Shoud l I stay or should I go?

[vashka]

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Hey SDNers, I'm debating leaving law school. I am half way through and I do not intend to use my JD. However, I f'ed up my 1st semester in law school and therefore have a less than stellar gpa, though I have made the dean's list for the past 2 semesters. I would rather go to med school sooner than later, but I'm afraid that this record will make it look as if I'm just running away from a bad GPA and the adcoms may think that I can't handle grad school. Advice? Please...

 

[QofQuimica]

Hey SDNers, I'm debating leaving law school. I am half way through and I do not intend to use my JD. However, I f'ed up my 1st semester in law school and therefore have a less than stellar gpa, though I have made the dean's list for the past 2 semesters. I would rather go to med school sooner than later, but I'm afraid that this record will make it look as if I'm just running away from a bad GPA and the adcoms may think that I can't handle grad school. Advice? Please...

How much longer do you have in law school? I think law school is three years, correct? So you have a year and a half left. I think in that case it might be best to stick it out so that you have the degree and you have time to raise your GPA more. Is your UG GPA good? Also, you didn't mention whether you had taken the pre-reqs and the MCAT, or whether you've done any shadowing of physicians and/or medical volunteering. If you haven't, you really should do some of that for a while before you apply. I don't know how busy law school keeps you, but maybe you could start working on these things while you're still in school over the next year and a half, and then take one more year of post bac and MCAT study. This would allow you to tentatively plan to apply in 2008 or 2009 depending on how long it takes you to get everything done.

 

[MeowMix]

If I were on an admissions committee, dropping out of law school would raise red flags, and you would have to have a stellar application to overcome that. Or you would have to apply to some of the more forgiving med schools.

Not to mention, how are you going to deal with the debt? There is a max on federal loans, and if you go over that into private loan territory, it is going to be very expensive.

 

[kia ora]

Hey SDNers, I'm debating leaving law school. I am half way through and I do not intend to use my JD. However, I f'ed up my 1st semester in law school and therefore have a less than stellar gpa, though I have made the dean's list for the past 2 semesters. I would rather go to med school sooner than later, but I'm afraid that this record will make it look as if I'm just running away from a bad GPA and the adcoms may think that I can't handle grad school. Advice? Please...

vashka, I graduated from law school (slightly over a decade ago, yikes!). I feel your pain. I alternated between hating law school and being incredibly bored by it. my law school gpa was by no means stellar, but it never held me back in the working world (I went to a top 5 law school; my employers never cared about much beyond that). in any event, I practiced law for several years and recently quit in order to take the prereqs for med school.

everything I've heard re: med school admissions dictates against dropping out of a grad program. however, you have to make the decision that will bring you the most fulfillment/peace of mind. I don't know whether dropping out would be viewed any less negatively than graduating and never practicing; maybe an adcom person will chime in and give you a relevant perspective on that.

think long and hard about what led you to law school in the first place. maybe the answer to that will help you decide what to do now. good luck to you!

 

[njbmd]

Hey SDNers, I'm debating leaving law school. I am half way through and I do not intend to use my JD. However, I f'ed up my 1st semester in law school and therefore have a less than stellar gpa, though I have made the dean's list for the past 2 semesters. I would rather go to med school sooner than later, but I'm afraid that this record will make it look as if I'm just running away from a bad GPA and the adcoms may think that I can't handle grad school. Advice? Please...

Hi there,
I am on a medical school admissions committee and I will tell you that you should do everything possible to finish law (or graduate school) before you apply to medical school. Yes, by not finishing, you will appear to be running away from a poor GPA.

Do whatever you can to finish and then be prepared to explain your transistion. I know it will be difficult (professional school is difficult even if your heart is in it) but you need to finish what you start. The last impression that you want to leave, especially with a medical school, is that you are not a "finisher".

Besides, the combination of MD/JD is quite useful even if you never sit for the bar. Finsh what you start and take some baby steps each day towards medical school so that you keep your goal in sight.

njbmd 🙂

 

[Law2Doc]

Hey SDNers, I'm debating leaving law school. I am half way through and I do not intend to use my JD. However, I f'ed up my 1st semester in law school and therefore have a less than stellar gpa, though I have made the dean's list for the past 2 semesters. I would rather go to med school sooner than later, but I'm afraid that this record will make it look as if I'm just running away from a bad GPA and the adcoms may think that I can't handle grad school. Advice? Please...

