What is the deal with law school and why?
So competitive.
If you're interested in law school, then you've probably heard some
horror stories about how ruthless it can get people ripping out pages
of books in the law library so that other people can't read them.
People stealing laptops on the week of final exams.
People aggressively forming study groups to make sure they have the best people in
their study group at the start of class.
None of these things are real, by the way, but the competition in law school, So why
is law school as competitive as it is, and what do we do with that information?
So there are three main reasons why law school is as competitive as it
is, and the first one is the curve.
And you guys have probably heard of this before, but in law school, every
class is graded on a bell curve, meaning that the vast majority of
people in the class are going to get so.
In the B range, so A, B, B minus or B plus, and only about 10 to 15% of
people are gonna get an A range grade.
And then the other 15% are going to get something C plus or below.
And this is a big difference than undergrad where we were graded on a
hundred point scale in literally everyone could get an a u performed well enough.
In law school it inherently breeds competition because now it's not
just about how well I do on the.
It's about how well I do relative to you.
And so if I wanna compete for one of those 10 to 15 a's in the class,
that means I not only have to sort of beat the test, but I have to beat
out 85% of the people in the class.
The second reason why law school is as competitive as it is, is the people.
Law school tends to attract people who are overachiever, high performers,
hard workers, and are used to performing at a really high level.
And so, while we may be at the top of our class in undergrad, when you
go on to law school, everyone was at the top of their class in undergrad.
And so now you have this pool of people who are really, really used
to being the quote unquote best and don't have any plans to change that in.
School.
The third reason that law school is as competitive as it is, is
that the stakes feel higher.
And so in law school, your grades, especially your first year grades,
have a really powerful impact on things like who makes law review, who
gets research assistant and teaching assistant jobs with the professor who
gets to keep scholarship money or even negotiate for more scholarship money?
And the big one, who gets to compete for these most prestigious, most
coveted jobs out of law school.
So it is absolutely true that the vast majority of legal jobs out of law school
do not directly depend on the grades that you get, but there is a small subsection
of jobs that absolutely overemphasize the grades that you get and use that to make.
Hiring decisions, and those are things like big law, judicial
clerkships, federal government roles, law school professorships,
and high profile nonprofits.
And because these positions are limited and they're highly coveted
and they're making hiring decisions based on grades, you can imagine
that that naturally breeds.
Competition.
So when you combine these three pieces, the law school grading curve, the people,
and the high stakes, you naturally get an environment of really intense competition.
And this environment of competition in law school is really destructive
in a lot of ways because it tends to cause people to push themselves past
their mental and emotional and physical limits to the point of burnout to
try to prove that they are the best.
Keep up with the crowd.
It also tends to cause people to turn into as a way to sort of show off
in front of the professor or show off in front of their classmates or in
front of law firms coming to campus that they're the smartest one in the
room or the best one in the room.
And once grades come out, it causes the sort of class hierarchy where
the people at the top of the class feel better than in the people at
the lower end of the class feel less.
All of which is totally up, but law school stands that way right now.
So what do we do about it?
Here are my thoughts on how to handle competition in law school, and the first
one is that it is totally fine to use competition to fuel you in law school.
The reality is that competition has been a huge motivating factor for a
lot of us and allowed us to thrive up until this point in our life, whether
that was going after the highest grade in class or winning the competition.
Going after that big, exciting job.
Competition in a lot of ways has really motivated us, and when you're
in law school, it can be the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning.
It can be the thing that allows you to push through an extra hour of work in
the library at night, and it can get you through that last stretch of final exams.
And so competition is not inherently a bad thing.
It's just important to know that you're using it in a healthy.
The important piece here is that you don't make competition the only
motivation that you have in law school, because none of us came to law school
with the singular goal of getting better grades than everyone else.
How incredibly boring and shallow would that be?
No.
We came to law school because we thought being a lawyer would be fun
and exciting, and we thought we could make an impact, and we wanted a legal
career to help us create a better life.
And so when you start feeling like you're getting sucked down the hole
of competition, remind yourself of all of the awesome reasons that you.
To pursue a law degree in the first.
The next thing I would encourage you guys to do is to focus your
competitive energy to a healthy source.
And so we talked earlier about how law school is graded on a curve and how
that does directly put classmates in competition with one another because how
well somebody else does affects how well you can do on an exam and vice versa.
But what I would encourage you guys to do is reframe that focused.
Elsewhere.
