Course Load for law school Forum

[Kaizug]

I was wondering what the course load was like? How many hours per day are you physically in class and how many hours a day are you studying outside of class?

Thanks

[seancris]

Reasonable question, not sure why no one has answered.

[20130312]

Reasonable question, not sure why no one has answered.

Probs because this question has been answered dozens of times. Search function ftw.

[reformed calvinist]

I was wondering what the course load was like? How many hours per day are you physically in class and how many hours a day are you studying outside of class?

Thanks

Depends on the school. My so's law school has 3 substantive classes per semester plus legal writing. So she had 1 semester of each doctrinal class (Contracts, et al). My school has 4 per semester (but Contracts and Civ Pro are divided into parts I and II) plus legal writing. Personally, I would have preferred more material in one fewer class to less material and one more class, but either way we both took 15 credit hours per semester.

I have class every weekday. Never more than three doctrinal classes in the same day, they each meet 3 times a week, legal writing once a week. Some days I have as few as ~2 hours of class, some days it's as high as almost 4 hour hours. I try to read the next class's assignment after the previous class (i.e. Tuesday's Contracts immediately after Monday's class) while the subject is fresh. Unless the assignment is particularly byzantine, I budget about an hour for 20 pages. Legal writing, is like any other type of writing--it becomes a real thorn in your side as a deadline approaches and sucks up an inordinate amount of your time. Overall it's manageable, just try not to get behind.

The best mental health tip I can give is don't work right up until your normal bedtime--it just makes you feel overworked and miserable. Even if you only have 10 pages of reading that night, if you do it from 11:30-midnight because you procrastinated, and then go to sleep at midnight, it feels bad. I always try to finish my work by 11 at the latest and just mellow out before I go to sleep.