Harvard 1L will take some questions about Harvard. Forum

[Reverethong]

Hi, thanks for answering questions!

I was just wondering what a typical day's schedule looked like for you?

thanks again.

[pleasetryagain]

does dropping the h-bomb at the bar help you get laid?

[Mr. Matlock]

does dropping the h-bomb at the bar help you get laid?

Hank.... I expect more from you. At least check out my question on the 1st page.

[pleasetryagain]

does dropping the h-bomb at the bar help you get laid?

Hank.... I expect more from you. At least check out my question on the 1st page.

touche. completely missed that on my read-through.

[mallard]

DCD: I haven't really tried it. In other settings, girls react positively, though.

Hi, thanks for answering questions!

I was just wondering what a typical day's schedule looked like for you?

thanks again.

Excellent question, I think this is a really important thing to be aware of. It's going to be different for everybody, of course. Mine is not going to be at all representative and I'm not sure it was at all successful. I guess a normal day would be let's say waking up and doing two hours of reading (or a practice test), morning class until around noon, lunch (ideally free at some event), afternoon class at one point or another, two more hours of reading before or after afternoon class, maybe an hour or two of outlining, and in the evening, maybe another two hours of reading, legal writing work, job applications, or whatever. On weekends I'd normally try to do legal writing work and read the entirety of the following week's material for one class or another (depending on the class, might take between four and six hours). Near the end of the semester weekend days were spent with morning and afternoon practice tests or sometimes with studying and trying to improve my outlines. I burnt out a few weeks ago and have been a bit of a bum during finals, mostly just taking practice exams.

[Mr. Matlock]

What about study groups? More comfortable going it alone, or are there section groups worth participating in... if you get invited? Not sure how it works. But am interested in your opinion on the subject.

[mallard]

What about study groups? More comfortable going it alone, or are there section groups worth participating in... if you get invited? Not sure how it works. But am interested in your opinion on the subject.

I outlined with a partner. It was good and we kept each other honest. We were less efficient than we might have been because we were both very interested in the "deeper" (i.e. policy - not that deep) questions in every subject, which generally are only applicable to the few liminal issues on 1L exams. Do not divide up the work. Do not outline with more than three or four people. Do not invite to your study group people in whom you have romantic interest.

Exam-taking groups are an entirely different matter. It's good to get maybe a half dozen people, I'd say, because then every issue will be hit by somebody. Also, you get confirmation that you're not going at it completely wrong, and you get to see alternative approaches.

[IHaveDietMoxie]

Thank you much for the info. I thought I would inform you, since you mentioned classical music, that H has holds pretty great contemporary/electronic music concerts right near the law school every year, and some of them are really interesting.

You also have New England Conservatory across the river if you ever want to hop in and see a free symphony/chamber music/jazz concert. Jordan hall is a national landmark and worth seeing at least once.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Hall


Cheers.

[mallard]

Thank you much for the info. I thought I would inform you, since you mentioned classical music, that H has holds pretty great contemporary/electronic music concerts right near the law school every year, and some of them are really interesting.

You also have New England Conservatory across the river if you ever want to hop in and see a free symphony/chamber music/jazz concert. Jordan hall is a national landmark and worth seeing at least once.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Hall


Cheers.

Hey, awesome! I'm pretty sure this is more informative than any of my posts.

[heyguys]

Not to hijack or whatnot, but I just wanted to say that I think tinman's sense of YLS is on mark. The sheer density of Ph.D.s, Rhodes/Marshall/Truman, many years of amazing work experience, etc is somewhat intimidating at first, and it's something that I don't think you would get at HLS. One of the nicer things about HLS is that those (like me) coming straight out of undergrad can avoid feel like the "exception to the rule" so much because there will be a large number of people who just scored well on their LSAT, worked hard in ugrad, and got in. At Yale, there just aren't many people straight out of ugrad, which can be intimidating at first and doesn't lend itself to feeling a real sense of community until you just get used to the different atmosphere. Ha, it's just hard to talk contracts when the person on your left graduated from ugrad in 2000 and has already sold his first start-up company for a lot of money and the person on your right has his Ph.D. in philosophy. Then the person behind you was an ibanker for the better part of a decade, and the person in front of you spent five years working for the financial times. And then there you sit with your B.A. in [humanity], wondering what you have to contribute to this conversation.

