Top Law Schools

Anyone who has any questions about UGA law feel free to fire away.

=

in2win wrote:=

Random punctuation is equally acceptable

is it a good law school?

on UGA: is there any reason you chose UGA over other schools? how do you feel about your decision? how close are you to your classmates? do you spend a lot of time with you fellow 1L's, or is most of your time spent studying by yourself? is it a competitive atmosphere? do you have much of a social life?

on 1L year:
how were 1L classes overall? harder than you expected? is there a lot of classroom discussion and professors calling on students during your 1L year or is it mostly listening to professors talk?

on Athens / campus living:

Is the cost of living really that cheap in Athens compared to other places? Do you have any recommendations on where to live in general, but also some specific apartment complexes in the area? For now I'm thinking I'd rather get a decent 1 bedroom apartment than share with roomates.

laxbrah420 wrote:is it a good law school?

Cute. It's currently ranked 34, so a lot of people on this board would laugh at its viability as an investment in future earning potential, but my experience has been positive thus far.

in2win wrote:on UGA: is there any reason you chose UGA over other schools? how do you feel about your decision? how close are you to your classmates? do you spend a lot of time with you fellow 1L's, or is most of your time spent studying by yourself? is it a competitive atmosphere? do you have much of a social life?

I chose UGA for a few reasons. First, I have siblings that attend undergrad there, second the cost (especially at the instate level which virtually everyone has access to in the second year) is about as cheap as it gets for a tier 1/2 school, and third it feeds the Atlanta market, which isn't the largest in the country by any means, but is up there.

I'm perfectly happy with my decision right now, though that may be due in part to academic success in the first semester.

I'm very close with my classmates that are in my section and there has been plenty of opportunity for interacting with the other 2 sections. The people here, especially considering that they're law school people, are generally pretty fun to hang out with.

I split my time between studying by myself (I really only do group study for exams. That's just how I function, but I study in the library which is basically a social club, so there's plenty of opportunity to take a break and chat.) and hanging out with people with most of my weekday time spent studying and most of my weekend time spent socializing.

Any school where there is a forced mean is going to have a degree of competition, but given that that is the case, I'd say that UGA is much less competitive than I expected. Sure, people want to succeed, but as far as I know there have been no book hiding incidents or anything of that nature and the amount of gunning is fairly minimal.

I do have a social life believe it or not. The amount of time for that is obviously dictated by the workload, but people really make a much bigger deal about the workload than they need to. If you just buckle down and get work done instead of bitching about it, it's quite easy to make time to have fun too.

in2win wrote: on 1L year:
how were 1L classes overall? harder than you expected? is there a lot of classroom discussion and professors calling on students during your 1L year or is it mostly listening to professors talk?

They've been fine. Overall they've been easier than I expected, but again that's based on my result rather than some comparison that I can perform between schools. The amount of discussion is entirely dictated by the professors. Some classes are almost entirely socratic, such that the professor says very little relative to the amount of time students are reponding and other classes are almost entirely lecture with a few opportunities for discussion. I'd say the average class is somewhere in between with a good deal of lecture but still a fair number of questions asked by the professor to students and by students to the professor.

in2win wrote: on Athens / campus living:

Is the cost of living really that cheap in Athens compared to other places? Do you have any recommendations on where to live in general, but also some specific apartment complexes in the area? For now I'm thinking I'd rather get a decent 1 bedroom apartment than share with roomates.

The cost of living really is that cheap. I know several people whose rent is ~300 a month. That said, I don't know where they live specifically, because I'm at 909 Broad this year, which is about an 8 minute walk from the law school. It's a little more expensive, but not having to drive to school AND being walking distance from the bars has been spectacular. Unfortunately, because I made that decision without really looking too thoroughly and because next year I'm also living in a slightly more expensive complex I can't help you too much on the specific apartments that are particularly cheap.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask!

bump

sorry didnt mean to be cute --i just thought it would be interesting to hear what you had to say off the bat.

what's your level of interaction with undergrads?

laxbrah420 wrote:sorry didnt mean to be cute --i just thought it would be interesting to hear what you had to say off the bat.

what's your level of interaction with undergrads?

My personal level of interaction is fairly minimal, but there are plenty of people who hang out with undergrads. It's a situation where you can easily control your level of exposure to the undergrad population (except at bars, where you're sure to find them!).

were you an out of state student? if so , do you plan on staying in georgia? if you were out of state, do you think it will effect your chances of getting hired in Georgia?

how is the overall quality of life in athens? would you say your law school experience was pretty chill?? i keep reading that athens is a very spacious campus that is overall a great place to live, is that true?

Pretentious much?

