I thought that law school was quite intense when I was law student. I also have an impression that law school is made intentionally hard.
Law school is hard not only because law students have to study and process a large volume of complex legal information but also pass hard and competitive law school exams.
Moreover, a law school is so hard because it is intentionally challenging to challenge law students intellectually and push them to new levels of understanding of legal theory and legal concepts.
Let me lay out the reasons why I think law school is so hard.
1. Law School Is Made Hard Intentionally
Without a doubt, law school is intentionally hard to weed out the weakest students in the first year. It is also made so difficult to prepare students intellectually for the future practice of law.
The whole point of law school is to train students’ brains to process, analyze, and interpret substantial legal theories and concepts. And to try to apply them to real-life situations. Note that law school does not teach how to practice law.
2. Law School Crams Overview of the Law in One Year
Law school makes students study the overview of the main body of law. In order o do that, classes cram main areas of law in the first year of law school.
These include constitutional law, torts, contracts, property law, criminal law, criminal and civil procedure.
Those areas of US law are huge by themselves and contain an enormous amount of legal concepts, rules, and theories. Think about all the case law, primary sources of law such as the Constitution, and laws passed by Congress over hundreds of years.
It is mind-blowing how much law students have to read and process in their first year.
That intensity makes the first year the most difficult intellectual experience in the lives of many law students. Some law graduates say that 1L (first year of law school) is the most challenging experience, even harder than subsequent bar exams and law practice.
3. Law School Exams Are Hard And Lack Feedback
Law school is hard because of the difficulty associated with law school exams. Law school exams are nothing like most undergraduate exams as they are made intentionally challenging.
Law school exams present never-ending patterns of facts, to which a student must apply numerous rules of law in a brief period.
In law school, there are no midterms and no quizzes per se. Therefore, law students often receive zero feedback in preparation for the final exam. Frankly, law school classes do not prepare law students for final exams.
Therefore, many law students in their first year prepare for classes, as they are accustomed to do in undergraduate college. But they essentially come unprepared for brutal, intense law school exams.
And many law students receive pretty bad grades. This is because law school exams are the single point that defines a student’s grade for the entire class in a semester.
And law school exams are made intentionally hard so that not a single student can write a complete answer to the poised problem.
Law school exams are tough because students have to identify factual issues and apply the law, but often there is no right or wrong answer, and they have to argue both sides. This takes plenty of time and brainpower to figure out.
Plus, issues on law school exams sometimes are not covered by a professor during semester class sessions. But could be based on a few sentences in the textbook reading assignment, which law students must have noted in the class outline.
Plus, law school exams are competitive.
4. Law School Is Hard Because It Is Competitive and Stressful
Law school is hard because law students must constantly compete for good grades. Law school grades are the most critical benchmark for every law student because they may define a possibility of obtaining a job after graduation and passing the bar exam.
Obtaining good grades is difficult to impossible. Law school students are graded on a brutal curve on exams. That means that the professor can give out only a few “A’s” for the whole class, a few “B’s,” and the rest are “C’s” and “D’s” and “F’s.”
Even if most students write a good answer, your grades depend not on how smart you are but on how you compare to other intelligent students. And you are screwed even if you are smart, but they are just more brilliant.
The effect of the curve combined with the fact that a single exam defines grade for the whole semester for a particular class makes law school exams extremely competitive. As a result, law students in the first year of law school compete for those few good grades like crazy.
And this competition, coupled with pre-exam suspense, creates severe stress and pressure for any student with ambition.
Imagine being an “A” student in an undergraduate, and suddenly becoming a “C” or even a “D” student in law school. All simply because your classmates happen to be particularly super-smart and just more brilliant than you are.
Or because they type faster on exams or have a better outline.
Not only is that a blow to self-esteem and confidence, but it may lead to a nervous breakdown for some. But, on the other hand, if you get a “B” in law school, you may consider yourself a successful law student.
All above makes law school a harsh psychological environment. We had classmates drop out of law school in the first year because they realized that they could not compete for good grades. You can read our article about why reasons why law stdents drop out of the law school.
