Law School

I’ve made it halfway through the semester. I have two half-semester classes.  I took the final for one on Friday and the other one will be on Tuesday.  Having my half-semester classes completed means I’ll now only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  That should save me a little gas and I hope to increase my productivity with the extra time.

I’m dreading the rest of the semester though.  Since I transferred they’re making me take a class where I have to oral arguments-two of them to make it even worse.  Public speaking is almost my least favorite thing in the world.

For my clinic class I have now been assigned two real cases.  I’m not looking forward to calling the clients and setting up appointments and then interviewing them to collect the information necessary for the case.  This all stuff I’ll have to do if I become a lawyer but not stuff I like.  People skills aren’t really an asset of mine.  Of course, I knew this is what I’d have to do when I started law school but didn’t worry about it when it seemed far off.

Sometimes I feel like quitting law school but it would be stupid to do so this late in the game.  Anyway, I’m halfway through the semester now so I might as well finish.  And if I finish this semester I’ll only have one part-time semester left so I might as well do that and get my degree.  I’ll probably be more positive about this once it is all over.

If you’re thinking of attending law school you need to ask yourself why you want to go to law school.  Once you determine why you want to go to law school you need to ask yourself if your reason for attending law school is a good one.  I read this advice before I attended law school but didn’t really heed it.  I just had a fuzzy idea of getting my law degree, making big money for a few years and then retiring.  This could be a good reason for some but it wasn’t for me.

This led me to make mistakes on deciding which law school to attend.  Since I wanted to make big money I felt I needed to go to the highest ranking school I could get into.  I was accepted to a top 25 school with no scholarship money and decided to go there and forego the scholarship offers I received at other schools.  After a year of attending law school it was obvious to me I wasn’t going to land a big money job and even if I did it would be something I’d hate.

This led me to transfer to my state school to save about $15,000 a year in tuition.  This was probably another mistake.  Once I had decided to attend the high ranking school I needed to just stick with it.  Things were going well for me there and I should have remembered the old adage,” If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”  After switching schools I had a hard time adjusting and struggled academically. Even though I’m saving tuition money here there is a good chance I could have made up the extra tuition expense at the higher ranking school with better paying job offers.  If I would have gone to the state school in the first place I would have received a good scholarship.  As a transfer student no scholarship was available.  It would have been much smarter to go to the state school in the first place or just stay at the high ranking school.

Now I’m not sure if I should have attended law school at all.  So far I don’t like any of the work I’d likely be doing as a lawyer.  I’m going to finish because I already have three years and many thousand of dolllars invested in it.  If you’re thinking of attending law school be sure of your reason for doing so and what you hope to get from it.