Whose starting law school in the fall?

[pokerlaw]

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Everyone is saying how important it is to go to a top tier law school and get great grades, so i'd like to hear the board's thoughts on what's available if someone actually completes such a difficult task.

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Just came across this thread and thought I would weigh in w/ my $0.02.

Little on me first - I started law school at Fordham back in 2002, after graduating from college (U of Delware) in 2001, finance major. I then got my LLM in tax at NYU and now work for a big 4 accounting firm. So far I am very happy w/ how everything panned out.

Here's what I learned:

First, on jobs, your first year grades are paramount in getting a big firm job, but they are not the end all. The NY ones have pretty much all made the move to $145k starting, which is nice. Just about all of my friends went that route, aside from one who is clerking prior to starting at one. Pretty much all of them were top 25% of the class. Although I know people who were in the ~60th percentile that landed big firm jobs after passing the bar exam.

The hours are pretty damn long. My roomate works in bankruptcy law and his avg hours are 10-11. All the firms pretty much seem to maintain similar hours. The one exception is my friend who does patent law. Her hours are much more reasonable and fall in the 10-6 range. However, the biggest thing about the work schedule is the unpredictability. Its the nature of the profession and can go from 50 hours on week to 100 the next. And you never really know what type of week is coming next.

As far as top 4 accounting, the hours are less, but its about 2/3rds the starting pay. Mine were 40/wk for the first few months, but the last few weeks are more in the 65 hour range (9-9 mon - fri and 6 hours on sat or sun) as we are wrapping up a project.

On school -

You have to want it. I did more work then I ever thought I would, and you have to be comfortable with long hours. The good thing is that you are your own boss, so you can study when you want. Of course, that doesnt mean you should give yourself off every friday [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] If you want it, you'll feel too guilty partying when you know you should be studying anyway.

I got a good amount of A's and one A+. I got a good amount of B+'s and some B's also. Most of the good grades came in tax/corporate classes, and I know that my finance and accounting background had a lot to do with that. I also find that material more interesting though, so I work at it harder than say, criminal procedure (still a great class worth taking).

How I studied:

first, I went to every class and had done the assigned reading about 99% of the time. I was one of the freaks who used 5 colors of highlighter while reading every case. I recommend the method, which I borrowed largely from the book Law School Confidential. Green for facts, yellow for analysis, red for holding, blue for citing precedent and orange for dissents. I found doing that and writing in the margin of the cases helped for outlining later. I tried to fairly on pace with the outlining, but wouldnt recommend starting outline until the end of september, as you will be pretty clueless as to what the f*ck is going on until around then. I liked to outline in consecutive 5-8 hour blocks, in that I would do one subject over that time (property from 11-6 and torts from 8-1 on a saturday, for example). If anyone wants to see an outline I made as an example, send me a PM and I can email it to you.

I certainly did my share of partying/relaxing, but its all about time management. Like, in Sept, get your reading done, go to class, and then enjoy life, cause come Nov its going to suck [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Ok, thats what I got for now, but I'm more than happy to answer questions people might have.

Dominate the experience [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]