My personal view is that you can pay down some debt and have a lot more ability to market yourself to med schools with if you actually finish law school and work as a lawyer for a while. Adcoms hate to see folks who degree hop, as it sometimes seems like you just want to be a professional, or have that lifestyle, prestige, etc. but don't really have a longstanding committment to a particular one. There is also a concern that someone who drops out of one graduate program makes flip, not well thought out career decisions and is perhaps not mature enough. However if you finished school, passed the bar and worked, you would be able to sell yourself as having been a professional in a service industry where you worked with people, worked long hours under professional pressures, and perhaps may even have insight into health law matters etc. Others on this board disagree with my view though - this topic has come up before.

 

[chrisjohn]

Parroting... FINISH

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Others on this board disagree with my view though - this topic has come up before.

It has? 😉 Yep, there are a lot of us here with JDs, and there are a lot of people who pop up periodically who are currently in law school. I'm generally a fan of quitting, but I agree that it's probably a little better to actually get that JD now. Also, it's really not that much time, and third year is so cushy -- I still have never gotten exactly why there is a third year in law school.

However, Law2Doc alludes to the other depressing problem with your situation. Even if you graduate and immediately go into pursuing medical school, you'll still look flaky and like a quitter because you didn't use your degree. So if you can stand it, your best bet is probably to work for a few years after graduating. If you can't, I don't think it's necessarily an insurmountable problem, but you'll still have a red flag. Anecdotally, though, I never took the bar and just worked for a few years in a tangentially related field (insurance) and did get in. My path probably looked worse than if I had been a practicing lawyer, but it probably still looked better than if I had gone immediately into taking prereqs and applying after law school graduation.

 

[2Sexy4MedSchool]

Hello. Here's my advice, for what it's worth:

1) Finish the JD. Use it, don't use it -- there's zero advantage to dropping out of the program now, and lots of obvious downsides.

2) Don't worry about your JD GPA. No one cares. You got into law school, a rigorous graduate program, you will have finished law school by the time you apply (see #1 above), and none of the classes are B/C/M/P, so it's irrelevant. My grades were mediocre, and my school used a weird scale, so by the time AMCAS finished translating my transcripts my GPA looked like a 2.7. But I'm still staring MS1 in two weeks, so there you go. Not one of my interviews asked a single question about my law school experience, grades, whatever.

3) I've got to disagree with Q -- I don't think you can start studying pre-reqs or start prepping for the MCAT yet, even as a 3L, unless you're a lot smarter than I was. But you can and should start buffing your "other stuff" -- shadowing docs, volunteer medical experience/work, and community service. Come to think of it, you should start volunteering (during school, if possible, and definitely over the summer(s)) somewhere you can get experience in some area that overlaps between medicine and the law. For example, years ago, before I ever considered going back to med school, I did a lot of work for the local AIDS clinic. It was all legal/administrative, but it put me in direct contact with ill people and their families. All of my interviews addressed this experience.

4) You don't have to be a lawyer per se after you get your JD, but I would do something for a couple of years while you prep for med school. Otherwise you run the risk of looking flaky: "I want to be a lawyer. No, a doctor. No, a chef. No, a lumberjack!" You can work for a little bit, make some money, get some experience in the real world as a professional with responsabilities who has to work with clients under stressful conditions. These are all good things. Then you can start to find ways to "shift" your focus from law to medicine, like by getting involved in county bar associations or professional societies that overlap: med mal issues (plaintiff or defense), bioethics, AIDS or elder law, etc.

Good luck and feel free to PM me if you have any questions. Remember, truth is beauty and beauty is truth; that is all you need to know. Well, that and res ipsa loquitor. And also dicta, it's all dicta -- 2S4MS.

 

[QofQuimica]

3) I've got to disagree with Q -- I don't think you can start studying pre-reqs or start prepping for the MCAT yet, even as a 3L, unless you're a lot smarter than I was. But you can and should start buffing your "other stuff" -- shadowing docs, volunteer medical experience/work, and community service. Come to think of it, you should start volunteering (during school, if possible, and definitely over the summer(s)) somewhere you can get experience in some area that overlaps between medicine and the law.

Hey, easy there, Counselor! If you re-read the part of your post that I quoted and my last post, we're basically advocating the same things! I readily confess that, having never attended law school, I have no idea whether someone could take pre-req classes at the same time. Hence my saying MAYBE the OP could do it, IF a law school schedule would allow it. All I can say is that it's definitely possible for many people to take extra classes as grad students, and it would give the OP a head start if s/he could do that too. If law school takes too much time, well, then so be it. I think we can all agree that it's more important to do the pre-reqs well than it is to do them fast. 🙂

 

[2Sexy4MedSchool]

Hey, easy there, Counselor! If you re-read the part of your post that I quoted and my last post, we're basically advocating the same things! I readily confess that, having never attended law school, I have no idea whether someone could take pre-req classes at the same time. Hence my saying MAYBE the OP could do it, IF a law school schedule would allow it. All I can say is that it's definitely possible for many people to take extra classes as grad students, and it would give the OP a head start if s/he could do that too. If law school takes too much time, well, then so be it. I think we can all agree that it's more important to do the pre-reqs well than it is to do them fast. 🙂

