Choosing Your Law School Classes

welcome it's really good to see you all here for the course advising panel for the spring and we have three wonderful faculty members who are here to dispense advice and I will I'm going to introduce them briefly not your usual introduction but just to give you a sense of maybe where they're each coming from given their backgrounds and then I'll give you a little bit of my own advice and then turn it over to each of them so they will be speaking in this order first professor Hellman who's closest to me she teaches contracts constitutional law classes related to the theory of equal protection the relationship between money and rights she is a philosopher by training and her work largely focuses on discrimination and equality she's also the faculty advisor to common law grounds sus professor Hellman next to Professor Hellman is Professor Geiss some of you may have him because he's teaching a fall semester contracts class he teaches contracts corporations agency and partnership and corporate finance professor Geiss is the faculty advisor for the Jim JDM a dual degree program and he's also deeply involved with the law and business program and then finally last but not least professor shin is an alumna of this law school so she has sat where you are sitting and made the decisions that you are about to make she spent some time after law school working at the legal aid justice center in they're just children program and then was a clinical professor at William & Mary before coming here just this fall to run our law and public service program and she's teaching courses in that program as well as additional courses so you can see from their backgrounds and their roles in this institution that they have probably different kinds of things to say so we'll see they were not pre-vetted I have no idea what they're going to say to you one thing one can imagine though is that they will likely give you conflicting advice so my first piece of advice is one that I gave you all on the pre orientation Friday before you began taking classes know thyself right so think about who's giving you advice then about who you are not everyone's advice is going to work for all of you so the most important thing to know before accepting a piece of advice is who you are and to honor your own perspective your own goals in being in law school your own interests and hopes and dreams if your goals are to do the law and business program make sure you're taking the basics if you have a sense that you're going into criminal law or criminal justice make sure you're taking some basics right so if you have a clear path and I say that not to stress out those of you who don't because many of you don't and even for those of you who think you do it will change but if you think you do set the table for yourself now right you don't want to look back and we all do look back and say I should have taken X or Y but to the extent that you can predict try to take the requisite courses for whatever path you're going to go down and that might mean do a little research right now right so if you have even the tiniest inkling that the jd-mba might be for you or the JD masters in legal history or some other program or a clinic that might have prerequisites look around see what the prerequisites are see when you have to do things so that you actually feel like you've made some decisions knowingly even if they're don't turn out to be the right ones even if you missed a class that you would have liked to have taken if you had a thought in your head one day I might like to do this now's the time to go to the webpage low cost see what it's all about and see whether you want to do it if you think you're going to be headed toward litigation take a litigation basic course to get you started and I guess the first piece of advice is know yourself know whether you are headed in a particular direction or you're not and either of those is totally fine but if you're heading in that direction know what it takes to get there the second piece of advice I would give is plan but not too much so even if you think you know where you're headed it is likely the case I'm sorry to say not may be likely the case but it is possible that you don't or that it will change so I was talking to an alum in Raleigh Durham who is a family lawyer she said she took trial advocacy on a lark it was not anything she ever planned to do she carries her trial ad book from law school she's now 15 years out of law school she carries her trial ad book from law school with her every day to court it is her Bible right and that was a lark it was she didn't take it because she thought she was headed in any particular direction and no matter where your career takes you in the law or outside of the law the skills that you learn here in whatever course you take are going to be useful to you so I don't think you want to overthink the planning too much so the place where I would say I have the most concrete thing to say because know thyself and plan but not too much may be frustrating to the type-a personalities of folks like me who go to law school so here's the most concrete thing I have to say and I've said it before but I'm gonna say it here as you plan for your courses there are in my view three kinds of courses but the law school offers and as you think about your full three year law school career I think you want to make sure that you are taking each type at least some of the time and I don't think they have to be equally balanced in fact I'm pretty sure they won't be and I don't think the mix of which kinds of courses you're taking will be the same for every person si si Supra know thyself but the three types of courses are the following one the doctrinal black-letter classes those are the classes you're taking now their property and constitutional law in the spring and they are all kinds they are corporations they are taxed right the basic fundamental black-letter law courses you want to be taking those those are where you're going to learn how to think like a lawyer but beyond those we have two other kinds of courses the second type of courses we have our skills or experiential courses these are clinics they are simulations classes they are negotiations classes