Law School - Is the First Semester Supposed to Suck This Much?

I love Torts, I like Property, I don’t understand a word of Civil Procedure. The legal writing and research class is killing me with all the huge assignments and the bitchy power-tripping TA. The cultural diversity class is sucking up time that should be spent on the writing class or on studying for the three real classes, and also seems to time assignments to interfere with the writing/researching assignments.

Why do they distract us from the real classes with these two extra classes? Writing/research I can understand, though not the enormous amounts of time we’re expected to spend on it. The diversity class seems to exist just as some bizarre torture written by someone who’s read a dictionary of buzzwords and is determined to inflict their paradigms and “safe spaces” on others.

Does it get any better?

Yes, it is supposed to suck that much, and yes, it does get better.

I know a lot of what you’re seeing now doesn’t make much sense, but shortly, you’ll be glad you went through it. Actually, that doesn’t so much apply to the bitchy power-tripping TA, I had one of those too. Take heart in that fact that, if she’s anything like mine, she’ll wind up having sex with one of the male students and getting fired (the year I had my TA was the first and last year she taught).

Do all your homework, but do at least one thing every day that has nothing whatsoever to do with the law. That’ll help you keep your sanity.

Fellation is pleasurable. Are you saying that the first year of law school is pleasurable?

Hee hee! Yes, it is supposed to suck that much. It’s like being taught to drive by putting an inexperienced driver behind the wheel and plopping them down in rush hour traffic.

Believe it or not, it’s good that you’re spending an enormous amount of time on research and writing. They’re two of the most important skills for a lawyer to have, and often the two least developed. The diversity class I can’t really explain; our school was already very ethnically diverse and a class on seems like it would have been superflous in the first year. But stick with it, it does get better.

Can’t say - back in the dark ages, we didn’t have a “cultural diversity” class. Naturally, that meant oodles of free time. As I recall, it was very relaxing.

Heh. Heh.

  • Rick

Old law school saying:

First year - scared to death
Second year - worked to death
Third year - bored to death

I imagine it’s a weed-out process. Many programs have a class that’s largely designed to get rid of the people who aren’t serious about being there. In my Math program it was a Linear Algebra class that was really tough and extremely rigorous (most of us had never dealt with proofs before, much less rigorous ones.) Almost half the students quit at that point.

As someone who just graduated from a law school (one near Boston, no less), I can safely say that it’s definitely supposed to suck that much. I remember the dazed looks on the faces of my fellow classmates as the first year ended. I think we felt like we’d just run our first marathon. We couldn’t believe how hard it was, and we couldn’t believe we’d survived it.

The experience became much less stressful after that. I practically phoned in my third year.

Out of curiosity, which school do you go to? If it’s my alma mater (Harvard), I’d be happy to dish dirt with you.

I go to Northeastern, and I’m in a slightly better mood today (they let us fill out anonymous evaluations in the diversity class, and the rest of the class seems to share my opinions), though I have a long summary judgment memo due at dawn tomorrow, so I’ll probably be back at 3 a.m. to complain some more.

You know, the third years do seem kind of bored. All they talk about is how they want to be back out on co-op or that they just want to graduate already. It’ll be nice to get to that point.

It would be so cool if my TA got in trouble for something like dating a student. She’s been so snotty and unhelpful.

I don’t think the school is trying to scare people away, though three 1L’s have quit already. The professors keep saying they’re trying to make us think like lawyers, but we all looked like zombies today from the sleep deprivation, and tomorrow will be worse. Even going to my beloved Torts on no sleep will be hard.

Well, back to my memo.

I hated the first year. I was not interested in the subjects and it felt like being in elementary school again, with the same people in all your classes. My advice is not to buy into the freaking out. You’ll probably don’t need to study as much as you think.

chula’s right. Don’t freak out and don’t study too hard. It’s not as impossible as the people around you might seem to think.

I lived in the law school dorms. During our take-home Civ Pro exam, a girl who lived on our floor was so freaked out that she threw up every hour or so (out of an eight hour exam). I studied for one day, chilled out, and did better than she did.

What is important is knowing how you best prepare for exams and having confidence that this will be sufficient. 'Cause it will.

I feel for you. I wouldn’t do it again for the world.

What Labdab said about scare to death, work to death and bore to death.

