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Hello Smart People,

I am currently in the midst of wondering whether law school is what I imagined it is + my experience from university classes (e.g., read cases and debate about them, and write sample decisions etc), because everyone from TLS seems to say is alot worse than people imagine it to be (I dont watch CSI/Law + order etc).

I was wondering if anyone can link me/pm me a sample syllabus for a class, and available readings, so I can get a taste of what a day is like for a typical law student

Some sample work related stuff would be great (e.g., if you are a summer intern, your typical workload)

jimmierock wrote:
I am currently in the midst of wondering whether law school is what I imagined it is + my experience from university classes (e.g., read cases and debate about them, and write sample decisions etc)

What in the hell...?

You do a lot of reading, the professor calls on random people to answer questions about the cases you read, rinse and repeat all semester.

What do you think it is and I will tell you if it is that. I am a current 1L.

I will tell you it is hell. If you thought that it was going to be a magical place, then you might want to reconsider.

kalvano wrote:

jimmierock wrote:
I am currently in the midst of wondering whether law school is what I imagined it is + my experience from university classes (e.g., read cases and debate about them, and write sample decisions etc)

What in the hell...?

You do a lot of reading, the professor calls on random people to answer questions about the cases you read, rinse and repeat all semester.

Can you provide a sample reading? and the approximate workload? (page #)? Do people actually do all the readings? Do you need to? Etc. I am just wondering about the specifics.

swimmer11 wrote:What do you think it is and I will tell you if it is that. I am a current 1L.

I will tell you it is hell. If you thought that it was going to be a magical place, then you might want to reconsider.

What is "hell"? I dont expect it to be a magical place nor would I want it to be.

I am just curious what a typical day looks like.

The day-to-day workload isn't that bad. If you treat it like a full time job you'll get your work done and have plenty of time to screw around. But if your college experience is anything like mine was, you don't currently have a "day-to-day workload" so some adjusting could be in order.

jimmierock wrote:

kalvano wrote:

jimmierock wrote:
I am currently in the midst of wondering whether law school is what I imagined it is + my experience from university classes (e.g., read cases and debate about them, and write sample decisions etc)

What in the hell...?

You do a lot of reading, the professor calls on random people to answer questions about the cases you read, rinse and repeat all semester.

Can you provide a sample reading? and the approximate workload? (page #)? Do people actually do all the readings? Do you need to? Etc. I am just wondering about the specifics.

Varies by professor. Some assign 20 pages a class, some 50 or 60.

Whether you have to depends on you. I know people who didn't do a damn thing and did well, and people who read everything twice and still didn't do well.

You should an on doing the reading.

Right now sucks.. The first half of the semester was awesome way better than having a job. If you can grind for like a month in a half straight no days off for the like two semesters you'll thrive in law school. If not you'll hate it. I love it. Two months easy street. Month and a half grind. Month off. Awesome IMO.

Can some one send me a sample .>.> please. I like concrete stuff to look at.

Believe it or not I have a pretty decent work habit in UG. I can study up to 10hrs a day without too much trouble.

casebriefs.com, lawnix.com, oyez.com lol....but in all seriousness its not that as bad as people on TLS says it is. If you treat it as a full time job go on to class in the morning, take notes, and do your readings in the library after class, then go home and just chill, but there will be days where you have a take home midterm (depending on the school) or you have a memo due, when you will need to put in a lot more work, but still its not that bad as long as you organize your time.

btw the memos will bite you in the ass especially when you are forced to use the library to do your research.

This might be a silly Q, but what is the typical full student course load? same as UG? 5 courses? so you are expecting to do about 100 pages of reading per day?

jimmierock wrote:This might be a silly Q, but what is the typical full student course load? same as UG? 5 courses? so you are expecting to do about 100 pages of reading per day?

naw i'd say like 60-70 I don't know how it is at others schools but I'm pissed i spent money on legal research and writing books. I open then only when referencing specific things. I could have literally got the old editions for like $20 live and learn I guess. Bu you really only have 3 classes to prep for usually on my hard day I have four. Actually i'd say I read like 50 pages a day not that I really think about it.

It depends on the school. I had 5 substantive classes plus a LRW class for 1L.

