<p>I have some questions about the law school environment. I'm more of a math/science person, but law school is something I may be interested in.</p>
<p>What is law school like? For example, what would be a typical homework assignment? Are the exams in essay format? </p>
<p>How are the classes? Are students required to participate in class discussions? Do students do a lot of oral presentations? Also, before graduating do they have to do a mock trial type thing? Thanks.</p>
<p>There aren't really "homework assignments" beyond the reading for the day. The exams are essays. You don't usually have oral presentations, but you do have to participate in class. Generally, professors will cold-call; some profs will instead have certain students or groups of students be "on-call" for a class or a week. </p>
<p>There isn't a mock trial, but most schools, or at least a lot of them, will require that you participate in moot court, which is generally a simulated appellate court argument.</p>
<p>Difference between mock trial and moot court?</p>
<p>Mock trial simulates a jury trial, so it's the kind of thing you'll see on something like "Law & Order", with a jury, witnesses giving testimony, etc. Moot court, as I mentioned simulates an appellate argument (this has actually come up in a few episodes of L&O, too), where you're generally arguing about issues of law, not fact. Moot court cases are also almost always civil suits.</p>
<p>You will get a mock trial if you take a course called Trial Practice, which used to be universally required but is now optional at many law schools and practicing lawyers who hire law school graduates highly recommend it. </p>
<p>For a traditional law school class done in the socratic method (not all courses are like that anymore), you will have a case book that has shortened versions of actual case opinions followed by questions to ask yourself and answer. You read a few to several cases for each class. What you are trying to do is figure out what the case actually stands for. Often, you will also go read hornbooks which are texts that simply try to explain legal priniciples. You read those in the hope of understanding the cases in the case book. You then go to class and the prof chooses someone to begin the questioning. He asks questions designed to find out if you understand what the case you read actually held. If you come close he then hits you with hypotheticals that change the situation in the case to something different to see if you can apply the same priniciples to the new situation. A traditional prof may make you stand whenever you are being questioned as it is part of your training to become a lawyer. The typical freshman in law school can spend an hour reading a 4-page case and not know what the heck it is trying to say. He will then read it again and spend another hour trying to figure out what it is saying. (In a book called One L, the author, Scott Turow, explained this process as one in which you are trying to stir concrete with your eyes.) On the the third try and third hour, the student will think he has it. He will then go to class, be called on, stand up, and then in a matter of two to three minutes will be destroyed and embarrassed by the prof as the student starts to realize that what he thought he understood he really understands not at all. The prof will not give him the answers. You usually spend the first 6 to 7 weeks in this daze of never really understanding anything and wondering why you ever thought you could be a lawyer. You think back to college, and, if you were a math major, you say to yourself that, in comparison, differential equations was the easiest course you ever had in your life. It is about that time (for those who eventually make it) that a lightbulb goes off in your head and you suddenly understand the stuff you were supposed to have learned in the first week. You more or less then spend the rest of the semester constantly being 6 weeks behind on the learning curve and constantly re-reading all the stuff you thought you knew and now can actually understand. You then reach the end of the semester and you are given your one and only exam, an essay which consists of hypotheical factual situations for which you have to identify and explain the legal principles involved and what the result could be when applying those principles to the factual situation. That exam is taken anonomously (you are given a number) so the prof does not know who you are when he grades it. Your grade for the semester is the grade you get on that test. Nothing else counts.</p>