have some fun, don’t buy into the bluster about who’s studied how much and all that garbage. Identify the real people, stick with them, and pretend the rest don’t exist. Philly is awesome. Go to Capogiro. Go to Hop Sing Laundromat and Franklin Mortgage & Investment.

4

I went to law school in Philly. I lived on 2nd street and could see Camden from my living room window, but in three years I never went there.

The Philly DA’s office is fantastic – one of the best in the country, and I believe they accept interns from Rutgers.

My 1L year, there was one afternoon a week when I had no classes. I’d go down to the CJC and just watch court proceedings. Very educational, and free, which was important for a broke-ass student.

5

Camden, NJ can be a bit rough and much (but not all) of it is somewhat run down. A lot of this is due to the decline of manufacturing, which hit the area hard in the middle to late 20th century. Camden was a huge “factory town” that made a lot of stuff that’s now made in China.

I’ve been there, it’s not all bad. Though do be aware of the reputation.

6

Camden is one of the worst cities in the country, but I don’t know if the specific area that the school is in is problematic. My BIL attended Rutgers-Camden law school about 10 years ago, and he never had any trouble that I know of, although he never actually lived in Camden or anywhere near it.

What he told me at the time about the school is that it’s said to be a place where you get more hands-on practical legal teaching, versus the focus on legal theory that you might get at other more prestigious schools. (He himself went on to get a job at one of the top law firms in the country, although that was a matter of who he knew more than what he knew. :))

7

Don’t work for spending money. Spend all your time on law school. That’s the luxury you have by not having to take out loans. Rutgers-Camden is a middle of the pack law school, which means to be successful you need to be top of the pack. You might be able to rock straight As and law review and work part-time, but I wouldn’t bank on it. You will definitely kick yourself if you sacrifice hundreds of thousands of dollars in future income for spending money during law school.

Do attempt to get a term-time internship at the federal courthouse adjacent to campus after your first year. The time commitment is low and it is a terrific introduction to the actual practice of law, gets you very strong job connections, potentially paves the way for a federal clerkship, and is a lot of fun.

8

I seem to remember something about 1ls not being allowed to work, or being limited to a certain number of hours per week. Check with the school before looking for work.

Read “1L” and “The Paper Chase” before classes start. It’s exaggerated for entertainment value, but law school is pretty much as portrayed.

You will be expected to have located the assigned reading and come to class prepared on the very first day. None of this happy-huggy shit like “Welcome to Contracts I, you special little snowflake.” Nope. More like your prof will walk in, glare at the class like a military drill instructor, call on someone at random, and grill them mercilessly for what to that unlucky soul will seem like a century or so, before moving on to another victim.

Get a law dictionary along with your required texts. Look up any word you don’t recognize. The poor guy that got grilled on my first day of class was asked to define “assumpsit” because the first line in the case we read for that class was a suit in assumpsit.

Study aids are very useful. I found Emanuel’s best for me, but Gilbert’s and other companies produce them.

I strongly disagree disagree with Richard Parker’s definition of success, unless all you want to do is join the world of “BigLaw” and work for some soul sucking defense firm for a huge pile of money. I missed the top third of my class at a no-name school by a couple of spots, yet I passed the bar on my first attempt, and I’ve made my living practicing law for nearly 20 years. No judge has ever asked me what my class rank was.

9

Whoa whoa whoa. I didn’t define success. It is undeniable that more doors are opened with a magna cum laude and law review than otherwise, regardless of how you define success. And if you want to be, say, a civil rights lawyer or an AUSA–to name two examples of awesome law jobs outside of Biglaw–you’d best come correct. That’s all.

ETA: If the “hundreds of thousands of dollars” is what’s throwing you off, feel free to compare the salary of a GS-13 to someone who is unemployed. It ain’t the 90s anymore. Shit got real in 2007.

10

That’s true, but it simply isn’t going to happen for the majority of law students. Sure, by all means bust your ass in law school to do as well as you can, but have a “Plan B” in case that doesn’t work out.

11

Absolutely. My point is that time spent striving for that goal is worth far more than salaries from being an Uber driver. Other than a big helping of luck, it’s 50-50 between being smart and working your ass off. Might as well not leave the second one to chance.

12

Living in South Jersey can be fun. Living across the river in Philly can be fun too.

Rutgers-Camden is right on the PATCO High Speedline - a subway-ish train line that goes from South Jersey into Center City Philly. The “City Hall” stop is right next to campus and it’s not unusual to see a bunch of students during the year getting on and off.

If you want to live in Philly and take PATCO in, that would work. If you’d prefer to live in the suburbs of South Jersey, that’d be good too. Keep in mind that parking in Philadelphia is very expensive, like many big cities, so that’s something to keep in mind if you want a car. Another bonus is PATCO runs 24 hours (though overnight trains are less frequent, of course…)

Towns worth looking at in South Jersey on PATCO - Collingswood, Haddonfield, Haddon Heights. Collingswood and especially Haddonfield have great little quaint “downtown” streets with some food and shopping options. There’s apartments and whatnot for rent above the stores as well. Most of the areas around the other PATCO stops - Vorhees, Cherry Hill, Lindenwold, Ashland - are pretty decent to live in also, though they’re very much suburbia.

