SerArthurDayne
Member
Canadian law school sounds like a disaster. Good luck to you, and hopefully it will make you a better lawyer after the experience. It is doubtful it will make you a better person.
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Law School & Lawyer GAF
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brucewaynegretzky
Member
Ah, got it. Yeah we make those one semester courses.... thank god.
Does Public Law include Civ Pro?
yeah... and this. Sorry.
Suggestion. Do what I did for my engineering degree: take an extra semester so you can cut your course load down to a manageable level.
I don't know about in Acadian land, but not graduating in 3 years, unless you're tying your JD in w/ an MBA or some other advanced degree, contains a negative stigma, at least around here.
It's not exactly noticeable, at least it wasn't for my degree. With co-op, my 4 year program was already extended to 4 years and 2 terms. I just extended it by a single term to 5 years. Still doing 4-5 classes per term.
I talked to the engineering coordinaters and they didn't dissuade me from doing it...didn't seem as though there was any downside to it other than having to pay for an additional semester.
The Engineering World /= the Legal World. And I'm only talking about the negative perception associated with taking 7 semesters to graduate, which can be harmful to your career. Graduating in December can also be difficult for a lawyer in other ways. Some jurisdictions only offer the bar exam in July, so by dealying your graduation date by a semester, you're really pushing back the beginning of your career a whole year. Even for those jurisdictions that offer a February bar exam, it will put you off the normal hiring cycle for most law firms.
LowEndTorque
Member
Thanks. I wouldnt call law school in Canada a disaster at all though. Im extremely happy with the quality of education Im getting, my profs are all amazing, and the school atmosphere is really friendly and collegial.
But generally, law school in Canada is no joke. Hard to do well and even harder to get in <-and things have gotten even tougher since that article was written. My school just released admission stats for our class last week and the average GPA/LSAT was 4.0/164. I know of 2 people so far who turned down offers from 2 of the HYS schools to come here. So basically, everyone in my class is fucking brilliant, I feel like I'm the dumbest person there, I have some serious fucking competition to contend with, and there is a curve so there is a tremendous amount pressure.
The upside to all this is that the job market in Canada is much, much better than our neighbours to the south and is even growing in some parts of the country(at least for the time being), so no need to console me
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
The worst part about taking a February Bar is that you can't really take part in the Bar Panic thread like me. I'm doing the CA bar at the end of this upcoming February.
Nah, you can be a one man panic show.
SerArthurDayne
Member
Yeah, the California bar sounds unpleasant. I really don't want to take another bar again, but I also don't know if I want to be in Texas for the rest of my life. Reciprocity, Fed job, or bust!
Bboy AJ
My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
Those stats aren't THAT impressive for US schools, from what I remember.
And I think every student in every other law school turned down HYS, according to them, heh.
SerArthurDayne
Member
Well, a 4.0 GPA means they do funny math, and that LSAT is pretty respectable for an average.
Wish we had a nice job market. Just wrapped up my reapplication for JAG, which is so selective I don't have much hope, but we will see. Need to get in gear as I can't really count on any of my current leads magicking into something.
Wish we had a nice job market. Just wrapped up my reapplication for JAG, which is so selective I don't have much hope, but we will see. Need to get in gear as I can't really count on any of my current leads magicking into something.
brucewaynegretzky
Member
Everyone gets that feeling. I'm sure you can't point to people and say, "But they did thing x," but the bottom line is admissions committees AREN'T bad at what they do. From what I've heard from them they don't even really have differing expectations of anyone there. Once you're in, you're all equals as far as expectations are concerned.
LowEndTorque
Member
Yeah the average LSAT is lower than the absolute top in the US but on par with lower tier 1 schools. Average GPA is higher. Admission committees here tend to weigh GPA more than LSAT. Some schools use a 4.3 scale where A = 4.0 and A+ = 4.3, hence the 4.0 median. I'm not at one of the top 3 in schools the country, don't know what their stats are like.
The job market is pretty sweet here, at least compared to the US. Its not perfect and ypu do hear stories of people who couldnt find work, but generally pretty much everyone gets something. The more prestigious schools have a placement rate of 96-99% for their grads. During orientation week everyone was showered with gifts from firms just for being admitted. Before we even started our first week of classes firms were asking us for applications and flying out to our campus from other cities to take us out to expensive restaurants and interview us.
