How Law School Differs From Undergrad

Coming straight from undergrad to law school was a huge transition for me and I had no idea what to expect, other than what I had seen in movies, tv, and the one time I had sat in on a law school class. In some ways law school is very similar. You attend lecture, you take notes, and you complete exams. There are, however, huge key differences. I’ve gotten so used to how law school is run I barely even think about how laid-back undergraduate classes were. Here are my main observations on how law school is different from undergrad!

Everyone dresses nicer.

In undergrad, my lectures were full of kids rolling out of bed and coming to campus in their pajamas, sweatpants, etc. In law school, that’s not the case. Everyone tends to care a bit more about their outfits and appearances. Law students definitely aren’t walking around in full business suits (except for the occasional day when they have on-campus interviews), but they aren’t showing up to lecture in their pajamas either. I would describe the dress code as “casual cute”. I personally tend to stick with a comfortable pair of flats, some jeans, and a nice top (basically what you find searching “teacher style” on Pinterest). When I want to dress lazier, I opt for something athleisure that still looks put together. You can read more about how to dress for law school in my blog post on law student style, here.

There’s much more reading involved.

Every college major has differing amounts of reading involved in their schoolwork, but none of it compares to the amount of reading you’ll be assigned in law school (except maybe english lit majors, perhaps). You may have been assigned articles or books to read in college classes, but let’s be honest. You didn’t actually read much of what was assigned. Law students are assigned hundreds of pages of reading every week. Not only is it the kind of reading you absolutely cannot skip, it’s dense legal-jargon-filled cases that are often hard to understand. It takes multiple hours out of each day to accomplish the assigned readings, and with that comes my next point…

You spend more time on campus.

Law students spend way more time on campus than undergrads. Attending lecture, study groups, office hours, and reading in the library all adds up to some pretty long days. Some students opt to take their studying home, but many stay at school to get their work done. I found myself packing two meals to bring to school most days because I knew I wouldn’t be home until well after dinner. This reusable lunch tote from Amazon was always filled with food and snacks to get me through the day.

There’s way more competition.

As I’ve discussed in my imposter syndrome post, law school classes (at least your first year) operate on a grade curve. Each law school sets its curve differently, dividing up how many As, Bs, and Cs, each class will have at the end. This means that even though everyone may be great at taking tests, only a handful can receive As. GPA and rank are very important for a lot of law students, especially those trying to get hired at big law firms (who often only interview/hire out of the top 15 or 20 percent of a class). This leads to a sense of competition absent from many undergrad programs, and can definitely be stressful. With more competition and a grading curve, people tend to take law school pretty seriously (which I discuss in my next point).

People take school more seriously.

Say goodbye to your free weekends and social life with friends! I’m kidding, but only a little. Law school is no joke, and everyone puts much more work into their law degree than their bachelor’s. Law students frequently turn down social invites, trips, etc. This doesn’t mean law students never go out, but most of them tend to stay in once the semester nears exam dates and spend quite a bit of time studying. Spring Break and Thanksgiving tend to be big stressors for law students, as finals are around the corner and what’s meant to be a “break” is really just more time for them to study.

You also won’t find any students who are constantly skipping out on lecture Law students never miss class, in fact we often notice when someone is missing from class. And no one is winging an exam by cramming the night before. We are constantly studying, reading, outlining, and preparing.

You get cold-called on in lecture.

Cold-calling, sometimes referred to as the socratic method, is a way of teaching class where the emphasis is on asking the class questions, instead of the other way around. Simply put, the professor is going to call on you, and they are going to ask you questions in front of the class. I experienced cold-calling in a couple of classes in undergrad, but nothing like what law school cold calls entail.

Most of the time, cold calls tend to be related to a case you were assigned to read, like what the facts were, or how the court analyzed the legal issue they were presented with. Sometimes, a professor will make up a hypothetical legal scenario and ask you what the outcome would be. I’ve also had to answer some pretty puzzling philosophical questions on-call as well.

Cold calls can be a huge part of the stress of law school for some students as there is really no way to prepare for them and they often contribute to your participation grade in some way. No one really encounters this method during undergrad, and if they do, the questions posed are not nearly as difficult. I’ll be going over some tips on how to handle cold calls in an upcoming blog post.

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I hope you found this post helpful and insightful when it comes to law school and what it’s like. Follow me on instagram, at earthtojul, for more law school content 🙂