As to what Mallard said about student quality earlier (regarding not much of a difference between Harvard and BC), my gut is to agree wholeheartedly, but I've heard a number of faculty series talks on legal academia in which they generally say that the primary difference in quality of different jobs isn't really the faculty (because the market is so competitive faculty tend to be top-notch through the top 50 at least, or so these profs have said), but in their opinion there's a significant drop off in student quality beyond the top 10 or so. I don't necessarily agree with their assessment, but then again I don't really have any meaningful sense of what other schools are like, so I take it with a grain of salt. I'm just writing that to suggest that what Mallard said (and what I tend to agree with) is not the only perspective on these things.

[mallard]

Not to hijack or whatnot, but I just wanted to say that I think tinman's sense of YLS is on mark. The sheer density of Ph.D.s, Rhodes/Marshall/Truman, many years of amazing work experience, etc is somewhat intimidating at first, and it's something that I don't think you would get at HLS. One of the nicer things about HLS is that those (like me) coming straight out of undergrad can avoid feel like the "exception to the rule" so much because there will be a large number of people who just scored well on their LSAT, worked hard in ugrad, and got in. At Yale, there just aren't many people straight out of ugrad, which can be intimidating at first and doesn't lend itself to feeling a real sense of community until you just get used to the different atmosphere. Ha, it's just hard to talk contracts when the person on your left graduated from ugrad in 2000 and has already sold his first start-up company for a lot of money and the person on your right has his Ph.D. in philosophy. Then the person behind you was an ibanker for the better part of a decade, and the person in front of you spent five years working for the financial times. And then there you sit with your B.A. in [humanity], wondering what you have to contribute to this conversation.

As to what Mallard said about student quality earlier (regarding not much of a difference between Harvard and BC), my gut is to agree wholeheartedly, but I've heard a number of faculty series talks on legal academia in which they generally say that the primary difference in quality of different jobs isn't really the faculty (because the market is so competitive faculty tend to be top-notch through the top 50 at least, or so these profs have said), but in their opinion there's a significant drop off in student quality beyond the top 10 or so. I don't necessarily agree with their assessment, but then again I don't really have any meaningful sense of what other schools are like, so I take it with a grain of salt. I'm just writing that to suggest that what Mallard said (and what I tend to agree with) is not the only perspective on these things.

Thanks for stopping by - I was reading to see if you had a question about Harvard Law, but it looks like you already know everything there is to know.

[DoubleChecks]

DCD: I haven't really tried it. In other settings, girls react positively, though.

Hi, thanks for answering questions!

I was just wondering what a typical day's schedule looked like for you?

thanks again.

Excellent question, I think this is a really important thing to be aware of. It's going to be different for everybody, of course. Mine is not going to be at all representative and I'm not sure it was at all successful. I guess a normal day would be let's say waking up and doing two hours of reading (or a practice test), morning class until around noon, lunch (ideally free at some event), afternoon class at one point or another, two more hours of reading before or after afternoon class, maybe an hour or two of outlining, and in the evening, maybe another two hours of reading, legal writing work, job applications, or whatever. On weekends I'd normally try to do legal writing work and read the entirety of the following week's material for one class or another (depending on the class, might take between four and six hours). Near the end of the semester weekend days were spent with morning and afternoon practice tests or sometimes with studying and trying to improve my outlines. I burnt out a few weeks ago and have been a bit of a bum during finals, mostly just taking practice exams.

Hey Mallard! Saw you as a very regular poster last yr. thanks for answering questions. ive read through the whole thread and i dont really have a question not already answered -- but clarifying your response here, it seems that throughout the semester, the amount of time put into ALL reading/studying/class in a given day is roughly equivalent to working a job, correct? i had a friend at a T50 school say she spent 10 hrs a day every day studying/reading (excluding class time) and freaked the hell out of me.

[mallard]

DCD: I haven't really tried it. In other settings, girls react positively, though.

Hi, thanks for answering questions!

I was just wondering what a typical day's schedule looked like for you?

thanks again.

Excellent question, I think this is a really important thing to be aware of. It's going to be different for everybody, of course. Mine is not going to be at all representative and I'm not sure it was at all successful. I guess a normal day would be let's say waking up and doing two hours of reading (or a practice test), morning class until around noon, lunch (ideally free at some event), afternoon class at one point or another, two more hours of reading before or after afternoon class, maybe an hour or two of outlining, and in the evening, maybe another two hours of reading, legal writing work, job applications, or whatever. On weekends I'd normally try to do legal writing work and read the entirety of the following week's material for one class or another (depending on the class, might take between four and six hours). Near the end of the semester weekend days were spent with morning and afternoon practice tests or sometimes with studying and trying to improve my outlines. I burnt out a few weeks ago and have been a bit of a bum during finals, mostly just taking practice exams.

