Dear Pre Law students: Forum

[Trev315]

Please, please do your research about what lawyers actually do before applying and enrolling into Law School.

Please be very weary of enrolling in Law School if you do not plan on being an attorney.

This seems like obvious advice, but after being an aspiring Law Student for the past three years, I've spent hours and hours (and hours) reading about employment prospects, school profiles, blogs, the job market, etc. After gaining a pretty good grasp and understanding about the different types of people who apply to Law School, I've reached a conclusion.

An overwhelming portion of Law School students either do not want to be attorneys or are not sure if they want to be an attorney. Students tend to apply for not only the wrong reasons, but upon graduation they seem to bash the profession and schooling as a whole because they made an uninformed and possibly poor decision to go to Law School.

I'm not here to tell people to steer clear of Law School at all. But you may want to reconsider and dig deep into your own reasoning as to why you want to apply if you fit one or more of the following profiles:

You scored high on the LSAT
Your family consists of lawyers
You want to make lots of money
You feel that a JD will make you more competitive in addition to your undergraduate degree
You want to stay a student
You want to go into business
You are pressured by your family
You like to argue
You watch "law-like" TV shows
Etc.

Not everyone is going to be 100% sure they want to be an attorney because that is virtually impossible. But please make a very well informed decision. Law school is extremely rigorous (obviously) and job prospects are not so good. Don't be one of those students who graduate, attempt to practice for a year, quit, then say "I'm glad a left, law school was horrible and being an attorney is even worse. I should of gotten my MBA".

You more than likely need to have a certain passion about being a lawyer if you want to be happy with your career decision.

[zombie mcavoy]

OK then.

[Johann]

These are the green light situations for going to law school:

1) you are a sociopath
2) you don't like to travel around the world and think a 2 week vacation sounds like only something socialist euros could get behind
3) you like staring at a computer screen all day and never seeing the sun
4) you are argumentative
5) you don't have friends
6) you don't care about sustaining a healthy lifestyle
7) you jack off to money

[ub3r]

These are the green light situations for going to law school:

1) you are a sociopath
2) you don't like to travel around the world and think a 2 week vacation sounds like only something socialist euros could get behind
3) you like staring at a computer screen all day and never seeing the sun
4) you are argumentative
5) you don't have friends
6) you don't care about sustaining a healthy lifestyle
7) you jack off to money

What if I prefer to jack off into money?

[TLSModBot]

These are the green light situations for going to law school:

1) you are a sociopath
2) you don't like to travel around the world and think a 2 week vacation sounds like only something socialist euros could get behind
3) you like staring at a computer screen all day and never seeing the sun
4) you are argumentative
5) you don't have friends
6) you don't care about sustaining a healthy lifestyle
7) you jack off to money

8 ) you don't have a family and never want one OR
9 ) you hate your family

[Atmosphere]

These are the green light situations for going to law school:

1) you are a sociopath
2) you don't like to travel around the world and think a 2 week vacation sounds like only something socialist euros could get behind
3) you like staring at a computer screen all day and never seeing the sun
4) you are argumentative
5) you don't have friends
6) you don't care about sustaining a healthy lifestyle
7) you jack off to money

This probably applies to a good amount of neurotic TLSrs

[science burner]

These are the green light situations for going to law school:

1) you are a sociopath
2) you don't like to travel around the world and think a 2 week vacation sounds like only something socialist euros could get behind
3) you like staring at a computer screen all day and never seeing the sun
4) you are argumentative
5) you don't have friends
6) you don't care about sustaining a healthy lifestyle
7) you jack off to money

What if I just want to be able to threaten to sue people all the time?

[TLSModBot]

These are the green light situations for going to law school:

1) you are a sociopath
2) you don't like to travel around the world and think a 2 week vacation sounds like only something socialist euros could get behind
3) you like staring at a computer screen all day and never seeing the sun
4) you are argumentative
5) you don't have friends
6) you don't care about sustaining a healthy lifestyle
7) you jack off to money

What if I just want to be able to threaten to sue people all the time?

Ah, you want to become a professional slip-n-fall victim then.

[science burner]

These are the green light situations for going to law school:

1) you are a sociopath
2) you don't like to travel around the world and think a 2 week vacation sounds like only something socialist euros could get behind
3) you like staring at a computer screen all day and never seeing the sun
4) you are argumentative
5) you don't have friends
6) you don't care about sustaining a healthy lifestyle
7) you jack off to money

What if I just want to be able to threaten to sue people all the time?

Ah, you want to become a professional slip-n-fall victim then.

Depends. How much does it pay?

[TLSModBot]

These are the green light situations for going to law school:

1) you are a sociopath
2) you don't like to travel around the world and think a 2 week vacation sounds like only something socialist euros could get behind
3) you like staring at a computer screen all day and never seeing the sun
4) you are argumentative
5) you don't have friends
6) you don't care about sustaining a healthy lifestyle
7) you jack off to money

What if I just want to be able to threaten to sue people all the time?