they are skills classes advanced legal research and writing I would put in that category I would put trial at public speaking as well as the 20 different clinical opportunities that we offer at the law school so you want to make sure because you have to because the APA requires it and many of the bars that you're going to be studying for require it but I think beyond the requirements these are really useful to get the practical experience you need to hit the ground running in your first job and and the third kind of course that I think it's important to think about and take some of are those in perspectives external to the law they could be economics they could be philosophy they could be history it could be accounting it could be you know courses on main grounds there are all kinds of things outside of the technical training and the thinking like a lawyer that you will do all the time that will give you a broader perspective on the black-letter courses that you're taking on the experiential opportunities you're taking advantage of and I think those two are really important so when I think about it I'm not saying you should take all that this spring right you only have two electives a spring but I do think that this spring gives you the first opportunity to start thinking about your whole career and these are the ways I would think about it which of those courses types of courses am I going to delve into now which are am I going to save for later and how will I think about them later overall I think your education is holistic it is one large experience you're learning the law you're learning how to think about the law but you're also learning judgment integrity perspective empathy those are often the things that you'll get from these both external perspectives and from your experience or learning and I would say especially there the various clinical opportunities that we have so remember after this spring you have four more choices more four more opportunities to choose classes we have so many fabulous classes which I think you already feel that you're in but I think it's hard to make a mistake so the last piece of advice I would leave you with is don't let it stress you out too much okay you'll note I didn't say not at all that's not realistic but don't let it stress you out too much there are lots of opportunities and and they are all good so enjoy and I will now turn it over to Professor helmet okay yeah yeah and after everybody does a spiel we'll open up for questions so there'll be a dialogue so I just want yeah I look forward to the spiel part and what I think is interesting I already I'm having fun listening to Dean gali buffs advice and thinking about the ways that mine is similar also different she said you're gonna hear different advice and know who it's coming from know thyself but I actually think it's also interesting to think about what the overlap between the advice that each of us gives because I have no idea what the others are going to say and maybe that's meaningful if there's one theme that comes up in all four of the the talks I can't remember what sections I have in the spring but I'm gonna have some of you two I have two sections of constitutional law and you know I look forward to seeing you okay so my my advice I've divided it into kind of three parts to and I would say the first one is career exploration or development as the first the second courses that you want to take to prepare yourself to be a lawyer citizen and third this is your last chance for most of you I think to have a not not in the spring but in law school is your last chance at a formal educational opportunity I hope you'll be learning throughout your career but it's your last time to be in school for most of you and so you want to take advantage of that okay so I'm going to talk about each of those so the first is career exploration or development and I'm putting it that way exploration or development as being Ghalibaf said some of you know what you want to do and some of you have no idea what you want to do and you're trying to figure it out so you this is your opportunity both to pursue what you think you want to do and it's your opportunity to try to figure out what you might want to do by taking courses so this part I would divide in in two ways that I think mirrors something some parts of what Dean Galia buf said that is something about subject matter and something about skills so the subject matter obviously what that is depends on what your interests are if you have an idea about that already you'll want to take courses in that and if you don't know what that is you'll want to start trying to figure that out by taking a bunch of courses that might be what you want to do maybe you want to have not necessarily maybe this spring but partly in the spring and partly in the fall pick three different areas that you think are ones that you might want to pursue to try to get a better idea of that even if you think you know it's often taking a course that shows you what you what you want to that shows you if you think you know what you want to do that shows you what you don't want to do I've heard from many students often over lunches oh I thought I wanted to do X then I took a course in it and I hated it I don't want to say what X is because I don't want to turn anybody off of anything but it could happen with anything so you're gonna take different subject area courses to give you a better idea of what you want to do to solidify your idea of what you want to do or to try to figure that out then there's the skills part and like Dean Ghalibaf I think you ought to take things in that area the clinical which we'll hear more about is obviously a big part of that the clinical offerings and other skills related courses like oral advocacy but something I'd add to that are writing classes in general and they don't have to be writing classes where you're doing legal writing they really could be any writing classes they could be seminars or anything that's going to give you an opportunity to do a substantial amount of writing lawyers most lawyers write an enormous amount and even if it's a paper that you're doing in connection with a seminar that doesn't seem like legal writing at all it seems more academic