As I mentioned before, I decided to attend a law school that, in addition to the traditional schedule, offered a non-traditional schedule for those students who wanted to continue to work during the semester or who had other obligations during the day that prevented them from attending classes full-time during the day. ABA rules require that a student attending law school on a full-time basis work no more than 20 hours per week during the semester. However, on a part-time schedule that ABA rule does not apply. At my school, full time is considered 13 credit hours and above (4-6 classes) and part-time was considered between 9-12 credit hours; the equivalent of 3-4 classes.
If you take the traditional route you are slated to graduate in 3 years. The non-traditional flex schedule extends the graduation date by a year (4 years total). With that extra year comes the added expense of an additional year of living expenses, book costs, school fees, and tuition. Although tuition is slightly cheaper on the part-time schedule, it still adds on an additional few thousands of dollars a year for those who choose to attend part-time.
I decided to take the part-time route for many reasons. Money was a big concern and I also carried the health insurance for my husband and I. However, one of the most appealing aspects to keeping my job and going to school was that the school I wanted to attend had a campus a block away from my work. This afforded me the added opportunity of attending student functions during the day, an easier way of meeting on campus with professors and employers, and if there was ever anything I needed to get done during the day I could just walk across the street on my lunch hour. Win-win!
One thing that I would like to stress about taking the part-time route is that IT IS NOT THE EASY ROUTE! Professor do not “take it easier on you,” you aren’t assigned less readings, and you don’t have more time to do the work since you are taking less classes. On the contrary, you are stretched thin trying to juggle work and law school; the readings, assignments, networking, student functions, to say the least, are all inevitable in law school. Try getting all that done after work and on weekends and tell me that it’s easier than solely focusing on all those aspects of law school. IT’S NOT EASY! It damn near killed me a few times. But, the more work I put into it going in, the easier it got. So, although it was hell in the beginning, it gets easier. I think this is true regardless of whether you attend full-time or part-time.
My first year schedule looked a little something like this:
6:00 a.m.- Wake up and get ready
6:30 a.m. – Head out the door and off to work
6:45 a.m. – Pick up coffee and a bagel on the way because I most likely failed to pack my breakfast and lunch the night before
7:00 a.m.- Arrive at work and get crackin’ on emails and voicemails that I missed the day before and make a to-do list (have I mentioned that I love lists?!)
11:00 a.m.- Call in a lunch order because I failed to seize the opportunity to wake up early enough to pack a lunch and I need to save as much of my lunch hour to review my notes for that night’s class
(Note: This is a good tip! Spend at least 10 minute before each class reviewing the notes you have made regarding the readings assigned for that class.)
11:15- 12:15- Lunch and studying
5:00 p.m.- Clock out and head over to school
5:10 p.m.- Grab a coffee and finish reviewing notes or get a head start on another class’s readings
6:00 p.m.- 7:30 p.m. – Class #1 and then grab a quick snack from the vending machine (ugh,the evil vending machines of law school!)
7:45-9:15 p.m.- Class #2
9:20 p.m. – Whenever I have to start re-reading what I have just read in order to retain the information- head home and get to bed. Sometimes this is 10:30 p.m. and other times I last until as late as midnight.
Wake-up and do it all over again….at least until Friday when I didn’t have classes. Friday night was a date night with my husband and the weekends were spent tucked away completing the readings for the following week. I, personally, felt more prepared having all of the readings done for the week finished on the weekends. It allowed me to feel more prepared for class discussions, to clean up my case briefs, and to fill out my outline where I felt I needed clarification on some issues. However, I had friends who would read the cases right before class and not make any notes and they were just as successful. Sometimes I made my weekend readings a little more interesting…to each their own.
mom's law blog 