<p>Hi!</p>
<p>I intend to start law school roughly 1 year from now (I've taken the LSAT but will formally apply to law school so that I can be admitted for the Fall 2007 term). In the meantime I will be working as an engineer preparing CAD design sketches and programming with Visual Studio; time consuming and demanding work to be sure, but not necessarily the type of work to best help me prepare for law school.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any suggestions (recommendend reading, activities etc.) on how best someone in my position could best prepare for law school. Unfortunately I don't get to do much researching, reading and writing right now so I would expect that doing that in my spare time would probably be a good way to start preparing, but your specific suggestions would be welcome.</p>
<p>Prepare how? Prepare academically, in terms of doing stuff that will help you once you get there? Research the law school process? All of the above? :)</p>
<p>Where do you want to go to school?</p>
<p>ariesathena, I was thinking more in terms of developing the skills necessary to prepare academically to become a successful law student, though advice on "all of the above" is also welcome</p>
<p>Mr Payne, I'm not sure which law school I will go to (I'm just now trying to determine which ones in the DC/Va area I can get into -- based on the info offered in another thread, George Mason may be where I end up studying law); you do raise a good point; it's likely that different law schools may emphasize different things and some skills may be more important to have when studying law at Law School A as compared to Law School B...</p>
<p>I think that your first step is to learn what you'll need to know in law school. If you pick up a book about law school (Robert Miller's Law School Confidential being an excellent one), you can get a general idea of what you'll be learning in law school, and, more importantly, how to do well there.</p>
<p>That all said, if you haven't taken many research and writing courses, take them when you are working - see if you can just take a night class somewhere. If you can take a technical writing class, DO SO. It will help you immensely. Technical writers tend to be very good at legal writing, because there are many similiarities. </p>
<p>You will have to learn to crawl around the library at law school and do research, but they'll teach you most of that at law school. It could be good for you to take a research class (history or something), just to get used to that.</p>
<p>As for actual law school classes -your engineering education should have been more than enough. If you feel like it, pick up legal commentary, which will teach you a bit about thinking like a law student. There are a lot of law professors who write short articles or blogs that are excellent.</p>
<p>Final piece of advice: after four years of engineering, relax! 1L year is stressful, and the fall of 2L year is crazy busy, with school, interviews, journals, moot court, etc. Expect to spend 18 months straight working very, very hard.</p>