Because what tends to happen is if you see your classmates as the enemy, you are
gonna treat them that way and you will be less inclined to help them out and you
will be more inclined to be an to them.
But those relationships last way longer than the three years of law school.
And so instead what we wanna do is focus that energy on, for example, the exam.
And if you can view the competition as you, between you and the exam, and that
being the entity to beat, then you are.
More likely to treat your classmates as friends and with respect and
still go after what you want.
And if you do need sort of a human form to rage against, then pick your professor.
Let the competition between be between you and your professor, and that's
the human that you're trying to beat.
So that's my encouragement to you guys.
If you find yourself sort of slipping into this mindset of it's me against them,
and really treating your classmates as.
The next thing to keep in mind when you feel yourself getting really
competitive in law school is to remember that grades are not the end goal.
Getting a job is, and yes, grades are a really powerful tool to use to leverage
and market yourself for these positions, but they're definitely not the only tool.
And as we talked about before, most legal jobs don't directly hire based on grades.
And so there are a couple of other really powerful tools in your toolkit
that you can use and leverage.
To get these positions, and one of them is building your own professional network.
And so I'm gonna link a video here because it is all about the most
organic, most efficient way to begin building that network in law school.
And it is absolutely wonderful.
You also have the ability to get really substantive legal experience when
you're in law school, which you can then use as a genuine offer of value.
A legal employer and remember, you are resourceful and scrappy, and
you hustle and work hard, and all of those things go into ultimately
landing a job out of law school.
Now, if you find yourself thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Great, great, great.
I hear you.
Getting a job is the goal, but I still wanna be at the top of my class.
That's awesome.
I think getting to the top of your class is a fantastic goal to have.
I had it myself, and I love the energy and the motivation that is behind a goal.
One of the things to keep in mind is that law school is learnable.
What does this mean?
It means that people are not born good at law school or born bad at law school.
Getting good law school grades is a skill just like any other, and it can
be learned, practiced, and perfected.
And so this is really important to understand because just because you don't
get the grades you want first semester or first year doesn't mean the game is over.
As a law school coach, I have seen.
People who have come to me after two years of being in the bottom of their class, get
straight A's during their three L year.
I've also seen people totally tank the first semester of law school,
come back and blow it out of the water second semester of law
school and land their dream job.
So when I tell you that this is learnable and this is doable and
this is repeatable, I mean it.
And so if you are curious about what a law school strategy actually looks like,
then definitely check out this Beat the Curve Guide where I break down how I.
To walk through a really solid law school strategy.
But the point here is that this is a skillset and it's really
important to relate to it as that rather than thinking, you either
have what it takes or you don't.
And that's a great segue into the next thing to remember about competition,
which is you are not your grades.
And the fact that we.
So many of us have internalized this over time is not our fault because
the entire educational system is designed to really create that link of
identity between the grades that you get and how you feel about yourself.
And good grades mean you're good and bad grades mean you're bad.
And for so many of us are literal identities and
self-worth are tied up in grades.
And I know personally now 15 years later, I'm just starting to do the
work to unlink those two things and.
Space between these perfectionist tendencies and these achievements that
are so deeply ingrained in who I am.
And so definitely pay attention to how you're relating to your grades
and making sure that there's that gap and there's that separation between
who you are as a person and the grades, which are just a tool that
you're using to build a life for.
And this is not just good for your mental health.
This is also strategic because if you are somebody with a growth mindset, meaning
you understand that your intelligence and your talents and your abilities
can be developed and grow over time, then you're so much more likely to
continue that journey going forward regardless of the grades that you get.
But if you're somebody with a fixed mindset where you think that your
intelligence and your abilities and your talents are innate to you, and
they can't be changed, When you're faced with a disappointing result or what
you perceive as a failure, you are much less likely to keep going and you're
much less likely to try again or try in a different way, and you're much more
likely to internalize that as meaning you are a failure, not that this thing
that you tried and this skill that you're developing didn't go your way.
So yes, it has mental health benefits, but it also has a.
Benefit and the best thing you can do for yourself is to separate yourself
from your grades and realize that that entity is not who you are as a person.
All right guys, so I hope that that discussion of
competition was helpful for you.
And if you are thinking about law school and just really wanting to get
some boots on the ground stories of what that actually looks like and what
the environment of law school is, then I definitely recommend checking out
the Law School Network Facebook group.
It's free to join and there.
3000 law students and pre-law students in there sharing their stories and
motivations and tips, and it's just a wonderful, supportive community.
So I hope to see you guys in there soon, and I will see you in the next video.