Law School FAQs

Last week I had the chance to be a "Student Ambassador" for BYU Law at the Law School Expo on campus. I got to be upstairs in the Wilk in a "reception room" where I met potential students and answered their questions. Even though I only signed up to be there for an hour, I enjoyed myself so much I stayed for an extra hour and a half! Like many people, I enjoy giving advice and sharing my opinions. We had a lot of students come through, so I actually felt productive and useful the whole time.

In the spirit of procrastinating doing homework (another reason why I chose to stay for an extra 1 1/2 hours) I thought I'd post my answers to the FAQs that I got today:

1. How much time do you have to study? Let me answer you that by asking you this: What grades do you want? As someone who is in the bottom half of my class, I treat my 14 credit load like a full time job- I'm on campus from about 8-5. Having observed those who are in the top half of the class, especially in my first year, they were on campus more like 8-8 minimum.  Speaking of, several students also asked about how much reading you have to do. The first year, it's about 25 pages of reading per class period. You have 3 classes a day, which equals around 75 pages of reading daily. 
2. How do you balance school and family obligations? Going back to my first answer, I balanced by choosing to dedicate the evening to myself (my first year) or my husband (2nd and 3rd years). I knew that by doing this, I would sacrifice my grades. Although I do know several mothers who have graduated in the top of their class and still made time for family- they just have to study every available minute they aren't at home. 
3. What is Law Review? Every law school has at least one student-run journal called "Law Review." The student's duties are to select, edit, and publish articles they receive from professors and scholars around the country. Law Review is the most prestigious journal at any law school. There are usually other smaller journals, as well. Each school selects editors for the journals differently, but BYU does a one week "write-on" competition where students write a 15 page paper based on a file of information that they receive. They also have to do a "tech edit" where they check the footnotes of an assigned article to make sure they follow the correct rules (scholarly articles usually have at least 200 footnotes, by the way). The score they receive from their paper and tech edit are combined and the highest scores are selected to be on Law Review. 



Other co-curricular programs besides Law Review include Moot Court and Trial Ad. At BYU Law, 1L students have the opportunity to compete so they can participate in these activities during their 2L year.

4. What do you have to do to get a good job? I had to have the student define "good job" since it's pretty subjective. She had heard that if you don't do Law Review or get high grades you won't get a "good job." If you consider working at a big law firm or clerking for the Supreme Court a "good job" then that would be true. However, if you consider working as a solo practitioner or for the government a "good job" then that statement would be false. 

Rhetorically,
Rebekah