Time to Take a Foreign Language in Law School? Forum

[ebm3q]

I thought this might have been a well-discussed topic, but I was unable to find any posts on the subject.

Do most law schools allow students to take language courses in addition to normal coursework?

Also, is there time to do this?

Thank you!

[Wholigan]

I don't know of any law schools which offer language classes. While knowing a foreign language can help you with employment prospects, in my opinion grades are far more important, so I would say it would be better to use your limited time to focus on your law coursework. There are some schools that have an interdisciplinary program where you can take a limited number of credits at other schools in the university besides the law school, so maybe if they let you take a language course and you got law school credit for it, but I wouldn't consider it otherwise. If you really want to do it, take a night class at a community college over the summer or something. I don't know your motivation, but even with employment prospects, I think you'd need to be pretty fluent to really get a boost for a job.

[174]

I'm waiting until second year to audit language classes. It sucks taking a year off, but 1L grades are too important for the rest of your career.

[BadgerDad]

Forget it. You wont have time for it.

[HarveyBirdman]

Looking through Pitt's course offering on their web site I did see a "chinese for lawyers I & II" but it said "no prior Chinese coursework required" so I don't know how in depth two semesters would really be...They also seem to offer area studies certificates, some of which included language course requirements that I guess you would take through the undergraduate school? I dunno though, sounds time consuming and stressful on top of all the other law school shit you'd have to do.

[EdmundBurke23]

Do you have in-depth knowledge of another language by any chance?

[ebm3q]

Thank you for all of your comments.

Haha, yes, Latin. I minored in Latin in UG and also started studying Chinese. Now I am pretty good with conversational Chinese (my boyfriend's family is from China). I wanted to continue my study of Chinese, especially in terms of reading and writing fluency.

Thank you for looking up that program at UPitt, I appreciate that. I think you might be right, HarveyBirdman.

I figured time might be a major issue, but I did have a law student audit our chinese class in UG, so I thought there might be some hope.

Again, thanks!

[CanadianWolf]

Many, maybe most, law schools allow law students to take 6 to 9 credit hours outside of the law school. Typically this would be done during the second &/or third years of law school.

The University of Denver law school has a "Lawyering in Spanish" program headed by the former law school dean. Tough to get clear answers from anyone at DU about which of the 5 or so law classes in Spanish are offered since the program is being revamped.

The most useful languages for lawyers, assuming fluency in English, might be Spanish, Portuguese & the Mandarin dialect of Chinese.