Boalt 1Ls taking questions Forum

[Tanicius]

I have somewhat of a specific concern. I would love to attend Berkeley Law and I know that I would fit right in (partially because I went for undergrad). However, I also heard from a lawyer that having Berkeley undergrad and law school on my resume might be a disadvantage. He didn't elaborate and it might've just been a speculation but I'd be interested to hear some thoughts on this.

Jesus that attorney has a weird opinion of things. I'd tend to take literally everything a hiring attorney at a firm says unless it is an actual policy their office uses in hiring people through OCI. And I highly doubt something like that would be.

[5965]

Could you share your favorite professors at Berkeley?

[Kronk]

Could you share your favorite professors at Berkeley?

From the professors I have taken, these would be the ones I have thought were good:


Sugarman.

(GAP)

Mary Louise Frampton.
David Sklansky
john powell (not as great in class but a great mind)
Jamie O'Connell
Kenneth Bamberger

[5965]

Could you share your favorite professors at Berkeley?

From the professors I have taken, these would be the ones I have thought were good:


Sugarman.

(GAP)

Mary Louise Frampton.
David Sklansky
john powell (not as great in class but a great mind)
Jamie O'Connell
Kenneth Bamberger

Thanks, Kronk!

Are many professors, especially those teaching 1L classes, willing to assist their students and to answer students' questions? (I remember in my undergrad some professors were so difficult just to reach.) Also, how helpful do you find the career service office to be? Thanks in advance!:)

[Redamon1]

Could you share your favorite professors at Berkeley?

From the professors I have taken, these would be the ones I have thought were good:


Sugarman.

(GAP)

Mary Louise Frampton.
David Sklansky
john powell (not as great in class but a great mind)
Jamie O'Connell
Kenneth Bamberger

Thanks, Kronk!

Are many professors, especially those teaching 1L classes, willing to assist their students and to answer students' questions? (I remember in my undergrad some professors were so difficult just to reach.) Also, how helpful do you find the career service office to be? Thanks in advance!:)

All my 1L profs were more than happy to answer student questions, particularly during office hours and via email. Although it doesn't always work out this way, the school tries to assign to 1Ls professors that enjoy teaching those classes. You'll have 1 class that in a smaller section (20-25 students), which allows you to ask more questions and build a relationship with a professor. Your two legal writing classes will also be smaller. In addition, Berkeley has a tutoring program that I've found very helpful: 2Ls and 3Ls help groups of 1Ls work through the material and prepare outlines and exams.

I've found career services to be very helpful overall. My points of reference were (1) undergard and (2) do-it-yourself in the workplace, so having multiple counselors willing to meet you repeatedly, guide you, and set up interviews for you was a big step up from what I knew.

Also, +1 for Sugarman.

[Redamon1]

I have somewhat of a specific concern. I would love to attend Berkeley Law and I know that I would fit right in (partially because I went for undergrad). However, I also heard from a lawyer that having Berkeley undergrad and law school on my resume might be a disadvantage. He didn't elaborate and it might've just been a speculation but I'd be interested to hear some thoughts on this.

Strange. At the margins, maybe it makes a difference, but I've never heard this discussed as an issue (granted, I didn't attend Berkeley undergrad). I don't think employers care about where you did your undergrad that much. It probably matters so little (if at all) that you shouldn't turn down Berkeley solely for this reason if you think the school is a good fit for you otherwise (job prospects, culture, location etc.)

[DreamShake]

Could you share your favorite professors at Berkeley?

From the professors I have taken, these would be the ones I have thought were good:


Sugarman.

(GAP)

Mary Louise Frampton.
David Sklansky
john powell (not as great in class but a great mind)
Jamie O'Connell
Kenneth Bamberger

Haven't had any of these except for Sklansky (whom I found to be an ass on a personal level), so I'll add a few others:

Gergen (genuine polymath of the law)
Doremus
Swift (retiring, I think)
Holmquist
Abrams

[5965]

Could you share your favorite professors at Berkeley?

From the professors I have taken, these would be the ones I have thought were good:


Sugarman.

