Defer LS for a year to work in DC? Forum

[LBJ's Hair]

FWIW I worked for several years before law school and am glad I did. Wouldn't delay for this, but don't have particularly strong feelings about it, as downside is just OP starting his/her career a year later.

[notinbiglaw]

The biggest benefit of work experience to me was I wasn't stressed out during 1L and OCI and that allowed me to enjoy the process... and possibly did better although that's debatable.

[BansheeScream]

I've written about this before and it's anecdotal but I'm a K-JD going to a firm in DC after graduating and I would've definitely taken a year or three off if I had the opportunity to do it over again. I didn't seriously underperform my grades at OCI and was successful in getting clerkships, law review, etc. but my older colleagues (which is most of them from law school and my firm) are at a different point in their personal lives than me while my friends from college are still having fun and going out 4 nights a week. I'm in a weird middle ground where half my friends are getting engaged and I can't keep up with the other half socially despite us being the same age. Would've been great to spend three years working a 40-50 week job and going out, hanging out with friends, trying restaurants etc.

That being said, K-JD thing is way overblown. I know brilliant K-JDs and people who worked for years in IB/MBB who didn't do well in law school at all. It's way more of the type of person you are than what age you attend law school. Regardless, +1 for taking time off for the reasons above.

[nixy]

Yeah, to be clear, I know plenty of brilliant K-JDs (like the top 3 students in my class) who've totally succeeded. It's more a personal growth thing, and about the ability to know more about what you want out of life and how to negotiate for it. Which I know sounds very pop-psychology, but I'm super glad I didn't go K-JD.

[Iowahawk]

KJD is a drawback at OCI, but non-KJDs seriously overestimate the benefits of work experience in general; it obviously has some benefits but the financial hit is significant. Supposed academic benefits are particularly suspect, liquid intelligence peaks disturbingly early and academic honors and LR are were significantly disproportionately KJD at the CCN I attended.

There are valid arguments for and against deferring admission, but the idea that KJDs do better in law school because they have superior "liquid intelligence" is hilariously stupid. Your empirical claim is likewise, to borrow your terminology, "particularly suspect." For example: of the 12 people who received Columbia's highest academic honor last year (RBG prize), not a single one was a KJD.

+1. That's the most absurdly pseudo-scientific argument I've heard for not taking a gap year (or five).

I don't think K-JDs ever fully understand the benefit of work experience, largely because only their colleagues notice the effects of them not having any.

I was slightly off, the term is "fluid intelligence," but it peaks incredibly young (around age 20) and is not psuedoscience. An example of it that almost everyone knows is that mathematicians, poets, and philosophers tend to produce their best work much younger than historians, who rely more on slower-declining "crystallized intelligence." But yeah everyone on this thread except maybe some 0Ls is already losing mental speed.

I don't think this is a good reason alone to not take a year off, a year making a significant difference is absurd, but the idea that there are academic benefits to delaying (especially delaying to do non-taxing work) is equally absurd.

[cavalier1138]

I was slightly off, the term is "fluid intelligence," but it peaks incredibly young (around age 20) and is not psuedoscience. An example of it that almost everyone knows is that mathematicians, poets, and philosophers tend to produce their best work much younger than historians, who rely more on slower-declining "crystallized intelligence." But yeah everyone on this thread except maybe some 0Ls is already losing mental speed.

That would be at least sort of relevant if (1) lawyers were poets, philosophers, and mathematicians, (2) everyone started with the same base level of fluid intelligence and peaked at exactly the same time, and (3) fluid intelligence were the only thing that mattered in both law school and the practice of law. It would also help if anyone had developed a truly reliable and objective way to test fluid intelligence, but it's mostly memory tests at the moment.

I don't think this is a good reason alone to not take a year off, a year making a significant difference is absurd, but the idea that there are academic benefits to delaying (especially delaying to do non-taxing work) is equally absurd.

No one is claiming that taking time between undergrad and law school confers academic benefits. But law school isn't solely an academic exercise. Nor is anyone claiming that your grades or job outcomes are based solely on intelligence.

[The Lsat Airbender]

An example of it that almost everyone knows is that mathematicians, poets, and philosophers tend to produce their best work much younger than historians[...]