what you're doing is learning how to make and defend an argument and that's a lot of what lawyers do as well so I would say make sure on the skills side that you look for opportunities to write okay so those are my subject subject area kinds of ways of thinking about it you're gonna explore what you might want to do excuse me that's your my career exploration side of it a clear expiration of development you're going to take subject area courses and you're gonna take skills courses and don't forget about writing as an additional part of skills courses so the second way I think about course selection is developing yourself as a citizen lawyer what should you take as being someone who is a lawyer citizen and the first thing I put in this box is something you can't take this spring but I think you should take that is our first year con law class and maybe I say this because I love con law and I want to make sure you have more con law but your first year con law class won't cover the First Amendment and I think as someone coming out of law school you should know something about the First Amendment so we have upper-level courses in both speech and religion I personally think you should take one of them you don't have to do speech and religion but acquaint yourself with the First Amendment secondly I think you should take I put income tax the basic income tax and based on my background you might not think that's something I would put there but think about what's happening on Capitol Hill right now when we're talking about the possible changes to the tax code we do so much social policy through taxation that I think it's really important for every lawyer every citizen lawyer not just people who want to do something related to tax to take a tax class a basic tax class I think it's much more of a social policy class than you might realize um I think you should take the third part of being a lawyer citizen as I think you should take something related to poor people most of us in law school and certainly coming out of law school are going to end up on the not may be in the top 1% but in the upper end of the income distribution and especially if you're not someone who grew up poor we live in an increasingly divided society and I think as a lawyer citizen you should acquaint yourself with the ways in which our legal system interacts with poor people and there are lots of opportunities to do that there are lots of ways you could fulfill that but I think you should do that as a lawyer citizen I took a quick glance with Jason's help because I couldn't find them initially on the on the webpage adjust the the list of courses that's just my problem I'm not good with that just things that that struck me that way and here's the additional list I in their administrative law environmental law family law immigration law international law that's obviously not a complete list in addition to what I said but things that I think are important as for you as a graduate as a lawyer citizen administrative law because it's so much of our law today environmental law it's one of the the biggest sort of public policy issues we face family law we're all in families and it's a big part of the way that the law interacts with people immigration law again another big public policy debate international law because we don't want to be parochial in our vision of the way that the law affects people okay the last thing I have the least to say about and that is the idea that this is probably your last chance for a formal educational opportunity law school is so take what you like take what strikes your fancy I think one of the boxes that you should think about is I should save some courses to just take something because I think it sounds interesting don't worry about it being practical it's okay to have some courses that you pick just because they sound exciting and fun and interesting and you don't know why you're taking it you know there's no particular career purpose it serves but it interests you this because this is probably your last opportunity in law school is your last opportunity to do that I think you should take it and maybe that's the kind of philosopher II person in me but I want to remind you when you think about that we have great things you can take care at the law school that would fit in that category but we also have the rest of the university so don't limit yourself to what's here at the law school feel free to take something on main grounds that fits in that category okay let me let me try to provoke the discussion by introducing some controversy immediately you're offering advice that's a little different than what you just heard when I was in law school I took a class called the law of ancient Mesopotamia and it was a wonderful class it was really interesting it was a great professor that came over and we got to you know look at cuneiform you know language look at the law my advice to you is whatever you do do not take the law of ancient Mesopotamia as your first-year elective right that's not I think the type of class you want to be taking I agree with that Professor Hellman said that you should take some courses over the longer term that relate to your area of interest or just sound kind of and like many classes to take I think that's a good thing to do but I think you want to be thoughtful about when you're taking those classes and I want to distinguish sort of the short term what are you thinking about taking as a spring elective as a 1l from the longer term what do you think about taking over the next two two-and-a-half three years I think that you are lucky in some ways to have a long list of classes to choose from and there's lots of things even in the short term that you can optimize on when you try to decide what classes should I be taking as my electives you know who's the professor that's teaching the class what's the subject matter of the course when is the class actually being offered where is it being offered do I get one of those comfy Aeron chairs or do I have to sit in one of those you know chairs that aren't so good I think that law schools going to go by really fast and so I would urge you to prioritize courses based on the professor and based on the subject matter and much less so on whether