Orientation/First Week of Classes

[anon12345]

I have a question about orientation and the first week of classes. I am out of the country until August 25th which means I'll miss the entire orientation week. I was wondering if anyone could provide insight on how problematic this will be for my transition into law school. Are any events virtual? How necessary is orientation? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[LMP]

Ideally you wouldn't miss it, but you'll be ok. 

The events are mostly going to be in person (even during COVID they were in person, to an extent). 

You'll meet people in your section later so don't worry about it too much. 

[SNAILS]

At Osgoode (unless they changed it) you will do only two courses for the first 10 days or so: Legal Process 1 (LP1) and Ethical Lawyering in a Global Community (ELGC). LP1 is a course with a ton of little assignments. Slightly bigger assignments include a memo and a factum.

ELGC is as essay course, and what is discussed in class is not even that related to the actual performance outcome that will affect your grade. People in ELGC basically just talk about their opinions of different ethical issues.  Most students do not speak at all. These classes are recorded (unless they changed that), so you can listen to the lectures later. In fact, by 2L and 3L I found that class attendance was below 50% for most courses because students were relying on the recordings.

Be aware that there may be "participation" component to ELGC and LP1, so check eClass regularly and submit what you need to online even if you are out of the country (it might be  brief reflection on an ethical issues, etc). 

If you are concerned about the "orientation" component (i.e. anything not related to a specific course), I found all of that completely worthless expect perhaps if you want to join a club (i.e. the Business Law Association or whatever).

I don't recall much of importance happening in my year before Sept 1, and even then the things I thought were important turned out to be not so important (i.e. Reading the countless optional readings).

[anon12345]

On 4/29/2024 at 8:20 AM, SNAILS said:

At Osgoode (unless they changed it) you will do only two courses for the first 10 days or so: Legal Process 1 (LP1) and Ethical Lawyering in a Global Community (ELGC). LP1 is a course with a ton of little assignments. Slightly bigger assignments include a memo and a factum.

ELGC is as essay course, and what is discussed in class is not even that related to the actual performance outcome that will affect your grade. People in ELGC basically just talk about their opinions of different ethical issues.  Most students do not speak at all. These classes are recorded (unless they changed that), so you can listen to the lectures later. In fact, by 2L and 3L I found that class attendance was below 50% for most courses because students were relying on the recordings.

Be aware that there may be "participation" component to ELGC and LP1, so check eClass regularly and submit what you need to online even if you are out of the country (it might be  brief reflection on an ethical issues, etc). 

If you are concerned about the "orientation" component (i.e. anything not related to a specific course), I found all of that completely worthless expect perhaps if you want to join a club (i.e. the Business Law Association or whatever).

I don't recall much of importance happening in my year before Sept 1, and even then the things I thought were important turned out to be not so important (i.e. Reading the countless optional readings).

This helps tremendously. Thank you so much for your response!