Center City - if you want to live in the city - has a lot going on, lots of places and is - in general - very easy to get to the PATCO line off of the subway system or from surface streets… depends on how far you’re willing to walk/bike/etc.

Driving from Philly to Camden is easy in that there are two bridges - Ben Franklin and Walt Whitman - but because there are only two, rush hour can be very unpredictable.

I’m pretty sure that Rutgers-Camden is also off of the Riverline, a light-rail system that goes up the NJ side of the Delaware River up to Trenton. There are a bunch of middle-class towns along the Riverline, many with places for rent that’ll give you a short drive from your apartment to a free parking lot for the Riverline. It’s worth a look as well, but if you’re looking to go into Philly a lot, it’ll probably be more annoying since I think the trains stop running between midnight and 6am…ish, and transferring from the Riverline to PATCO is kind of annoying (one stop, all you have to do is walk about 200 feet, but the Riverline stop is open-air).

For the record, I would personally not recommend in any way, shape or form, living within Camden. In general, you’ll want to get East of US-130, north of US-30 or south of the Walt Whitman bridge to be in more “safe” areas. Camden has a bad reputation for a well-deserved reason, just keep that in mind.

Oh! And one other bonus I just thought of … PATCO links up to the NJ Transit Atlantic City line, so going East to the beach (and casinos if you’re into losing your tuition money) is pretty easy too.

Good luck!

13

1, I never had a professor like that in three years of law school. It was almost, but not quite, happy-huggy shit by some very smart and accomplished legal scholars.

  1. I agree. Law Review is for people who never read Tom Sawyer. Resume padding of the worst kind, since you don’t learn nearly as much as if you spent the time in a law related part-time job or internship.

  2. Take clinical courses if they are offered I learned much more useful things in the Criminal Law Clinic (and actually got to court) than in most classes.

  3. relax. Overall, I found law school considerably less demanding than undergraduate.

  4. I wish someone had told me this. Especially for first year classes, don’t stress over trying to figure out “the answer,” the purpose of the cases they give you to read are to show how different judges addressed issues in different ways. I went crazy for a couple of weeks thinking the law was much more undefined that it turned out actually being. You find get “the answer” from the selected cases they ask you to review (which often cannot be reconciled), but you will get a sense of how appellate judges make decisions.

14

Interesting. All of my mine used the Socratic method, except the writing instructors. Some of them were more hardcore than others, but the guy that did the Contracts course I mentioned was very old school with the 1Ls. He lightened up a little bit in his advanced courses. His courses were hard, the workload was high even by law school standards, and his exams were brutal. His Secured Transactions final reduced the editor of law review to a sobbing mess after it was over.

15

I guess we had modified Socratic method. Students were certainly called on to answer questions, but it was all very civil and respectful. I was definately not the most prepared in the room, and I don’t recall any anxiety about being selected to answer something. Of course, it was a long time ago and I may have suppressed some of it from my memory.

16

Since you’re going to be in the area, treat yourself to breakfast at Pop Shop in Collingswood one day. Bring your appetite.

Also check out a bar in Philly called National Mechanics; it’s a fun and quirky place that as of my last visit had not fallen victim to weird pretentiousness. They’ve got a good beer selection and the food menu is pretty solid as well.

17

pancake3, I sent you an email. The title is “RE: Your Straight Dope Message Board post”.

18

  1. Yes. First semester in 2010 was no work allowed. We weren’t allowed in the career office and did not have access to the online job postings. The mantra was to prepare for law school. No work. Second semester and following, we were allowed to work 20 hours per work with more requiring a special dispensation from the Dean.

  2. Do your first day reading. I had a mix of professor styles. The older ones are more hardcore, but the younger ones don’t embarrass you as much. Even if you do your reading, the older profs will find something that you did wrong to embarrass you. Relax, it’s just a part of the routine.

  3. I think that Oakminster and Richard Parker are speaking about both sides of the same coin. GPA, Law Review, Moot Court, etc. are all valuable tools if you want to work in certain areas of the law. If you are going solo or working in a small town, then they don’t mean so much. I am of the opinion that it is better to be in the top 10% and never need it than to not achieve that honor simply because you don’t try hard enough. If you don’t make it, don’t worry about it, but strive for it. Your success as a lawyer will be in the niche that you find in what the public needs and how well you can use your personality into getting client trust and, more importantly, to get their checkbooks out.

  4. I found that going to law school was less stressful than working a full time job. If you are 22 and have never been in the workforce, I can see how it would be daunting. If you treat law school like your career, then (at least I found) that you will have plenty of time to complete your reading, prepare for class, and still have time to have a couple of beers on the weekends.

Good luck.

19

How was “no work” actually enforced? Did you have to provide a copy of your tax return, and if there were any W-2’s, you got written up for a conduct violation? Was it more or less an honor system thing but if they somehow caught you, game over? Was this just a “very strongly encouraged” thing and they let you know in uncertain terms that “I had to work late hours” was not and would never be a valid excuse for missing an exam, but if they caught you there was no specific, direct penalty imposed?

20

Invest in a good pair of prescription reading glasses. Give up drinking for three years, exercise every day.