you can get four-day weekends I would also urge you speaking to some of the advice that you are all ready to think about what's your rhythm of learning I think that the courses that are going to be exciting to you right now are not necessarily going to be the ones that are going to be exciting to you in two or three years and you should try to think about how you time the classes that you take when they are particularly exciting for you to take them I would go into the bookstore and pull down the books and think is this something that I really want to be taking because in my experience there really is a rhythm to learning and I think it's important to take the classes that you're excited about right when you're excited to take them so let me divide my advice into the short term in the long term right now I suspect that many of you while interested in the longer term are really focused on what classes should I take is my elective and I just want to offer four quick thoughts on that one take a class with obvious practical relevance don't take the law of ancient Mesopotamia at least not now take something that you know you think will have obvious practical relevance both for you and both so you have something like that on your transcript as you go into recruiting for the for the 2l season second play to your strengths by taking a class that you think you're going to be able to do well in if you're a numerically oriented person take a class like tax or accounting finance or something that lends itself to those of you that have facility with numbers if you hate numbers maybe don't take a class like that at least not right away not necessarily advising you to shy away from it forever but what you take is your spring elective I think is important you want to set yourself up to do something you can to take something that you can do well in third don't put off critical foundational classes too long you really want to give I think some good thought to taking a class like accounting finance or corporations or evidence or something that's going to be a foundational class because if you wait to do it it's just gonna leave you less time and less semesters to take the deeper classes in the area that you really want to focus on which are which are important both for flushing out what you really want to do and for getting some of that substantive knowledge that I think is important and then finally talk to your current professors if you have some options that you're toying with and you're not really sure whether you want to take professor X or professor Y or course X or course Y I really would recommend you'd go to your office hours of your professors and just say hey I'm thinking about this versus that what do you think makes the most sense I think getting specific advice on a specific array of options can be can be really important and this is a good vehicle for you to actually have some interesting conversations with your professors about what you might be interested in doing and how the coursework that you take might be able to support that over the longer term I think it's fair to make different choices about versus depth and I think it's fair to take classes that are really different than classes that your friends are taking I don't think I would prioritize that very high either what your friend likes to take may not be the same thing that you want to take I actually would agree with a lot of the advice we've heard already on what a rich legal education would look like I think it's going to have a lot of the different elements of diverse classes that that we've heard about already I would just echo that I would just add to that I think it's also nice to be able to take a class that relates in some way to an international law or in an international legal aspect I think having a perspective from outside the US on how we do law in the u.s. is important and I think it's helpful to and hard to see that unless you actually look at how the legal system works in at least some area in a different part of the world and I think that can be a valuable perspective to gain as well I also think it's important to consider taking multiple classes from an instructor that you really like I know on the other side of the podium it's really fun and helpful for me to be able to have the same student in more than one class and I think if you have someone that you really enjoy taking a class with the second or third time that you take the class with them you can you know start off already on a stronger relationship and really set up a nice foundation for getting letters of recommendation or just really getting to work with them on an independent study project and so if there's someone that you really like and you have a good opportunity to take another class with them I'd say you know go for it is as soon as you can I want to spend just one more minute or two talking about law and business courses because as Dean Ghalibaf said that's sort of my area of expertise and I want to just say a word about how you might think about those classes if you really are interested in the intersection of law and business first thing to think about it's not too late to consider doing the dual degree in the JD MBA the way the degree works as many of you know is it's a four-year program you basically save a year you get both advanced degrees at once historically to do the degree you would have had to apply right now and then matriculate over to Darden for your second year and then do your third and fourth year back and forth we've recently changed the program so that you can now apply during your second year and so you don't have to feel like you have to get everything together immediately to get your application in but if you really are focused and interested in learning more about law and business I think that might be something you'd want to consider and you could certainly come talk to me more about it if you'd like however many of you or some of you may not feel that you want to or can afford to dedicate a fourth year to your graduate studies unfortunately even if you're interested in the law in business area we have a ton of classes here that we offer at the law school that are focused in this direct area and so you have a lot of