Beat Law School
Unconventional
Advice for Current and Future Law Students
Michael West
Copyright 2010 by Michael West
Smashwords Edition
All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Contents
Textbooks, Hornbooks, and Commercial Study Aids
Introduction
Many aspects of law school are
shrouded in mystery. A lot of important information that a law
student should have is not widely available, especially in books that
purport to teach students how to do well in law school. In this book
I try to reveal what you need to know to make your time at law school
as productive and memorable as possible. I reveal the truths about
law school that students only learn at late points in their law
school careers, when the knowledge has lost much of its value. The
information is based on my experiences and the experiences of my
former classmates at a top ten law school.
The purpose of this book is to enable current and prospective law students to make better decisions and thereby improve their law school experiences as much as possible. I wrote this book intending that a student could read it in a weekend (a few hours) and begin to act on its principles immediately. For that reason I tried to be concise and straightforward, with the exception of some relevant personal anecdotes.
As for the notion of “beating” law school, this will have different meanings for different students. Depending on your approach, you might “beat” law school by getting into a great law school that you didn’t know would accept you. You might “beat” law school by getting high grades in law school or a great job. And then again you might “beat” law school by doing the minimum amount of work in law school while saving money and making connections and otherwise treating law school as a vacation. If any of these approaches are appealing to you, you will find in this book a number of strategies to help you achieve your goals.
This is the book I wish I had read before law school, instead of the books I did read. Not only did I waste my money buying those books, but I wasted money buying into all the strategies that those books recommended for law school success. And I’m sure that I could have done even better in law school had I never met a law school advice book.
Unfortunately, most law school guides simply take advantage of prospective law students’ fears. These guides tell young pre-Ls what they want to hear – that law school is a horrific, cutthroat ordeal, that only the strong survive, and that those who want to get ahead must spend lots of money on commercial study aids to do it. That’s simply not true, and you have a right to know.
Let me also tell you what this book is not, so that you can decide if it is really right for you or not. I do not relate “baby” advice. I will not tell you how many pencils you should have with you at all times, and that you should sharpen said pencils. I will not tell you that you should get a good night’s sleep before an exam or important interview. If you’re thinking about law school, you’re an adult, and you don’t need to be taught how to pack your backpack, because you know these things already. While there will be some overlap with other books and even with some mainstream advice, my focus here is to tell you what it is about law school that will be different from your expectations, and what mainstream advice to watch out for as incomplete, inaccurate, and biased.
Chapter 1
This
and the following two chapters are perhaps the most important in the
entire book as they address whether and how you should apply to law
school in the first place. Let's start by being extremely realistic.
The decision to attend law school is a decision to enter into a
transaction with the law school. You agree to pay tuition for three
years, and in exchange, you receive a JD.
The point of entering into this transaction is to receive something that is of greater value than your tuition. The general idea is that a JD is worth more than the tuition it costs because the sum of your future employment opportunities and income streams will be greater than your initial investment in law school. A degree from a top law school can open all kinds of doors to high-paying careers.
How do you decide if you should make this investment in a graduate degree? One of the common reasons for students to go to law school is that these students enjoy law or at least what they perceive law to be and want to practice it. For many prospective law students, this is the case. Whether they decided when in elementary school or in college, they decided they wanted to study and practice law.
Sometimes people go to law school purely for the money they expect to be making when they graduate and take a job at a big law firm. Making money is a worthy goal and can be rewarding all by itself. Most people have to work for a living, and why not work in a high-paying field? Another common argument is that if you’re going to be unhappy in your job, you might as well get paid a lot to do it. The money you can potentially make as a lawyer will always be one of the background reasons for attending law school, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Another common reason to go to law school is that you don't know what you want to do with your life and you're not sure you want to be out of school yet. You may also have heard that law school and being a lawyer are prestigious. You want to be prestigious; therefore you decide to go to law school. This is my personal favorite.
For a typical college student, all of these reasons are present to varying degrees, and that's normal. My recommendation to you is to take some of the following steps to make sure ahead of time that law school is not the wrong decision for you.
Test the Waters
If you are thinking about law school you should begin by taking a few law classes as an undergraduate, whether offered by your college, your university's law school, or a law school close by. If you are out of school, audit some classes at a nearby law school. You should know what you're getting into by taking a class in which the subject matter is made up mostly of court cases.
In addition to trying out some law classes, you should seek out some practicing lawyers and talk to them over lunch or coffee. You must do this. Ask them what they do on a daily basis, then ask yourself if this is something you might be happy doing yourself. Also talk to some current law students and recent law grads and ask them what their law school experience was like, and then ask yourself if that sounds like something you can or want to handle for three years.
Law school is very reading and writing intensive, so if you hate reading a lot, or if you hate writing a lot, law school will not be a good fit for you. On the other hand, if you enjoy a large amount of reading and writing, and you enjoy the law classes that you try out before law school, you may even enjoy law school.
Deciding whether or not to go to law school is a huge decision. If you can see yourself practicing law and you think you enjoy the subject matter, you should go, especially if you can get into a top school. A good way to look at law school is as a self-investment. You are investing in improving your mind, specifically your thinking abilities, and this investment will serve you for the rest of your life. However, consider that there are various other ways to improve your mind outside of law school, and law school often implies that you may have to practice law for at least a little while after you graduate.
If you have done some of the above analysis and determine that you want to pursue your self-investment via law school, I invite you to continue reading to see the various strategies that you can use to get the most from your experience. In addition, as you read, you will learn more about the law school experience and what it’s like to be a lawyer, and in doing so you will be better able to determine if this path is right for you. Law school is neither an awful experience nor a walk in the park, but it can be fun and memorable if you enjoy the subject matter and are committed to the end result.
Chapter 2
GPA
and LSAT
You've decided to go to law school. Now the most important task is to make it into the best schools possible so that you have several good options to choose from. The most important factors that law schools consider are their applicants’ LSAT scores and GPAs. These are often the only factors that law schools consider. I can’t overemphasize that these two numbers are practically the totality of your application, regardless of what you hear to the contrary.
It sounds impersonal but that is how it is. Law schools only care about their rankings and their rankings are influenced most directly by the statistics of the students they admit, the most important statistics being the grades and LSAT scores of these admitted students. Your well-meaning college guidance counselor might be clueless about this and tell you how important extracurricular activities are to your application. They're not. Not unless you have something truly spectacular, and even then it might not help.
A close friend of mine in college was senior class president, a member of nearly every student organization on campus, had a terrific GPA, but did very poorly on his LSAT. He was rejected everywhere and managed to get into one good school only because of some very powerful string-pulling.
Many of my friends from college had spectacular GPAs but did not take LSAT preparation seriously. The common strategy among them was to do five problems every evening before going out to bars. All of these smart but overconfident students with high GPAs did not get into good law schools because of their low LSAT scores. Some did so badly on their LSATs that law school was no longer even an option for them. My point is that the LSAT is an important exam that you can’t afford to take lightly. So even if you think you have some great connections with law school deans, don't neglect studying for the LSAT, as this one exam will make the difference between success and ruin as far as law school admission is concerned.