Hey Mallard! Saw you as a very regular poster last yr. thanks for answering questions. ive read through the whole thread and i dont really have a question not already answered -- but clarifying your response here, it seems that throughout the semester, the amount of time put into ALL reading/studying/class in a given day is roughly equivalent to working a job, correct? i had a friend at a T50 school say she spent 10 hrs a day every day studying/reading (excluding class time) and freaked the hell out of me.

There are many ways to do it and I'm really not sure which one is best.

There is certainly the "treat it like a job" approach. This will work well in the middle of the semester, when you've already learned to read the cases but haven't had to start handing in memos or study for finals. It's likely you'll be spending a bit more time on it than on a job at the front and tail end of the semester.

There's my approach, which is the "do it until you can't do it anymore" approach. This works well until you burn out.

There's the "do it like undergrad" approach. This consists of reading cases for the first two weeks and then stopping, then working twelve to fourteen hours a day when exams come around.

There are probably some others. It's not really conceptually difficult stuff, so the time is really just spent making sure you know everything, getting your materials in order, becoming really conversant with it, etc.

[Mr. Matlock]

Not to hijack or whatnot, but I just wanted to say that I think tinman's sense of YLS is on mark. The sheer density of Ph.D.s, Rhodes/Marshall/Truman, many years of amazing work experience, etc is somewhat intimidating at first, and it's something that I don't think you would get at HLS. One of the nicer things about HLS is that those (like me) coming straight out of undergrad can avoid feel like the "exception to the rule" so much because there will be a large number of people who just scored well on their LSAT, worked hard in ugrad, and got in. At Yale, there just aren't many people straight out of ugrad, which can be intimidating at first and doesn't lend itself to feeling a real sense of community until you just get used to the different atmosphere. Ha, it's just hard to talk contracts when the person on your left graduated from ugrad in 2000 and has already sold his first start-up company for a lot of money and the person on your right has his Ph.D. in philosophy. Then the person behind you was an ibanker for the better part of a decade, and the person in front of you spent five years working for the financial times. And then there you sit with your B.A. in [humanity], wondering what you have to contribute to this conversation.

As to what Mallard said about student quality earlier (regarding not much of a difference between Harvard and BC), my gut is to agree wholeheartedly, but I've heard a number of faculty series talks on legal academia in which they generally say that the primary difference in quality of different jobs isn't really the faculty (because the market is so competitive faculty tend to be top-notch through the top 50 at least, or so these profs have said), but in their opinion there's a significant drop off in student quality beyond the top 10 or so. I don't necessarily agree with their assessment, but then again I don't really have any meaningful sense of what other schools are like, so I take it with a grain of salt. I'm just writing that to suggest that what Mallard said (and what I tend to agree with) is not the only perspective on these things.

My opinion of Yale Law has taken an incredible nose dive in the past 4 hours.

[mallard]

This happened when Objection and I were talking about wearing our Harvard sweatshirts in the Class of 2012 thread last spring or summer - some Yale kid came around and started saying stuff like "this is exactly what Harvard people are like, such a good reason not to go there," or something. It's absurd and it's always the same "everyone else is so special here" bullshit. Your inability to contribute meaningfully to a discussion of contracts does not indicate anything about Harvard Law.

[ylc]

oh, another thing -- I'm very curious about the new Winter Term course, so I hope you or someone will come tell us about it next month!

[mallard]

oh, another thing -- I'm very curious about the new Winter Term course, so I hope you or someone will come tell us about it next month!

What I know so far is that it's collaborative (the homework is all teamwork), it's ungraded (well, P/F), and I don't know anybody who isn't planning on spending most of January wasted off their ass. It sounds like it's going to be a very fun combination; I'm really hoping the class itself is enjoyable.

[Nom Sawyer]

Awesome thread Mallard... really like getting your perspective. Ok, so two questions,

1. Whats the cheapest living you can get around HLS? (As in are the dorms at Gropius the cheapest or perhaps a triple off campus?)

2. Any chance of them every bringing back that skating rink? Is there a nice, close ski resort nearby? (This is very important to my HLS decision )

[mallard]

Awesome thread Mallard... really like getting your perspective. Ok, so two questions,

1. Whats the cheapest living you can get around HLS? (As in are the dorms at Gropius the cheapest or perhaps a triple off campus?)