I could not have said any of that better myself. Q, you are the quintessence of que-ititude. 🙂

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Hey, easy there, Counselor! If you re-read the part of your post that I quoted and my last post, we're basically advocating the same things! I readily confess that, having never attended law school, I have no idea whether someone could take pre-req classes at the same time. Hence my saying MAYBE the OP could do it, IF a law school schedule would allow it. All I can say is that it's definitely possible for many people to take extra classes as grad students, and it would give the OP a head start if s/he could do that too. If law school takes too much time, well, then so be it. I think we can all agree that it's more important to do the pre-reqs well than it is to do them fast. 🙂

And I'm going to come in and say that you could do prereqs or study for the MCAT your 3L year, at least I could have, and I'm no genius. At my school, we had all of 3 required courses that we had to take after the first year, so you could load your third year with the easiest classes at the school. Law school's already fairly slack in terms of time requirements because there's no busy work, no quizzes, no midterms, no class mandatory attendence (I just can't spell that word), and a curve that essentially guarantees that you'll pass, etc. Honestly, I've never had as much spare time working as I had in law school.

 

[kia ora]

And I'm going to come in and say that you could do prereqs or study for the MCAT your 3L year, at least I could have, and I'm no genius. At my school, we had all of 3 required courses that we had to take after the first year, so you could load your third year with the easiest classes at the school. Law school's already fairly slack in terms of time requirements because there's no busy work, no quizzes, no midterms, no class mandatory attendence (I just can't spell that word), and a curve that essentially guarantees that you'll pass, etc. Honestly, I've never had as much spare time working as I had in law school.

I knew some people who almost never went to class - they only showed up for the final (in more than one of their classes each term). seriously, it's not like you're going to miss something crucial that might cause the death of a client one day down the line when you're practicing (the biggest difference between law and medicine, in my opinion!...but I digress). if the OP can pass doing that, then s/he certainly would have time to do prereqs during third year. however, is that really "going to law school"? and there is some risk of failure (though it's pretty difficult to fail a law school exam).

 

[gpumpkin67]

As a current 3L/med school applicant who completed some of the pre-reqs/additional science grad courses during 1L and 2L years, I just want to confirm that it is possible to do assuming your school allows this. I would also agree with the consensus that finishing the law degree is probably a good idea unless you have truly fantastic stats...Feel free to PM me if you have any questions. Good luck!

 

[Law2Doc]

seriously, it's not like you're going to miss something crucial that might cause the death of a client one day down the line when you're practicing (the biggest difference between law and medicine, in my opinion!...but I digress).

Actually, if you do criminal law and work capital cases, this could most definitely occur. Over the years, there have been people executed due to ineffective legal assistance.
But more likely, in other areas of law if you screw up you will cost them money. Often lots of money. And to some clients that's worse than costing them a life, limb or family member.

 

[vashka]

Thank you all so much. I will stay in school, it's only one more year and maybe a summer class. I don't have that many more credits to comlete. Law school isn't that intense during the semester, so I could volunteer, etc. Thank God that med schools could care less about my gpa, my first semester exams screwed me over and I've been recovering ever since. Anyway, thank you for all the advice, I am soooo glad this site exists.

 

[kia ora]

🙂

Actually, if you do criminal law and work capital cases, this could most definitely occur. Over the years, there have been people executed due to ineffective legal assistance.
But more likely, in other areas of law if you screw up you will cost them money. Often lots of money. And to some clients that's worse than costing them a life, limb or family member.

I knew someone was going to say this. ok, until recently I was a prosecutor for many years. the criminal justice system is heavily weighted in favor of the defendant. most judges are so afraid of getting overturned on appeal that they bend over backwards in favor of the defendants.*** do you know how many convictions I've seen reversed based on ineffective assistance of defense counsel? many. wrt capital cases, convictions are always appealed, then the appeals process goes on for years and years and years. the actual risk that a truly innocent person will be executed for a crime s/he did not commit is miniscule. certainly it's happened in the past, but wrt cases from many years ago (people sit around on death row for ages while their convictions go through the appellate process). so really, the risk that if you screw up as a lawyer someone is going to die is practically nonexistent today. and in most of the cases you hear about where a death row inmate is released based on new dna evidence (ie, dna testing shows someone other than the convicted person committed the crime), ineffective assistance wasn't the problem - dna technology has advanced so much in recent years that back in the day when the trial was going on, they often couldn't have made that determination based on the available evidence.

