Suffolk University Law School

Suffolk Law is a non-top ranked school in Boston, MA. It is in an area overburdened with attorneys (Boston has a higher per capita lawyer ratio than even NYC), and competes with such stalwart  law schools as Harvard, BC, BU, Northeastern as well as New England Law and Roger Williams Law.

I just completed my first year at Suffolk Law and this is what I think of it so far.

Overall, my 1st year of law school was both harder and easier than anticipated. You have everyone tell you how terrible and hard it will be, to forget about even thinking about getting good grades, and how the teachers will be using an arcane Socratic method which will require you to learn everything on your own. The first year is not that bad. It is however difficult. I saw many a girl have a nervous breakdown and start crying. People stopped caring for themselves during finals and would be seen all haggardly, unkempt, unshaven, and otherwise completely disheveled (myself included). I do not normally stress out, and I was stressed, I was more stressed than I have ever been before and I have run a business. It was difficult but entirely do-able, and to be honest it is perfectly possible to get through.

Some people dedicated their entire lives to school. I mean Saturday morning at 8a they are in the library, and during the week they do not leave the library on a daily basis until 9p. They would not go out on weekends. They would spend the two months before finals cooped up studying with singular purpose. That was not me, I cannot do that. I would say I was one of the more laid-back students. I would go to classes in the morning, go back to my apartment then head out to the gym, eat lunch, then go back to the library at around 3-4 for like 5 hours or so, oftentimes less. It was balanced and worked well for my night-owl lifestyle. Not terrible.

Law School is not undergrad, it is not partying, booze, and chilling out all day grilling and in otherways being as useless to society and your self as you can possibly imagine and loving every second of it. Law School is work and it is serious. The people are different as well; in high school a majority of people didn't care, in college a lot of people didn't care, in law school everyone cares, and a majority care way too much.

When you go through your first year of law school, some things happen. 1) You drink a lot more coffee or energy drinks or those 5-hour energy shots or other coffee-equivalents. A lot more. 2) you drink more, or perchance that is just me. 3) You find out what a gunner is. 4) you gain weight (I gained like 20 pounds in my first semester, and that is when I got a gym membership again and got into Crossfit, but that is for another entry). 5) relationships sputter and fail, falling from their skyhigh in a fiery blaze. Most relationships fail, my friends relationship failed, a girl I know who was in a 6 year relationship had that end, my own relationship ended. (I talked to someone though who is still going strong with their significant other, I feel like law school is a very difficult test for a relationship but can make it stronger if it works, if a relationship survives a 1st year than you have a keeper!)


Let me tell you about Suffolk law in particular now instead of generalized 1st year law doom-and-gloom.

First off, lets talk about what is sometimes taboo to talk about. Stats and getting in to Law School. It is not often talked about but it is sought after knowledge and valuable to have and can help with expectations. I was not accepted to any law school better than Suffolk Law, I was offered a 25k a year merit scholarship to New England Law. I went to Bryant University and got a 3.7 there, and got a 158 on my LSAT (btw, Kaplan class I took was great, forced my procrastinating self to study, increased my score about 8 points, I have heard that the Princeton class is not as good, but this is just word of mouth, I do recommend you take a class to improve your score, it is worthwhile). I know a person who did well in undergrad and got a 156 and got accepted to Suffolk Law, another person who got a 160 on LSAT's and did very well (3.7 or better) in undergrad and got a good scholarship to come to Suffolk. I know another person who had below a 3.0 in undergrad and a 168 on the LSAT and got accepted. This is all in reference to the day division by the way.

Suffolk Law has some great teachers and also some terrible teachers. Professor Glannon and Blum are incredible professors. There are also some terrible teachers, and if you ask students they will tell you (cough...Dodd...cough). Greaney, a former MA SJC Justice, teaches criminal law at Suffolk. Overall, the teachers are good. Some classes you will have to teach yourself the material, other classes it will be difficult not to learn it (Glannon is the Man). I did not have a single "mean" teacher, the kind you see in those movies like The Paper Chase. Most teachers did not use the Socratic method, where they basically bounce questions back and forth with students until they figure it out themselves and answer their own questions. As a sidenote, the teachers of Suffolk Law overall have a much higher rating on RateMyProfessor.com than other law schools in the area.

