<p>I was just wondering if someone could tell me this.</p>
<p>They're quite different. In no particular order: (1) With rare exception, law school is a commuter experience and so, unlike undergrad, law school is not necessarily the source and focus of your social life; (2) the teaching method (socratic) is different than most undergraduate experiences. No lectures and no passive learning. You read the assigned cases and the professor covers the material by asking questions. Students who don't volunteer get called on; (3) law school is primarily designed to train your mind; there are often no correct answers (which drives certain types of students nuts); (4)while it varies a lot depending upon the location of the law school, students at urban location law school frequently work part-time as law clerks or other non-school jobs.</p>
<p>I've spoken to many people who were undergrads at the same university where I attended law school. Law students and undergrads described the university and their experiences there very differently.</p>
<p>Most work of a more difficult nature!</p>
<p>Oops, I meant to say More work...more difficult nature.</p>
<p>Whether it is more work or more difficult than undergrad depends a lot on where you did undergrad and what you majored in. While a lot of reading is required in law school, I actually found law school easier than undergrad.</p>
<p>The reading assigned in law school is drier and denser than the reading assigned to undergrads. I found it to be less intrinsically interesting. </p>
<p>I majored in history in college; I also took a fair number of literature courses. Even the most serious literature aims at being entertaining; the same is true of historical writing. That's a far lesser consideration for appellate opinions, which make up the bulk of the assigned reading in law school. Appellate opinions are written arguments about whether trial courts made a mistake in applying the law to the factual findings that the trial court made. </p>
<p>The law professors who put these case books together sometimes try to select appellate decisions dealing with an interesting set of facts. They're also looking for cases that clearly illustrate whatever aspect of the law they're trying to illustrate.</p>
<p>I'd also note that my law school classmates at Boalt were on average significantly smarter than my undergraduate classmates at Stanford. (In those days, Boalt weighed the LSAT score much more heavily than the undergraduate GPA. The reverse is true today.)</p>
<ol>
<li><p>College: You get a 3.7 GPA, you are well over and above the masses. Law School: everyone is in the same group as you when you start.</p></li>
<li><p>College: Your assignment for a class is to read a chapter in a text book about 20 pages long, often takes less than an hour and you underline important parts and understand what you have read. Law school: Your assignment is to read 20 pages in a casebook along with reviewing numerous questions at the end of each case. You read it once and you have no idea what it is telling you. It is, in the words of Scott Turow, author of One L, "like trying to stir concrete with your eyes." You read it again and still have no idea. You keep going over and over it and after about five hours you think you now understand it and you do that for each class (but now go to 3).</p></li>
<li><p>College: You go to class and get a lecture, which you understand, and take notes and those notes become what you will need to study for the exam. Law school: You go to class and the professor calls on you and starts asking questions designed to see if you understood and can apply what you have read to hypothetical situations. Two minutes into that exercise, it becomes apparent that you didn't understand a word of what you read and you feel lost and embarrassed. That lack of understanding continues for about six weeks and then eventually, if you are one of the ones who will make it, light bulbs go off in your head and you suddenly understand what you read during the first week of class. You spend the rest of the first semester always feeling like you are five weeks behind on the learning curve.</p></li>
<li><p>College: you have at least three exams per semester that count toward grade and you may also have homework or other things, like quizzes, that count toward grade. Law school: your grade depends on one thing only -- how well you do on the final exam, the only test you get and the only thing you turn in all semester. To be able to do that exam, you will have needed to have made an outline of everything you learned during the semester and that should be something that is started early and continuously updated as the semester progresses. </p></li>
<li><p>College: students who actually go to class and study will pass; failure is usually due to not doing those things. Law school: you can go to all classes and study 80 hours a week and still fail despite that 3.7 GPA you had in college.</p></li>
<li><p>College: lots of free time during the semester, party on the weekends, not too much worry you will make it. Law school: enormous hours spent out of class trying to learn and understand the law, it starts to consume you and you start dreaming about it. Always worried, in first year, that you are not making it. Your one weekly release is Friday afternoon and evening after the week is over and you go to a bar with numerous other law students and drink yourself into a stupor while discussing law with those fellow students.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I too found law school easier than undergrad but I had been out for 4 years getting a masters and working so perhaps maturity played a part. I was an English major undergrad so the reading load in law school was not overwhelming to me. I really enjoyed law school and the school was the center of our social life - had a great time. I only wish I had enjoyed practicing even a fraction as much as law school.</p>
<p>cartera, I take it you stopped practicing law? What are you doing now?</p>
<p>I disagree about the social life in law school--on the contrary, because especially during your first year, you take all your classes with the same people (anywhere from 70 to 100 typically in a "section"), and because most people are pretty stressed because of the unfamilairity of the material and the process, those other law students, especially the ones in your section, are the only people you can really relate to--so I describe law school social life as X-rated middle/high school. Because it's a relatively small group of people, everybody knows everybody else's business, and because everyone is over 21, there's a lot of "connecting" going on.
