jackdanielsga wrote:
The primary reason I ever was interested in law school is that I wanted to learn the law (especially property and international law - I also have an MBA) and I want to improve my writing skills - which at the moment kinda suck.
...
- Does my plan fundamentally make sense? Am I going to dramatically improve my writing, and is the law school really the only source for the guided knowledge of the law?
...
- Exactly how much work outside the classroom should I be expecting in the first year? The curriculum calls for Contracts 1+2, Torts, Property, and "Lawyering Foundations" 1+2 which is GSU's term for legal writing. 11 credits in the fall, 10 credits in the spring.
I am an evening law student with 2/4 years under my belt. I am top 10 in my class, hold an executive position on my school's law review, and I work 40+ hours per week. I also have a bachelor's degree in creative writing, a paralegal certificate, and 5 years' experience as an in-house paralegal. I will attempt to avoid snark and judgment; however, I want to state at the outset that I think moving forward with your stated plan would be a very bad decision for you. I think that a much better path would be to take some legal research courses from a local community college or undergraduate institution that has a paralegal program and to audit some bachelor's courses in creative writing, comparative literature and/or literary theory.
Your stated goals are to 1) "learn the law" and 2) improve your writing skills. I will address the second goal first. Your principal question regarding this goal is "am I going to dramatically improve my writing?" My answer to this questions is an emphatic NO. First, there is almost no emphasis placed on becoming a better writer in law school. In my experience, it is expected that students enter law school with strong writing skills. Moreover, students with weak writing skills are at a significant disadvantage because nearly all grades are entirely dependent on a single written exam.
You will take one or two legal writing courses in your first year--that's it. At my school there were two, one each semester. The first focused almost exclusively on learning how to cite cases and other legal sources properly. The format for your paper is given to you in advance (usually some sort of internal document a.k.a. "The Law Office Memo"), and you are expected to adhere to it strictly. You will be taught the IRAC (Issue, Rule, Application/Analysis, Conclusion) method of legal writing, and at least in your first semester will likely be graded partly on whether you structure your argument according to the method or not. Though this is an oversimplification, it is not a stretch to say that your first semester writing grade will be based on your ability to properly cite sources according to the Bluebook, whether or not you can follow instructions on how to structure your paper, and whether you were able to write objectively. There was little--if any--guidance given on style beyond major mistakes and/or where legal writing vastly differs from everyday prose. If your school has a second required writing class, as mine did, it will likely focus on trial documents such as legal memos and appellate briefs. Because these are persuasive documents, you will be taught how to effectively structure an argument (IRAC, but with language that paints your client in the best possible light). The second class will require more research, but is otherwise very similar to the first semester class. Because this course requires a persuasive tone the strength of your argument will be graded, but your grade will still be heavily dependent on Bluebooking and structure, which the professor will expect you to have mastered during your first semester.
It cannot be stressed enough that the 1L writing classes are heavily focused on litigation documents and documents that would be written internally at a litigation firm. As you have stated that you do not plan to practice as an attorney, these courses will be of limited value to you. You will produce maybe five documents, and within a year you will be so far removed from them that you will have to pull them up to even remember how they are formatted. Writing, in any form, is a muscle that must be exercised in order to remain strong. If you don't plan on being a practicing litigator, then these courses will likely be a waste of time and money. While the IRAC method is certainly helpful as an analytical tool outside the realm of litigation, it can be learned for free online. If you really desire feedback, just take a paralegal writing class--you will learn the same information, do the same writing exercises, and save a hell of a lot of money.
If you truly want to become a better writer, then my suggestion is to audit some bachelor's level English courses, which you can do at GSU. If you're really dying for a degree, get a bachelor's in literature from GSU--the four year price tag, including books, is $2k more than your first two years would cost at the law school (and, pro tip, book costs are usually overestimated for English majors because a lot of your books are novels rather than traditional textbooks). By taking the literature track (GSU also offers a creative writing track and a rhetoric and composition track), I think you will hone all of the skills that you are looking for. You will study the the masters in the American and British canons and compare and contrast their work. This alone will make you a better writer. By reading and analyzing the works of the masters, you will learn and absorb what makes "good" writers good, and you will learn what styles you prefer. You'll also learn literary theory and apply it in your many, many written assignments.
