Things are looking very dire for the students of Western State College of Law at Argosy University. As if its name could afford to be any longer, this school will probably be referred to as “the Beleaguered Western State College of Law at Argosy University” whenever it’s brought up this year.
There are all kinds of concerns that may arise after you’ve sent off your law school applications: you might be waiting to hear any response at all from law schools, you might be waitlisted at your top choice school, or you might have the more enviable problem of deciding between different schools where you’ve been accepted. Since a lot of applicants do get at least two acceptances, they have to find a way to choose between them. And that process of choosing the right school might look a little different from undergrad, so here’s some key advice to get you started on choosing between your choices of law school.
Today — to commemorate it being the third Monday of February, the date on which we honor George Washington’s birthday, colloquially known as President’s Day and popularly understood as a federal holiday that you may or may not get off from work or class — we’re going to take a look at some of the presidents who were lawyers before being elected.
Since my first semester of law school recently ended, I’m ready to share the experience with the LSAT students who may be curious about what is probably the most notorious part of law school: finals. I’ll give you my best description of the finals period first, and then tell you a story that will give a real sense of how it feels to be in the thick of law school finals.
For those of you applying to law school this cycle, we are now in the later stage of the law school application period. I’m sure many of you have noticed there is one constant to this whole process — waiting. You have to wait for your LSAT score, you have to wait for your letters of recommendation, you have to wait for a school to make a decision on your application, etc. Unfortunately, even when a decision is made, your waiting isn’t necessarily over. This post is about two different ways that schools can make you wait longer: by putting you on hold or by putting you on a waitlist.
If law school is in your future, *this* is the period in law school you’ll hear horror stories about (you’ll have to camp out in the library just to keep up with your classes, you’ll become the worst possible version of yourself, etc., etc.) Here’s the reality (from the perspective of one law student).
Like many Americans, you may be reading the torrent of terrible news in the morning and feel the urge to do something important with your life, like defending justice with the help of a JD (that’s what is stands for, right? Justice Degree?).
But there’s much more to becoming a lawyer than increasing your proficiency on logic games and landing a near-perfect LSAT score. If you want to work in the law here is a quick breakdown of the process of becoming a lawyer.
Despite the warnings I heard before law school, the great majority of law students I’ve met are thoughtful, interesting and supportive people. The “gunner” stereotype of a law student is essentially the opposite: a self-important student who sits at the front of every class, takes up class time with their own philosophizing on the law, and ensures that everybody knows just how much they’re studying. My experience has been that the “gunner” rarely exists in its full form, but you do see different pieces of the gunner personality in people you meet in law school.
When I was applying to law school, I ended up having to make some difficult decisions (as we all do). Basically, my options boiled down to School A with some financial assistance, School B with more assistance, or School C with a significant amount of assistance. I distinctly remember discussing those options with a friend/recent graduate. He told me that he’d attended a school with minimal assistance and his loan payments repayments were essentially going to amount to a second mortgage for the foreseeable future. Suffice to say, loans are a significant factor driving many applicants decision to apply to law, and the practical ramifications of taking out significant loans should not be ignored.
When you think of law school, the scene that comes to mind might well be the beginning of the movie The Paper Chase, where a law professor calls on a student the first day of class and ruthlessly interrogates him about a case he didn’t know he was supposed to read. Law school professors are notorious for “cold calling” students — essentially, calling on individuals at random to answer questions without waiting for students to raise their hands. It’s a source of stress, especially when a lot of new law students are used to seminar-style classes in undergrad where they could pick up participation points by giving their opinion about a novel they looked up on Sparknotes that day. Cold calling takes away so much of your control over how and when you participate, so you have to be on your guard all the time. Now a few weeks into law school, I have been cold-called, and I’ve also observed it in my classes almost every day. With that experience in mind, I can answer some of the most common questions people have about professors cold calling in law school.