I’m a law school dropout, only finished a year. Took a gap year after college and worked at one of the top law firms in Chicago. All the young associates tried to talk the 4 college grads doing grunt work out of it. I had a political science degree and no clue what to do with it.
Honestly, my S24 that was considering BS/MD has more maturity in his decision making than I did then at age 22. 
I always tell people asking for advice about law school to work as a legal assistant at a firm for a year or two first. It either confirms law is for them or keeps them from making a very expensive mistake. It’s also not a bad idea to make some money that can be used towards school, and develop relationships for references down the road.
You are very hard working and dedicated. I have goals in my mind but when I try to implement it my laziness comes in my way! So I always appreciate people like you!
In my case not remotely so. It’s about their way of thinking, their incredibly skillful, insightful, nuanced, persuasive writing, their astonishing recall and attention to detail, and their olympic caliber bend and snap (kidding about the last part if not clear).
So when I say ‘headed there but doesn’t realize it’ it’s an exposure issue. They really have no idea what an attorney does outside of the scene in A Few Good Men. And the fact that law comprises an incredibly broad range of roles contributes to this exposure issue all the more, not to mention all of the client-side legal type/adjacent corporate, NGO, NFP, etc. roles there are, as discussed upthread.
Yup. I have not met a single person who, having done this and then gone on to any type of grad school (including medical school), regrets having done so.
I’d probably apply this to many undergraduate schools too, and also add a distinction in the left (bottom) part of the bell curve.
I’m guessing this is many although for me it’s Law & Order and my work exposure.
The # of fields / specialties within the legal ranks is pretty wild. I work with standard corporate attorney and I think much of the heated discussion above came from many types of organizations - but not so many specialties - which there are.
My D26 loves the fact that most attorneys never have to step foot in a court room. She’d much rather do the office work stuff instead of being a litigator.
You can still be a commercial litigator and not go to court much. Personally, I preferred the same, primarily writing briefs in the office. Spouse, on the other hand, was a college debate team sort of student and was into trials.
Like any job, there will always be some aspects that an individual may find unpleasant, and it may take some time to get into a position with a more ideal balance between the more and less pleasant aspects.
To the extent this can be generalized, how much of law school is geared toward “primarily writing briefs in the office” vs the college debate person who loves being in court?
Hmm, in law school? Sort of neither. While aspects of both brief writing (moreso) and courtroom experience (less so) can be found in the law school experience, instead I think of law school as primarily focusing on legal analysis, for lack of a better term.
Generally, all top law schools will have a legal writing course requirement, though personally, I learned little in that class and learned much more on the job, both as a summer associate and a young attorney. I had couple of good mentors.
The courtroom angle will vary depending on the law student’s interests. There is almost always at least one required moot court component (an oral argument where you are arguing against a classmate in front of a 3-person judge panel usually consisting of practicing attorneys/judges), and optional moot court competitions. Many law schools may have optional mock trial activities as well. As far as actual courtroom experience, top law schools will typically have some sort of public interest/legal aid clinic that will involve supervised legal assistance for actual individual people. I feel like I’m missing something, but it’s been >25 yrs, so maybe someone else can fill in on these types of activities.
Someone has a D in this thread, I can’t remember, but for courtroom purposes, learn to speak loud and slowly.
What no one tells you about litigation: discovery can be fun or un-fun, depending on the person and the case. Reviewing boxes and boxes (or, nowadays, electronic files upon files) of documents can be both boring and rewarding when your thorough search finds some key piece. I feel like I never really got the hang of writing discovery requests and responses, which I disliked.
Adding, a bit of post-college work experience is a plus, in my view, if only for poise and demeanor, to prepare you for that moment when you arrive at a settlement negotiation with personally unpleasant opposing counsel, only to receive a call from your managing partner that they are not showing up and you are authorized to settle for $0.
Caveat, I retired when my oldest was born. I confess that once in a blue moon, I will have a bad dream involving failure to do timesheets and then not remembering what work I had done, right up there with the recurring bad dream where you miss the bus to school. Best to do them every day without fail. Do not procrastinate on timekeeping. It’s probably easier here in modern times as presumably electronic forms are used.
Super helpful thank you!