During my undergrad, my upper-level literature and theory classes all consisted of two graded assignments: a midterm paper and a final paper. The papers will require you either to read and analyze a single text as a literary critic, or to read, analyze and compare two or more texts. Your professors, all or most of whom will have PhDs in literary fields, will be incredible resources to you as someone who wants to become a better writer. If you begin your drafts early, your professors will be happy to provide advice on style as well as substance; because this is undergrad, they are expecting that you are still learning how to write, and it is their job to give you guidance. In your third and fourth years, there are plenty of elective slots. Some of these will need to be filled with advanced literature classes, but I recommend taking any fiction writing classes that are offered, and any other writing classes that you find interesting including some of the rhetoric classes to further hone your argument skills. By doing the lit track you'll be able to take fiction and story writing classes that will dramatically improve your writing while avoiding the poetry writing classes that will be a waste of your time. There will be more than enough room in your schedule as a literature major to take all the writing classes you want--as a creative writing major I took a ton of advanced lit classes (e.g. American Short Stories, American Novels, and English Renaissance Drama, to name a few). After all is said and done, you will have another bachelor's degree, dramatically improved writing, analytical and argumentation skills, and more than enough money saved from not doing law school to audit some of the paralegal courses at the local community college.
This brings me to your second goal: to "learn the law," particularly international law, and your associated question, "is law school really the only source for guided knowledge of the law?" The answer to your question, on several levels, is another emphatic NO. I won't get into it too much, as these topics are discussed ad nauseam in TLS forums and elsewhere, but the idea that one attains a "guided knowledge of the law" by going to law school is perhaps the biggest myth surrounding law school. Law school teaches you to "think like a lawyer" (TM), but it does not really teach you "the law," at least not in any practical sense. The best short and dirty definition of thinking like a lawyer that I can come up with is to be able to digest a set of facts, identify any possible legal issues, and analyze both sides of all of those issues. Except for on the Bar Exam, you will generally only have to do this in one area of law at a time, e.g. property. This is a microcosm of practice. The days of the general practitioner are effectively gone. Lawyers generally practice in one or a few specific fields, such as real property, trademarks, patents, etc. These special fields are where lawyers have actual knowledge, and that knowledge comes from practice, not from law school. "Guided knowledge," as you call it, comes from working under a more experienced attorney who can show you the ropes as you begin your career; from there, you must continue to learn throughout your career to remain effective and relevant. With this in mind--that is, the fact that lawyers continue to learn throughout their careers and do much of that learning on their own through work-related research and outside reading--I think what you really need is to determine what area of law it is that you are interested in knowing more about and focus your free time on learning about it.
You've stated that you want to learn about "international law." This is an immensely broad topic, but given your MBA background, I assume what you really want to know about is cross-border transactions. With that in mind, I'd recommend some business law classes, international business law classes, and classes on international transactions. Familiarize yourself with the UCC (Uniform Commercial Code, particularly Article 2), CISG (UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods), and since you have an IT background, you'll probably want to keep up with the EU General Data Protection Regulation, which I'm sure you already know about. Couple this with some legal research classes from your local community college's paralegal program and I am sure you will keep yourself busy.
This post is much longer than I originally intended, but I wanted to make sure that I got my point across. I really do not think that law school is the right decision for you given your age, goals, intent regarding practice, and financial aid situation. As someone who works full time and goes to law school at night I can tell you from experience that it will be very difficult for you to complete if you are doing it to become a better writer and learn a few things about a few topics. You should hone your writing skills
before considering law school, and if you don't intend to practice then you should scrap the idea altogether and learn the areas that you are interested in on your own. It is the law school industrial complex (*snark*) that mystifies the law. The information you want is out there, you just have to find it. The brutal truth is that even if you were to finish law school, you'd likely find that you still lacked the knowledge that you'd hoped to gain, and that you lacked the money to buy the books that you needed to gain it.