Is law really the death sentence that everyone makes it out to be? (1 Viewer)

[Bingobango]

I read in a Susan Daicoff article once that ~40% of Law students go through a major depressive episode between the start and end of their degree. (This may speak more to the type of person to enrol in a law degree than it does about the degree's content)... It's not as brutal as people make it out to be, ut if you're unorganised and say, do no readings for the first four weeks of semester and you have a load of 3 law units, you're headed for pretty dangerous territory. Really though, it's manageable and not really breakdown inducing.

The more breakdown inducing thing is your chances at the type of job you think you'll get. lol, as aforementioned.

 

[isildurrrr1]

There are a shit load of melodramatic pricks that do law... They are actually the most annoying ones out of all of them... (Yes, they are even more annoying then those mature aged students who sit at the front of lectures and ask pointless questions...)

It's actually pretty easy when you get the hang of it... leostrut.jpg

Essentially this shit. Some people out there would kill for some fucking sleep.

If you can't handle law you can always drop out. Like 50% of first year law students who don't understand the gravity of the situation.

Worst than mature age students are hippie assholes who drop the fact they listen to ABC radio or some shit and somehow it makes them smarter.

Rish: It's not about something being "easy" or "hard." It's all about your dedication. Sometimes you just gotta motivate yourself like an abused wife or the military. Convince yourself all that suck you're feeling now is somehow good for you and making you STRONGER.

More importantly for your marks in law is doing internships/clerkships. But your marks help you get those anyway.

 

[enoilgam]

Enoil this post depressed me.

There are still jobs within Law, always have been, always will be. My point is that you really need to be proactive during uni and after in order to make it work. Too many people think a Law degree is a magic ticket into a high paying career - like they will waltz out of uni and have organisations and firms desperate to hire them.

Because there are so many law schools now, it is generally the tier one law schools and their highest achieving students that make it into top tier law or become some high flying barrister. The money is still there and if you are good at what you do, you can make waay more than a surgeon for similar hours (By the time they fully specialise you'll be in a good position).

The money is definitely there and I wouldnt discourage people who genuinely want to do Law from doing it for that reason.

No don't worry, it's not a death sentence but a law degree from Macq is fully unemployable. Need to do law at USYD/UNSW for undergrad.

Complete rubbish - I know for a fact that top tiers consider and hire graduates from Mq, UoN, UoW and even ND (mainly because most firms have offices in WA, where Notre Dame has a highly regarded Law program). UWS does have a negative stigma, but this is slowly changing as dinosaur partners start retiring.

I hate all the fuckers who post about how hard law is on facebook, twitter etc, it really isn't as hard as people make it out to be, but law students (like me) are up themselves and want to make out to the plebeians how 'hard' law is.

I only did law subjects last year, and had no trouble completing the work and getting marks good enough to get into usyd.

I genuinely found it so much harder than Commerce - I had equivalent marks in both before dropping out and like, I thought the two degrees were in different leagues of difficulty.

i stated that because i haven't done law at every uni so iwouldn't know. Rather not speculate, never did a law degree at uws. But from friends, i do know where it is easier to get higher marks in.

It isnt so much the quality of the course though which is an issue - it's the quality of the cohort. Someone who may produce Credit calibre assignments at USyd may get Ds at UWS simply because their work will appear better within the context of what is seen at UWS. My mate goes to UTS and I would say our assignments/exams were roughly on par.

 

[RishBonjour99]

Essentially this shit. Some people out there would kill for some fucking sleep.

If you can't handle law you can always drop out. Like 50% of first year law students who don't understand the gravity of the situation.

Worst than mature age students are hippie assholes who drop the fact they listen to ABC radio or some shit and somehow it makes them smarter.

Rish: It's not about something being "easy" or "hard." It's all about your dedication. Sometimes you just gotta motivate yourself like an abused wife or the military. Convince yourself all that suck you're feeling now is somehow good for you and making you STRONGER.

More importantly for your marks in law is doing internships/clerkships. But your marks help you get those anyway.

Definitely agree with the motivation thing. I am where i am because of precisely that. Just on the clerkship etc - to grt clerkships in big law, you eithet have to know a partner or have top marks. So for most people in law, marks are a huge category (much more important than marks in Commerce )

 

[RishBonjour99]

I read in a Susan Daicoff article once that ~40% of Law students go through a major depressive episode between the start and end of their degree. (This may speak more to the type of person to enrol in a law degree than it does about the degree's content)... It's not as brutal as people make it out to be, ut if you're unorganised and say, do no readings for the first four weeks of semester and you have a load of 3 law units, you're headed for pretty dangerous territory. Really though, it's manageable and not really breakdown inducing.