Side note about timesheets - a good friend is a partner at a recently founded firm and they’re employing some sort of automated system that “knows” based on the document you’re working on which client to bill. Same with the phone system - it can tie outgoing calls and called-ID incoming calls to clients, who are then similarly billed. He said it’s not perfect so they do manually double check, and it doesn’t account for 100% of your time of course. But I found it interesting.
I interned at a Big Law firm one summer in high school and had to track my time by 10ths of an hour i.e. every 6 minutes. That pretty much dissuaded me from a career in law!
Many people will say that my S or D should go to law school because they are good at arguing, debating, are persuasive etc.
Does your S or D have the self discipline to read, absorb and analyze hundreds of pages of dense and boring text? If not, law school may not be for them.
Not all classes are boring but, IMO, many are, especially your first year.
At Andover so, yeah. Grinding is not remotely foreign to them.
Also editing to note that I did not say they were good at “arguing, debating, are persuasive” (except the latter in their writing, which, when tasked with same, is highly effective persuasion).
It may be a good fit. You’ll have a better idea when they take the LSAT.
My experience was substantially similar. I hated the writing course in my first year because I just didn’t understand the goal of what they were trying to teach us (I didn’t get it until I actually started practicing law at a large firm). I’ve always wished there would have been two separate writing courses, the first year one and then one right before graduation, once students have enough experience to understand why they’re being taught to write this way.
I don’t remember having any particular litigation training as a requirement when I was in school, but I was in the night program which may have differed from a daytime curriculum.
I spent a significant amount of time my first year of practice reviewing documents, and I am the huge nerd that kind of loved it. You got to learn so much stuff about the cases and the parties. And that feeling when you find a critical document was always really great. Same with contracts – i liked being able to parse why things were worded in particular ways and to provide guidance to clients who didn’t understand why we needed to be so precise.
Also, totally with you on the timesheet nightmares. Hands down, worst part of practicing law.
I will add that I hated writing in high school. Went on to love brief writing. For me, the logic of proofs opened the door.
Just last night I was explaining to two of my kids that certain genres of writing, where you actually have something to say, are very different from high school fictional lit class.
I went to a law school that was ranked around 50, but had the highest bar passage rate in the state. I was accepted to better schools but had basically free tuition (and that being the case, my parents picked up my living expenses in the very low COL area). Also I finished college in 5 semesters, and completed law school in 2.5 years (because it was on the quarter system) so my parents felt that I was keeping up my end of the bargain.
I did 5 years at BigLaw and then went in house. I started in general corporate, but didn’t care for M&A so I became a securities law specialist. It’s not ever really low stress, but in house is routine, and I generally know when things are busy well in advance. I felt that my degree in history was excellent preparation because my upper level exams were all essay and had paper requirements and we wrote more than the English majors even. My day is spent drafting disclosure and reviewing press releases, and preparing Board materials, and approving all of the random stuff we put out on a daily basis. I am well compensated and we never had a nanny, and I have never once regretted leaving BigLaw, but I also was incredibly fortunate to never have a dime in student loans.
That said, I struggle with knowing that my kids will almost certainly not have the financial security that we enjoy. I do not recommend law school to any of them. The school I attended now runs $80K per year, and the BigLaw prospects are not what they used to be, and it is simply not worth the cost.
I also do not subscribe to the school of thought that you can do so many things with a law degree. For literally any endeavor other than practicing law, you could also have done that thing without a law degree.
Most legal careers are in fact reading and writing careers of some sort. Law school is a little about writing, but really more about learning to read legal cases and rules and such.
Incidentally, I came to law school much later than most of my friends, and having observed their various paths, made it a point to try to start my career in a federal government position, which I did. I think it was a lot more fun than most junior lawyer jobs, but you have to be focused on making it work, including the money side.
Funny how much law talk there is on what seems to be a general class of 2024 thread.
Lot of time to kill until March. I suspect we may cycle through quite a few deep dives into somewhat random topics just to stay sane.
Sometimes we see kids (or parents) say they want to go into “pre-law” or thinking of going to law school, post grad without really understanding what law school is about, the opportunity cost/ROI, and/or realistic career opportunities.
But we can cycle back to microwave popcorn or a blast from the past 16/17 years ago: If Dr Brown’s baby bottles really were BPA free and why Boudreuax Butt paste was by far the best.