how much harder is law school than undergrad?

[Warner Huntington III]

title

how big was the jump in terms of workload? did you have a "grade shock"?

[OnlyResident]

Aren't you a law student and able to answer that question lol? 

[Warner Huntington III]

no I'm a law applicant 

[goosie]

I'd say there is a "grade shock" but mostly because many of us are not used to being graded on a strict curve the way you are in law school. Many students are shocked to see they got a C because they're not used to getting those kinds of grades. 

[BlockedQuebecois]

33 minutes ago, Warner Huntington III said:

no I'm a law applicant 

You probably want to indicate that you're an admitted student rather than a law student, then. 

I found law school much, much easier than my undergraduate degree. If I had to quantify it, I would say law school was about 50% less work and was around 90% easier overall. 

Other people I know found law school (or at least, the first year and a half or so) to be much, much harder than their undergraduate degrees. 

Overall, I think most people find 1L a bit of a shock and a bit harder than they did in undergrad. Then they mellow in the back half of 2L and most of 3L, to the point where many students do less work than they did in their undergrad. Of course, as goosie said, most of those students will also be getting lower grades than they were accustomed to getting in undergrad. 

[Rashabon]

I found law school easier than undergrad personally, and on some level did better in law school than undergrad.

[Ben]

I find the material in law school a bit easier to absorb than the material I dealt with in undergrad (philosophy), but I find it significantly harder to get the results I was accustomed to in undergrad.

[TobyFlenderson]

I think this answer requires you to determine what you want out of law school. If your goal is to ride the curve to graduation, you might find that you can do minimal work in classes that are 100% exams. Going to class, paying attention, taking notes, and relying on upper year summaries might be enough to achieve that for you. If that's the case, you might not touch a reading for three years and, outside of exam season and regular class, have an almost entirely clear schedule. This was my experience in 2L (which was last year, so it was Zoom school).

If you want to get As, stand out, become involved in some ECs, take classes with major research papers, etc, then you might find that you need to do the readings. You might find that your social life isn't as active as it otherwise might be. You might find that you're dedicating more time than your friends to your schoolwork. It depends on what you want.

For what it's worth, I'm certainly not advocating that anyone try to do the bare minimum, or to do so and expect grades that you're happy with. Personally, I really dislike law school (but had a great time at my 2L job), so I'm happy to be an average law student and graduate. 

And, as a final note since you haven't started law school yet: in September, you will hear a lot of people talk about how hard they're working. How much they're reading. How little sleep they're getting. How many notes they've taken. Stuff like that.

It might be true. It might be exaggerated. Either way, it doesn't mean they know the law better than you, that they'll do better than you, or that you're not working hard enough. Generally, people have the grades to go to law school because they did well in undergrad and found routines and systems that work for them. Stick to what's tried and true for you.

Ultimately, I wouldn't read too deep into other people's experiences re: difficulty/workload. It might stress you out if you think it'll be really hard. It might give you a false sense of security if you think it'll be really easy. Give it a good faith effort and you'll more than likely be fine.

[Lilbb19]

Its easier. Tobys post above is accurate. You can legit not even buy the textbook, or go to class and get a good grade with a good can lol

 

Edited November 27, 2021 by Lilbb19

[Mr. Deeds]

2 hours ago, Lilbb19 said:

Its easier. Tobys post above is accurate. You can legit not even buy the textbook, or go to class and get a good grade with a good can lol

 

Ya I second this. All of my textbooks are still vacuumed sealed… and that includes my 1L ones lol. 

[SNAILS]

Law school is very hard. I'm surprised people in this thread are indicating that it was relatively easy for them.

In my experience, you cannot leave any books in their plastic wrapper (wtf?). I would say that I read 500-700 pages of my textbook per course, and this includes online readings and going back and reading selected parts for a better understanding . This was not merely skimming, but carefully reading while taking notes. You should expect to be in class maybe 15 hours per week and studying an additional 50 hours per week. You should listen to any lecture recordings of classes you attended a second time (while taking notes again) for a better understanding. You should take the time to consolidate your various reading and study notes, and you should take the time to read and consolidate them with upper year summaries ("cans" as some people call them, I guess).