(GAP)

Mary Louise Frampton.
David Sklansky
john powell (not as great in class but a great mind)
Jamie O'Connell
Kenneth Bamberger

Haven't had any of these except for Sklansky (whom I found to be an ass on a personal level), so I'll add a few others:

Gergen (genuine polymath of the law)
Doremus
Swift (retiring, I think)
Holmquist
Abrams

Thanks DreamShake and Kronk! Could you elaborate a bit on why you liked or disliked them? I feel liking one for academic reasons can be different from liking personally.

[asdfghjkl1]

Does anyone know anything about the JD/MBA program? Is it impossible to get admitted to Haas with a high GMAT score if you don't have 3-5 years of work experience?

Also, do you think that it would be beneficial to read E&E supplements over the summer?

[Kronk]

Could you share your favorite professors at Berkeley?

From the professors I have taken, these would be the ones I have thought were good:


Sugarman.

(GAP)

Mary Louise Frampton.
David Sklansky
john powell (not as great in class but a great mind)
Jamie O'Connell
Kenneth Bamberger

Haven't had any of these except for Sklansky (whom I found to be an ass on a personal level), so I'll add a few others:

Gergen (genuine polymath of the law)
Doremus
Swift (retiring, I think)
Holmquist
Abrams

Thanks DreamShake and Kronk! Could you elaborate a bit on why you liked or disliked them? I feel liking one for academic reasons can be different from liking personally.

I haven't had his / hers except for Doremus. That is an egregious omission on my part, she's a great prof. I never really go to office hours so that might be what DreamShake means by "personal level," I'm not sure. I could see him being a bit pompous. I just only knew him in class. He was just a funny guy, seemed to enjoy being there, didn't cold-call, used classic movies to illustrate Evidence problems, and was overall fun to take class from, IMO. He's also one of the best minds on criminal law issues in the nation and one of the most respected professors, and when you combine those two (good in class + great legal mind) I think that makes for a good professor.

I love Sugarman because he's just an awesome guy, a kind heart, a brilliant professor, and encourages students to not just recant what they've read in the book, but to really analyze legal problems. You would get to class and he wouldn't really even go over the case facts or holdings. He would just assume you understood them. That might annoy people, but it was pretty awesome, because then we'd spend the hour talking about the implications of the holding, the alternatives, policy involved in the holding, what other countries do in similar situations, etc. I just found it much less dry.

I should add a caveat here in that I find most law school classes incredibly boring and dry and hate about 90% of it, so if I think a class is actually interesting, I mean it.

[Tanicius]

I haven't had his / hers except for Doremus. That is an egregious omission on my part, she's a great prof. I never really go to office hours so that might be what DreamShake means by "personal level," I'm not sure. I could see him being a bit pompous. I just only knew him in class. He was just a funny guy, seemed to enjoy being there, didn't cold-call, used classic movies to illustrate Evidence problems, and was overall fun to take class from, IMO. He's also one of the best minds on criminal law issues in the nation and one of the most respected professors, and when you combine those two (good in class + great legal mind) I think that makes for a good professor.

I love Sugarman because he's just an awesome guy, a kind heart, a brilliant professor, and encourages students to not just recant what they've read in the book, but to really analyze legal problems. You would get to class and he wouldn't really even go over the case facts or holdings. He would just assume you understood them. That might annoy people, but it was pretty awesome, because then we'd spend the hour talking about the implications of the holding, the alternatives, policy involved in the holding, what other countries do in similar situations, etc. I just found it much less dry.

I should add a caveat here in that I find most law school classes incredibly boring and dry and hate about 90% of it, so if I think a class is actually interesting, I mean it.

Sugarman was great for Torts up until the moment in the course where we started talking about nothing but alternative remedies to the tort system (read: mind-dulling depth on different insurance schemes, for several weeks).

[Kronk]

Sugarman was great for Torts up until the moment in the course where we started talking about nothing but alternative remedies to the tort system (read: mind-dulling depth on different insurance schemes, for several weeks).

Did it go on for several weeks? I don't remember it being that long at all. I might not have read though. I actually found that stuff interesting (relative to normal law school material) though.

[Tanicius]

Sugarman was great for Torts up until the moment in the course where we started talking about nothing but alternative remedies to the tort system (read: mind-dulling depth on different insurance schemes, for several weeks).