Ah, you want to become a professional slip-n-fall victim then.

Depends. How much does it pay?

This is the wrong forum. Maybe check out Top Assholes Forum

[science burner]

What if I just want to be able to threaten to sue people all the time?

Ah, you want to become a professional slip-n-fall victim then.

Depends. How much does it pay?

This is the wrong forum. Maybe check out Top Assholes Forum

When I click that it just goes back to the TLS forum index though

[CaptainJapan]

Cockiest 7th post in TLS history

[bearsfan23]

These are the green light situations for going to law school:

1) you are a sociopath
2) you don't like to travel around the world and think a 2 week vacation sounds like only something socialist euros could get behind
3) you like staring at a computer screen all day and never seeing the sun
4) you are argumentative
5) you don't have friends
6) you don't care about sustaining a healthy lifestyle
7) you jack off to money

More great advice from Johann. Even though he spends 10 hours a day posting on TLS, he will claim he worked 120 hours this week and then complain more about how miserably being a lawyer is.

Please don't send me another angry, threatening PM btw. That's just pathetic

[TLSModBot]

These are the green light situations for going to law school:

1) you are a sociopath
2) you don't like to travel around the world and think a 2 week vacation sounds like only something socialist euros could get behind
3) you like staring at a computer screen all day and never seeing the sun
4) you are argumentative
5) you don't have friends
6) you don't care about sustaining a healthy lifestyle
7) you jack off to money

More great advice from Johann. Even though he spends 10 hours a day posting on TLS, he will claim he worked 120 hours this week and then complain more about how miserably being a lawyer is.

Please don't send me another angry, threatening PM btw. That's just pathetic

Yeah - be fair to the rest of us and insult bearwhatever in public where we can see it.

Also how do you bill for TLS lurking?

[Trev315]

Not sure what happened here. Johann, was that an attempt at being funny? Anyways, I was just trying to help out anyone thinking about going into Law School!

And also wanted to point out how many people matriculate into Law School and then talk bad about it and the profession, as if it's hell and no one would like it. Just because you went for the wrong reasons and made a bad decision, don't try to convince everyone not to go. Maybe convince them to be well informed about the profession. (Not anyone in particular, just common point of view that is very apparent in the field)

Most importantly, if your thinking about LS, Just make sure you WANT it. That is all

[RCSOB657]

These are the green light situations for going to law school:

1) you are a sociopath
2) you don't like to travel around the world and think a 2 week vacation sounds like only something socialist euros could get behind
3) you like staring at a computer screen all day and never seeing the sun
4) you are argumentative
5) you don't have friends
6) you don't care about sustaining a healthy lifestyle
7) you jack off to money

What if I prefer to jack off with money?

FIFY YMMV?

[kalvano]

Why in the hell are you capitalizing "law school" and "law students?"

[Mack.Hambleton]

My mom says I like to argue


Am I gonna make it

[Johann]

Please don't send me another angry, threatening PM btw. That's just pathetic

Yeah - be fair to the rest of us and insult bearwhatever in public where we can see it.

Also how do you bill for TLS lurking?

sorry guys, this was the PM you missed out on

Anybody who says Johann is a good poster needs to have their head examined. He almost singlehandedly makes TLS unreadable

I'd be happy to hash out any questions you have about my advice. If you think my advice is worse than the blind copying and pasting of retake than you prolly don't understand the legal industry. As someone who worked in biglaw and shitlaw and has friends in basically every possible outcome from law school - politics, government, boutique, shitlaw, bigla, midlaw - I probably have one of the most complete pictures of the legal landscape of the regular posters. If there's something in particular you have questions about or think I'm off base about, I'm happy to discuss.
I honestly am only sending this pm because I feel bad for people who think the legal industry is anything it's not and if you think I'm the worst poster on here, you probably are a very disillusioned 0L who actually knows nothing about the legal profession.[/quote]

[Johann]

i don't bill for tls lurking unless im doing something that doesn't demand my full attention. a training/huge conference call/ lunch. ALmost all of my tls posts are off the clock. I'm pretty inefficient and prolly spend like 50-55 hours in the office to get 40 billables for the week. This week wasn't even bad and I billed like 55 hours, but I was constantly thinking about work. Monday I was in the office from 7 am - 2 am and billed like 17.5 hours. Tuesday - Friday 9-6 because I wanted to spend some time with my gf. Then I spent my whole weekend or what felt like my whole weekend outside of bball games, the gym, making easy dinners working on stuff I should have done during the week but was too drained to do. And today I spent a lot of time on a non billable project. So prolly somewhere around 50-55 billable hours this week but I didn't really do anything fun. But yeah If I had been in the office late every day I wouldnt have had to work over the weekend, but sorry for wanting to eat dinner with my SO.