different types of courses to choose from the way I might think about dividing up the courses in the law and business area are into three different groups first there is an array of classes that we might call business methods or business skills classes that are similar to the exact type of classes that you would take if you were taking a course over at a business school so this is what our accounting and corporate finance class looks like we have other classes in strategy or leadership or things like that that are really similar to the type of class that you might take if you're going to Business School you just could take them here at the law school if that's what you choose to do the second type of business law classes are what we might call the core foundational classes I think it'd be hard to to take a course of study in business law without taking a course in corporations that's probably the key foundational class but there's a lot of classes beyond that that are that are pretty important and relevant to take if you want to dig in on this area it might depend on whether you think you want to do litigation in the business law area or transaction to work in the business law area both are open or even regulatory compliance work in the business law area I think it covers all three of those different types of class of activity areas but I think that you probably want to try to get a corporation's class pretty soon beyond that is you look to the next you know a few semesters I think you want to try to look for courses like securities regulation maybe the law version of corporate finance income tax and then you can dig into other courses like bankruptcy and antitrust and things like that as well one important thing to note if you haven't looked at our law and business website already you should just be aware that there are different types of sections for some of our different core business law classes so corporations for example has a law and business version of the class and a regular version of the class you can still take the regular version of corporations and still be a part of our law and business program but if you really want to dig in a little bit more to some of the transactional elements that are that are raised in the class or some of the business motivations for what motivates the law in the class you might consider taking our law and business version of corporations or securities regulation or some of the other courses finally we have a whole array of more advanced offerings and these are probably courses you'll look to take more during your third year if you really do like class work in this area but we have a number of different seminars we have practical classes on transactional drafting and we have a whole host of short courses where you we have outside instructors that will come in for a couple weeks at a time and they'll dig very deeply into a specific topic something that you probably wouldn't have exposure to and any other type of a class and I really would keep your eyes open for courses like that they're really a great array of topics we just finished one on what do board of directors really do and we had one of our graduate who's been in been involved in many many different boards and he actually came in and took students through a short course talking about what actually happens in the board room one of the types of decisions that are made how does the process work I think having experience like that can be really valuable especially as we continue to hear from our lawyers and other people that are hiring our students that attorneys really do need to have more domain knowledge in the specific business area and so if you really do like these types of courses you might have an eye for some of those advanced classes as well one final note on scheduling and sequencing if you do think you might want to do something in this area and your schedule permits then I really would encourage you to consider taking the accounting finance sequence in the spring as the core foundational class if you already have experience in that area don't take the class disregard the advice you've waived out of it you're eligible to take whatever else you want but if you haven't had an accounting and Finance class at all then this course is designed for you it's going to give you some experience in the basic language of business and the reason I think you might want to consider taking it as a spring elective is it's going to be a prerequisite to then taking the law and business version of corporations or any other you know law and business classes and if you wait and you don't take it in the spring then you would need to take that class in the fall and then corporations in the spring then that then leads you less time to take some of these other courses in its area so in any event good luck with your classes again ask your professors and I think all of us will be happy to stick around a bit afterwards if you have more specific questions good afternoon everyone so I think my advice is pretty similar so I'll try to keep it short I would also like to break down my advice in the short term and in the long term so as you're selecting your spring elective courses my perspective is you should take classes that you're really interested in or you're really passionate about the 1l curriculum is packed with required courses and I think it helps balance out your 1l year a bit to have elective classes that you are really interested in going forward as you select courses during your tool in 3l year I would suggest a mixture of classes you're really passionate about classes that will give you the foundational black-letter law training that most of us should have that all of us should have his attorneys and maybe a couple of classes that will help you in your bar study so for what it's worth I came to law school knowing that I wanted to represent indigent youth in some capacity so I took courses that I was very interested in like children in the law class a special education law class the criminal defense clinic because these were classes that I was passionate about that I knew would assist me in my future career as a legal aid attorney but I also took courses that I felt like I should have background foundational