Did it go on for several weeks? I don't remember it being that long at all. I might not have read though. I actually found that stuff interesting (relative to normal law school material) though.

OMG I hated it so much. Talking about actual percentages of premiums for days on end.

[Redamon1]

Sugarman was great for Torts up until the moment in the course where we started talking about nothing but alternative remedies to the tort system (read: mind-dulling depth on different insurance schemes, for several weeks).

Did it go on for several weeks? I don't remember it being that long at all. I might not have read though. I actually found that stuff interesting (relative to normal law school material) though.

OMG I hated it so much. Talking about actual percentages of premiums for days on end.

The following exchange is another testament to Professor Sugarman:

K professor in class today: "so you covered fraud in your torts class, as an intentional tort, right?"

Cold-called classmate who'd had Sugarman first semester: (silence)

[Redamon1]

Does anyone know anything about the JD/MBA program? Is it impossible to get admitted to Haas with a high GMAT score if you don't have 3-5 years of work experience?

Also, do you think that it would be beneficial to read E&E supplements over the summer?

No idea about the MBA.

But don't read supplements over the summer. There are some pretty good threads on TLS with advice on what to do (and NOT to do) over the summer. In short: rest, organize your life for the storm that is 1L. I know it's hard to believe as a 0L that you shouldn't learn the material over the summer to get ahead, but it becomes clear pretty quickly once in law school that that's a bad idea.

[twinkletoes16]

Still haven't heard back about $, but I've gotten no need-based aid so not looking good (hate that my parents' income, who aren't helping me pay, influences this. And to boot their finances are changing drastically for the worse this year anyway but after they filed taxes, ARGHHH). Regardless:


How many of you paid sticker? Do you regret doing so? What were your other options? Can you sleep at night with almost 300k debt over your head?

If this is too personal, PMs are fine. Just really struggling to make a decision.

[Marshall Eriksen]

Any thoughts about the immigration seminar with Echaveste or the law and economics seminar with Cooter?

[SemperLegal]

Any thoughts about the immigration seminar with Echaveste or the law and economics seminar with Cooter?

I have no information, I just wanted our avatars to be next to each other.

[Kronk]

Still haven't heard back about $, but I've gotten no need-based aid so not looking good (hate that my parents' income, who aren't helping me pay, influences this. And to boot their finances are changing drastically for the worse this year anyway but after they filed taxes, ARGHHH). Regardless:


How many of you paid sticker? Do you regret doing so? What were your other options? Can you sleep at night with almost 300k debt over your head?

If this is too personal, PMs are fine. Just really struggling to make a decision.

Depends on what you want to do. I knew I wanted to do work that qualified for LRAP so I sleep just fine. I think that if I had known I wanted to do BigLaw I probably would've gone somewhere that gave me a bit more money, although honestly unless you're talking about a fuckton of money, it's still going to be a huge amount of debt. For instance, I had 75k at Chicago, which seems like it would've been a good idea to take if I wanted BigLaw, yeah? But when it comes down to it, that's the difference between paying back 180k or 255k. That's a lot of skrilla, for sure, but once you factor in wanting work in CA / Western US plus the three years of your life you can live in the Bay Area vs. somewhere like Chicago, Virginia, etc. I think it's a little fuzzier considering you're going to be in a lot of debt regardless.

At least that was how I looked at it. I would be a little scared to take anything out of the T10 or so unless you're cool not getting the job you want right if things don't go as planned academically (they don't go as planned for most people, I would venture to guess).

[worldtraveler]

Sugarman was great for Torts up until the moment in the course where we started talking about nothing but alternative remedies to the tort system (read: mind-dulling depth on different insurance schemes, for several weeks).

Did it go on for several weeks? I don't remember it being that long at all. I might not have read though. I actually found that stuff interesting (relative to normal law school material) though.

OMG I hated it so much. Talking about actual percentages of premiums for days on end.

The following exchange is another testament to Professor Sugarman:

K professor in class today: "so you covered fraud in your torts class, as an intentional tort, right?"

