How hard is law school?

Law school is very hard. To start with, getting into law school is difficult. You need to have a strong GPA and score well on the LSAT.

The LSAT is an exam that must be taken to enter law school, and it is notorious for being very hard. Many applicants have to take it multiple times before getting a passing grade. And if you are planning to attend a top law school, the competition is fierce.

Once you get into law school, you are confronted with a barrage of coursework that is diverse. To be a successful law school student, you must dedicate yourself to your program and be prepared to study and research for long hours.

In many undergraduate situations, some students can get by simply doing the bare minimum; they may skip classes and wait till the last minute to cram before an exam. This is nearly impossible to do in law school. If you miss one class, there is a good chance you aren't going to pass the course.

You are also expected to complete a hefty amount of coursework, and this means not just memorizing things from textbooks but actually gaining an understanding of complex concepts, strategies, lines of reasoning, and many other legal and ethical principles.

If you do the bare minimum in law school, you are likely to fall behind fast. Expect to spend long hours in libraries studying and researching different legal matters.

There is a humongous amount of reading you must do in law school. Most of this pertains to legal texts and cases and has a lot of legal-specific jargon and even Latin. And if your undergraduate degree had nothing to do with the law, you are going to have to grasp many foreign concepts quickly.

During classes, law professors are known to cold-call students. This is when they pick a student at random to answer a question. Even students who know the answers often dread this part of law school, as it puts them on the spot to deliver a succinct answer to what is usually a very complicated question.

Law professors are also known to not give feedback unless you actively seek it out, and even then, it can be hard to obtain. While this does teach you how to be independent, it also makes it difficult to know if you are on the right track with your coursework.

Most law schools work on a curve grading system. This means that only a fraction of the class can do well. And since you are surrounded by high-functioning dedicated law students, getting good grades in law school requires a massive amount of effort.

It is not uncommon for a law student to spend at least three hours studying every night after classes. In many law schools, you have one exam every semester, and how you perform on this one exam can alter your grades for the rest of your time in law school.

While there aren't many assignments in law school, the exams and curve grading system make for a sometimes brutal experience.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of law school is preparing for the bar exam. These differ in each state; however, they are all immensely hard to pass. Like the LSAT, only more difficult, the bar exam has a reputation of being the hardest exam a law student takes. People are known to have to take it multiple times, even as much as ten times or more.

Law school is one of the most demanding forms of higher education you can pursue, second only to medical school.