knowledge and even though I knew I would never practice in that area of law like corporations I took corporations of professor guys it was a great class now I know about different corporations and I was more prepared to take the bar and then I think it's helpful to take maybe a couple of courses that will help you in your bar studies so one specific advice I have is if you know that you are practicing in Virginia you know you're gonna take the Virginia Bar I strongly recommend the Virginia practice and procedure course it's immensely helpful and it will make your bar studies a little bit easier I also posted a poll on your behalf on Facebook and I asked some of our UB alums what advice they have for you and overwhelmingly my classmates said that they would reckon picking courses based on professors and they mentioned that good professors make any subject matter interesting so that might be a factor that you consider I also want to put in a plug for clinics we have 18 clinics at this law school in almost every single subject area that you can think of and clinics will provide you a unique opportunity to be able to practice law under the very close supervision of a clinical professor or supervising an attorney on the first day of every class I'm when I was teaching at William and Mary when I was a clinical professor I said to my students you have this amazing opportunity to represent clients draft actual work product interview clients advise clients prepare for court appear in court discuss issues with opposing counsel and guardians ad litem with a safety net because you're practicing on my bar license so we're gonna be working very closely together and I'm not gonna let you make any big mistakes so I think that you should consider taking a clinic or a second or third year I think that it will provide valuable substantive and practical training for you as future lawyers and I also think that law school clinics provide a great opportunity for our law students to represent indigent marginalized and vulnerable community members and I also think that it's important for law schools to help close that access to justice gap so those are my thoughts we'd be happy to answer any questions questions the floor is open extra do y'all know man campuses are the questions when you repent for or against short courses I think that unless there's something that you really really are excited about that you probably want to wait on many short courses until you have a little more context for taking the class I mean you can look at and see whether there's a prereq if there's not a prereq and you know it's available and it's really excited to you then I wouldn't necessarily shy away from it until the logistics of a short course though could just be relatively compressed right and so cram in two weeks of where you have class every single day can sometimes be difficult when you're trying to keep up with property and calling law which are pretty meaty classes by the way so you know we tend to offer many of our short courses you know it's several years in a row so you know not you know no guarantees but it but unless you really see something that you don't want to miss at all I might consider waiting a little bit on that are there questions photos mostly paper writing process so um do I need the microphone so there are other courses that involve writing I've taught for example advanced con law classes I did one on the law and theory of equal protection and I did one on money and Constitutional Rights where I had a writing prompt to each week and the students had to pick I think six of the weeks to write a paper I know professor showers jurisprudence course works something like that I don't know if it's exactly like that so I think it's you know all the seminars involve some writing but I think there are some other upper-level courses that involve writing to say what whether it's an exam course or or a paper course and and what the nature of the requirements are the other thing to keep in mind which I don't I don't recommend for your electives now but to keep in mind for later are independent studies you can do independent research with faculty members and and write papers with them I would think that in the spring it's a little premature to do that but once you have more law under your belt that's that's also a great way to get to know a faculty member really well and pursue a specific research interest that you might have the important concentration law I don't feel highly knowledgeable about that but my anecdotal sense is no but but I but I wouldn't say I'm highly knowledgeable about that I mean I I think that many of our first-year students put a real heightened emphasis on what exactly am i signalling with the courses I choose for the spring and why and I don't think that's a waste of your time to think about what are you saying on your on your on your transcript when you go into your fault while recruiting I mean again this relates back to my you know I really want to be an antitrust lawyer and they're like well why'd you take the law of ancient Mesopotamia right I mean I think that's not that that's not something that you want to get yourself in a situation for so I think you want to do courses that are logical ones you know if you you know that being said I think there's lots of different ways to signal and I think you can also signal by the courses you choose for your fall semester classes as you go into your 2l recruiting and so if you don't get into the one class that you feel like is gonna you know send the best signal for your area of interest I wouldn't despair right I mean I just would take something useful PR is a class that's I think some first-year students like to get out of the way it's requirement they might as well consider you know doing it and just having it be done with but I think it can't be a class that you know even if you want to be a transactional lawyer evidence is a good class to round out or you know in anything that you think is just a basic you know we've heard it before kind of a bread and butter or meat and potatoes class that you're not going to be embarrassed to defend as a course that you took to your to a recruiter that's maybe the way I would think about it just about the