5. Socratic Method of Teaching is Exhausting
The Socratic method of teaching makes law school hard for many unprepared law students. The Socratic teaching method in law schools essentially means that the professor never stops asking you questions when you get called out.
Law professors will make you question or substantiate or provide the basis for any of your answers. And no matter how well you answer, the professor will always come up with a question that you cannot answer.
It is a losing game, in any case, making it difficult to swallow the pride.
6. It is Impossible to Read All Assigned Reading in Law School
Law school is also hard because it is impossible to read all assigned reading for all classes. Finally, law school is difficult because of the large amount of homework, where assigned reading consists of very complex legal material.
It is incredibly time-consuming because it is so difficult to understand and decipher that material. And court case legal opinions assigned to read are too long and sometimes quite esoteric. As a result, law students study practically all their free time.
I had a law professor who graduated at the top of her class. However, she told me that she could not catch up with all the assigned reading in her days in law school because there is just too much.
It is done on purpose to push students to the limit and make it tough for them. So much reading essentially makes students cram it all together and test their brains to work stronger.
And if you miss reading and get called on by the professor, then comes the humiliation moment. Because the professor will be asking you questions, and you will not know any answers.
Many law students take it too close to their hearts and focus on preparing for classes instead of preparing for law school exams.
Yes, you must prepare for law school exams from the first day of law school. It is better to suffer some humiliation in class but score higher on law school exams when you prepare for it rather than the other way around.
One of my classmates was a former doctor MD. And he could not read and understand this complex legal material more than 10-15 pages per hour.
We also had a couple of law students in our class who could read like 20-40 pages of this legal staff and practically memorize it. They did pretty well on exams. Law school exams were not hard for them. I think one of them was a former philosophy major.
That is why philosophy majors often do well in law school. See my other article about the best undergraduate majors for law school.
7. It is Impossible to Memorize All Material In Law School
If reading everything assigned is extremely hard in law school, memorizing everything is impossible. The impossibility of remembering much of the posted material makes law school even harder.
That is why most law students prepare class outlines over the semester. Or they get a copy of the law school outline from a 2L or 3L law student, and then they add their notes and build upon those.
Law schools allow outlines during exams. So essentially, those who get a better outline and memorized t outline better will likely score more points on the exam. I wrote a whole extensive article specifically about how to succeed in law school. You absolutely MUST read it if you plan to go to law school.
8. In Law School, You Must Think Rather Than Memorize
Another subtle difference that makes law school harder than undergraduate is that undergraduate students can memorize material for exams, and law students cannot. And as I mentioned above, in law school, it is impossible to remember all the material.
Moreover, law school exams are written by professors in such a way that mere memorization of material is by itself useless. Thus, law students must think deeply to succeed in law school exams.
They must take supplied facts, take all the material they learned in class, and apply everything together. You do not just learn facts; you know how to think and analyze facts through the prism of legal rules.
Essentially, a law exam is about solving a legal problem both ways. And you usually have no idea how to do it in a legal context because you never had to deal with the law so closely before. So lots of guesswork is involved. In addition, professors specifically write exams so that there are no easy answers.
See, there are no “Yes” or “No” easy multiple-choice answers on law school exams. Instead, you have to think about how to apply the legal theory to the facts. The key is to be able to analyze, not just memorize. Law is not about memorizing but about interpreting.
Instead of repeating the fabric learned, law students are forced to think about interpreting the material and applying their interpretation to presented facts.
It is about legal reasoning rather than mere restating facts that you learned and memorized. Thinking and analyzing are substantially more energy-consuming for the brain than just repeating memorized staff. That alone makes law school exams very hard to write out.
Note that this hardness of law school is true mainly for the first year of law school. The second and third years of law school are easier because students are already familiar with preparing and taking exams.
You can read my other article about how hard is law school for some additional details.
How to Make Law School Less Difficult?
As I mentioned, you must read my complete mini-guide about how to succeed in law school. But in short, you must get outlines for your particular classes and use those outlines to build your own.
I wrote several posts on this blog about how to make through law school much easier. You should read them.
