Work load in Law School Vs. Medical School

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ewar84

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Most of my friends in law school seem to have an incredible amount of free time- averaging during non exam time about 3 hours a day of school work. I was just curious what people thought of the workload of a law student compared to a med student.
 
Read "One L" by Turow.

ewar84 said:
Most of my friends in law school seem to have an incredible amount of free time- averaging during non exam time about 3 hours a day of school work. I was just curious what people thought of the workload of a law student compared to a med student.
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ewar84 said:
Most of my friends in law school seem to have an incredible amount of free time- averaging during non exam time about 3 hours a day of school work. I was just curious what people thought of the workload of a law student compared to a med student.
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Law school has a lot more free time, no matter how you slice it.
 
I heard law school is a walk in the park compared to medical school, but for some reason they have a higher attrition rate.
 
Law school was a miserable experience for me for lots of reasons, but the time it required wasn't one. 🙂 I guess I went to class most days, so that took up about 4 hours. I didn't do much other than that until about two weeks before exams. Then I studied my a&& off. So, it was pretty chill aside for the last few weeks of the semester. My law school had pretty much zero busy work, too, which is the one thing I'm really starting to hate about med school.

Editing to add that I did know people who studied all the time in law school, so there's probably some individual variation. You are graded on a curve, so if you're really driven or obsessive, it might be hard to stop studying. I did have friends in law school who studied more than I study now in medical school.
 
Doctor Bagel said:
Editing to add that I did know people who studied all the time in law school, so there's probably some individual variation. You are graded on a curve, so if you're really driven or obsessive, it might be hard to stop studying. I did have friends in law school who studied more than I study now in medical school.
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I studied all the time in law school, and still feel there is simply a lot more ground to cover in med school.🙂 But it should be noted that it's a different kind of work -- you basically have essay tests in law school, and the reading tends to be cases in case books - somewhat less dry as they involve "stories" about real people. Additionally, in law school, some courses had just one exam at the end of the year on everything -- no regular tests -- so you could get by just staying organized. In med school the testing is far more frequent, more objective, and you tend to be focusing on notesets compiled by the professors, laden with much drier material -- ion channels, pathways and the like.
 
sirus_virus said:
I heard law school is a walk in the park compared to medical school, but for some reason they have a higher attrition rate.
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The higher attrition rate is likely related to the less stringent application process. You have to be more impressive to get into med school because the adcoms serve a gatekeeper function -- once you are in, in all probability you will become a physician. In law, they leave the gatekeeping function to the state bar -- so they don't screen as carefully, accept much bigger classes than med school, plenty of people drop out, some fail out, and about 30% of each state's law grads don't pass the bar. Of those who pass, a non-insignificant percentage find non-law or quasi-law jobs and never practice with their JD anyhow.
 
Law2Doc said:
The higher attrition rate is likely related to the less stringent application process. You have to be more impressive to get into med school because the adcoms serve a gatekeeper function -- once you are in, in all probability you will become a physician. In law, they leave the gatekeeping function to the state bar -- so they don't screen as carefully, accept much bigger classes than med school, plenty of people drop out, some fail out, and about 30% of each state's law grads don't pass the bar. Of those who pass, a non-insignificant percentage find non-law or quasi-law jobs and never practice with their JD anyhow.
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Yep. The attrition rate is actually pretty low at more selective schools but huge at less selective schools. Some schools supposedly fail out 1/3 of their class. 😱 At my school, you had to work to make less than a C considering we had a B curve.

I guess I went to a school with a very traditional curriculum because about 95% of my classes just had one final at the end. I never had any classes with midterms, and I took maybe 2 classes where you just wrote a huge paper instead of taking a test. Keeping up would make your life a lot easier, but I'm proof you can get away with some massive late semester cramming. I wouldn't recommend it, though. 😎
 
AttackNME said:
Doctor Bagel said:
...My law school had pretty much zero busy work, too, which is the one thing I'm really starting to hate about med school...
quote]

you're saying you want the busy work? explain.
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She's saying there is more busy work in med school, not that she wants more. I'm not actually experiencing this though.
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ewar84 said:
Most of my friends in law school seem to have an incredible amount of free time- averaging during non exam time about 3 hours a day of school work. I was just curious what people thought of the workload of a law student compared to a med student.
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It really depends on what school and which professors you have. I have friends who went to law school and said there were alot of reading and studying. In comparison to medical school, it was definitely alot less work and studying involved. I remember days where I had to stay in to study while they went out partying... so medical school definitely has more workload.
 
As far as time in classes goes, from what I understand my buddy at AECOM hasn't been attending class regularly since December. Smart idea? He's apparently doing pretty damn well so maybe that works for him.
 
My brother is in law school right now at a pretty well-respected institution and he has almost no free time - maybe like 1-2 hours a day during the week and a little more time on the weekends. His weekday schedule is apparently something like this:

8-10 am - Read/Study
10 am-4 pm - Go to Class
4-6 pm - Read/Study
6-8 pm - "Free Time" - Dinner, spend time with wife
8-12 pm - Read/Study

I'm not sure how typical this is of law students. My brother is a hard-worker, though (he's currently first in his class) and he probably works harder than most of the students in his class.