I just had a difficult exam yesterday, so going to take it easy today (which means reading only 3-5 hours today because it's Saturday). Prior to this, I had not set foot outside of my student residence for 11 days. I was attending class (Zoom), studying, and doing minimal chores like cooking/eating. I always prioritize sleep (very important) but other than that, I am studying.

If I had to compare it to undergrad, I would say it is harder than taking 2 undergrad programs at the same time (theoretically; I have never done that).

[Rashabon]

^

This post is a good jumping off point and raises a good point indirectly - some people like the poster above just don’t have a natural aptitude for law or law school. So of course to such a person law school is difficult, because it is. It’s like someone who can’t draw trying to learn art or someone who can’t do math trying to do math.

But most people have some aptitude, and many people have a lot of natural aptitude.

50 hours a week on readings is insane and overkill. Listening to lectures twice is insane and overkill. I never put in anywhere close to that effort and graduated with honours. The only thing in law school I may have done for at least 50 hours a week is play Xbox.

So to wrap back to the original question, law school is hard for some and not as hard for others because it’s subjective and comes down to your personal situation, aptitude and learning style.

[Whisk3yjack]

I don't want to denigrate the lived experience of other students who may be struggling with school, but if you are reading this thread and thinking about attending law school, please do not think 65+ hour weeks and not leaving your residence for 11 days is normal. It is not. Law school, at least for myself, is a lot of fun and you will have more than enough free time to go out, see friends, work out, have hobbies.

While I did/do more work in law school than undergrad, I think the actual content is much easier. I have much higher grades in law school than I have since probably middle school. The "hard" part of law school is that there is more of it to learn. 

There are certainly some people on this forum who were probably able get straight As with much less work then me. But as someone with an above average, but not insanely high, aptitude I was able to get a low 80s average in 1L by putting in around 24 hours a week. I went out with friends 3 times a week, I worked out 4 times a week, I took all of Saturday off school. I had a lot of fun. I am biased, but I think this is a pretty reasonable work to reward trade off. Of course I had weeks where I did more work, but there was also weeks where I did less. I never felt like I had to spend 65+ hours a week working, and neither did any of my friends. Sometimes you would see people posting on their insta story talking about spending hours on end in the library, but frankly I think that's performative and they are either lying about how much work they do or they are just sitting in the library on insta. 

Your mileage may vary, but in general I would say that while it's not going to be a cake walk, you should not worry that law school will be this all consuming entity that will suck away all your free time (though it should be noted that law school definitely can be all consuming, but in different ways).

[123]

1 hour ago, Whisk3yjack said:

The "hard" part of law school is that there is more of it to learn. 

For me, the hard part was competing against the curve on exams, as others have mentioned.

I think the mistake I’ve seen applicants or 1Ls making is conflating workload with difficulty. The difference between top, average, and below average students, as I saw it, was more execution during exams than preparation. Almost everyone has reasonable levels of aptitude and diligence in law school. Most people are going to be prepared. Maybe not for 1L midterms, when people haven’t necessarily figured out the important bits. But after that, it’s fair to expect people will know the law well enough to perform reasonably well.

If someone is spending all their time reading, that might be an aptitude issue, like Rash says. It might also be the mistaken idea that knowing the cases really well is going to be an advantage on the exam. It’s not. You need to be able identify legal issues in the facts, and then quickly assess which principles apply well enough to provide an opinion to a hypothetical client (or whatever the exam asks for). But that’s not about getting really deep into the jurisprudence. It’s a matter of having the top-line takeaways from each case or statute readily available and organized in your mind, so that you get them down and pick up as many points across as many different issues as possible.

I was not a particularly gifted law student. But spending 50 hours a week reading wouldn’t have made a difference, because at a certain point, you’re learning a level of nuance you’re not going to be tested on or rewarded for. Instead, figure out what you need to be familiar with (spoiler, it’s usually the CANs), and learn that. After that, your academic fate is mostly left to ability and discipline on exams. People are free to try and grind by spending every waking minute with their textbooks, but it’s probably not going to matter after a certain point. And there’s no prize for being the martyr who closes down the library every night.