I think there are 15 law schools with class sizes ranging from 80 - over 200. You can sort of guesstimate the number of yearly grads based on that.
Bboy AJ
My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
I wish the ABA were more restrictive with schools. It's great people want to be lawyers and all but who can be a lawyer if there aren't enough jobs to go around? It's such a scam.
I want to open a law school.
I want to open a law school.
brucewaynegretzky
Member
I'm in. We probably have to fill out two or three forms, right?
Byakuya769
Member
This is really a thing. I expect it at a top school, because then at least the story is almost believable, but once I got it from a person who went to third tier school. Said she "got a high enough LSAT score to go anywhere she wanted, but liked the school better."
Riiiiiiight.
SerArthurDayne
Member
Lol. I turned down Duke to go to Texas purely based on money. I don't know a single person at Texas that turned down anything in that tier to go to Texas. There was a guy on top law schools who said he turned down Harvard for Texas, but I never actually met him in person, and it is not incredibly ridiculous for money/regional reasons.
There's a world of difference between Texas and a Third Tier school.
brucewaynegretzky
Member
I applied to one law school. True story. 100% acceptance rate! Woot!
SerArthurDayne
Member
That was kind of my point. Duke was the best I could do and I went to Texas for reasons. I can't imagine the discrepancy being much larger. If you get into Harvard, you will also get into pretty much every school between Harvard and your third tier school, and there will be reasons to go there- money, environment, geography, etc.
The worst school to reject me was UCLA. And I was like 0-8 in schools 1-10. Feels bad man.
My point was that Texas is still a really, really good law school. Going to Texas over Duke is not that bit of a deal, in terms of career prospects and what not. There would have to be a HELL of a good reason to go a T3 school over HYS. Unless you had a guaranteed job doing what you love upon graduation, not even a concern over debt is a reason to go T3 over HYS.
LowEndTorque
Member
Maybe they are full of shit and maybe they aren't, who knows. But it really isn't inconceivable that couple of ppl at my school scored 175+ LSAT, which would have been enough to get them into HYS combined with their 4.0+ GPA's. If they weren't lying and they did get offers, it's even less inconceivable that they turned down those offers to stay in Canada.
If you are a Canadian looking to work in Canada and your options are
a)Take a full-ride scholarship at a Canadian school, graduate with no debt, have offers thrown at you as a 1L to summer at the firm/city of your choice and pretty much have a guaranteed well-paying job when you graduate as long as your grades hold up.
b)Go into a soul-crushing amount of debt to attend HYS, graduate into a very uncertain job market, and be forced to go through a 1-2 year accreditation process + articling if you can't find anything in the US and need to go back to Canada and get licensed.
Option a would seem like the smart choice for most people.
Within the Canadian law student community it's generally seen as a terrible, terrible idea to go to school in the US unless its at HYS. And even then, people debate whether HYS is a good or bad idea. As a Canadian planning to work in Canada you'd still probably be better off at UoT or Osgoode rather than HYS, at least that's what the consensus seems to be.
Reading comments from this thread reminds why I love studying in Finland lol.
No tuition fees, housing is provided and there is no real stress regarding the pace of your studies.
How does applying work in the USA btw? What are the requirements, do you only need money etc?
In Finland there are admission tests every spring. Every faculty publishes books for their own entrance examination three months before the test and the best performers will get in. There is no way to gain a place with money so that's a pretty effective way to measure your motivation. (you do get some starting points with a good high-school diploma but the difference is pretty negligible in law school)
No tuition fees, housing is provided and there is no real stress regarding the pace of your studies.
How does applying work in the USA btw? What are the requirements, do you only need money etc?
In Finland there are admission tests every spring. Every faculty publishes books for their own entrance examination three months before the test and the best performers will get in. There is no way to gain a place with money so that's a pretty effective way to measure your motivation. (you do get some starting points with a good high-school diploma but the difference is pretty negligible in law school)
LowEndTorque
Member
Having money has nothing to do with how you get admitted into US law schools.
You write the LSAT, submit your transcripts and for some schools submit a resume/cv and write a personal statement describing why you want to go to law school. You need to have completed at least a 4 year bachelor's degree to apply.