The more breakdown inducing thing is your chances at the type of job you think you'll get. lol, as aforementioned.

Yes and roughly 50 pc of lawyers would do law again according to lawyers weekly survey. This is in line with the medical profession. Just the grass is greener on the other side.

 

[enoilgam]

Definitely agree with the motivation thing. I am where i am because of precisely that. Just on the clerkship etc - to grt clerkships in big law, you eithet have to know a partner or have top marks. So for most people in law, marks are a huge category (much more important than marks in Commerce )

If you know a partner or an important client, your chances increase dramatically.

Also marks do count for a lot more mainly due to the need for technical proficiency. A Senior Partner at a top tier was telling me that they need students with higher marks because that is a good indicator of technical proficiency. Top tiers and even mid tiers usually handle legal work from organisations when their in-house teams are unable to do so. So they have to be the cream of the crop and their understanding of the law must be extremely high. According to the partner, people with a credit average or lower lack the high level proficiency needed, although they do make exceptions in cases where the person has strong legal experience from doing other roles during uni.

 

[RishBonjour99]

If you know a partner or an important client, your chances increase dramatically.

Also marks do count for a lot more mainly due to the need for technical proficiency. A Senior Partner at a top tier was telling me that they need students with higher marks because that is a good indicator of technical proficiency. Top tiers and even mid tiers usually handle legal work from organisations when their in-house teams are unable to do so. So they have to be the cream of the crop and their understanding of the law must be extremely high. According to the partner, people with a credit average or lower lack the high level proficiency needed, although they do make exceptions in cases where the person has strong legal experience from doing other roles during uni.

Exactly man. Marks are really important. Although 70 plus wam from usyd cracking big law does happen. give only around 10-15 people get a wam above 77 by 5th year. But experience is extremely important as well - i.e. proper legal experience not "admin clerk" at a suburban law firm employed to pick up phone calls etc. Paralegal is always good i think.

 

[TrentsUnicorn]

Complete rubbish - I know for a fact that top tiers consider and hire graduates from Mq, UoN, UoW and even ND (mainly because most firms have offices in WA, where Notre Dame has a highly regarded Law program). UWS does have a negative stigma, but this is slowly changing as dinosaur partners start retiring.

really? I though top tier firms only hired from USyd or UNSW?

I genuinely found it so much harder than Commerce - I had equivalent marks in both before dropping out and like, I thought the two degrees were in different leagues of difficulty.

So basically it is hard, but not as hard as some people make it out to be and definitely not impossible?

 

[enoilgam]

really? I though top tier firms only hired from USyd or UNSW?

Yes and they are expanding out more and more. Law firms compete for the top talent much moreso than businesses in the Commerce field. Some of that talent comes from unis outside of USyd/UNSW (you also have to consider interstate graduates as well(. Its true that USyd/UNSW have most of the talent, but you cant ignore other unis. Even though UWS isnt well regarded, they are likely to have 1 or 2 top tier calibre graduates. If no one is currently competing for them, then this presents a lucrative opportunity for firms which consider these graduates. As the competition for top talent gets higher, Law firms will begin expanding outward.

So basically it is hard, but not as hard as some people make it out to be and definitely not impossible?

It's hard, but certainly not impossible.

 

[Cleavage]

Might I ask (rather noob-ily) how much of studying law is pure memorisation?

 

[JasonG123]

really? I though top tier firms only hired from USyd or UNSW?

They will look at the very best from UTS and UMaq (top 10% probably). It's important to understand that the relationship between UNSW and Usyd grads and the best jobs in law is mostly correlation and not causation, although some employers will have a bias. What I mean by this is that take the same outstanding student and place them in Usyd or UTS and ceteris paribus there won't be much (if any) difference in their employment outcome.

So basically it is hard, but not as hard as some people make it out to be and definitely not impossible?

Most of the time, conceptually it isn't that hard (although some topics will be confusing), so it's not hard to pass. What makes it hard is that it's marked on a bell curve and you're competing against smart people, so maintaining a D average is hard and a HD average is almost impossible (on average only one HD average grad at Usyd).

 

[enoilgam]

Might I ask (rather noob-ily) how much of studying law is pure memorisation?

Not as much as people would expect. Law is more about understanding and applying the law, which is where it gets quite difficult.

 

[RivalryofTroll]

i stated that because i haven't done law at every uni so iwouldn't know. Rather not speculate, never did a law degree at uws. But from friends, i do know where it is easier to get higher marks in.

