Reduced Course Load

[adamsmasher]

I'm thinking about working a job during school next year and offsetting my course load by taking 4 summer courses. It's an on campus job with good experience for law school so I thought it could be helpful. Instead of taking 5 courses in the fall and winter semesters, I'll be taking 4 in the summer, and 3 in both the fall and winter. Will this look bad on a transcript? I'm worried that it'll look like I'll be doing an easy course load when in reality the job will replace the workload of those courses and some. Should I do this? Could this hurt my chances at applying?

I'm going into third year if that matters.

[Renerik]

Some (most?) Canadian law schools don't look at course load. You should look at the websites of schools you plan on applying to for that information. For schools that do care about course load, the 3/3/4 split is likely to come across negatively.

As an aside, some Canadian law schools don't consider your summer courses when calculating your GPA for admission purposes, which could be a pro or a con depending on how well you do on them.

IMO, unless a school specifically mentions on their website that they care about course load, apply for the job. I doubt that an undergraduate campus job would constitute "good experience for law school" but the experience and money generally don't hurt.