Law School - in the US

[toomanycurls]

So @down-in-flames @RonsGirlFriday @TidalDragon @aurevoir @Aphoride and others

I have an OC. Her name is Sylvia. She spends a lot of time at coffee shop where she meets Isa (my protagonist who teaches middle school). I want Sylvia to be at a point where she spends some time at the coffee stop and has several meetcutes with my main character. 

She's late 20s to early 30s, has professional working experiences (did stuff at a non-profit that got her into law -- I'm still working on this). But. Um. what was it like in law school? What's the workload like? Is there a period after you graduate and before you take the bar? Do you have to take the bar? What was the life like? Did you do anything else besides school?

[Cassius Alcindor]

Law school lasts three years, and most people would agree that the first year is the hardest. The first year has required classes in basic subjects like contracts,criminal law, torts, etc., and the curriculum will be pretty similar at most schools. In many cases, the final exam determines your entire grade for the class. It's a lot of work and a lot of reading an outlining to keep up with. Sylvia could potentially be doing some of this reading/outlining in the coffee shop. For the first year nobody really has a life outside of law school.

The second and third years aren't quite as bad, partly because you're more used to it and partly because you have more flexibility with elective to take classes you're interested in. Also, during these years a lot of people could be doing internships or volunteer work for some work experience. 

Bar exams are usually held in late July (some states also offer it in February), so there's a little bit of a gap from when you graduate in May. You aren't necessarily required to take the bar, but you would be greatly limited in what jobs you can do if you didn't, so it's kind of pointless not to. 

Hope this helps!

[TidalDragon]

What was it like at law school?  STRESSFUL.
What was the workload like?  HIGH.

In all seriousness though, I'd say you're talking about 100+ pages of reading either day-to-day or every-other-day, plus 'short answer' questions to ponder/answer (depending on the professor) related to the reading. Some courses are going to include one or more research papers. Studying for final exams is a relatively extreme undertaking with some people studying hours upon hours after classes (there's no 'easing into finals' in law school) poring over books, taking old exams, reading up on treatises, reporters, etc., group study - overall a big, long drill that often starts quite generally starts two or three weeks before 'reading week(s) (AKA study weeks) in advance).

As far as inhabitants go, obviously you've got a lot of intelligent, highly competitive, very Type-A personalities. There are your gunners - people who take competitiveness to the next level in a true obsession at finishing top of their class while being kind of cutthroat to other students (this combination is necessary for someone to really be a gunner IMO). Gunners usually form a kind of insular group of people they feel are 'worthy' to study with (and sometimes even associate with). There are your legacies - which I expand to include not just the particular school, but people who have one or more parents that are lawyers. These people can be gunners or they can be kind of 'meh' about the experience because they're doing it to follow their parents for any number of reasons. There are the JD/MBA students who often 'trade semesters' after 1L year between law and business. There are the non-traditional students who are generally older and have attained other experiences (like Sylvia) and often just by virtue of shared issues tend to hang together when possible. Any of these 'types' can be very scholarship-dependent or otherwise cash-strapped, which adds a different dimension.

The structure of legal education though is somewhat dependent on where you go these days. Some schools vigorously try to weed out a substantial portion of their class (one-third or one-fourth) while others are more focused on passage at set levels. Almost all schools have a traditional three-year track with your first (1L) year consisting (almost) exclusively of what could generally be described as the 'core' courses (contracts, torts, constitutional law, civil procedure, criminal law, and legal research and writing). Others allow flexibility in fitting those course in where you want as prerequisites to graduation. Some school even try to jam the three-year (though the necessity of the third year is, frankly, questionable) into a two-year or two-and-a-half year program.

As far as the meet-cutes go though, law school would be no obstacle whatsoever to that. Some students study while out in places like that. Some are obsessed with studying in the library. Some primarily study at home though I would say the first two are much more common unless you're talking about someone who's married, whether they have kids or not. There's also plenty of social events/gatherings - both formal and informal and both set up by the school or not) - like...students who've come straight from college to law school or law school after a 'gap year' are still going on bar crawls and shit. Other people also fit in other activities like being part of law review (top-of-class, top-writer people) or another specialized journal or do moot court (appellate court simulation) or trial team (trial division simulation).

As far as the bar, anybody who actually wants to practice has to pass a bar exam, which usually takes place in July, six-to-eight weeks after graduation (some offer it in February though that's most often taken by re-takes). That intervening time (if somebody wants to pass ) is usually spent studying hardcore and attending bar prep courses. Example: between the prep courses and studying via flash cards, practice tests, etc., I probably spent at least eight hours a day on it. Law school really does not fully prepare you to take the bar - it teaches you the type of thinking to absorb and analyze 'what's important' and general legal principles but often bar prep courses for whatever state's exam you're taking are where you learn the actual law of that state. If you want your JD to supplement another career path (usually we're talking the JD/MBAs, who generally have the intention of working in business), then you don't necessarily need to pass the bar unless you'll be engaging in things that could qualify as legal practice because unauthorized practice of law is an actual criminal offense in many places (in North Carolina it's a felony).

In case by not in school you're also talking about summers, generally students have internships during the summer. People at the top of the class (usually the top ten percent) are usually chasing those at prestigious firms which are not just prestigious experiences in themselves, but also pay both literally and in terms of networking. Other people are left scrapping for other stuff or accepting an invitation as a research assistant. Those prestigious internships though are a grind. They're semi-prep for a real job at those firms in terms of hours, which are usually at least ten hours, if not more, daily.

My experience was, IMO, very unique because of the personal circumstances I dealt with, but I feel like the above is a legitimate representation of the experience. And I'm sure this is far more than you ever, ever, EVER wanted to know. 

