FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS How do I choose if I don’t know what specialty I want to pursue? Easy. Start with courses everyone should take. Plus, do what sounds interesting. You will get to know more as you study more, and then you can assess better what is likely to interest you. When should I take which courses? Take BA as soon as possible. It is a prerequisite for other important courses. Take Securities Regulation right after BA. Also take basic Tax as soon as you can manage (but note the general advice at the end). Take Secured Transactions, if you can, in the second year. Take Creditors’ Rights and Bankruptcy at the same time as Secured Transactions or right afterwards. Give yourself a chance to fall in love with tax or bankruptcy (you wouldn’t believe how many people this happens to). If it happens, you’ll want time left in law school to take the more specialized courses. Should I take such a vocational approach to course selection? Not necessarily. For starters, even if you think you know what you want to do, you are probably wrong. You can’t know this now. Tell me in six or eight years whether you are doing what you thought you would do when you were in law school. You won’t even say; you’ll just laugh. Given this reality, not to mention the changing nature of the law, law practice, and hey, the whole world, too narrow an approach may well be misguided. On the other hand, most law school courses are not as narrow as all that. They are generally taught by thoughtful faculty who design their courses to cover areas in a way that reaches further than the next few years, with enough deep concepts to carry you through many changes. Now it is true that they still are not as broadly applicable as, say, Shakespeare, but this isn’t college anymore. It’s not that you should ever stop reading Hurston or Tolstoy or Eliot, and certainly not Dickens, but it is time to start thinking about making a living, and what you take in law school is probably relevant not only to your 4 likely eventual practice but also your chances of getting a job. If you’ve been paying attention, you will see that I have given you reasons why and why not to take a vocational as opposed to a liberal arts approach to your legal education. What good does that do you? It means you get to choose. Do what you want, and do what sounds good, and comfortable. You will have job prospects in mind, I do not doubt, but you will also keep in mind the broader interests you had before you came to law school. Should I do a clinic or some other experiential learning? Experiential learning can be valuable for obvious reasons. How much time you devote to it in law school is a personal decision that you will have to make for yourself. You are presumably accustomed to multifactor balancing tests by now, so let me give you some factors. Don’t do a clinic. You only have three years in law school, and you can only choose roughly eighteen of your courses. We have about 150 courses in business law alone—a sensational range of choices—and you will want and need to do other things as well, so you have to spend your choices carefully. Clinics can require a significant commitment of time and intellect, sometimes an enormous investment (a year-long clinic can take 14 credit hours). Plus, you’ll have the whole rest of your life to practice law, and you should enjoy the chance for a purely academic experience now, as this is probably your last chance, ever. Do a clinic. Not everyone likes law school all that much. At all. Many of those people eventually love practicing law. Why not bring on the love now? Clinics give you that chance. Not to mention how much better you can learn by doing rather than simply reading about it. Plus, the clinical program at WCL is, without debate, among the best in the nation, maybe the best in the world. The only debate is whether we’re #1 or #2. (Right answer: We’re #1.) It’s smart to take advantage of the best things that a place has to offer, whether you’re talking about food at a restaurant or courses in school. And the best clinics put together the academic with the real world in a setting that gives you genuine experience. That’s a lot to love, and a lot of work, so you get a lot of credit. If you want to do 14 credit hours, you can, but you can also do a one-semester clinic: the Tax Clinic is 6 credit hours and the General Practice Clinic is 7. Choose an alternative experience, or an additional one. A wealth of internships and externships are available in Washington, and they offer excellent chances for experiential learning. A few field components are also available, particularly in securities and real estate. In addition, some paying jobs offer excellent experience in business-related areas of practice, and I find my students who are clerking for firms, businesses, and agencies often have insights and questions that they would never see otherwise. Also, let’s say it: Going to law school in Washington is a special—no, extraordinary—opportunity. Where else can you do field placements, externships, or the like at places like the SEC, the CFTC, or the State Department? There are many options, and you need to figure out what is best for you.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 00:55:59 +0000
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