For me the worst thing about first year was that I had no idea what was going on. In order to keep up I had to do twice the amount of work that would have been necessary if just understood what the whole thing was about. After four years of minimal effort as an undergraduate, law school was a tremendous shock. The stuff that was expected as a matter of routine was just incomprehensible. The idea of being required to be ready to engage in an intellectual fencing match with a real live professor every day was just foreign to my experience. I was in a constant state of exhaustion verging on panic for nine months.

As I look back on it now, it was a delight of intellectual rigor and new experience. Others who have survived the experience seem to feel the same way. Wait 30 years or so and you can exchange giggles with your state’s leading tough guy trial lawyer about the day he got so bamboozled in a first year class that he lost his cookies during the professors interrogation.

Yea, it’s just horrible. It’s supposed to be. Wait a while and you will look back on it as the best time of your life–if you are any good.

Enjoy it while you have the opportunity.

Cultural diversity? WTF???

Civ Pro is the law school class most relevant to my current job. Good thing they teach in as opaquely as possible.

And if you are worried about your TA dating students, look around and see how many profs are married to ex-students.

Just remember, all you need is the degree and passing the bar to gain your ticket into the game. Both of which are little more than elements of an archaic fraternal hazing ritual. Well, some of the vocab is useful.

While it may be difficult (inconceivable?) to get an A, realize that it is next to impossible to get less than a C. Hook and go!

Keep in mind that the skills you’re learning right now - how to read a case, how to write, how to analyze - are what’s worth learning in law school. I found Civ Pro invaluable, even though I have never used even one of the concepts I learned in it. Why? It’s so abstract that it’s almost a course in pure reasoning. Deal with that monster and you can pretty much deal with anything else.

It’s true that the first year used to function as a weeding-out. But this was back when it was pretty easy to get into most law schools. For example, until the 1950s the “school near Boston” (does that turn the “H-Bomb” into a “neutron bomb”?) concerned itself at least as much with social connections as intellectual promise. And I know that at NYU in that period only about one third of an entering class would actually graduate. Many would flunk out first year. With the advent of the LSAT and the enormous increase in law school applications, the weeding out process is mostly over by the time people start - but the curriculum is still enormously front-loaded. You’ll learn every legal skill that lends itself to classroom learning by the middle of your second year*. After that, all you’re learning is the substance of the law, for which there is little reason to be paying $40,000 a year: you can do that just as effectively on the job. But the third year’s required, and there’s nothing you can do about that. (Somewhere around here I posted my rant about the law-school-mega-firm-industrial-complex, so I’ll spare you now.)

*[gratuitous advice not really directed at the OP]I’d say that if you’re still really struggling at the end of your first year, it’s best to cut your losses. That’s really hard to do when you’ve made an emotional and financial investment, but the legal profession just ain’t worth beating yourself up over. Law requires a peculiar type of brain: not having it is certainly no flaw![/gratuitous advice]

Short Answer: YES
Hang in there…both Civ Pro and Evidence were unfathomable to me until I had workshop classes where you actually USED the rules.

Also, keep in mind that law school is NOTHING like being a lawyer…

But, don’t overstudy, enjoy yourself, drink, party, live, because you are gonna wanna commit suicide when you finally get out :slight_smile:

Cheers,

BBJ

When do they teach you about how to compute “billable hours”. How does a five-minute phone call translate itself into a $200.00 bill? And finally, how does one accomplish the trick of working MORE than 24 hours per day?

Easy. Get an office right on the edge of your time zone. Right as it gets Midnight, drag your desk to the other side of the room. Ta-da! It’s 11:00 again. Bill accordingly for your 25-hour day.

Easy. Bill in quarter hour increments, 1 hr min for court calls. And make sure you bill every time you touch anything related to a file.

Heck, if you apply yourself, you can bill half a day going through your mail while sitting on the john!

I’m billing right now!

(Actually, that’s not true. That would be fraud.)

Ariadne, it gets very much easier after this semester, because you’ll actually know how things work.

I remember the weekend before law school started – we’d had orientation that Thursday and got the first assignments. I woke up early on Saturday to start work on them. I read until 11:00 PM. Then I woke up early on Sunday, read until 9:30, and went to sleep scared to death about how I’d survive the next several years.

I graduated with honors and now “earn” a ridiculously high salary.

Also, it sounds like you’re not drinking nearly enough. There are very few law school problems that cannot be solved with more booze.

–Cliffy, Esq.

P.S. If you still think it’s too hard, it could be worse – you could be a night student like I was and take that many classes while still holding down a full-time job!