Admission committees then admit the strongest applicants based on LSAT score and GPA.
In the US though, many law schools have turned into a business/scam. There are way too many law schools and a lot of the lower tier schools get rich off admitting students who couldn't get into better schools and will struggle desperately to find work after graduation. In Canada it's the reverse problem, the number of schools/seats available are extremely limited and so a lot of bright and qualified people can't get in or take several years of trying/retaking the LSAT to finally get admitted somewhere.
Yeah, the "well I don't like (insert part of country)" or "it's a money thing" is a popular made-up excuse.
Stanford rejected me in three weeks flat. That sort of impressive efficiency made me all the more sad I couldn't go there.
LowEndTorque
Member
Out of curiosity, do you work in New York City or Boston?
V5 and V10 NYC and Boston firms do OCI's and recruit at a few Canadian schools. Dat US biglaw salary attracts a lot of Canadians to move south. Outside of that I haven't heard of many Canadian law grads trying their luck in the US.
You're not in NYC anymore?
Byakuya769
Member
So the firm I did my 1l summer with has yet to give me an offer on paper, though a hiring partner said u could definitely return to the office even though they didn't have a 2L summer program. I struck out at oci, and all of my job fair callbacks led to rejections or one is still pending after a month.
I got a screener through my career adviser and it led to a callback.
Offer before the last interview at a great firm. Fuck this whole process, but I am done!
I got a screener through my career adviser and it led to a callback.
Offer before the last interview at a great firm. Fuck this whole process, but I am done!
ZackieChan
Member
brucewaynegretzky
Member
Congrats!
SerArthurDayne
Member
Byakuya769
Member
congrats
Thanks! I was really close to doing that while still in the interview.
RandomDancing
Member
Nah it's cool, I can panic with you again. I'm taking a second state's bar in Feb. My app's due in about a week and I am so not excited to be starting bar prep up again in December (but this time while also working full-time).
Don't worry about grades. There is tremendous pressure to force everyone to the middle. Grades in law school aren't a reflection of how smart you are. Getting good grades is less about knowing information and more about knowing how to answer questions. Try to find someone's old Barbri books (it doesn't really matter if they're a couple of years old). Use the state essay books to figure out how to write answers for a law school exam. Then use the muti-state multiple questions to learn the information. The essay section will be good for civil procedure/fed jur and crim. Multi-state for the rest. But agian, don't sweat grades. You probably aren't going to make straight As. The people who do have either worked in law for several years before going to law school, or come from lawyering families and have been molded to do it... Or are just lucky or "get it" - a friend of mine did nothing but smoke pot and play videogames all semester, and then a week before exams he'd start studying - no one thought of him as being smart - but he was in the top 5% of the class.
Also, in-dept outlining of facts is a huge waste of time. Hell I even think reading is a waste of time. What's important are the rules. Know the rules cold (and the names of the cases they came from).
Also, don't just study like they tell you too. We were all expected to pre-read, then outline. But that wasn't how I personally learned things. For me, going into a lecture not knowing anything was the most efficient thing because I'd pay attention more. Also, I found outlining masturbatory because, again, only the rules are important, so making these 100 page outlines was just a waste of time. Just find a good commerical one, or a past student's. Seriously, just get someone's old Barbri books and memorise them.
Finally, try no to get depressed. I was depressed as fuck throughout all of law school. If you start to get depressed go to student counselling. I saw loads of law students in there.
brucewaynegretzky
Member
http://abovethelaw.com/2012/10/what-are-the-20-best-cities-for-young-attorneys/
Go DC!
Go DC!
I'm not in BigLaw so it doesn't really matter
ooo gurl, you and astro making me feel too good right now. Its like getting a handy in a parked car by the seven eleven. Just post our employment rate to top it all off.
I'm writing a comment/article this semester to see if our journal would publish it. If they don't, do other schools' journals take entries from people not at their school?
Student note? Usually not unless it is ridiculously good. They usually have their own student notes to publish. I know we didn't accept notes from students at other law schools, but I can't speak for the policies of other law reviews.
Edit: employment rates are the most inflated and manipulated stat that law schools report.
Congrats!
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