Top Law Schools

Just being a curious 0L. Ive heard the negatives of law school. I'm now interested to hear about the good side of law school. (If any)

I love law school. I'm like top 1/3d at a top 50 school in the south. The weather is decent, the surrounding area is nice, I have enough cash from COL loans that I can do as I please, and I don't have to worry about much other than twice a year for a one month period. We get awesome vacations (spring break, christmas, summer) and my friends in school are real cool and on the same schedule. There's lots of chicks within the school as well as in other grad programs in the university at large, as well as in the city who seem to dig law students. The material is fascinating and the faculty is approachable and loves to talk about. The work is cool too. People at work seem happy and interested in discussing the academic nature/current events of law just as much as strategy in their law practices. Noone's bashful about sounding smart or nerdy, and no one at work or the people I talk to in school is condescending in their arguments...though people do like to argue (which is cool). The work is intellectually tough, but not exceedingly so, and therefore the days go by super fast as you get lost inside the puzzles. Clients and partners are appreciative of work that is well done and you feel accomplished when you send out good work.

I've done probably about a dozen info interviews so far (i.e. getting beers with lawyers I know), and everyone raves about their full law school experience and are jealous I'm starting. It's once it's over where things get more iffy.

If you went to a big public undergrad and loved college, you'll hate law school.
If you went to a big public undergrad and hated college, you'll love law school.
If you went to a small liberal arts school and loved college, you'll love law school.
If you went to a small liberal arts school and hated college, you'll love law school.

What about liking medium sized private university?

JohannDeMann wrote:
If you went to a small liberal arts school and loved college, you'll love law school.
If you went to a small liberal arts school and hated college, you'll love law school.

Interested in your explanation for this.

Hipster but Athletic wrote:What about liking medium sized private university?

The better the school the higher likelihood you'll like law school. Also depends on grade inflation at the private.

TheUnicornHunter wrote:

JohannDeMann wrote:
If you went to a small liberal arts school and loved college, you'll love law school.
If you went to a small liberal arts school and hated college, you'll love law school.

Interested in your explanation for this.

If you hated liberal arts school, it's prolly cause it kicked your ass. Law school will be easy comparatively/nothing new.

If you liked liberal arts school because small like school and intellectual, law school is the same. Clique and just like high school.

If you hated liberal arts because of the small size, then this does not apply to you. But I figure most people wouldn't go to liberal arts school without liking the atmosphere of high school/ small class size.

Almost everyone I know misses law school. Other than finals it was basically a 3 year cruise, but instead of lounge singers there were intellectual circle jerks.

DELG wrote:Almost everyone I know misses law school. Other than finals it was basically a 3 year cruise, but instead of lounge singers there were intellectual circle jerks.

..

sublime wrote:It beats the shit out of a real job. It really isn't that hard, and a good deal of the stress is manufactured bullshit.

I can honestly say I prefer working to law school. But I miss the shit out of my LS friends (who are now all over the damn place).

..

I signed up for law school because 2 weeks vacation a year wasn't nearly enough. I have not been disappointed.

I loved law school. If I could go back, I would.

JohannDeMann wrote:If you went to a big public undergrad and loved college, you'll hate law school.

This seems like nonsense. I went to a big public undergrad, liked college a lot, and like law school a lot.

JohannDeMann wrote:If you went to a big public undergrad and loved college, you'll hate law school.
If you went to a big public undergrad and hated college, you'll love law school.
If you went to a small liberal arts school and loved college, you'll love law school.
If you went to a small liberal arts school and hated college, you'll love law school.

went to undergrad at a state school with 30K+ students, absolutely had a blast, still loving law school.
Then again, my undergrad degree made me pull 2-3 all nighters/week so the amount of work in law school seems to be not as much of a burden to me... may be different for others but idk.. maybe not.

hth

went to a private LAC, loved it (while appreciating it's flaws), fine with law school. But I don't think that paradigm holds, unless you're at a tiny school like Chicago or Yale. The 90 person section is a very different experience from the 8-12 person discussion/presentation seminar.

Definitely a lot more g-chat in the former.

.

brotherdarkness wrote:I love law school. I like nearly all of my classmates and professors, the coursework is generally interesting (especially once you get to start choosing which classes you take), I enjoy the intellectual circle-jerk, the vast majority of the semester is analogous to a vacation, and law school is basically an extension of college (which was a blast).

This is awesome.

JohannDeMann wrote:If you went to a big public undergrad and loved college, you'll hate law school.
If you went to a big public undergrad and hated college, you'll love law school.
If you went to a small liberal arts school and loved college, you'll love law school.
If you went to a small liberal arts school and hated college, you'll love law school.

Looks like I'll be loving law school from this analysis.

I'm loving the responses so far! Thanks for sharing!

you, too, can have all this fun for the low price of $300,000!

I loved law school. Had a blast, made wonderful, life-long friends.

It's the reality of graduating and $240k of debt pissing in my cereal that's harder to deal with.

ManoftheHour wrote:

brotherdarkness wrote:I love law school. I like nearly all of my classmates and professors, the coursework is generally interesting (especially once you get to start choosing which classes you take), I enjoy the intellectual circle-jerk, the vast majority of the semester is analogous to a vacation, and law school is basically an extension of college (which was a blast).

This is awesome.

fwiw I don't find law school to be at all like college, they are unique and positive in their own ways. I think a lot of this has to do with location (for example, moving from basically a suburb / township with my car to the middle of Manhattan) and choice of school, but also I've worked way harder academically in law school than I did in college (and I worked a lot in college too), so undergrad was a lot more "fun" in the traditional drug abusing/music festival attending/beerpong tournament dominating sense.