Hello prospective students

Hey prospective students!
We get a lot of the same type of questions from students who are considering going to law school, whether they’ve already been admitted or are thinking of applying. I’ve written up the same kind of note several times so I thought I’d just post it here for folks who come wandering by.

The questions:

- How many hours a week can I expect class and homework to fill?
- Is it possible to take summer classes to lighten the load from the school year?
- Should my husband and I try to have our second child before fall 2009? Or wait til during law school? Am I crazy to even be contemplating this?

The answers: And remember, this is only my perspective on these things, but formed on the basis of talking to lots of people over the nearly 3 years I’ve been here.

hours per week:
The Bar and professors expect that your study time should be about two hours for every hour you’re in class. You’ll average 15 hours of class time per quarter, so another 30 hours of study time per week. I have found that unlike undergrad, this is real study time. Just to keep up. Your young, beer-drinking, childless classmates (I love them!) have vast expanses of time in which to study, and they will. It’s ALWAYS possible to study more, and the people who do are the ones with the great grades. However, 30 is enough. Unfortunately, 30 is a lot. It’s hard to find study time during the school day – if you have an hour between classes, it’s nice to study, but often you just want to zone out for a minute. Then there’s commuting, life, etc. My 1L year I did the bulk of my studying on weekends: eight hours on Saturdays and 4-8 on Sundays. (This is largely because I commute 3-4 hours a day, which hopefully most people don't.). Some weeks were lighter. If a paper was due, it was worse, but that only happens a couple times in the first year.

The second year seems a lot easier, though the work load isn’t lighter. There’s more of a variety of things you get into, and you can choose what you get into, so it seems more fun (or less painful), but there’s still a lot of work. People often try to time having their babies between first year and second year, or after second year. It’s still hard, but you have more choices about what to do, and you know better what level of work you want to put into it. First year really is boot camp, and you need all the focus you can get (within reason).

summer classes:
You can take summer classes. There is a full slate offered. There are two aspects of your question. One is, yes, you can take summer classes and lighten the load. An alternative would be to do an externship for credit (you can, for example, earn 15 credits – a full quarter’s worth – over the summer by working for a judge, and it looks awesome on your resume too). The downside of both the classes and the externship is that you have to pay full tuition for the summer. If you use your credits to lighten the load, you’ll have to still pay full tuition for the rest of school as well, because there’s no discount until you get to a really low credit load. So you’d be out another $5K and whatever else. That’s not actually a huge amount in the perspective of law school debts, but something to keep in mind.

The other aspect is that summer is such a great time to go out and exercise your legal skills. Pretty much everyone finishes their first year and thinks, great, I feel like I’ve learned a lot but what use is it? Your summer job or externship is incredibly helpful in making you realize you do have marketable skills, are good at this, and there is a point to going to law school. It’s really good for staving off a, for lack of a better term, crisis of faith. If you start wondering why the heck you’re doing this.

In addition, and this is where the law school voodoo kicks in, the first summer job is a great thing to have on your resume to land your second-summer job. The second-summer job is crucial because for a lot of people, at the end of their second-summer job, they get a job offer for after graduation. Not everyone. But a lot of people. That’s the, hmmm, track. The road that people try to get onto. So, the first summer, you want to have something on your resume that makes it look like you did something somewhat ambitious. A paying legal job would be great, but exceedingly rare. An externship is fantastic. A non-paying legal job is good. Somewhere after those is taking classes – it’s good, it’s legal, but it’s less of an effort to apply your skills and see how you do.

If you were to have a baby, most employers understand about that – they have babies too. So, say you had a baby your 1L summer, you could pretty much take the summer off and get a job as a research assistant for a professor, and find a professor that’s understanding about your schedule. Something where you could do a pretty minimal amount of work, but you still kept your toe in the pool. That would look great on an application for a 2L summer job. One of my friends did exactly that and got her first-choice 2L summer job.

(Just to finish off the train of thought, the only thing you don’t want to do your 1L summer is 1. nothing at all (although even that is ok if there’s a baby involved) or 2. go back to your old job because it looks like you’re not really interested in the law.)

timing of second child:
I started with a 9-month-old (and a 3-year-old) and that was doable. There are a couple of 1Ls this year who started with even younger babies. I wouldn’t recommend that though. I think you want your child to be old enough that you’re comfortable with having them in day care, and you’re familiar with the day care routine. A friend started at the same time as me with 8-month-old twins and that was fine – she had been accepted the year before, but deferred a year when she found out she was pregnant.

Older would be ok too, but I have found that this year, my 5-year-old is more interfering with my studies than in past years. I’m glad I didn’t wait until she was much older than 3 when I started.

One caveat. First year is tough, stressful, sometimes emotional. Having a baby your 1L summer is ideal, but it means spending most of your 1L year pregnant. Which can add to the stress and emotion. Shouldn't stop you, but something to consider.

(I don't really expect any current students to have read this far, but if you have, feel free to add your perspective in the comments!)