I didn’t want to hijack this thread so I figured I should just start my own.
I am considering going to law school after I graduate and I thought who better to ask than lawyer dopers?
I realize it’s a lot of hard work to get in and to graduate but I think I am capable of it. So what’s happens on an average law student’s day?
It’s a great big pain in the ass. 
I go to a four year, night program. This allows me to work and pay my rent, as well as go to school. All of the professors are practicing attorneys which is really nice. On the other hand, it can kind of suck because a lot of them think standing in the front of the room telling war stories all night counts as teaching.
I’m in my fourth year and will graduate in May, taking the bar in July. It is a lot, lot of work. I get up, go to work all day, then go to class for 3 hours in the evening. My weekends are spent studying. Around exam time, I take time off of work (I’m a law clerk so they’re very flexible) and study 8+ hours a day for about 3 weeks. I’ve done well in school thus far and am at the top of, or very near to (we don’t have standings posted) the top of my class.
My school was quite easy to get into, actually. If your check clears, you’re in. However, it’s very difficult to stay in. There were 3 first year sections when I was a first year, approximately 120 students. Now I’m a fourth year and there’s less than 30 of us. Down from 120. That is how hard it is to make it all the way through. I am a firm believer that you have to really, really want a law degree to go to law school. It’s not something you do on a whim.
I remember when I first started the dean would reiterate time and time again, “we’re going to teach you how to think as a lawyer.” I used to roll my eyes at it, but this far along I realized he’s right. It’s a whole different way of thinking. No one can memorize all of the law and retain it. When you’re practicing, you look up the law, you don’t just know it (unless it’s your area of specialty). What you get from law school is how to think critically about a problem, from a legal standpoint, i.e. “to think like a lawyer.”
Some people say they enjoyed it and found it interesting, stimulating, etc.
I found it extremely boring.
I went to U of I, which was probably ranked somewhere in the 20s. One thing to get used to is that in nearly every class your grade is based 100% on a final test. In my 2d and 3d years I took as many seminar courses as I could, where you generally wrote a paper instead of a test.
In my previous schooling I had been a master of tests - both essay and multiple choice, including standardized tests. But I couldn’t get the hang of law tests. It was very frustrating to go into finals week and get your worst grade in the class you thought you knew best and vice versa. So I figured “screw it” and just went for mediocrity. While I couldn’t figure out how to get an A, I could get Cs without ever attending class or cracking a book - other than a study aide the week before finals. In the end I had roughly a B GPA - split perfectly between the classes that had finals vs those with papers.
IMO&E law school classes have exceedingly little significance on the actual practice of law. What would be more effective is clinical studies - internships and the like. But a law school can actually lose accreditation if it offers too much in the way of clinical studies. Law schools like to present themselves as “national” in scope, so they avoid teaching you how to practice in any specific jurisdiction.
And lawyering is just a job like any other. A significant element of lawschool is ego enhancement on behalf of everyone involved. We must really be fine fellows seeing as how we are engaged in this “noble profession.”
Some folks will say they met a ton of exciting, interesting, brilliant folks in law school. Uh - everyone there is smart in one way or another, or they wouldn’t be there. But there were a pretty darn high geekage percentage. (Full disclosure - among that small percentage was my future wife!)
In short, I’m not a big fan. But if you want a ticket to play in the law game, you have no alternative but to got to law school.
You’ll go to classes, usually 2 or 3 per day if you’re a full time student. You’ll have read 50-300 pages of cases/commentary per class. You may study between classes, you may hang out and chat in the designated area. You’ll read 50-300 pages per class for tommorrow’s classes. You won’t go look up that ancient case some prof cited, but you know somebody probably will. You might get drunk, high, laid, or all three. Such opportunities abound. You will secretly wonder how you got in, why you don’t understand. and if you can really cut the mustard, but you won’t admit this to anyone. You should volunteer for something, but you’ll probably watch TV or play a computer game instead. You won’t think of the massive debt you are more than likely accumlating.
I’m in my fifth year, doing my LLB part-time by distance education. It’s been a mixed experience. Some subjects have been fascinating and others have been pointless and dull. Ditto for the lecturers. All the usual rules of study apply. If you put more into it, you’ll get more out of it. Overall though, I’ve found it enjoyable and pretty stimulating.
Dinsdale and I are alumni of the same school.
You can find LSAT and GPA averages and lots of speculation about the process at the Princeton Review boards.
As far as my experience-
I found the work pretty easy (intellectually speaking) and I was a good fit for the essay exam format, which my undergrad also used to use. However, I found it a very isolating and emotionally exhausting experience. Days would go by when I would do little else except read, attend class, outline and sleep and I would realise that I hadn’t even really spoken to anyone that day (it’s way worse when you live by yourself). There is a lot of rejection and disappointment you have to deal with. I’m pretty good under stress and even I just barely crawled over the line (emotionally speaking, grades were excellent and I recovered from the breakup nicely, he was a twat). For most people, they will be able to wallpaper a room with the rejection letters they receive by the end of school.
In retrospect, I believe it was worth it. I don’t find my job super-intellectually stimulating, but I like my employer and believe I have a nice career track. I also like the perks of being an attorney-like my own office and administrative help etc…
A lot of my classmates were really into the social scene and I was relatively into it the first year but after a while I got sick of it because I figured out that a lot of people were sort of fake. I made a few good friends, I made a lot of excellent networking contacts.
Also keep in mind that my experience is coloured by the fact that I was very studious. My parents helped me pay for school, I took out loans and I ended up liquidating most of my assets for it. I felt I had a lot riding on it and wanted a good job after school. Some of my friends treated it like a party and still ended up okay. I wouldn’t change the way I approached it, though.
Best of luck with everything.