I have about 4 hours of class per day and a reading load of 60-100 pages per day.
The reading is not like undergrad - figure on a bare minimum of 2 hours reading per day.
Don't skip. You can get away with not having read it for class, but you won't learn the material properly if you haven't read it before class.
Then you need to outline. That'll take time, as will exam prep.

I also get assignments for legal research and legal writing which take additional time. Put simply, if you're not putting in 8 hour days (a solid 40 hours per week), you will not keep up.

Sending a sample syllabus is difficult. My 1L year, while all of my professors gave a syllabus, the syllabus didn't tell us what to read for each class. The professors would tell us what to read for the next class during class and we'd just write it down. If a professor tells you at the beginning of the semester what to read for each class, expect that it won't stay that way because it's more likely than not that many days you won't cover all of what was assigned and you'll start to get behind.

jimmierock wrote:Hello Smart People,

I am currently in the midst of wondering whether law school is what I imagined it is + my experience from university classes (e.g., read cases and debate about them, and write sample decisions etc), because everyone from TLS seems to say is alot worse than people imagine it to be (I dont watch CSI/Law + order etc).

I was wondering if anyone can link me/pm me a sample syllabus for a class, and available readings, so I can get a taste of what a day is like for a typical law student

Some sample work related stuff would be great (e.g., if you are a summer intern, your typical workload)

The workload should be the least of your worries. The pitiful job outlook should be your biggest worry.

The workload is a joke compared to having a full time job.

I'll revisit this post when I start prepping for finals.

It should be mentioned that many of the cases are dry/boring/confusing/old. Some casebooks have great notes explaining the law, some have nothing. Some professors will grill you about the most minute details of a 6 page case, while others will never talk about cases at all (just give you hypos to think through). In other words, mere page numbers alone cannot explain the "workload."

dextermorgan wrote:It should be mentioned that many of the cases are dry/boring/confusing/old. Some casebooks have great notes explaining the law, some have nothing. Some professors will grill you about the most minute details of a 6 page case, while others will never talk about cases at all (just give you hypos to think through). In other words, mere page numbers alone cannot explain the "workload."

Even "modern" cases (looking at you, Scalia).

jimmierock wrote:Can some one send me a sample .>.> please. I like concrete stuff to look at.

Believe it or not I have a pretty decent work habit in UG. I can study up to 10hrs a day without too much trouble.

I really don't think a concrete example would really be helpful unless you can actually look at the assigned reading. Almost all 1L classes use casebooks that are not "textbooks" in the way that you think of them. They are essentially compilations of edited and annotated primary sources. "Textbooks" in the way an undergrad would think of them come in the form of hornbooks and supplements, some of which your professor may assign.

The reading will be difficult to manage initially, even for very simple rules because simply doing the reading is insufficient. The language will vary in difficulty. Some modern appellate opinions are pretty straightforward. Many modern SCOTUS opinions are obtuse. Opinions from the SCOTUS in the 18th and 19th Centuries will be hard. I pity those who, like I did, have to read King's Bench opinions from the 16th and 17th Centuries (mostly for torts and crim law).

Sometimes 20 pages will take you 20 minutes to read, but more often, it'll take better than an hour. In some cases, 20 pages will take all day.

jimmierock wrote:This might be a silly Q, but what is the typical full student course load? same as UG? 5 courses? so you are expecting to do about 100 pages of reading per day?

At my school, we have 4 doctrinal classes per semester and LAWR (legal analysis, writing, and research). LAWR is graded and curved here, but at some schools it is not.

You asked for specifics so here is what I usually have:

Torts- 30-40 pages
Crim- 20-30 pages
Civ Pro- varies greatly, some days 50 and other days 10
Ks- usually she assigns 40-50 pages, but we only get through like 20 per class cause she's slow and easily distracted.
LAWR- usually have busy work and some readings per class. There are three major assignments, a client advice letter, a closed research memo, and an open research memo.

And that is per class, I only have 3-4 classes per day. I'd say less than 100 per day. Obviously this is just average, some days more and some days less.

In all honesty, so far this year hasn't been too bad, other than when I had memos due. Those weeks were hell. But now its all about outlining and finals.