If people are worried that they’re going to be below average, but want to advance their careers while in school, my advice is to spend that extra time on ECs. Clinics and other volunteer experience is what will count with many employers outside the recruits. Focusing your energy on building up practical skills and experience is a much better use of time than wearing out the library seat cushions. 

Edited November 27, 2021 by realpseudonym

[Ben]

Without intending to denigrate those on the "1L is a 90 hour work week" side of the fence, I think some of the disparity between answers here can be explained by patience and work ethic. One of the first things I noticed when I adjusted to law school was that there was at least a bit more material and a lot of it was kind of boring, since 1L classes are survey courses of entire legal areas. That struck me as a sharp contrast with what I'd been doing for at least the past couple years prior - in late undergrad or grad school, you develop interests and take courses that align with them, so that most of what you're doing is something you picked out because you like it. It sucks reading a long case about whether it's within the power of the Manitoba legislature to regulate the price of eggs in a way that affects eggs produced in Quebec (or whatever), because I don't care about that. So I had a hard time sitting there and reading it and would go on my phone or check sports scores or something and that would turn an 8 page reading into an hour-long grind or worse. Some people are better at realizing that it will go faster if they don't do that, so they wouldn't lose the extra hour that I did, and that meant they didn't spend as much time as I did grinding through it. 

Managing my workload properly became a much more important task in 1L than it was before, and I was pretty bad at it at first. Until I got better at it, I had the same sense that this was a totally different beast as others here have described. I still have that happen to me when I need to read a case about whether a worker was fairly represented by his union that requires me to read some dense pages about his various assignments at the sawmill, other workers' assignments, and what it meant for their relative seniority and what that seniority meant for the union's responsibility to carry a grievance through arbitration. Maybe others have similar experiences or maybe I am just a baby who has a hard time working through stuff I find boring, or maybe both lol. 

[CheeseToast]

Echoing @Whisk3yjack, @SNAILS experience is far, far outside the norm from what I’ve seen (1L).  

[easttowest]

Law school was easier than my undergrad but I also worked much harder at it in 1L than I ever did in undergrad. So that made it easier.

I went back to school after 7-8 years and worked at 1L like it was a job, especially in the fall. I was on campus 8-6, did all the readings, missed I think two lectures, started studying for things well in advance, made my own summaries. I did this because in undergrad I goofed off and did none of that and had a sub-3.0 GPA, which is why I had to wait to go to law school. I did well. Not like medallist well but decently above average. 

In 2L and 3L I definitely relaxed a bit. Did far fewer readings (sometimes none), missed more classes (3hr evidence from 7-10 is just… easier not to do), but still worked hard because of external activities (recruit and moots, etc). I actually did better these years but that’s partly due to the nature of upper year classes. 

[Thrive92]

I think it may be important to know what the majors of the posters were for undergrad and from which school they received the degree

I attended two schools for my undergrad -- one relatively highly - ranked and the other in the middle of a farmland, and the difference in the difficulty of the courses was black and white. Literally from B/B- to A+/A. This was with the same major.

Maybe this is why there is a big discrepancy between how posters here describe the difficulty of law school compared to undergrad?

[PulpFiction]

9 hours ago, SNAILS said:

You should expect to be in class maybe 15 hours per week and studying an additional 50 hours per week.

This can't be normal. I don't think I made it a full week without missing a class for the entire 3 years of law school. 50 hours per week on top of class? You don't have to answer, but are you hitting deans list/well above average?

Outside of a few courses, I didn't look at the materials properly until 1-2 weeks out from exams.  I was only a B student, but I don't think additional studying would have changed that. My peers that excelled academically were just sharper than me and I highly doubt they're putting in the hours you are. I found I could put in 15 hours or so a week (including classes) to hit average/slightly above average grades. I'm no genius, I assure you. If you're achieving top 10% or something close, maybe it's worth it. If you're just average with that kind of effort, I feel for you, because law school shouldn't be that hard. 

Also, a lot of people don't buy textbooks in upper years. Once you figure out how to use and adjust a good CAN, it makes life a lot easier. I bought maybe 3-4 books all 2L/3L, and that was because I wanted those for my collection. 

