Lies about Law School

This is the first in a series of posts I want to write in the coming weeks. Now that I am in the last half of my last semester in law school, I think I am entitled to indulge in a bit of reflection on the whole process.

If you are thinking about going to law school and happened to stumble upon this page, there are some important things to consider about law school before you make your decision that you will not find in your law school's brochure. In fact, they are going to make sure you don't understand them until after the deadline for receiving a refund on your first semester has pasted. If after you have read this and still want to go to law school, then you should go; otherwise, find a different career.

Lie #1: After you get accepted, everything will be OK.
Almost everyone I know in law school has told me that when applying to law school they thought that as soon as they got accepted, everything else in their career would fall into place; they, and I, believed that once you were in the door, your first internship would be lined up, then your first job, then your meteoric rise in whatever field you accepted, and then partnership. The real competition is against those who are trying to get into law school! False. In fact, once you are in, getting accepted is meaningless, because now you are competing with the accepted students for the limited internships and later you will compete with all those young lawyers from all the law schools and in their first five years of practice for your first job. At least when you are applying for law school, you are not facing the impending doom of your student loan repayment grace period ending six months after you graduate.

On a positive note, during your first semester you will probably be thinking: wow, there are a lot of really smart people here, but by your third year, you will wonder how most students ever got into law school.