PR because I just to offer a different perspective on that actually a lot of students do take PR I've been struck by that and I think they do it because they don't know what to take and so they think well I know I have to take PR so I might as well get it and I used to teach PR I haven't recently but I think it's a better class to take when you've had some legal experience so I personally think that it's not a good course to take in the first year because when you've had some experience practicing law the what you're studying in PR makes a lot more sense and is more relevant feeling the other thing is don't be don't be afraid of the fact that you don't know what you want to do the way you're going to figure that out is by taking some course that might be one of the things that you want to do so I would say not ancient Mesopotamia but take some subject area class that's in an area that you think you might be interested in and that will help you to figure it out the only thing I'll add is according to my facebook posts many alums also agree that it's okay to pursue areas of interest but not to pursue it so single-mindedly for example my husband graduated from the law school the same time as I did and thought he was gonna be an antitrust lawyer he selected his courses based on that he made his summer law firm decisions based on that and we ended up at his big law firm in DC after graduation he's put in the corporate group and one thing he mentioned to me I wish I'd taken corporations so it's okay to explore and pursue areas of interest or concentration but not to pursue it so single-mindedly I would add something else along the lines of know thyself so obviously you want to be thinking you know about the signals you're giving to prospective employers and the future but you also need to and of course you know professor Geist mentioned this right you want to put your best foot forward we we do live in a system that if I were making the system from scratch it wouldn't be this system where first year grades play an outsized role and I think that's really unfortunate and so I understand thinking about grades to some extent as you think about your year 1l spring classes I hope not too much and I hope you don't give that pride of place but I understand that it's out there but the other piece I would put in that is you're not going to excel in a course and it's not going to be a great signal to a future employer if you really hate it and you're really unhappy and you don't want to do the work and you know you don't end up doing well and so you should know how have I you know ask yourself how have I been experiencing the courses I'm taking you know am i at a place where I just have to take a class that's right in the wheelhouse of why I came here and I feel like the classes I've been taking aren't that and I now need to go re-establish for myself what that looks like or or is it that I've been loving these really you know common law doctrinal classes and I'm ready for more and you know so to ask yourself you know what is going to enable me to excel and thrive in the spring and I do think the answer to that question will be different for lots of you you know for different from one another and and that you and and that even if there are lots of strategic questions that need to be asked you have to answer them for you and that means knowing where your own head is and knowing what is going to enable you to succeed the most disprin so I'll take a everyone can I'm gonna say evidence administrative law tax international international law family law you're right those those are the I think there's probably other I think international I think we are all agreeing that international is important component to have I think so much law is administrative I think that's a kind of a the building block for a lot of other areas so I would put administrative law there I guess you know there's so many things that could be bread and butter you know those are sort of public law courses and I think yeah I mean I don't think you're gonna get a definitive answer I think you know by bread-and-butter what I generally mean is classes that word if you were a poll the number of students and professors would be ones that they'd say well this isn't a required course but it basically should be a required course so maybe I have more of a narrow definition of a bread-and-butter but I would think something like evidence or corporations or maybe the the intro tax you know it may be admin law I mean my concept of bread butter is is probably a little bit narrower I think you could go out a little bit and there's a whole lot of classes that would be really off the good ones to take but they are not that critical that you're going to be remiss in in in missing something that should have perhaps been a required class if we restrict her about you know asking you to take specific courses I would add a Criminal Procedure class to the broader category I think I think that's an important thing to know [Music] [Music] the latest develop so you definitely salute some of the wait list when a drought happens instead but that said it's done right the message doesn't this get to say oh yeah yeah yeah I'm just gonna increase the size especially first name like seminars you want to keep it in a minute but with lectures I wanna we want to help as many people as we can torpedoing enrolling in other classes so there's a balance there so it doesn't hurt no and that's it they can't have a student her [Music] [Music] I think you'll get some different opinions among our faculty on how important the subject nature of the bar exam is in your course on consideration I actually think it's really unimportant I would I would not worry a lot about what's being on the bar exam because I think you're gonna have an opportunity to study for the bar exam during that summer right before you take it and I think if you take the bar prep class you'll do great right I don't think you need to rely a lot on what you're taking during law school in order to do relatively well on the bar but I acknowledge that people will really disagree with that and so you know there's a difference of opinion there I just think that with evidence and corporations and in classes like that there