Law school/ lawyers
 

Going through the different threads I have noticed that there are a lot of law school students and lawyers out there in GC land. I figured I would start a thread to talk about law school or ask advice from those who have already finished.
We are all apart of the Greek community and should always be there to help each other.
Tell me what you think.

:)

~2017

As of tomorrow, I will have survived 6 weeks.

11 more weeks to go until the semester is over. Hooray!

I can't help but notice how excited to talk about this we all seem to be. :)

My bar exam results are supposed to be ready in the next three days. I went through most of August and September not thinking about it very much, but in the last week or so I've started to get anxious. I'm not panicking -- I felt okay about the exam -- but I'm anxious to know for sure. I feel bad for the people who took the California exam and have to wait until November, especially since it's reputedly a much harder test. (I don't know about any other states).

The biggest challenge before me right now is my hunt for employment. The legal market in the Denver area, as in most parts of the country, is a lot slower than it used to be. I went to a top-20 law school, and was in the top quarter of my class, but those aren't numbers that work magic, at least not anymore.

Part of me wishes that I'd taken a bit of time between undergrad and law school to get more experience in the world and to figure out a bit more about what I was getting into. Probably at least half of my class had taken at least one year off or had other post-baccalaureate degrees, and some of them were making big changes from other careers that had been running for a while. I jumped in not really knowing much about where I was going or what I was going to do with it. Even though most people change their minds about their plans, I still think it might have helped me to have had a better idea of what I was getting into and why I was there. My first year was... challenging, shall we say, and also loaded with culture shock and other complicating factors. When you're not sure why you're there, it's hard to face all that. I was well into my second year before I started to feel more at home with what I was doing in school... but then, I think it's pretty rare that anyone feels happy with their first year of law school.

Junior girl, me too! These past few weeks have gone by so fast. It's really amazing how much my way of thinking has changed and how I look at the world.

At this very moment i'm taking a break from writing my first memo. Not as easy as I thought!

Eupolis, good luck with your job search. I know that it's horrible all over. I'm glad that I don't have to worry at the moment. Hopefully by next year it'll be better for my 2L summer, and then for when I graduate.

I agree that so many people seem to have taken time off. But so far i'm glad that i've gone straight through. I haven't had to change my lifestyle that much, it hasn't been a major life change for me. And there are enough of my classmates that are a year or less out of school that I don't feel out of place. Although it's weird to meet a classmate's wife (especially when they're only a couple years older than you!). I'm just not used to that yet.

I'm really enjoying it so far though.

Eupolis, after reading all of your very thoughtful and well worded posts, I have no doubt that you passed the bar. :) I know that waiting is the worst, though.

As far as looking for a job, have you tried bankruptcy? It's the one hot thing right now, and it's actually very interesting, sophisticated work if you're in a large law firm practice. If you haven't already checked out www.infirmation.com and its Greedy Associates message boards, you might want to because there's usually some good information there.

Oh, back to the original topic -- I graduated from law school, summa cum laude, in 1999. :D I thought law school was really fun (I know, I'm warped) but the actual practice isn't my favorite thing in the world right now. I'm naturally a more creative, artsy type person, and that's not always the best personality type for legal work.

The first week of school was the longest week of my life. Not the hardest, but definitely the longest.

I used to say "it sucks less each day." Now I've taken to saying "I like it more every day."

I hate not having any feedback along the way - that's the hardest part for me. I'm used to knowing the magic number to get an A in my classes. The idea of making a C is scaring me to death!

We've got Thurs and Fri off for the hurricane. And then we have Mon and Tues off as "reading days" So, that means I have a whole week off! :D

It's very easy to freak out at the beginning of law school. I remember sitting in a Mexican restaurant my first week, having dinner, and then I thought -- OMG, what am I doing here at a restaurant when I should be home, reading? Yeah, I got over that pretty quickly.

It is scary around exam time, first sememster freshman year. My first final was criminal law, and the class sucked. We had a new professor who usually showed up for class looking like he had slept in his clothes, in the car, and ran class like a talk show, asking "Well, what do YOU think about that?" and bragging about the guy he prosecuted in New York for smuggling drugs in his shoes. His exam was this horribly convoluted fact pattern involving Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston, and of course the ultimate question was which people can be charged with which crimes (and then you have all the people standing around in the hallway after class, doing the law school version of "tent talk" admitting that they were charging dead people with crimes). I left the building convinced that I was going to flunk out of law school because I just didn't know what I was doing and lived in terror until grades were posted. Of course, I did fine, but I always did get the freak outs waiting for grades. It *is* super stressful when your entire grade for a whole semester is determined by only one exam...but as long as you prepare and set three alarm clocks and arrange a wake up call for exam day (my number one fear was oversleeping and missing a test entirely) everything will be good.

Valkyrie-- Thanks for your kind encouragement! I'll let you all know what happens, of course.