Use law school supplement materials which are usually tailored to your particular textbook. And use other tricks to make law school exams easier.
For example, you can join with few other students to form a study group. Then you can study together, brainstorm issues, exchange materials, share costs, share outlines, and so on. I learned on my own, though.
Is Law School Harder Than Being a Lawyer?
Law Practice is Different From Law School Studying
As a person who has been working in the legal industry for more than a decade, I can say that being a lawyer is harder than being in law school. But, at the same time, it is easier than law school. In any case, being a lawyer is a different experience than being a law student.
Law school does not explicitly train law students on how to practice law. It only teaches minds to process lots of legal information and think about legal concepts and rules. The practice of law is an entirely different animal.
Law practice is hard for a new fresh attorney who learned all the general legal concepts and theories in law school but now has to perform specific tasks that law school did not teach them.
And those tasks must be done right because courts or government agencies are not keen on babysitting new attorneys. They want all the paperwork done right, and they expect the attorney to know the law and apply the law correctly.
Law Practice is About Real-Life Legal Issues
The practice of law is no longer a theoretical application of law to facts like in law school. Now the lawyer is dealing with real-life legal issues which require real-life problem-solving solutions. As a result, there is tremendous pressure not to screw up and not to make mistakes.
Because all lawyers make mistakes, but legal mistakes can cost clients liberty or money and cost lawyers a career. Losing a license over a malpractice lawsuit is a source of stress for attorneys.
Being a lawyer is all about meeting constant, never-ending deadlines and providing perfectionist quality work-product. In addition, law practice is always about winning over the opposing side and about continuously perfecting skills and knowledge.
Plus, legal practice means dealing with real people and real-life stories. Sometimes it is challenging because an attorney may have to make difficult decisions regarding their client or the opposing side.
Often you have to deal with tragedies, with wrong people, assholes, with dishonest people on both sides of the case. It is tough to manage all that bad stuff and do quality work at the same time.
Law practice is harder than law school because it is not about just knowing the law, but it is more about figuring out how to spin the law and apply it to win. Essentially, law practice is often about spinning the facts and truth and the law itself.
And not everyone can manage to do that. Even an intelligent person may not be capable of doing that as an attorney. Because applying (“spinning”) the law is a different skill to learn besides legal concepts and legal reasoning. Moreover, in law practice, you often must compromise with your morals and values.
I can tell you one thing – law practice is not for the lovely, kind, and mellow people. Law is about waging war and constant fighting. And it is about lots of deep thinking to provide real solutions that solve the problem. If not, then a lawyer is out of the practice and with reaming hanging student debt.
Plus, the practice of law is often much more boring than law school. It is not fun like they show it on TV.
It is Not Easy for New Attorney To Find Clients
The following reason why being an attorney is hard is that attorneys need to find either a good job or see their clients. It is tough to find clients for young inexperienced attorneys. Clients are ready to pay lots of money only for the significant experience.
Even experienced attorneys are often constantly looking for clients. As a result, law firms spend humongous amounts of money on legal advertising and marketing. As a result, legal fees keep increasing.
Law Practice Experience Matters a Lot
However, as time goes by, young attorneys specialize in a specific area of law and become more experienced. It takes about 3-5 years to specialize well and about 7-10 years to master the practice of a specific area of law.
The first three to five years are difficult while attorneys try to find their place in the legal industry. But once the money starts coming in, the law becomes a profession. Now paycheck alleviates at least some of the stress associated with practicing law.
Now attorney knows the law well, knows how things work inside and out, and work becomes a semi-automatic process.
For skilled attorneys, the practice of law is easier than law school because now there is very little new information to learn. And even then, further information is built upon established practices already well-known to the attorney.
Plus, attorneys are compensated for their work, while law students have to pay for their, essentially, work.
Conclusion
Law school is hard but manageable if you work hard and smart. Likewise, law practice is challenging but manageable if you want to be an attorney, grow a thick skin, and work very smart with your brain.
Law is not an easy profession. Hence, why should law school not be problematic if it is designed to prepare law students for the future practice of law?