If I were you I would focus on where you are at - learning the language and being good at what you are doing - law school will always be there and you never know where life with take you over the next few years.

Boared, your perception on law school and the law field are mostly wrong. Working in a law firm as a paralegal isn't going to give you an advantage in law school admissions. A degree from an online law school (if they even actually exist) will not get you into even the lowest rung of the law world. Paralegals in my area make between $20k and $30k.

You can obviously do whatever you want, but don't say you weren't warned.

Do understand that everyone in law school thinks that the odds don't apply to them, and that the only ones of those who are right are the ones who have a really strong connection to a certain post-graduation job before they ever start into school (and not just "I know people in the field," but "I know that this specific person will hire me as long as I graduate and pass the bar").

If you want to be a lawyer, quit dicking around in Asia and go to a real law school ASAP. Don't be a lawyer in the first place because it's a bad field to get into, but if you are going to do it, get your **** together and do it in a way that will give you a reasonable chance of succeeding at it.

I'm living the dream right now. I was at work the other day and was literally euphoric as I was teaching this little kid, it was such an amazing feeling. I love living here, even going to the grocery store feels like going on an adventure, and there's asian girls that look at me as some exotic creature -- I'm not exactly interested in rushing away from this, especially when I'm picking up language skills in the process. But at the same time I know I don't want to do it forever, and would like to move back to the states eventually and since I only work 25 hours a week it would be nice to have as much of a head start in a field as possible when I do move back.

anywho, think I'm done, thanks for the advice everyone.

Establishing residency for tuition purposes makes no sense.. The in-state vs out-of-state difference is very small and we're talking about a full year when you're already getting pretty old to switch.

What you need is to blow out your scholarship opportunities and go for free.

aj, I believe you that you had a better opportunity than many day timers, but iirc your law school (I say this because I have a friend who attended it and I don't mean to offend you) has a pretty poor reputation/ranking right? That's sort of like not being the fattest kid at.. Well, you get the idea.

Yes it was a bottom feeder school. As a practical matter that means that almost no one really goes to NYC, Philly or DC biglaw, and only a handful go to the Wilmington equivalents of Biglaw. However, there are plenty of PI firms, insurance defense firms, smaller commercial litigation firms, family law firms around (i am in the 5th largest metropolitan area), and my school is well represented both in the associate in partner ranks. Plus nobody wants to move to Delaware so the district attorney in public defenders office are also populated by locals many of whom graduated from my school. Obviously there are not nearly enough jobs to go around. As for the people who get those jobs I think connections matter a whole lot more than grades and it is simply much harder to develop a network of connections three years out of undergraduate as opposed to having lived and worked in the area particularly in the legal field for 5 to 10 years before even going to law school.

I can't remember the number, but when my friend told me how many lawyers had passed the DE bar in the history of the state my head exploded.

They admit about 150 every year. I would bet about 20% come from my school. So it is a very small town type of feeling, where everybody knows everybody

Had trial this week. Some serious courtroom drama the last 3 days. It involved the defense attorney accusing my legal assistant of falsifying documents and me of committing fraud, and ended with me refusing to shake the guys hand after closing arguments and a big verdict.

The jury foreman walked straight up to me and said "you beat his butt" and patted me on the back and then walked up to the defense lawyer pointed at him and said "you're offensive" and went off on him for had to be half an hour.

Nice job trial wins are the best and dare I say worth all that high blood pressure.

GPA went up, class ranking went down. Law school is rigged.

haha I am often described as the most laid back person in the world, but I can almost guarantee you I have high blood pressure all day every day during trials, especially one like this.

Got news today...defense lawyer called, they aren't going to appeal, which is fairly shocking. So good news for me. He did have the balls to continue his schtick about how "unfair" I was because I called him out for his conduct to the jury. Really felt like he probably realized on some level that acting like that doesn't pay, but apparently he's undeterred. Whatever. I sent them numerous letters telling them (in a nice and professional way) what was going to happen, so this shouldn't be a surprise. Hopefully they've got a red flag next to my name that says "will kick our ass" and they'll just pay next time.

1L here. Currently doing the 1L summer internship application grind. My resume kind of sucks outside of some non profit experience for one year after college but whatever. Grades were okay but not really good (top 25% at a mediocre regional school that is barely ranked in the top 75). Anyway my grades aren't really good enough to apply to any of the bigger firms in the area and I doubt I can get a judge to take me on. I did have a good interview with a local legal aid non profit. I guess my question is whether if I do that for the summer will it pigeonhole me into some sort of non-profit or government career path in the eyes of potential employers?