prereqs do a lot of other classes you're probably gonna want to take and so those would be examples of classes where I think you might want to try to take them earlier just because they're gonna be foundational prereqs they're gonna be required to get into some of the more advanced classes now of course like agency and partnership right that might not it's a good class by the way but that might not be something that you necessarily would feel compelled to take really early but if you did think that having just another look at something is gonna help me prep for the bar exam that could be a class that you might consider waiting until your third year tape because many bars do test pretty extensively on agency in partnership you're going to need [Music] I don't know if if Dean do guess we disagree with us but my general instinct would be I don't think you need to overload your spring so you know if if you end up with the five credits or the six credits rather than seven I don't think you should be thinking I need a three credit class and a four credit class it's a lot property and common law are pretty heavy course load classes and you've still got legal research and writing so you know and this is all pretty new so I wouldn't feel compelled to go to the seven and you know by taking the four credit you know my sense of the difference between the four and the three credit or you're gonna have a deeper dive right there's going to be more coverage so if there is a class that you are really interested in that you really do think this is somewhere you're headed you might want the four credit option for that class but I don't think it has to be there are also the Criminal Procedure classes where there's one for credit survey so if you're not that interested but you'd like a fair bit you could do the one for credit survey as opposed to taking the series of two three credit Criminal Procedure classes which would leave you with six credits of Criminal Procedure you could do the one for credit or you could do one of the one three credits and not the other but but but I would say it depends on on how deep a dive although the only thing I would say that goes the other direction and then we'll see if other people have other views is sometimes it's easier to learn when you're meeting every day you know there or you know three days a week as opposed to two days a week and you keep it in your head better and you're more immersed in it and and it's going to stick more so I'm not saying don't take a four credit class but but I wouldn't think of the spring as the time to overload on the credits and and go for the heavy credits you know just on principle last question the back y'all recommend balancing concerns of developing skills so I mean those are those are difficult questions that in a way you have to answer for yourself I mean we can tell you that practically it is true lamentably so but that the first year grades have an outside influence I think we all regret that and we don't want to lie to you about that that's the truth but I also think that life is about so much else than your GPA and I hope that you can take that perspective and so I would not overdo the emphasis on that you know I think if you have not been happy with how you've been doing well we don't know yet so yeah so you can't take that into consideration passing it on you know I'm not sure there's always gonna be necessarily difference right I think it's difficult to predict at the outset which types of classes are necessarily gonna be the ones that you're going to be able to ace I don't think anybody can say with that with certainty and so you know I do think you want to be careful about perhaps waiting on a course that has a reputation for being a really difficult and challenging class and again I don't want to name specific courses here but you can talk with your friends and upperclassmen and women and ask right what courses are really hard ones and I think that you know there might be something to that right there may be a certain class that you don't necessarily want to jump into right during the spring even if it is a really wonderful class but I think that still leaves a ton of different classes that are going to allow you to identify whether something is really of interest to you in a way that probably doesn't put you at risk of jeopardizing your grey-eyed go all of that and echo what Dean Gallo both said earlier that if you're taking a class that you're not interested in but you feel like you have to or you feel like took the class for primarily grade reasons whatever that would be it would be I think it's hard to be motivated in the class that you're not interested in I have one last thing to say which is though we can acknowledge and lament the outsized influence of first-year grades I wouldn't overemphasize their influence their influence is larger than it should be but it is not everything and and I think especially as you come to the end of your first semesters and you're going to be getting grades it's really important to remember that the grades don't define you and they don't define your career and you're going to have two more years two and a half more years after this first semester but two more years after your first year of grades and the number of alumni who I could name right off the top of my head but I won't who have been wildly successful who come up to me at alumni events and say I did so terribly as a law student right you are not your grades your career is not your grades they're especially not your first year grades and so whatever happens in December in January I just hope you'll remember that and if you need reminding let us remind you because you don't want to overdo the influence that your grades will have and the pressure you put on yourself so I'll just end there thank you all and if you have more questions we'd be happy to answer them thank you

Channel: University of Virginia School of Law

Views: 5,003

Keywords: 1L advising, law school, UVA Law, Risa Goluboff, George Geis, Crystal Shin, Deborah Hellman, electives, University of Virginia School of Law, Semester, class, law school classes, advise, 1L

Id: O3FVR6bqhag

Length: 52min 25sec (3145 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 03 2017