Cold-called classmate who'd had Sugarman first semester: (silence)

I had Sugarman and I still don't even really know what an intentional tort is.

I also have yet to meet a female student who really enjoyed his class. In my experience, he shut women down a lot when they tried to talk (and a lot of my classmates felt the same way). He's kind of entertaining but I wouldn't take another class with him.

[DreamShake]

Still haven't heard back about $, but I've gotten no need-based aid so not looking good (hate that my parents' income, who aren't helping me pay, influences this. And to boot their finances are changing drastically for the worse this year anyway but after they filed taxes, ARGHHH). Regardless:


How many of you paid sticker? Do you regret doing so? What were your other options? Can you sleep at night with almost 300k debt over your head?

If this is too personal, PMs are fine. Just really struggling to make a decision.

I'm paying sticker, am headed to biglaw, and am on pace to graduate at just over $170k in debt. I didn't have any great options with merit-based aid when I was picking law schools, but after playing around with projected loan payments the last couple of days, I do regret not transferring after 1L to a place with better need-based aid. I love Boalt and the people here, but the fact is some schools average $25k/yr need-based aid. Multiply that by two, and the money you save in GradPLUS loans is >$600/mo over a 10-year schedule. Given the option before law school, I probably would have chosen any peer school with $75k aid over Boalt (or any other peer school). I'd encourage people who're contemplating sticker at one school vs. money at a peer school to figure what the actual dollar difference is in the long run--it's easy to do w/this calculator: --LinkRemoved--. Obviously there are other differences which should also play a factor (e.g., Boalt's access to the CA market if you want to be here but have no prior connection).

[ssanonymous]

Does anyone have pics of Manville or Jackson? The ones from the website make the rooms appear incredibly small.

[5965]

Hi all,

I learned about the LEEWS from this website, but it seems to cost quite a money. Is it worth it? Did you find it useful in your 1L? If so, I wouldn't mind buying it, but just want to hear your thoughts.

Also, given that your housing is set, how early do you think one should come before the school starts? Is August 10th too late?

[Real Madrid]

Quick question about employment for current students:

For those who aren´t necessarily wedded to the idea of staying in California forever (though could definitely be persuaded to), how difficult is it to get a NY big law offer from OCI?

Also, does anyone know of current students or recent graduates who have gotten Magic Circle or Silver Circle offers from London-based firms? I have experience living abroad and foreign-language skills and would be interested to know if it´s totally a pipe dream to think about one day working either in a satellite office for a US firm or for a UK-based firm because it seems like the London firms don´t really recruit outside of east coast-based schools.

Thanks for the great advice so far, guys!

[Rotor]

Quick question about employment for current students:

For those who aren´t necessarily wedded to the idea of staying in California forever (though could definitely be persuaded to), how difficult is it to get a NY big law offer from OCI?

Also, does anyone know of current students or recent graduates who have gotten Magic Circle or Silver Circle offers from London-based firms? I have experience living abroad and foreign-language skills and would be interested to know if it´s totally a pipe dream to think about one day working either in a satellite office for a US firm or for a UK-based firm because it seems like the London firms don´t really recruit outside of east coast-based schools.

Thanks for the great advice so far, guys!

Class of 2012 has quite a few folks in NY and DC. I don't know exact numbers, but guessing it's in the 20s or 30s in NYC. DC it's about a dozen. There were a very good number of NY offices interviewing even back in 2010. [anecdote] Everyone who I am aware of who sought NYC got NYC. But I don't know everyone, and even those I do, I don't pretend to know the inner thoughts/desires[/anecdote]

As for Magic Circle, I know at least three Boalties working for Freshfields one in DC, one in NY, one in London. I also think one classmate is with clifford chance, but I'm not 100% sure. Clearly you cannot bank on UK since it is super niche, but it is possible. (One thing that may help Berkeley's ability to place in London in the future is Prof. C*ron's departure from Boalt to become the Dean of King's College law school in London. He likely won't know you personally, but it could increase Berkeley's reputation in London having him there.)

My opinion: I think being willing to leave CA gives you an advantage in a job search. Top firms like having school diversity on their rosters and so many do NOT want to leave. If you're willing to do so, you're likely to get at least some good interviews.