I recently talked to a med student who had been to law school, and he thought that medical school was more difficult simply because of the sheer amount of knowledge you are expected to gain. At law school, the teaching is much more esoteric -- they are essentially teaching you how to think like a lawyer. There is little memorization and much interpretation.
 
I haven't been in med school yet, so I can't speak to how tough it is. But my husband is in his first year of law school. He definitely spends a lot of his time studying, but on top of that the law students are consistently presented with one competition after another. Of course you don't have to participate in all of them, but if you're trying to be towards the top of your class and get a good job, you most likely will. This semester he's done Mock Trial, then ADR, next week is Law Review, after that is Mute court. At the same time he's been applying and interviewing for summer jobs which are also very competitive and he's sent out at least 100 resumes. So even though I bet his class work load is less than that of a med student, he's consistently stressed and spending his time working on something law related. Personally, I would hate competing with my classmates all the time and then being publicly ranked afterwards. But that's why I'm not in law school 🙂
 
ewar84 said:
Most of my friends in law school seem to have an incredible amount of free time- averaging during non exam time about 3 hours a day of school work. I was just curious what people thought of the workload of a law student compared to a med student.
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I don't know who these friends are or where they are studying, but everyone I know who went to law school didn't have any time for anything except for reading. I suppose that it depends on the person and how they learn.

Law school is TONS of reading and memorizing cases and so forth, whereas medical school is more practical learning a lot of the time, and it might also have to do with how much background one has in each type of material. Say you were pre-law, you might go over a lot of the same stuff you did in undergrad, whereas if you were a philosophy major you might have a hard time catching up. Similarly, if you were already a nurse or a pharmacist certain courses in medical school would be easier than if you came in from being an English major who only took the basic pre-med requirements.
 
ewar84 said:
Most of my friends in law school seem to have an incredible amount of free time- averaging during non exam time about 3 hours a day of school work. I was just curious what people thought of the workload of a law student compared to a med student.
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Law school has work in spurts (until exam time) and then breaks where it's much easier on you. Med school seems to be more of an endurance race.

If this is any measure, I always feel like my brother (law student) isn't working that hard, given the amount of Thursday night "Bar Reviews" he goes to!
 
LOL what a concept. I believe you mean Moot Court :laugh:

Lulu8 said:
I haven't been in med school yet, so I can't speak to how tough it is. But my husband is in his first year of law school. He definitely spends a lot of his time studying, but on top of that the law students are consistently presented with one competition after another. Of course you don't have to participate in all of them, but if you're trying to be towards the top of your class and get a good job, you most likely will. This semester he's done Mock Trial, then ADR, next week is Law Review, after that is Mute court. At the same time he's been applying and interviewing for summer jobs which are also very competitive and he's sent out at least 100 resumes. So even though I bet his class work load is less than that of a med student, he's consistently stressed and spending his time working on something law related. Personally, I would hate competing with my classmates all the time and then being publicly ranked afterwards. But that's why I'm not in law school 🙂
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Schaden Freud said:
LOL what a concept. I believe you mean Moot Court :laugh:
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Why thank you for pointing that out. My, what a keen eye for detail you have. And you've really contributed in a productive way to this thread. 👎
 
Come on- Mute Court? It's funny.

Lulu8 said:
Why thank you for pointing that out. My, what a keen eye for detail you have. And you've really contributed in a productive way to this thread. 👎
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All this talk of law school vs. med school. You all know there are other things out there, right?

Why don't you all try engineering school or architecture (architorture??). Talk about no free time...
 
I did law school and a SMP. I agree a SMP isn't *exactly* med school, but it gives you some taste of what it's like. I think the workload factor in law school didn't come so much from busy work and reading, but rather from the million other things we had to do as well.

Everyone is vying for prestigious honors like law jounral editor and moot court honors. Just preparing the writing sample you need to vie for those, as well as the activities themselves if you get in, take up a fair amount of time. And although they're still technically considered extracurriculars, in reality they're not--you almost WANT to have something like that on your transcript to compete for big-firm jobs.

Also, unlike in med school, there's a whole lot of interviewing and networking that takes place in school. The OCI period second-year (on campus interviewing period) is a especially hectic time, where you have to prepare for summer job interviews with anywhere from 20-30 firms or judicial chambers. These summer jobs are the closest we ever came to rotations, and as a law student you're responsible for arranging your own unlike in med school.

So even if there wasn't a whole lot of class-related busy work, there was a lot of work outside classes that really drains you that you wouldn't have to do in med school. People used to joke that law school is where all the people who couldn't get into med school went. After having been through it I'm certain that's not the case. There are so many law students that are unbelievably bright and able to handle so much simultaenously. I I dunno, just my two cents. =)
 
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