Well, it's probably safe to ''assume'' that law is generally one of the harder disciplines, relative to the other disciplines (not uni) such as Commerce, Arts or Science, at every university.

Not sure about MACQ or UWS or ND or UoW and so on but from what I hear, UTS Law doesn't give out that many HDs (or even Ds at times) - especially in the later Law units.

The fact that they don't use a bell-curve or scaling too often like some sandstone unis (from my own experience, my final subject marks for my first year subjects were raw) makes it theoretically pretty difficult to crack into the top marks.

 

[enoilgam]

Not sure about MACQ or UWS or ND or UoW and so on but from what I hear, UTS Law doesn't give out that many HDs (or even Ds at times) - especially in the later Law units.

Notre Dame bell curves across all subjects in terms of Ds and HDs, but in Law they are pretty restrictive on giving HDs or Ds (D was usually the highest mark in exams/assignments I did).

 

[RivalryofTroll]

Might I ask (rather noob-ily) how much of studying law is pure memorisation?

Very little (close to zero really).

Also most law schools tend to do open book exams (UTS, UNSW and I think MACQ?) so there's no need to memorise every single thing.

 

[strawberrye]

Very little (close to zero really).

Also most law schools tend to do open book exams (UTS, UNSW and I think MACQ?) so there's no need to memorise every single thing.

Although I have heard for some law courses they do have closed book exams, but apparently it is not that much different from open book. The trap of open book exam is that you think you might not need to remember that much, but you still need to remember a substantial amount and be familiar enough with your notes so that you can find the crucial information that you need in the minimum amount of time.

 

[RivalryofTroll]

Although I have heard for some law courses they do have closed book exams, but apparently it is not that much different from open book. The trap of open book exam is that you think you might not need to remember that much, but you still need to remember a substantial amount and be familiar enough with your notes so that you can find the crucial information that you need in the minimum amount of time.

Yeah that's true but I think law involves close to zero ''pure memorisation''.

I mean if it was a whole load of pure memorisation, it wouldn't be such a demanding discipline.

 

[RishBonjour99]

Well, it's probably safe to ''assume'' that law is generally one of the harder disciplines, relative to the other disciplines (not uni) such as Commerce, Arts or Science, at every university.

Not sure about MACQ or UWS or ND or UoW and so on but from what I hear, UTS Law doesn't give out that many HDs (or even Ds at times) - especially in the later Law units.

The fact that they don't use a bell-curve or scaling too often like some sandstone unis (from my own experience, my final subject marks for my first year subjects were raw) makes it theoretically pretty difficult to crack into the top marks.

Typically, Less than 10 people out of around 400 get hds in a proper 1st year law unit (i.e. excluding foundations of law which is just bs). My raw was exactly the same as my final mark for all my law units so far (public, torts and contracts). You are up against some of the most hard working AND smartest kids.
most people in oxbridge law graduate with honours. Why disadvantage students with lower marks after getting into the best institutions? Melbourne law is similar.

 

[JasonG123]

The fact that they don't use a bell-curve or scaling too often like some sandstone unis (from my own experience, my final subject marks for my first year subjects were raw) makes it theoretically pretty difficult to crack into the top marks.

At Usyd and UNSW a bell curve makes it harder to achieve top marks since the competition is very strong.

 

[RivalryofTroll]

Notre Dame bell curves across all subjects in terms of Ds and HDs, but in Law they are pretty restrictive on giving HDs or Ds (D was usually the highest mark in exams/assignments I did).

At Usyd and UNSW a bell curve makes it harder to achieve top marks since the competition is very strong.

Well you can say that due to a bell curve, there's at least a minimal amount of HDs ''guaranteed'' for the cohort in a sense.

Without a bell curve, a cohort could be HD-less.

Anyways it's fair to say that UNSW or USYD have stronger cohorts (no one can argue against that).

Typically, Less than 10 people out of around 400 get hds in a proper 1st year law unit (i.e. excluding foundations of law which is just bs). My raw was exactly the same as my final mark for all my law units so far (public, torts and contracts). You are up against some of the most hard working AND smartest kids.
most people in oxbridge law graduate with honours. Why disadvantage students with lower marks after getting into the best institution? Melbourne law is similar.

Like it's fair to argue that it's most likely harder to get HDs at USYD Law due to the competitive nature of the cohort.

But basically, I'm trying to saw law is probably tough everywhere (at least relative to the other degrees offered at each university).

[HR][/HR]

Anyways, I have to acknowledge that you guys are the more experienced law students here.