The Economic Fears of Law School Grads…

In my recent blog surfing, I came across a post on Lawiscool.com replying to a youtube video that was claiming that law school is in essence a scam, that your paying all this money for a job you will not get or make a ton of cash with. I started to make a comment on the video as well on the website, but as it got longer, I thought it best to make a post about it. My argument, countering this video are threefold…

1. 1. The American vs. Canadian Experience.
   2. Starting salaries fallacy
   3. A improper assumption about why we should go to law school.

My Own Pearls of Wisdom

The Law is not a Philosophic King, but rather a Just Tyrant.

Kenny S. R. Costa

Background

From my reading in law so far, I have found that the law can be very harsh at times. It is not that ideal philosophic king you would find in Plato’s Republic. In that, one finds the power of the king, tempered by a love of wisdom. The law however does not seem to possess those qualities.

That isn’t to say the law isn’t just, often it can be very fair, but in a merciless and cruel way. Hence the law can be Just in fairness, but it can be cruel, and sometimes even overbearing, so also a tyrant.

Five Tips for Law School I learned from my Exams

Throughout the exam process, I kept on thinking about certain things I needed to do better, things I had done well, and ideas that might help be become a better law student. I thought to ensure that such principles were taken to heart, I should write them down. Here are the five things I learned about from my exams.

1. Go Electronic: All of my notes up until this point have been in the  traditional paper-pen style, the preferred method of schoolwork in my undergraduate studies. I love the simplicity of bringing a scribbler and pen to class, which weigh only a few grams and cost no more than a dollar, as opposed a kilo or more of computer, load-up time, power cords, etc, with the cost of only a few hundred dollars. I like having open space in front of me, no hiding behind a screen. If I’m being totally honest, I didn’t think I would be disciplined enough to stay on task with a computer right in front of me as well. But while my hand written notes were good, they were scattered and hard to keep track of at times, but more particularly, they were not very conducive to writing out an outline. Instead of copy-paste and simplification, I had to retype out my notes a lot of the time. It is a minor note, but I’m going to have to go electronic in the New Year. Hopefully, I will only have Word open when I have my notebook on in class.

Letter to a friend…

An old friend from my philosophy days contacted me by facebook. He works in Ottawa but never finished his honours philosophy degree. He was thinking finishing up his degree and then going into law school. He was asking for some advise. So I sent him the letter below.

Some of you may wonder why I would post this on my blog. Well, I always remembered that alot of the philosophy I read was personal letters to fellow thinkers. I thought that the things I wrote in the letter really showed how I’ve been feeling, as well as how I felt about the past. I thought it illuminating, so I took out all the personal stuff, and am showing you what I wrote…

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The Honours Degree.. wasn’t too bad. Again I did a double honours in history and philosophy. I’m really glad I did the Thesis, it ended up being on the philosophy of history, and something like a hundred pages. If I were to do it again, I think I would stick to something more managible, like the moral philosophy of plato, or something like that. Even that might be too large, but make sure you do something specific. Any good advisor will tell you that, and even though I got a B+, I might have reached too far. I think the thing to remember is that your not writting philosophy (as I was trying to do), but you are a student of philosophy. It’s alot of work, but worth doing. I never thought I could do it, and now that I have, it really gave me the confidence to think I could move on to greater and better things.

Law School… I almost didn’t get in. Study hard for your LSAT. That is the thing that will make or break you.