Suffolk Law has some advantages over other schools. It is a huge law school, one of the biggest in the country, and so has alumni all over the Boston area, and the courts in the area. Their is a great alumni connection and networking opportunity. However, Suffolk law is not well known outside of the Boston area (excluding RI), so I would not recommend going to Suffolk Law if your ultimate goal is to practice in another market (however, I know a few students who plan on graduating and practicing in NYC and other areas and they are doing fine, one got an internship in NYC). The awesome Professor Blum has created a program for 1st year students called First Year Student Internship Program (FYSIP), where she hooks up like 80 students with an internship with a judge for the summer, which I am currently doing and can say is an awesome opportunity (2 of the judges I work with had Blum as a teacher, and she is well known and regarded in the country, and she loves to teach, great lady). FYSIP is but one example of how Suffolk Law creates opportunities for students.

Law School is graded on a curve, Suffolk Law and most other schools grade on a 3.0, which is a B. The curve has a strange effect on people. It makes people more competitive and sometimes petty, so beware. It also has the side-effect of making it really difficult to gauge how well you are doing. I have never done so bad as I did on my Law School final exams, NEVER have I done so poorly, knew so little, or had to stumble so blindly through an essay answer. Never have I not had enough time to get through so little of what I meant to write. Never have I had to qualify so many statements so many times and in other instances quite simply write "I do not know..." Never have I felt so poorly leaving a test. Yet, that is how it is supposed to be. (espeically prof. Brown's property final, which is the most saddening monstrosity I have ever stood face to face with in my life, whose sole purpose was to obliterate your maligned belief of understanding and comprehension into a million pieces and then shit on those million pieces without even having the decency to pretend it cares what it has done to your poor and mistreated psyche [his test was hard]). Yet in the end, it does not matter how well you did, or how many questions you answered correctly, it only matters how well you did compared to others. If others mucked up, and you mucked up slightly less, congrats.

OK, well after that, let me just say I was planning on taking time off of law school if I scored in the bottom half of my class. I was going to go back to my painting company or look for a job. That is because unlike undergrad, where I was a politics major and loved to study and write my papers and basically go to class, I dreaded law. I found it boring and tedious. Oftentimes I did not find it interesting. It is difficult to work hard on something, it is difficult to wake up early to study, when you do not enjoy what you are studying and doing.

Law practice is very formulaic and strict with rules of writing, form, font, fashion, and citation (the Bluebook is the bane of my very existence and the spawn of Hades himself, placed on earth to waste time and make the world and overall darker place to exist upon). I have trouble writing a paper in the correct size font (I wrote a memo for Legal Practice Skills in the wrong size font and the prof. was not too happy about that), let alone follow the rules of the Bluebook. The rules and format and strictness bothers me. I just want to write what I feel and if I cite it using See or See also is your damn problem.

Also, law in many ways is holding back society, and no that is not harsh. First of all, lawyers are paid way too much (even though I am interning for no money right now, fml). This is because it is a self perpetuating system where the government increases in size and regulates and controls more, more rules means more laws means more complexity means more lawyers and more work. Furthermore, bars to entry such as an undergraduate degree, law degree of three years education or more, LSAT, Bar exam for every state, and an ABA requirement to do anything or even have a school get accredited. The ABA does not let you go to law school fulltime and work more than 20 hours a week. These barriers to entry and licensure laws (read my post on licenses) act as a bar to entry and increase the cost of legal services. Also, the courts create very high stakes, Pennzoil v. Texaco saw Texaco fined for 10.3 BILLION, and forced Texaco to declare bankruptcy. When the law has such power, people will pay big bucks to not lose.

Let me end on a better note. Not all areas of law practice are bad. I want to do something within law which I find exciting and which will do society good, sometimes you need to fight fire with fire, and that is what I hope to do. I am excited to take my second year classes which are more focused to find out what I enjoy. A law degree opens up your options and is an invaluable tool. I hope to use it well.