Graduate Degree and Law School Forum

[Godric32]

Hello folks,

If this has been answered before, please let me know. I couldn't find anything on the topic.

This question directed more towards law students who earned a graduate degree (e.g., PhD, MS, MA) BEFORE going to law school. The question is did you find law school to be more difficult than your graduate program? Was it similar? Did you feel that it was advantageous to have gone through a graduate coursework before law school?

Again, this has nothing to do with admissions (that topic has been answered multiple times), but more towards whether you found law school to be just as difficult, if not more so than your graduate coursework.

Cheers

[admiringatticus]

I personally found law school to be much more difficult. I had very limited coursework during my graduate degree and had A LOT of time to manage my own research. Law school was a ton more wok and harder for me to grasp than big, lofty graduate school ideas.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I found law school much easier for the above reason - grad school was an awful lot of coming up with my own ideas and plotting out a research agenda and you're not done until you've thought of everything and produced new scholarship and had it picked apart multiple times. It's really amorphous. Law school was just learning what was on the syllabus and covered in class. I'm not going to claim I was at the absolute top of my class, but the work was definitely easier for me.

Having gone through the degree and having done a lot of close reading, and having developed a high tolerance for tedium in my first grad program definitely me do better in law school, though.

[banjo]

It's easier to get good grades in a PhD program, but harder to do almost anything else. Harder to get in, harder to stand out, harder to get published, harder to graduate, harder to get a job.

[grizz20]

I echo banjo's and a nony mouse's statements, with some to add.

I have a PhD in O. Chem. IMO, law school is much easier. Job hunting is much easier - got a BigLaw job with minimal effort. If you are smart enough to get into a top graduate school, law school will be straightforward. My advice: pay attention in class to know what the prof wants, read the casebook, and don't get behind. Forget any extra shit like reading a supplement, note cards, etc. You will get drowned and probably do worse. Make many friends, they will cover your ass when you need it. Get into a journal, pref. law review, intern at a fed or state court.

If you want to practice law, don't get a graduate degree after law school.

Best of luck OP