Except for a writing class, your entire grade is your exam at the end of the semester. Based on what people say in class, and on out-of-class chatter, you will have an opinion as to who is smart and who is not--but once the grades come out after first semester exams you will find that for the most part, you were completely wrong.</p>
<p>Also, if you have survived the first semester, you will know what you need to go to succeed, and then the rest of the time, it's just a matter of putting in whatever time you must and you will know that you'll be ok.</p>
<p>The first semester of law school is the only time in my life I ever lost weight by accident--from the stress. It's worth it, though--but you REALLY have to want to succeed. No one who really tries ever flunks out of law school; if you're accepted, you are able to do the work--it's just a question of whether you WANT to do the work.</p>
<p>As an engineering major, I certainly hope that law school won't be more difficult.... I don't really think that's possible. Although, I suppose, it will take a considerable amount of time for me to transition from an analytical mode of thinking to a more qualitative one :-.</p>
<p>In undergraduate courses everything you need to know is typically given to the students in the textbooks; whereas in law school the path to success is in the development of one's analytical reasoning abilities.</p>
<p>sachmoney - I have been a headhunter for attorneys for over 20 years. I don't regret going to law school because I really enjoyed the academic part of it, but I didn't enjoy the document-intensive practice of law. It also opened the door to me to have my own business and, to me, that is the best case scenario. </p>
<p>icy - I don't think law school does much to develop analytical skills - I think you either have that when you arrive or not. I also think that, as an English major, very little was given to us. We were graded there on our analytical and critical skills and our ability to put our thoughts onto paper in a well-thought out manner.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I disagree about the social life in law school--on the contrary, because especially during your first year, you take all your classes with the same people (anywhere from 70 to 100 typically in a "section"), and because most people are pretty stressed because of the unfamilairity of the material and the process, those other law students, especially the ones in your section, are the only people you can really relate to--so I describe law school social life as X-rated middle/high school. Because it's a relatively small group of people, everybody knows everybody else's business, and because everyone is over 21, there's a lot of "connecting" going on.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I agree with this in disagreeing with the previous statement (if that makes sense). Law students seem to be singularly focused on the social life within the law program because of its tightly confined social setting. You have little choice but to get to know everybody else in your section, whether you want to or not. </p>
<p>I believe that Turow said the same thing in One-L: that after spending a full year at Harvard Law, he still knew practically nothing about the city of Cambridge besides the Law School (he barely knew anything about the rest of Harvard), and he knew practically nobody outside of the law school. That hardly sounds like a commuter experience to me.</p>
<p>I think drusba's description is the best explanation of law school that I've ever read! </p>
<p>The hardest thing for many students is the perception that the things that worked for them in high school and college will also guarantee them success in law school. They do the reading, outlining, memorizing, volunteer in class or try to spend time with the Professor to develop a "relationship," and then still blow the final exam, or end up with a D or C (or even an F). </p>
<p>There are always one or two students who have given an appearance of having all the answers, but who end up being at the bottom of the class after finals. Someone who didn't seem to work so hard, missed some classes and hardly ever spoke in class may end up on law review. </p>
<p>I don't know if there's any way to predict which students will end up having the best "legal" mind, but it isn't always the students who did the best in college, already have moot court experience or a dozen family members who are lawyers, or who had the highest LSAT. It's voodoo, folks.</p>
<p>There is a knack to success on law school exams. I always thought there were many in my class who knew the material better than I did who didn't fare as well on the exams. The ability to "issue spot," then shotgun those issues and then have time to hit everything else briefly in case it was more important than you thought is not one that is taught in law school. You find out whether you can do it or not in that first set of exams, and if you can't, it is hard to recover from that first set of grades. So much in law school flows from those first exams. I wouldn't down play the helpfulness of a great memory. Particularly, with the first year material, there is a lot of very basic material that must be committed to memory. Analysis is important but so are buzzwords.</p>
<p>i would just add that an undergraduate should not take law related courses assuming that they will in some way replicate what will await them in law school.</p>
<p>a constitutional law class taught in college will not show you what constitutional law course will be like in law school.</p>
<p>while in college i took several such "law" courses -- from political science profs - one who pretended he was teaching the way they would in law school (he was in fact clueless as to what law school is like), one who made no pretense of doing so and was interested in the political and historical context of cases; from adjunct profs who were practicing lawyers - gave a very practical view of their field of practice, but nothing like law school; from a philosophy prof who examined the nuances of "why" law should be what it is. </p>
<p>the courses were interesting -- but in no way reflected what law school was like -- nor did they in any way prepare me for law school. things my college profs thought were important were often either so basic they were passed in the first 2 minutes of discussion, so minor as to be entirely irrelevant, or just off point to what was really at issue.</p>