Law School Advice

This post is a response to Grillicheese's question in the comments section of the previous post so if you are interested in attending Wayne State's Law School you might be interested in this. If you are looking for Tigers content skip this and I'll post something later.

Here is my advice regarding law school. Don't go. Not just to Wayne, don't go anywhere. It's a nightmare. Well, let me amend that by saying don't go unless being a lawyer or a judge or a politician is absolutely, positively, 100% what you really, really, really, really want to do with your career. It's a lot of work and a lot of money and a full time commitment for three years of the prime of your life. On top that the market for lawyers sucks in Michigan, like every other part of the states economy, so unless you know someone who is already a lawyer or you graduate in the top 10-20% of your class job prospects are dismal, and you'll likely be clerking at some firm in Southfield for $20 an hour your first year out of school until they fire you to hire some other first year clerk on the cheap, which is the fate about 50% of the people I'm graduating with are going through.
Maybe I'm being cynical but if I could have met my present self three years ago when I was considering law school I might have changed my mind and tried to do something I really loved instead of falling into law school. (My first mistake was getting a history degree, which was worthless). Anyways I've got no beef with Wayne, even if their Career Services office is more poorly run than the Lions front office. Seriously, there is one person in charge of the whole school's job placement program and if you aren't near the top of your class they have no interest in helping you. I've sent e-mails to them that have gone unanswered and half way through my third and final year they sent me an e-mail to me with the heading "Getting to Know You" and asking what my interests were and that if I found work after graduating to report it to them so their numbers would go up, as if anybody there had any hand in helping me find work.

As for classes you are assigned your classes and teachers based on what section you are in your first year, something you don't have control of. I was assigned to the group that had Mogk, Browne and Findlater as professors and all three of them were excellent (as was Moran but he's leaving this year to teach at Ann Arbor). I liked Browne so much that I took a couple of employment law classes during my second and third year that he taught just because I enjoyed him. If you are into environmental law or administrative law, Prof. Hall is a great teacher. He's young, easy-going and funny and more importantly a fair grader (i.e. lots of A's). If you are into IP law take the classes that Bambauer teaches, he has similar qualities to Hall. Now that I think about it I can't think of anything negative about any of the faculty as they were all knowledgable and relatively friendly. The only class I absolutely hated was Secured Transactions but that was more because of the subject matter than anything else.

Finally my advice for things to do while at school is to move to Detroit. Move close to Comerica and go to a ton of Tigers games, find restaurants in Detroit that you like, go to concerts at the Magic Stick and other music venues. Living in Detroit has been tits to say the least. When you get to law school you will quickly find that 90% or more of your fellow classmates are insufferable douchebags that you would never associate with outside of school. Any girl who is remotely attractive is already married or engaged and will spend every minute in class browsing theknot.com and or talking about their wedding. It's awful. I was fortunate to identify the few really cool people I go to school with early on, namely the aforementioned Matt from the previous post, and have spent most of my time in school hanging out and talking with him. I'm also painfully shy, awkward and possibly paranoid so take my advice about making friends with a grain of salt.

Anyways if you have any more questions just send me an e-mail and I will gladly answer them for you as best as I can.