Do law school electives help you in practice? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Are law school electives in your practice area actually beneficial once you start practicing?

I will be working in-house for a bank so I am strongly considering Securities Regulation over some international law courses which I find more interesting and which will likely be easier. Also, I could end up working employment law for all I know, so I'm not sure if struggling through this course would ever pay off.

Thoughts?

[Anonymous User]

I never intended to go into criminal law, so I never took anything besides the required 1L crim. Now I work in criminal law. So yeah, I do wish I'd taken the various iterations of Crim Pro and maybe some other related stuff, so at least some of the vocabulary and concepts would have been familiar when encountering them in my job.

That said, there are tons of things about my job nothing in law school would have taught me, and I'm also living proof you can learn to do whatever job regardless of what you took in school, so I really don't think electives are necessary. I think it's up to you.

[Pokemon]

Are law school electives in your practice area actually beneficial once you start practicing?

I will be working in-house for a bank so I am strongly considering Securities Regulation over some international law courses which I find more interesting and which will likely be easier. Also, I could end up working employment law for all I know, so I'm not sure if struggling through this course would ever pay off.

Thoughts?

Probably not but you might find the mundane things you will be doing a little more interesting if you have an idea of the bigger picture so I would personally take the elective.

[TheHill5]

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No.

[kellyfrost]

Are law school electives in your practice area actually beneficial once you start practicing?

I will be working in-house for a bank so I am strongly considering Securities Regulation over some international law courses which I find more interesting and which will likely be easier. Also, I could end up working employment law for all I know, so I'm not sure if struggling through this course would ever pay off.

Thoughts?

No, not really. The only one that I can think of that would be beneficial is a trial advocacy class or a trial lab. In that type class, you can at least learn some things about how the actual trial process works, but it will not effectively prepare you for practice beyond an acute familiarity.

I know a lot of people who took Education Law as an elective. None them work in Education Law, and some are unemployed.

[favabeansoup]

Are law school electives in your practice area actually beneficial once you start practicing?

Thoughts?

I took a pass/fail contract drafting class. It was helpful when I first got into transactional because I could actually understand what the various parts of agreements where trying to do and good ways to tweak them. It's usefulness quickly faded out though as time went on and I just learned how to do things from other associates or partners.

So I think electives can give you a nice "head-start", but after a year or two you won't use it that much.

Edit: I probably would never have taken it if it wasn't pass/fail and if it had any work to do besides showing up.

[Londonbear]

Why not? It doesn't hurt if you have room for it. If it's either that or the class you're interested in, I'd take the class you're interested in. You can learn what you need to learn when you're practicing. But if you can take SecReg and that one international class you're interested in, then take both. I would recommend SecReg if you're going to do corporate work. Personally, I thought it was an interesting class. But for corporate work in general, law school does a terrible job at preparing you, but hey at least you'll basically be in the same boat as everyone else when you start.

[PMan99]

On rare occasion, yes, but it's so rare (like once or twice a year) that I wouldn't bother picking my electives on that basis.

[emkay625]

I think it depends on the elective and on the job. Securities regulation seems like something standard you should probably take if you're going to be working in house for a bank. Is it going to teach you everything you need to know? Not by a mile. But it will at least introduce concepts and vocabulary that will be helpful to have some kind of grasp on when you start working.

[Devlin]

I think they can be beneficial for providing an overview of an area and deeper context. However, you should not rely on the class to teach you all the rules/issues. Once you start practicing you will need to check rules, cases, etc. even if you remember what the "rule" was from your class. Also keep in mind, sometimes classes are not state specific.