I do agree with the money thing, though...

to the OP - drop out of law school or you'll end up like me, engaging in longwinded arguments with people you don't even know...

 

[Doctor Bagel]

to the OP - drop out of law school or you'll end up like me, engaging in longwinded arguments with people you don't even know...

Doesn't law school naturally attract people who like pointless longwinded arguments? 🙂

 

[Law2Doc]

Doesn't law school naturally attract people who like pointless longwinded arguments? 🙂

I don't know about that -- some of the pre-allo posts can be as long and pointless as anything you might see on a pre-law board. At least when lawyers make arguments someone gets a bill.

 

[nomorelaw]

I would finish it and sit for the bar if you can. Having the degree does help in life and it is an accomplishment. I thought law school was a huge mistake until I started working and then I realized that practing law was the worst mistake I made. I did not realize how many lawyers wanted to switch until I came to this site. I wonder if fewer students would enter law school if they had to shadow like pre-meds.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

I would finish it and sit for the bar if you can. Having the degree does help in life and it is an accomplishment. I thought law school was a huge mistake until I started working and then I realized that practing law was the worst mistake I made. I did not realize how many lawyers wanted to switch until I came to this site. I wonder if fewer students would enter law school if they had to shadow like pre-meds.

Honestly, I think a lot fewer would if law school standards were as stringent as medical school standards. I had zero legal experience, and I really don't think I wrote about why I was interested in law or wanted to be a lawyer in my personal statement. However, I had a high lsat and gpa and was admitted to some pretty impressive schools (the school I attended was about the lowest ranked of the schools I applied to -- got a scholarship). From my understanding, virtually anyone can get admitted to some of those fourth tier schools. Your odds of passing the bar are slim, but they'll take your $120k.

 

[Haqiqa]

hey - let me preface this by saying LISTEN TO ADCOM PERSON BEFORE YOU LISTEN TO ME, but i think it's okay to drop out of law school if you are truly miserable and have no intention of doing anything law-related. I have known others who have dropped out of ivy-league law schools, gone on to graduate school in other fields, and are currently very successful and very happy. No one held it against them for realizing that they wanted to make a change.
If you do superb in pre-med classes, and show through your activities that you are committed to medicine, I don't see the cardinal sin committed in leaving law school. What irks me about this whole issue is that this your decision, one that should be made to best suit your own emotional and financial well-being, and should not be made based on fear of how you will come across. In reality your not-so-stellar grades and change of heart are human and totally normal.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

hey - let me preface this by saying LISTEN TO ADCOM PERSON BEFORE YOU LISTEN TO ME, but i think it's okay to drop out of law school if you are truly miserable and have no intention of doing anything law-related. I have known others who have dropped out of ivy-league law schools, gone on to graduate school in other fields, and are currently very successful and very happy. No one held it against them for realizing that they wanted to make a change.
If you do superb in pre-med classes, and show through your activities that you are committed to medicine, I don't see the cardinal sin committed in leaving law school. What irks me about this whole issue is that this your decision, one that should be made to best suit your own emotional and financial well-being, and should not be made based on fear of how you will come across. In reality your not-so-stellar grades and change of heart are human and totally normal.

That's true, too. Obviously, the safest, most conservative, least likely to bite you in the a$$ move is to stay and finish the degree. If you don't, it will maybe be a red flag, but people get in with red flags, so it's not necessarily a career killer. If you're in a situation where you can't stand to stay, then by all means leave.

 

[Law2Doc]

I have known others who have dropped out of ivy-league law schools, gone on to graduate school in other fields, and are currently very successful and very happy. No one held it against them for realizing that they wanted to make a change.

There have certainly been more people with the contrary experience -- and med schools adcoms aren't all that vague when it comes to whether they frown on folks quitting certain graduate programs to change course. Med schools look for indicators of your likelihood to succeed in and continue through med school. Having dropped out of one school is by definition a bad indicator of your likelihood to stick it out in another. And there is some evidence that you do not really know what you want to do with your life, and perhaps make poorly thought out decisions, having already chosen to enroll in expensive professional education you aren't even finishing. And it's always a hard sell to convince adcoms you have the drive and passion to become a physician when it clearly wasn't your initial choice - it becomes an easier sell when you are a few years out and have some marketable skills and accomplishments under your belt.
Med schools have a goal of keeping attrition to a minimum, unlike other professional schools, such as law, which don't serve a gatekeeper of the profession function (they let the state bar do this); as a result law school classes are more numerous and the percentage who don't follow through is greater. By contrast med schools grant MDs to well over 90% of those who matriculate, and strive to fill their classes with folks whose track record suggests they will make it through. Thus having quit a professional program already will be a huge black mark. Just my two cents (again).