Good luck with law school and we await your travel reports.

Congratulations! Now for some fast advice (that I wish someone had given me at the same juncture):

1. concentrate on getting the very best possible grades the first year: getting on a law review etc. is important for career options.

2. a. While you obviously have to fulfill course requirements, otherwise only take courses that light your fire, float your boat--you get the idea. Makes it easier, and easier to get good grades.

2. b. NEVER take a course, that you otherwise don't want to, because the subject is on the bar exam. That's what bar review courses are for.

3. The clinics can prepare you for a practice area. The courses alone won't, and most employers end up directing you to the areas where they need you anyway.

4. You will have to take a bar review course. The bar exam itself is an extended lesson in acute bulemia: binge, purge--and, hopefully, never repeat.

Best wishes.

Yes, congratulations, I guess, Scott

I too went to law school to increase my options. And to avoid the draft I must confess, which didn't work out as smoothly as I would have wished.

In any case, Wendells's advice sounds about right, that is, if you are interested in high performance vs. getting the damned J.D. and a bar.

Myself, I got the degree (in the top quarter of my class at GW but I was never much motivated to excel; actually "sticking it out" more accurately described my trajectory, thoughI did choose and enjoy a number of courses -- not strictly bar review oriented, e.g., international law and seminars; law of the sea; jurisprudence; negotiation -- and spent a lot of time reading victorian novels in a wierd sort of compensantion for the drduge of the law school grind. Commercial paper was a bear. Tax law atually interestng.

And yes, ahem, the bar and bar review. I hit the NY bar without a review course and did not pass. So, living in DC, I took a bar review course at the next opportunity, and did pass. Eventually went to work for the Feds but have not since used the degree or bar admission in a strict way but have found the grounding and method useful in numerous ways.

Today, I went to beach with my kids. I found a shell and gave it to my 4-year-old daughter, said: "You can hear the sea, if you give it to your ears. "She put her ear and screaming shell. A hermit crab, it pinched the inside of her ears. She did not want to go back! LOL I know this is completely off topic, but I had to tell someone!