LOLyer wrote:Pretentious much?

what do you mean

in2win wrote:were you an out of state student? if so , do you plan on staying in georgia? if you were out of state, do you think it will effect your chances of getting hired in Georgia?

how is the overall quality of life in athens? would you say your law school experience was pretty chill?? i keep reading that athens is a very spacious campus that is overall a great place to live, is that true?

Yea, I am out of state. I do plan on staying in Georgia primarily due to the regional value of a UGA JD. From 2Ls that I've talked to initially out-of-state students aren't discriminated against at all with regard to atlanta jobs, but sometimes are in smaller cities that may be worried about whether the student will jump ship after obtaining some experience.

The quality of life is great. The people around athens are generally friendly and everything is pretty cheap. I'm not sure if my law school experience has been chill or not. I think any curriculum is going to be stressful at certain times. Prior to submitting memos or briefs and prior to exams people are fairly stressed, but otherwise it's not so bad. The UGA campus is quite nice and I've very much enjoyed living here. Most people seem to feel the same way.

in2win wrote:

LOLyer wrote:Pretentious much?

what do you mean

It was directed at op. Let me rephrase:

"Create a thread to help people who strive such apparent greatness as you have achieved (and don't hesitate to go out of your way to talk about such achievements), and then bump said thread with it becomes apparent that nobody cares" much?

I noted that I had some academic success. We're on TLS and you find that particular comment to be pretentious?

pballer wrote:I noted that I had some academic success. We're on TLS and you find that particular comment to be pretentious?

More like the entire essence of this thread and everything it stands for.

LOLyer wrote:

pballer wrote:I noted that I had some academic success. We're on TLS and you find that particular comment to be pretentious?

More like the entire essence of this thread and everything it stands for.

A thread wherein I solicit questions because threads like this have been helpful to me in the past? How pretentious!

pballer wrote:

LOLyer wrote:

pballer wrote:I noted that I had some academic success. We're on TLS and you find that particular comment to be pretentious?

More like the entire essence of this thread and everything it stands for.

A thread wherein I solicit questions because threads like this have been helpful to me in the past? How pretentious!

I very much appreciate you taking the time to answer some questions. Don't let the trolls get fed.

How is/was your 1L summer search going? Have you found that there is a large amount of competition from Vandy/Duke/UVA students, or mostly just the Emory crowd?

I'll be there in the fall, looking forward to it!

gregfootball2001 wrote:

pballer wrote:

LOLyer wrote:

pballer wrote:I noted that I had some academic success. We're on TLS and you find that particular comment to be pretentious?

More like the entire essence of this thread and everything it stands for.

A thread wherein I solicit questions because threads like this have been helpful to me in the past? How pretentious!

I very much appreciate you taking the time to answer some questions. Don't let the trolls get fed.

How is/was your 1L summer search going? Have you found that there is a large amount of competition from Vandy/Duke/UVA students, or mostly just the Emory crowd?

I'll be there in the fall, looking forward to it!

No problem. As long as someone is getting some value out of the thread, the trolls are irrelevant
At this juncture it's somewhat difficult to tell where the competition is coming from, but I can say that 1L SAs in particular were really hard to come by. I know of about 7 or 8 people with some sort of SA with a firm and 2 who were able to land NLJ250 1L SAs. That said, people have jobs; they may not pay, but actually finding some sort of job hasn't been too hard for people (as long as they were willing to put in the effort). Personally, after striking out at spring OCI and with my initial slew of firm applications, I blanketed the article III judges in the region and was able to lock up an internship.

So how many spots are there on moot court and mock trial total?

Moot takes 8 1Ls each spring based on competition. They take about ten 2Ls in the fall and a few alternates (five this year). Making moot isn't easy because our team is very good. You can't try out your 3L year.
Mock trial has a required competition that is part of your score in addition to a traditional tryout. You can tryout as a 2L or a 3L. There are about 26 people on the team with about five 3L alternates and seven or eight 2L alternates.

I've already answered a lot of questions in the main UGA thread, but I'm an out of state 2L more than happy to answer PM'd questions. I am not going to check this thread.

There's probably not a need to confirm that info as correct, but it is.

How is the Atlanta market doing hiring wise? Is it friendly towards transplants, or are they super "local ties" centric?

jms1987 wrote:How is the Atlanta market doing hiring wise? Is it friendly towards transplants, or are they super "local ties" centric?

The market seems fairly healthy. Some of the 2Ls that went through OCI this year would know better than I would, but based on talking with a number of 2Ls and with some employers at spring OCI, hiring doesn't seem to be hurting.

Local ties will never hurt, but it doesn't seem to be emphasized nearly as much as a lot of other cities, so long as you demonstrate that you intend to stay in Atlanta.

As to other, smaller cities in the area, local ties seem pretty huge.

Thanks, thats pretty much what I thought.