Top Law Schools

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-maye ... thy-living

"Although law students enter school with fairly normal rates of depression (about 8-9 percent), upon matriculation, the rate of depression more than quadruples (to about 40 percent), according to the Dave Nee Foundation, which works to end the stigma of depression among lawyers. This striking change can't be blamed solely on the rigors of a professional education. Whereas 96 percent of law students experience extreme stress, only 70 percent of medical students and 43 percent of graduate students are extremely stressed. "

Quote from article on Huffington Post

Is this real?

Yes. It is a serious problem, and much of it can probably be attributed to the awful job market lawyers face. Knowing that the odds are stacked against you makes life unpleasant.

The 60+ hour weeks many lawyers work certainly do not help, either.

Doctors and dentists still have the higher suicide rate.
#WINNING

but are the reforms even possible? Moving away from a single test determining your entire grade and dumping the Socratic method?

Finnpower wrote:but are the reforms even possible? Moving away from a single test determining your entire grade and dumping the Socratic method?

Or maybe cutting class sizes and closing TTTs, so the woefully unprepared and unqualified don't make the worst decision of their lives?

NorCalLaw wrote:Yes. It is a serious problem, and much of it can probably be attributed to the awful job market lawyers face. Knowing that the odds are stacked against you makes life unpleasant.

The 60+ hour weeks many lawyers work certainly do not help, either.

60 hours a week is pretty manageable though, especially if you're including weekend work. Lots of people work worse schedules in other industries. But I've gotten the sense from TLS that biglaw is more commonly 80+ with occasional hellish lunges into the 100 range.

ymmv wrote:

NorCalLaw wrote:Yes. It is a serious problem, and much of it can probably be attributed to the awful job market lawyers face. Knowing that the odds are stacked against you makes life unpleasant.

The 60+ hour weeks many lawyers work certainly do not help, either.

60 hours a week is pretty manageable though, especially if you're including weekend work. Lots of people work worse schedules in other industries. But I've gotten the sense from TLS that biglaw is more commonly 80+ with occasional hellish lunges into the 100 range.

Nah it's more like 60 with 80+ during the bad weeks and 40 or less in the slow ones.

The big shock to me is how 96% of law students can be experiencing extreme stress. Way more than 4% of people are getting good jobs out of OCI and first year students are usually optimistic in an almost sad way. I understand how it would be tough in your second and third year to have nothing lined up, but this data suggests that even what amounts to a three year vacation can be extremely stressful for a lot of people, which is just weird.

EDIT: Although I just read the article and the author says "law students really do hide books from each other." Maybe the fact that she expects people to believe BS like that in the 21st century is a sign that she is loony.

FWIW, i looked into the author. she graduated summa from a top LAC and top 1% at GULC. apparently, she played the law school game really well.

http://www.hahnloeser.com/references/fe ... 9f29e1.pdf

Tiago Splitter wrote:

ymmv wrote:

NorCalLaw wrote:Yes. It is a serious problem, and much of it can probably be attributed to the awful job market lawyers face. Knowing that the odds are stacked against you makes life unpleasant.

The 60+ hour weeks many lawyers work certainly do not help, either.

60 hours a week is pretty manageable though, especially if you're including weekend work. Lots of people work worse schedules in other industries. But I've gotten the sense from TLS that biglaw is more commonly 80+ with occasional hellish lunges into the 100 range.

Nah it's more like 60 with 80+ during the bad weeks and 40 or less in the slow ones.

The big shock to me is how 96% of law students can be experiencing extreme stress. Way more than 4% of people are getting good jobs out of OCI and first year students are usually optimistic in an almost sad way. I understand how it would be tough in your second and third year to have nothing lined up, but this data suggests that even what amounts to a three year vacation can be extremely stressful for a lot of people, which is just weird.

EDIT: Although I just read the article and the author says "law students really do hide books from each other." Maybe the fact that she expects people to believe BS like that in the 21st century is a sign that she is loony.

People on TLS have talked about that kind of shady/sociopathic gunner behavior at TTTs though. IDK if it's real, but every article like this seems to talk about LS in terms that sound more like Cooley than Columbia. Which maybe kinda makes sense given how many more TTTs than T14s there are and what a tiny percentage of students will actually find real legal jobs.

drumstickies wrote:FWIW, i looked into the author. she graduated summa from a top LAC and top 1% at GULC. apparently, she played the law school game really well.

http://www.hahnloeser.com/references/fe ... 9f29e1.pdf

Yeah I figured she went somewhere good based on the rest of the article. And maybe she was the book-hiding master at GULC, but with a little thing called the internet I don't see that strategy working quite so well in 2014.

It's also possible that "extreme stress" could be as little as a single passing moment of extreme stress, although I don't know why it would be higher in law school than med school. Maybe it really is so many law students at terrible schools feeling the pressure of no job.

Didn't look at whatever study she is using, but 95% confident that it is full of shit.

ymmv wrote:Doctors and dentists still have the higher suicide rate.
#WINNING

lol'd

maybe she should use her profound intellectual skill to learn the meaning of the word 'matriculation'

drumstickies wrote:FWIW, i looked into the author. she graduated summa from a top LAC and top 1% at GULC. apparently, she played the law school game really well.

http://www.hahnloeser.com/references/fe ... 9f29e1.pdf

How did she graduate only magna cum laude from GULC if she was in the top 1%?