Juniorgrrl-- I know what you mean about the lack of feedback. If you're concerned about exams, several professors I know recommended the book Getting to Maybe by Richard Michael Fischl and Jeremy R. Paul. Law school test-taking is a separate skill just like paper-writing or memo-writing is, and you can study it. They don't teach it in classes, though! I probably should have paid more attention to that book -- I never really excelled at the three- and four-hour essay exam. Fortunately there are other exam formats that I'm much better at writing!

I'd written a lot here with some of my thoughts on exams and scoring, but I decided that you've probably got more than enough thoughts on that (and advice from 2Ls and 3Ls) running through your head already! So, I've set it aside.

the July 2002 Colorado Bar Exam
 

I PASSED!!

Whew!

I'll be swearing in as an attorney on the 29th.

HOORAY!


http://www.plauder-smilies.de/jump.gif


I'm positively POINGING for joy!


I knew you'd do it!

CONGRATULATIONS!

Like there was *any* doubt???

Congratulations!!!!!!!

http://plaudersmilies.de/person/cheering.gif

Congratulations, Eupolis!!! :D

Congrats

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

:D :D :D

I'm a criminal justice major as well as pr. Lately I have been thinking about being a lawyer. Every so often I think about this. But I realize my GPA is only in 2's so I would not be able to get in a first tier law school. I am also someone who gets stressed easy and feels like dropping something if i think it is too hard for me, bc I'd rather drop out than fail. UGH! But criminal law really interests me!
congrats Eupolis!!!! :D

Lana, you don't need to go to a first tier law school, especially to get into criminal law. If you really want to do it, you should go for it!!

Lana -- a few thoughts:

First, if you're curious about what attorneys who practice criminal law do, see if you can get ten minutes to chat with people who practice in local DA's offices and criminal defense firms. Many people would be happy to talk with you for a few minutes about what they do. Your school's career center should be able to provide you with tips on "informational interviewing," and you should definitely do it. You might also be able to secure an internship or something with a proscutor's/DA's/defense attorney's office that would give you an opportunity to see for yourself what goes on there and would help you decide whether to pursue that.

Second, I want to say a thing or two about your concerns about your grades. Valkyrie is right that you don't necessarily need to go to a first-tier school to get into criminal law. If, after some informational interviews, you find that the practice of criminal law as an attorney is what you want to do, but you have trouble getting into the schools that you want to attend, you can consider taking some time to do other work, perhaps work that would give you more insight into the legal career that you're thinking about. For example:

- Quite a few people who entered my law school class had already spent a few years as paralegals. Becoming a paralegal requires a bit of specialized training, but the certification programs usually don't run that long.

- You might be able to get a job working as an administrative clerk for a judge whose caseload is primarily criminal. Those jobs are not known for high pay, but depending on how the court works you might be able to get some time observing in the courtroom. People who go into law after working court jobs say that one of the most valuable opportunities the court job provided was the opportunity to see good lawyering and bad lawyering and understand the differences (and sometimes hearing the judge's private point of view back in chambers after hearings). If you see jobs like that opening up, ask people at the courts what the jobs involve. (Note -- the kind of job I'm talking about is different from a judicial legal clerkship, which goes to new law graduates and involves more legal research.)

- I know absolutely nothing about what kind of training is involved, but you might seek out some specialized training in criminal investigation. Both prosecution and defense require investigators, though the government tends to have access to more resources. If you're at a large school, there may be classes in, say, forensic investigation directly available to you. Even if you can't get those kinds of classes, if this path sounds interesting to you, you might consider taking background classes in chemistry, biology, and/or psychology. Your major field probably requires plenty of courses in the soc/psych area already. If this is a route you're curious about, there are people in police departments, state bureaus of investigation, and crime laboratories who could tell you what training it would take, beyond your Bachelor's degree, to do it.

- Even if you were to do something completely unrelated to criminal law after college, it helps to remember that as college recedes into the past, so does the significance of your college grades. Life experience can count for a lot.

All of this, of course, is "do as I say, not as I do." I went to law school right out of college, having gotten into a school I wanted to attend. I also went to law school having very few clues about what I would do with the JD once I got out. But my point is, if you decide that criminal law is what you want to do but you don't get into law schools that (after research) you think will give you what you need, there are lots of options that would give you connections to the field. The background experience they offer would not only increase your law school opportunities, but would also help your employment opportunities beyond law school regardless of what school you attended.

I also have to include the caveat that I'm not a criminal lawyer, and I haven't had much training in criminal law. Valkyrie might tell you that I'm off my head (you practice crim law, right, Valkyrie? or have I confused you with someone else in that regard?). :) I'm just brainstorming a bit here.

Okay, that's more than a few thoughts. I hope something in there helps or gives you some ideas as to what you might do! :)

obtw
 

Thanks, everyone! :)

Thanks for the advice. One of my mom's patients as a brother in law in Pensacola that is a District court Judge. Apparently his family is open to having college students come to dinner etc. So my mom is giving the patient some info about me so the Judge can contact me.