[aurevoir]

2 hours ago, TidalDragon said:

like...students who've come straight from college to law school or law school after a 'gap year' are still going on bar crawls and shit. 

yeah, basically if you went straight through you're an alcoholic for three years (or four for me because I did a tax LLM after I finished my JD). Every law school event is just a smorgasbord of fucking alcohol. Probably some drugs too, but that wasn't my scene. I just ingested large quantities of alcohol and showed up to class hungover a few times. Depending what school she goes to, football tailgating can be a big thing (i.e., if its an SEC school or other big football division). If it's one of the ivy leagues, sometimes there's other things (NYU and Columbia Law always have this basketball competition). 

But second everything said above. My life was basically read 100-200 pages every day for classes, once I finished that I started outlining the things we were learning right away so that closer to finals I was focused on review, and then drank a lot. I studied in between classes within the law school, spent my weekend studying at home, but usually was in the law school 9am - 6pm. I had a job within the law school that I did maybe 10 hours a week for, I did research for a professor I got paid for (ethics on pharmacists participating in life ending injections), and then for one semester I TA'ed the professional responsibility type class over in the law school - this was supper common at our law school. There were 5/6 of us doing it every semester. My first summer, I had a paid gig at a small law firm, second summer was unpaid at a federal court summer clerkship. 

Also as you progress the story, she'd probably take Isa to barristers which is basically ... law school prom with obscene amounts of alcohol. Almost every law school has it. 

[Darling_take_off_the_mask]

Everyone before me has answered pretty thoroughly and along the lines of what I was thinking as well, so I hate to add repetitive stuff (though look, see how I've gone on to completely ramble anyway...)

There was definitely an active social scene at my law school; not everyone is shut in studying 24/7 (thought there is a ton of studying and work, don't get me wrong). Every law school is going to have its own culture. My law school was actually situated away from the main undergrad campus, in the middle of a city, and was more of a commuter law school, so most people didn't actually live on or near campus -- but you have plenty of law schools (most of them, I'd say) that are located on the main campus, and since schools tend to come with college towns around them, at one of those you'd probably have a lot more law students living in the immediate vicinity. (I commuted like 30-60 minutes each way to my law school.)

I don't know if anyone mentioned this already, but your first year (1L) classes and schedule are predetermined for you, and your entering 1L class of a few hundred people is divided up into what are called "sections" of, say, 90 students (I'm ballparking here, it's different according to the size of your school, and I went to law school more than 10 years ago, so memory is fading). You have basically every single one of your 1L classes with your "section." So it's the same 60-90 students in every single 1L class. Despite that seeming like a large number, you get to know who everyone is pretty well. A lot of people definitely become really close as a result of this.

Invariably, there's another "type" of student, the one who is always raising their hand and asking the professor all kinds of questions about hypothetical variations on something you're learning. At first, this person is very frustrating because you're already struggling to cram all the information in your head to begin with, and to wrap your mind around difficult concepts. However, somehow this person seems to have a knack for asking questions about inane shit that actually ends up on the exam. So you learn pretty well to listen when this person over the next couple of years when they speak up in class.  

Studying involves a process called outlining, which is basically taking all the shit they are jamming into your head and, well, outlining it, and constantly revamping and reducing that outline to a form that you can sort of reference when you're getting ready for an exam. You learn a lot of stuff that might not even apply to the practice of law in your own state -- e.g. federal law, common law, legal history and theories, etc. Bar prep (called "bar review") after graduating and before taking the Bar is pretty critical because they focus on the need-to-know law in the actual jurisdiction whose Bar you will sit (and you can take the Bar in multiple jurisdictions).

A lot of students go out for something called Law Review, which is a school/student-run journal that published articles, but not by the actual students (except for a select few on occasion) -- articles by professors and other legal scholars. The students on the Law Review have the lovely job of checking the articles' citations, making sure they're in the correct format. It's a coveted thing to do -- to be on your school's main law review, more so than the smaller, more niche law reviews, although those are perfectly good, too -- and a big resume builder, but I had no interest in it so I stayed the hell away from that. There's also Moot Court, which is a competition that simulates presenting oral argument before appellate judges. That's also a big resume thing. It involves research and legal analysis and being able to respond in real time to questions thrown at you by judges in the middle of your argument. I did trial advocacy, also known as mock trial, which is fairly self-explanatory, but completely different from moot court, because moot court does not involve a trial setting (e.g. taking testimony from witnesses and so forth).

In the spring, employers looking to hire law clerks for the summer will actually come to do interviews on campus. It's a huge ordeal, submitting your resume and getting one of their limited number of spots to interview with them. My school also did mock interviews before this, where we'd sit a fake interview with one of the Career Services staff. My school, as I suspect a lot of schools now do, also put a lot of emphasis on learning practical lawyering skills, which you'd think would be a thing anyway, but not too long ago law schools were really focused so much on the theory that they seemed more concerned with churning out legal scholars rather than lawyers. And this doesn't necessarily mean courtroom practice (though it can), because most practicing lawyers don't actually see the inside of a courtroom ever. It includes how to write a brief (e.g. a brief to your boss analyzing a client's case or some issue involved), how to write a motion to submit in court, and even how to interview and advise clients (we did mock client interviews where actors came in and spoke to us about their "case" and we had to determine how to advise them). The mock interviews took place in our ethics class, one of the big takeaways being, your client doesn't always have a good case, and you have to do the ethical thing and tell them when they don't, not just, "Ok, cool, give me $10,000 to start and we'll see what we can do" even when you know their case is garbage or at least very unlikely to succeed (in which case, sure you can still take the case but they ought to know their prospects).

 

tl;dr: Don't fucking go to law school. Ever.

 

[down-in-flames]

2 hours ago, RonsGirlFriday said:

tl;dr: Don't fucking go to law school. Ever.

this is reassuring