Edited November 27, 2021 by PulpFiction

[CleanHands]

56 minutes ago, Thrive92 said:

I think it may be important to know what the majors of the posters were for undergrad and from which school they received the degree

I attended two schools for my undergrad -- one relatively highly - ranked and the other in the middle of a farmland, and the difference in the difficulty of the courses was black and white. Literally from B/B- to A+/A. This was with the same major.

Maybe this is why there is a big discrepancy between how posters here describe the difficulty of law school compared to undergrad?

Just no. This is not a major factor in this conversation (and I am in the "some undergrads are way harder than others" camp).

Really 95% of it boils down to exactly what @Rashabon wrote: different law students have very different innate aptitudes for law school. They compete on a curve against each other and I can honestly say that most of the people who were in the top 10% of my class quite clearly appeared to put in less effort than most of the people who ended up in the bottom third of the class (there are a few outlier bottom-of-the-class students who simply did not care about anything but getting a minimal pass, but they were rare), and everything I have read on the forums has validated that this was more than an anecdotal observation of my specific class (e.g. @BlockedQuebecois and @Rashabon getting top grades and putting in a fraction of the effort that struggling students here write about every day).

[Vizslaw]

I also found law school easier than undergrad. I think the adjustment from high school to undergrad is more of a shock to the system/adjustment than undergrad to law school. Once you figure out exams and how to read cases (i.e. CANs) in 1L, the rest was smooth sailing.

[CleanHands]

While this will vary hugely between people (as clearly demonstrated above), I think @Ben's post is the most common experience among law students (including myself): the material in law school is easier to comprehend than that of most undergraduate programs, however you're competing on a curve against other people who also received good undergrad grades and LSAT scores, so the old undergraduate experience of being able to consistently receive As if one is simply able and willing to put in the work no longer holds except for those who are truly brilliant.

Edited November 27, 2021 by CleanHands

[Kimura]

10 hours ago, SNAILS said:

Prior to this, I had not set foot outside of my student residence for 11 days. I was attending class (Zoom), studying, and doing minimal chores like cooking/eating. I always prioritize sleep (very important) but other than that, I am studying.

I'll just add that one of the most important skills to learn in law school is how to find a balance in the midst of a high workload and high stress. I'm not trying to dogpile here, but for any 1Ls or incoming law students, you need to figure out how to incorporate other elements of your life while learning how to do law school. It only gets harder from here.

Get exercise, get fresh air, learn proper sleep hygiene, learn how to build and maintain relationships. All of that stuff will help you be more alert, refreshed and focused when you're studying and preparing for exams. Not stepping outside your residence for 11 days, while doing nothing other than studying besides minimal chores/cooking/eating sounds like a good way to approach burnout. You don't realize it until it's too late.

 

[Warner Huntington III]

21 hours ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

You probably want to indicate that you're an admitted student rather than a law student, then. 

I found law school much, much easier than my undergraduate degree. If I had to quantify it, I would say law school was about 50% less work and was around 90% easier overall. 

Other people I know found law school (or at least, the first year and a half or so) to be much, much harder than their undergraduate degrees. 

Overall, I think most people find 1L a bit of a shock and a bit harder than they did in undergrad. Then they mellow in the back half of 2L and most of 3L, to the point where many students do less work than they did in their undergrad. Of course, as goosie said, most of those students will also be getting lower grades than they were accustomed to getting in undergrad. 

oh oops I did not realize and I'm not entirely sure how to change that! I'm new to forum posting. thank you! 

[Whist]

I'm still in 1L, so take all this with a grain of salt, but the biggest adjustment was probably the first couple weeks and this term in general (what with having to write our first ever law school exams). I quickly noticed that if I took really detailed notes on readings, I never got through them in time, so I cut down on that a lot. Also, the content sticks way better for me when I use it on a practice question. The rote memorising thing I did in undergrad isn't helping me here as much, so there was a bit of an adjustment to changing my study methods. Other than that, managing the volume of content feels more difficult than the details of the content itself by now. I could be singing a very different tune after exams though, ha. Although midterms aren't worth all that much and I'm not worried about failing. 

3 hours ago, Ben said:

It sucks reading a long case about whether it's within the power of the Manitoba legislature to regulate the price of eggs in a way that affects eggs produced in Quebec

You impugn the Manitoba egg case??? 😤