Bad Glacier

Following through with my promise to comment on other parts of Jeremy’s tips for prelaw kids, here’s Jeremy’s advice on law school preparation:

3. Stop imagining that law school is so different from everything else you’ve ever done before. If you’re going to law school, you probably didn’t completely screw up college. Law school’s a lot more like college than, say, a job is. If you survived college, you’ll survive law school. Heck, if you enjoyed college, you’ll probably even enjoy law school. Yes, you need to read a bunch of stuff every week. No, this will not be the most grueling three years you’ve ever experienced, it will not require you cut off contact with your family and friends, it will not require you radically change your lifestyle and force yourself into a miserable existence because you don’t think you’ll pass Torts otherwise. It’s school, you know how to do school, just put in the hours you end up needing to out in, which will probably be fewer than you fear, and you’ll be fine. This is not some sort of radically different paradigm.

8. Ignore anyone who tries to tell you that some sort of week-long law school preparatory class is going to be anything more than a waste of money. That includes ignoring the voices inside your own head that are telling you to go. You won’t get a “leg up” and, at worst, you’ll be the jackass who keeps raising his hand because he knows the answer and everyone will hate you. If you really want to get a head start, find a 3-page summary on the Internet of all of your classes, and read it. You’ll be more prepared than you need to be, but it won’t turn you into “one of those people.”

In my head, these are related. If you feel that law school is going to be something completely different from undergrad, you’re more inclined to think a prep course will be worth the time and money. Of course, some people take prep classes because they’re ultra-competitive. I’m just saying that’s not me.

I won’t be taking a law school prep class, but I will be reading a bunch of law-related things between now and September. My goal is not to get a leg up on my classmates. I’ll read about law because I’m interested in it, I’m excited about starting school, and I’m just nerdy like that. It won’t be work; it’ll be fun. Once classes start and the reading assignments start piling up, my enthusiasm will quickly fade. There’s no need to smother it prematurely.

Law school will definitely not be like my undergraduate experience. I didn’t have to read much for my classes. And by “much”, I mean, “at all”. Sure, we had books, but for the most part no one, not even the professors, expected you to read them. Computer science books are, generally, reference materials. You look up the programming language syntax, the algorithm, whatever, and then you go back to coding. There were a few classes with reading assignments, but in these cases, the reading was more like a mathematics textbook. But I had a few humanities/social science classes. I did alright, and I like reading in general, so I don’t think law school is something I can’t handle. I may not be appointed Chief Justice when I graduate, but I’ll get over it. Eventually.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 26th, 2005 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Applying to Law School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.