Considering doing law....need some advice

[viking22]

Im considering going to law school. I have an economics background but never really enjoyed the number crunching involved in finance and detest Excel spreadsheets. So I was looking for an alternative career that makes use of my analytical skills and ability to reason.

Law gets a bad rap. People say it is just endless paperwork and reading boring legal documents. A friend of mine also says it is anti-intellectual and it suits vacuous shallow people.

I also see statistics saying most lawyers want to change careers.

Id probably want to go into public interest law and I think it would be interesting to help people and be an important part of the local community. Also a work/life balance would be easier to achieve

 

[Bible_Belt]

I saw one of those public interest legal positions advertised in Tampa. The salary was $30,000. My dad makes more than that as a truck driver.

It's fine to not want to make big money. The problem is that law school costs big money. Most of my friends graduated with $80-$100k in debt.

And yes, law school is very anti-intellectual. Your job is to learn how to write an essay exactly like your professor writes the same essay. Student tests are ranked according to how much they resemble the professor's model answer, and then that is your grade. It's a ranking on a bell curve distribution. My law school had a 2.6 median gpa and a requirement that the bottom 5% of students in each class receive below a 2.0 - literally a quota of Ds to be handed out in every class. To the school's credit, that is how they teach you to pass the bar exam. But creativity and independent thought are punished severely.

I never took the bar exam, but still do not regret at least having the degree. I was able to pay cash as I went instead of going deeper into debt, which helped a lot. I think of it a lot like martial arts. It is in fact just learning a different kind of fighting. No one is ever going to intimidate me or my largely uneducated family with the legal process, which is what lawyers spend a lot of their time doing - psychologically intimidating ignorant people. I don't like lawyers at all as people, and I always want to be able to fight back if I have to.

The most rewarding part of having the degree is to be able to help friends and family on an unofficial level. I can't show up in court or sign papers, but I can help other people do that for themselves. My truck driver father once got a $2,000 paycheck seized by his employer, because their poorly maintained truck broke down on him, and they billed him for the repair. There is a statute in my state that says word-for-word that billing employees for broken equipment is illegal. At my urging, he filed a small claims suit for his paycheck...and they countersued him for $3,000, the rest of the repair bill. The trucking company had an attorney in the family doing all of this for them. They dragged him through two pre-trial hearings and arbitration before he got to have a trial. Finally though, my dad, who dropped out of 8th grade, just beat the crap out of the other side's attorney in that courtroom. I sent him there with printed statutes to cite, case law, exhibits A-F...he looked like Perry Mason. The judge did nothing but scream at the other attorney for wasting his time. My dad said the guy looked like he was about to cry.

So that is my impression of having a law degree. It is worthwhile for the sake of the power it gives you. The hard part is making enough of a living to pay your student loans, without working 80 hrs a week or turning into a soulless jackass.

 

[viking22]

Thankfully in the UK legal education is considerably cheaper and having saved up for a while and able to continue working part time I won't have to go into much debt. All education is jumping through hoops and Im pretty good at it. Im more interested in what it is like to practice law.

Definitely knowing a bit of law is useful in life. But Im looking for a career. So I want to know a bit more about law before committing.

To give you an idea of my background, I have an economics undergrad and masters and worked in the City for a few years but the number crunching put me off. I also taught for a bit and it was cool and I might return to it in later life but I can't see myself doing that for the next 40 years. So that is why Ive been thinking about law

 

[MikeYikes122]

I'm going to start law school in a year. I've taken the LSAT twice (bombed first time, did real well the second). While I haven't really entered the legal world yet, I can give you some advice on how to prepare for the test and school.

I fvcked up bad on the LSAT - got a 151 - when I took it for the first time in December. I had studied for it on my own with a few guidebooks and didn't give myself nearly enough time to prep. I only studied for about 20 hours a week for a month and a half. The recommended self-study amount for a person who doesn't have any legal background seems to be about three months worth of heavy studying. If you do decide to self study, I'd buy the PowerScore books - the Logic Games Bible and the Logic Reasoning Bible. The Kaplan and Princeton Review materials are garbage because the publishers don't purchase any official LSAT questions from LSAC, which holds the rights to previous LSAT tests. The PowerScore books are more expensive, but the publishers throw down wads of cash to buy official questions from past LSATs. Some people's LSAT scores actually go down after taking the Kaplan and Princeton Review classes or reading their books.

Also, if you do decide to study on your own, make sure you take plenty of simulated practice LSAT tests under the same time constrictions that you'd have during the actual test. IMO, the key to doing well on the LSAT is doing loads of practice tests prior to test day so that you build your endurance and get used to the pressure. If you take enough practice tests, the actual LSAT will seem easy in comparison. You can buy past LSAT tests on Amazon.

My second time around taking the LSAT, I scored a 166. My score increased greatly for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I took a ton of practice tests, maybe about 30 or 40 in all - sometimes one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I also took a class with TestMasters that really helped me and cleared up a lot of concepts that I wasn't previously understanding. If you can afford to drop about $1,500, I'd take a class with TestMasters. Not only did it give me some structure for studying and a highly knowledgeable teacher I could consult, it greatly improved the efficiency of my studying. I wasn't spending too much time re-reviewing the same concepts that I wasn't understanding entirely.

The investment of a taking a class with TestMasters or PowerScore is definitely worth it. It will cost you some dough in the short term, but if it helps you land a good score, you can get a scholarship, which would likely offset the cost of the course by a large margin.

EDIT: Doh, didn't notice that you're in the UK. This advice probably doesn't pertain to you. Hopefully it helps someone else who surfaces on this thread.

 

[Centaurion]

I'm stuyding law, and i'm about to write my master thesis this semester.

Law isn't "difficult", it just requires a lot of time and a lot of reading. I don't know how the exams are in the US, but here we only have two 6 hour exams at the end of the year with no obligatory course attendance. Basically you can goof off for 2 semesters and take the exams at the end of the year.

That said, there are tons of stuff that you have to read. In addition to the regular books, for every subject (commerce, constitunial law, criminal law etc) there are anything between 10 - 30 important cases that you have to read and understand. But if you want a top grade you need to read a lot more cases than that in each subject. So yeah, it can become quite boring.

I can somewhat agree to what Bible_Belt is saying about the professors and grades. Here, we only have to exams at the end of the year, and if you **** up on those, you are ****ed. Sometimes those who are grading our exasm are professors (or Phd students) and sometimes working lawyers. The professors prefer a more indepth discussion surrounding the issues, while the lawyers want a more to the point discussion. This pretty much ****s up the reliability of the grades, as a lawyer will give a C on an exam, while the professors would have given you a A for the same exam.

Language and writing skills are very important. The language is the tool of the lawyer. You need to write in a very precise manner, and state your arguments in a clear and structured way. You also need to master law-lingo, ie sh!t like "culpa".

 

[mpimpin]

for anyone in the U.S. reading this knewton has a great online class and prep program. I'm taking it now after bombing and making a 151 the first time and preparing for October. After about 3 weeks of prep and classes I'm already seeing a significant improvement. The cost is $600-$700 they typically knock off a hundred dollars every few weeks if you can jump on it at the right time. They also have a referral program so If anyone is interested I think I can get you $50 off. They also a 5pt score increase or money back.

now I sound like I'm a promoter for their website ... Just a satisfied customer

 

[kingsam]

Your job is to learn how to write an essay exactly like your professor writes the same essay. Student tests are ranked according to how much they resemble the professor's model answer, and then that is your grade.

hmm... its like that in most subjects!

if you dont appeal to the lecturers immediate interests(thier reality) they give poor marks

many lectuers are very poor teachers