2. Any chance of them every bringing back that skating rink? Is there a nice, close ski resort nearby? (This is very important to my HLS decision )

I'm pretty sure off-campus housing is going to be cheaper than Gropius. Cambridge is expensive but it's not that bad. Of course, if you have to sign a year-long lease rather than just the nine months, it might end up being more expensive. But of course you get a lot more for your money with an off-campus apartment, too. The very cheapest will be way off campus in Allston or something like that, and you'll have to take the T, but there are going to be relatively cheap apartments just a few blocks away, and (somewhat more expensive) even just across the street.

As for the rink, I guess we'll see in the winter. I haven't heard much about it but it looks like there's a chance it'll be part of the "in this economy" cuts. As a beach volleyball court it's a pretty good space (it's the same thing, right? they convert it in the winter?).

[02082010]

--ImageRemoved--

FTFY

[mallard]

180 picture...

Like I said, the clinicals have very good reputations, and I spent awhile considering joining the Defenders. I'll try out for law review, I think, and I did some subciting with another journal that seemed to like me, so I'll try and move up the ranks there if I don't get LR. I go to some ACS, ACLU, and JOLT events based on my legal interests and political instincts. I don't think I'm going to get too involved in anything except a journal, having spent a lot of time in undergrad putting up flyers and emailing people to ask them to attend things. I may try and start doing some stuff at the Berkman Center, which is just a really cool place.

[tinman]

[TheLuckyOne]

Mallard, nice to have you back.

Do you have any insight into int'l foreign educated students? Are those mostly superstars or there are some average ones?

[Lysis]

Thanks so much for answering questions, Mallard!

I've been to Harvard (campus--never toured the law school) several times and I have a slight conflict with ASW. Did you go, did you enjoy it, and would I be missing anything important if I skipped it?

I'd also be interested in what you think the biggest differences between HYS are, since that's what I'm most stressed about right now, but I don't want to derail the thread into a silly "My school has more Rhodes scholars than yours" contest. Maybe you could PM me about that if you prefer.

[mallard]

tinman, I don't know what to say. You came here to respond to a perceived attack on your school that was due to a sloppy reading of what I said. What I wrote was part of a critique of Harvard as the center of production of legal culture. I was not in any way speaking about student quality, nor about the production of law clerks or professors. Perhaps once you have grades you'll start worrying about things like responding to points that have actually been made, interpreting people's statements in line with the intentions behind those statements, and basic cause and effect (again, the fact that you may or may not be able to hold your own with your Yale classmates does not bear on student quality at any other school). I also note that you took time out of your second tirade to call me a gunner. I'm here answering questions and you're jumping into my thread to remind everybody how much better your school is than mine and talking about how networking is a better use of time than learning law. So I'll let the audience decide who looks more like a gunner here.

TheLuckyOne, you'll have to distinguish between LLM students and JD candidates. International students studying for a JD do tend to be at quite a high caliber. As for LLMs and the even rarer SJD students, I think they're sort of on a different track, and I haven't interacted with them much. They already have a degree so they obviously bring a higher level of substantive knowledge to bear on class discussion.

Lysis, I enjoyed ASW a lot. You will be missing free food and an opportunity to get to know your classmates. ASW will not show you the dark side of a school, so it's not as though you're going to miss on some essential detail that would completely change your calculus.

As for the differences among HYS, I'll just tell what I know from only having attended one. Harvard being bigger has its ups and downs, which have been discussed a lot. Obviously the very top x students at Harvard will be better than the very top x students at Yale or Stanford, but in general it's not quite as picky as the other two. Yale is best at getting into academia and clerkships and Stanford is best if you want to work in venture capital, intellectual property, or on the West Coast. Harvard may be best for politics or business, but I'm not really sure there's a huge difference there. One thing Harvard has going for it against the other two schools is the political diversity of its faculty which was a big issue in recent hiring. It's just excellent to be learning the law from Scalia clerks and Brennan and Marshall clerks simultaneously.

If you like history and particularly legal history you want to be at Harvard. That's really what I was discussing before, although apparently the Yale kids thought I was saying my friends were smarter than theirs (despite the fact that I had immediately said kids here are not that much smarter than kids at other Boston-area schools...). There is something very intense and special and yet sometimes troubling about experiencing what Langdell meant us to experience, attending the same school as Holmes and Brandeis and Frankfurter and Friendly and Brennan and Scalia. This is what I was saying before.