"Ms. Mangan is a summa cum laude graduate of Pomona College, where she was an Academic All-American swimmer.
She earned her J.D. degree from Georgetown University Law Center, graduating magna cum laude and in the top 1% of
her class."

js1663 wrote:

drumstickies wrote:FWIW, i looked into the author. she graduated summa from a top LAC and top 1% at GULC. apparently, she played the law school game really well.

http://www.hahnloeser.com/references/fe ... 9f29e1.pdf

How did she graduate only magna cum laude from GULC if she was in the top 1%?

"Ms. Mangan is a summa cum laude graduate of Pomona College, where she was an Academic All-American swimmer.
She earned her J.D. degree from Georgetown University Law Center, graduating magna cum laude and in the top 1% of
her class."

GULC only offers two or three summas each year. With over 500 students in each class, you can be top 1% without being summa.

http://www.law.georgetown.edu/campus-se ... 3-2014.cfm

js1663 wrote:

drumstickies wrote:FWIW, i looked into the author. she graduated summa from a top LAC and top 1% at GULC. apparently, she played the law school game really well.

http://www.hahnloeser.com/references/fe ... 9f29e1.pdf

How did she graduate only magna cum laude from GULC if she was in the top 1%?

"Ms. Mangan is a summa cum laude graduate of Pomona College, where she was an Academic All-American swimmer.
She earned her J.D. degree from Georgetown University Law Center, graduating magna cum laude and in the top 1% of
her class."

how low was her LSAT to only get into GULC is real question. what a scrub

Tiago Splitter wrote:
Yeah I figured she went somewhere good based on the rest of the article. And maybe she was the book-hiding master at GULC, but with a little thing called the internet I don't see that strategy working quite so well in 2014.

Now students will need to up their game and start taking down servers that have useful information using DDoS attacks.

not sure why 96% are depressed. adversity is a motivation. try harder, be inspirational

Mredav44 wrote:not sure why 96% are depressed. adversity is a motivation. try harder, be inspirational

Not sure how? It seems like it could be an easy place to get depressed. You don't seem to understand how depression works.

Also, despite the internet, at my school I've heard of students (not overheard it myself though) already talking about hiding books for an LRW assignment due.

Attax wrote:

Mredav44 wrote:not sure why 96% are depressed. adversity is a motivation. try harder, be inspirational

Not sure how? It seems like it could be an easy place to get depressed. You don't seem to understand how depression works.

Also, despite the internet, at my school I've heard of students (not overheard it myself though) already talking about hiding books for an LRW assignment due.

With how miserable med school is, the disparity in numbers makes me skeptical.

Attax wrote:

Mredav44 wrote:not sure why 96% are depressed. adversity is a motivation. try harder, be inspirational

Not sure how? It seems like it could be an easy place to get depressed. You don't seem to understand how depression works.

Also, despite the internet, at my school I've heard of students (not overheard it myself though) already talking about hiding books for an LRW assignment due.

That would literally mean 48 out of 50 people in your average classroom are depressed...

Attax wrote:

Mredav44 wrote:not sure why 96% are depressed. adversity is a motivation. try harder, be inspirational

Not sure how? It seems like it could be an easy place to get depressed. You don't seem to understand how depression works.

Also, despite the internet, at my school I've heard of students (not overheard it myself though) already talking about hiding books for an LRW assignment due.

is your lrw on a hard curve
(though either way, wtf)

Brut wrote:

Attax wrote:

Mredav44 wrote:not sure why 96% are depressed. adversity is a motivation. try harder, be inspirational

Not sure how? It seems like it could be an easy place to get depressed. You don't seem to understand how depression works.

Also, despite the internet, at my school I've heard of students (not overheard it myself though) already talking about hiding books for an LRW assignment due.

is your lrw on a hard curve
(though either way, wtf)

whatever it takes to get to the top

i can't blame em

I think the depression figures may be accurate but its impact and the comparison to other graduate programs remains flawed because of the deceptive control population. The issue is more that Americans are rejecting adulthood, because it's fucking terrible, and becoming "depressed" whenever they must face it - i.e., whenever they age a certain margin beyond college. There's float for this margin, and it might take longer for some folks to hit a depressed phase than others, and law school serves as a catalyst but it's probably not the driving depressive force in and of itself (just a path of least resistance). I bet excluding certain sub-groups (like the excessively wealthily and well socialized), depression skyrockets for most of our generation post-college. That happens to hit in law school, but its pretty shitty universally.

jbagelboy wrote:I think the depression figures may be accurate but its impact and the comparison to other graduate programs remains flawed because of the deceptive control population. The issue is more that Americans are rejecting adulthood, because it's fucking terrible, and becoming "depressed" whenever they must face it - i.e., whenever they age a certain margin beyond college. There's float for this margin, and it might take longer for some folks to hit a depressed phase than others, and law school serves as a catalyst but it's probably not the driving depressive force in and of itself (just a path of least resistance). I bet excluding certain sub-groups (like the excessively wealthily and well socialized), depression skyrockets for most of our generation post-college. That happens to hit in law school, but its pretty shitty universally.

i feel like you're overthinking this one