I hear that the 1L summer internship doesn't really matter so maybe it's whatever...but I also heard that some people kind of look down for people doing non profit work for whatever reason (less stressful hours? less intellectually challenging? idk) and I have no clue what I actually wanna do in a couple years. I'm pretty much positive I can get my grades up into the top 15% by the end of next year at least since I kind of punted this semester being lazy as **** so I would like to at least give myself a shot to do something more meaningful next summer

Anyway overall I am pretty happy with my experience so far in law school. OFC I don't go to a very challenging school at all but I haven't found anything stressful yet. It sure seems like there is really nothing to do until the last few weeks of the semester. Maybe i'm missing out on some big stuff but man reading the cases and whatnot and doing case briefs and stuff before class every day just seems like a horrendous waste of time and way more likely to stress you out than actually help you learn anything other than some meaningless facts if you get cold called. Obviously my grades weren't that good and I really should do better this semester but when we are pretty much solely tested on black letter law I feel pretty good about really only using outlines from last year and just taking 10x more practice tests and working on issue spotting this semester. I am just an idiot but I sort of feel like the whole rationale of "oh we gotta teach you to think like a lawyer" seems like it's mostly bull****. Feels like legal research and writing will be orders of magnitude more useful than anything else I will do first year and that class mostly accomplishes the "think like a lawyer" part of this year

Anyway thread is kind of dead so figured I would pop in. Any answer would be appreciated. I'm sure it is "it doesn't really matter, just find something to do vaguely related to legal work for this summer"

My 1L summer internship order was roughly this:

1. Find a job that pays...if not,
2. Find a mentor willing to take you on if you work for free
3. Find something in an area of law you find interesting
4. Become a prof's assistant for the summer
5. Anything legal related
6. Work a "real" job


I got lucky and ended up combining the 2 and 3, finding a mentor + an area of law I like, but I know plenty of people who didn't really do anything serious 1L summer but crushed their OCI's and are set for biglaw. Can't imagine your 1L summer will hinder your future career choices.

Also, were in somewhat alike situations. I go to a T1 but not a t14, so would assume our employment situations are similar.

Maybe we're different, but if I had just committed 30-50k and a year of my life to law school and wasn't getting the credentials to land a good job from it, I would be pretty ****ing stressed out.

I agree. If I had to pay a dime I don't think I would be attending law school. At least not this one anyway. As is I'm not too stressed out yet.

I don't understand why you're talking about second semester of 1L in the past tense as if it's already unsalvageable in early February. All in the same thought as "I'm confident I can get into the top 15% next year."

Doesn't see why he needs to work hard and study in law school.

Complains grades too lousy to get the job he wants.

Smh

What is top 25% at your school? Should be above a 3.5, no? If it is, I'm surprised to hear that you're out on jobs. Top 75 is definitely very different than my school (top 20), but all the job postings I've seen don't require higher than a 3.5.

I'm a 1L too. For the most part all the judicial externships are done, but there are lots of other things still floating around. It's only 1L summer, it won't follow you around and prevent options during OCI. You lose the opportunity to gain experience and a talking point, but as long as you do something you still have a fair crack.

I know this is the law school thread and it has been kind of dead lately, but I wasted most of my morning reading trial transcripts of a billion dollar case against a bunch of Russians that was just dismissed because Exhibit 1 turned out to be a fabricated document. Crazy!!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...nction-request

Man, that's fascinating.

I must have been unclear or have no clue what i'm talking about at all. I just meant that considering that I didn't get in top 10 or 15% (most of the big firms around here have those cutoffs afaict) first semester I won't be able to get any of those jobs for 1L summer. My hope in the end is to get up there next year when it matters more. Unless I'm missing something I don't think my grades this 2nd semester will have any bearing on what kinds of things I can do this summer since everyone is already has an internship lined up by the time 2nd semester grades come out, no?

A lot of the big firm OCI stuff at my school doesn't have a GPA req it is "top x percent". It's actually slightly lower than 3.5 but anyway I'm not that worried about finding a job at a smaller firm or something but I actually genuinely like helping people who don't have a lot of money and wouldn't mind doing some non profit work. My main question is whether it will be looked down upon if I decide to do that and potentially hurt me in the future compared to working at a smaller firm.

Yeah, guess I misunderstood, I was thinking ahead to next school year's job search. You'll find something for this summer. Don't discount your chances of nabbing a free internship with a judge somewhere. The good paying ones are probably out, but I just got a circuit court judge in a rural area 20 minutes away to take me on for my 1L summer and it was a good experience.