Dinsdale, lord, you met her THERE? When you said you met her at school I assumed she was a Ph.d student or something. Was this a section romance or did you cradle rob a 1L in your later years?
It seems like all my classmates ended up married to each other. Did you get some extra-awesome loan consolidation deal???
We got to know each other during summer classes between 1st and 2d years. After she dated several of my friends and realized they were all pretty much jerks, she ended up with me. Don’t know why she expected me to be any different. We got married the summer between 2d and 3d year. Having the same last name we took the bar sitting right next to each other (she will never forgive me for finishing early and reading the paper), and graduated and got admitted to the bar next to each other.
No loans for either of us. We both had a number of teaching/research assistantships giving us tuition waivers and stipends, and I was working at a liquor store, so we graduated with zero debt. By far the accomplishment I am most proud of from law school.
I had gone to U of I for undergrad, and then lived there and worked for a year before starting law school. I was pursuing a Master’s in PolSci at the same time as my JD, and found my PolSci and non-law friends more interesting that the majority of folks in law school. I’m sure there were plenty of fine folks in law school - its just that already having a social group, I didn’t go out of my way to establish ties with many fellow law students.
Realize that a goodly portion of law students - and lawyers - are definitely on the competitive end of the spectrum. which may be different from the social circles you are used to. You will want to decide the extent to which you seek out social relations outside of law school. Some folk essentially spent the majority of their time with folks in their law school class - which may be only 200 or so people. It is not like undergrad where you have a variety of classes with completely different people in your different classes, live with another group of people in a dorm or frat, etc. Unless you work at it, it can be difficult to meet people other than law students.
BTW anu - you enjoy the administrative help you have in your job? I thought you worked for the federal gubmint! 
The first thing I was surprised by in law school – and I really don’t know why – was how much harder work it was than undergrad. I don’t mean that it was inherently intellectually harder, because it’s not; in the words of Yogi Berra “It ain’t rocket surgery.” But it was much harder for two reasons: (1) the sheer volume of work to get through and (2) the level of competition from fellow students. It became pretty clear to me early that law school was a race and if you want to finish well you’d better hit the ground running and keep running. If you want to do very well, you have to look at also taking on extra-curricular activities like moot court or law review – and there is steep comptetition for limited spots among those who want to do those sorts of things. And even if you’re selected, that’s more work in addition to all the work you’ll already be doing. Law school is busy; there is always cases you should be reading or outlining, or projects you should be working on, or papers you should be writing. You can’t even really enjoy breaks, like Christmas or even a night at the movies, because even if you go and have a good time, there will always be in the back of your mind that you should be working and because you’re not working, you’re falling behind.
And law school can bring out the worst in people. It seems like of any given class, about half will be competitive schmucks who would step over their own dead grandparents to improve their class standing. They are the sort of people who cannot genuinely wish you well on a test or be happy if you do well on a project, because that might mean you are getting ahead of them. The best thing I did in law school was decide I didn’t want to be one of “those people” who can never draw a breath that’s not geared to improving their performance or standing and who become so invested in their own law school “careers” – forgetting entirely that law school is not actually a career – that they can’t even feign noncompetative interest in anyone else.
The best characteristic I had going for me was that I loved, and love, the law. I have a fundamental idealistic belief in the inherent rightness and utility of the Rule of Law, and I am fascinated by constitutional law. I’m very interested in how American law arises, is interpreted, and is applied. I’m proud to be a lawyer, and I think I make a positive difference in the world because I am one. Those sort of puke-worthy sentiments went a long way towards keeping me afloat in law school. Honestly, if I didn’t have that inherent affinity for the law, I doubt I would have or could have stuck it out.
I would not recommend that anyone go to law school because they can’t think of anything better to do. It is hard work, expensive, and not infrequently boring. It’s a huge investment to make – too big of one, IMO, to make on the off chance it might be something you may like to do.
Law school is a fantastic education that you will work harder to receive than you probably have in your prior schooling experience. I didn’t know what studying was until I got there- “studying” in high school and college for me meant attending class and worrying whether I knew the material. Not until law school did I realize I had a learning disability- ADD- and after it was diagnosed and I began taking meds, I finally understood, at 29, what it meant to study. And I did it a lot.
I approached the typical day like a long work day- from 8am until 7pm, I was “on”. When I wasn’t in class, I was in the library preparing course outlines, reviewing notes, writing drafts of papers, reading cases for the next class, etc. At 7pm, I was done. I had dinner, watched TV or caught a movie, maybe a little socializing/quality time with my girlfriend, bed at 11. Weekends usually meant 9-5 in the library on Saturday and socializing at night; Sundays basically the same but a shorter day, maybe 5-6 hours. It was important to me that I maintain some semblance of a life.
I did better in law school than I ever did in my life, grade-wise. I think that’s because I wanted it, whereas college was just something I did because my parents sent me there. And contrary to Jodi’s experience, I sort of did it because I needed a challenge in my life, not because I had any built-in love for the law. I was successful at my job at the time, but was stagnating. I knew that if I kept it up I’d be a mindless drone for the next 40 years, doing the same shit job. I wanted something new, anything that would stretch me, and I figured law school would be a pretty difficult mountain to climb. I was right and I loved every minute of the law school experience. Often wish I could go back.
See, your mistake is assuming it’s our administrative assistants who are helping us :). It’s not…outside counsel make their admins help us, otherwise these deals would never get closed and unlike other areas of law they get a flat fee rate from the banks, so their interest isn’t in billing but lobbying clients and closing as many deals as possible within as short a timeframe as possible (there are also lots of fees if they aren’t closed within a timeframe).
Good instinct, though. My admin & paralegal are nice and that’s all I ask. What they do with their time is anyone’s guess.