2L employment and attendance Forum

[Anonymous User]

Struck out at OCI but full ride at my regional T40/T50 in a major market. I've realized I don't want to do big law and am also not seeing public interest as worth it. I'm thinking about just taking evening classes, and going to just a couple days of class this year. I would like to get some non-legal day job. But don't necessarily want to drop out since I'm on a full ride.

What are your thoughts? I have a couple irrelevant nonprofit experience from prior to law school. Hoping to swing some marketing job or something?

Do schools care about law school attendance?

I had a 4.0 last year so even if I get a 2.5 or something low this year, my average will still be ok.

[QContinuum]

If you're planning on doing something completely non-law related down the road, such as marketing, be warned that many (most?) non-legal employers view the J.D. as a "scarlet letter." They believe, rightly or wrongly, that J.D.s want to practice law, and thus can't be counted on to stick around. If you're completely sure that you don't want to be a lawyer (and you should double, triple, and quadruple check), then I suggest withdrawing from law school.

(The caveat is that there are some law-adjacent jobs, notably in advocacy and policy, where a J.D. may be marginally helpful or at least not harmful. So it may be worth seeing the J.D. through if you're interested in that arena.)

[Anonymous User]

Struck out at OCI but full ride at my regional T40/T50 in a major market. I've realized I don't want to do big law and am also not seeing public interest as worth it. I'm thinking about just taking evening classes, and going to just a couple days of class this year. I would like to get some non-legal day job. But don't necessarily want to drop out since I'm on a full ride.

What are your thoughts? I have a couple irrelevant nonprofit experience from prior to law school. Hoping to swing some marketing job or something?

Do schools care about law school attendance?

I had a 4.0 last year so even if I get a 2.5 or something low this year, my average will still be ok.

I recommend not doing what you're thinking about doing. Stay the course, try to graduate with a 4.0 or 3.9, and apply to various in-house positions. You'll get something with your grades.

With a grade slip and no biglaw, however, you'll be hardpressed to find an entry-level job that's near or exceeds six figures, assuming that's what you want (as public interest is "not worth it")

[Npret]

Struck out at OCI but full ride at my regional T40/T50 in a major market. I've realized I don't want to do big law and am also not seeing public interest as worth it. I'm thinking about just taking evening classes, and going to just a couple days of class this year. I would like to get some non-legal day job. But don't necessarily want to drop out since I'm on a full ride.

What are your thoughts? I have a couple irrelevant nonprofit experience from prior to law school. Hoping to swing some marketing job or something?

Do schools care about law school attendance?

I had a 4.0 last year so even if I get a 2.5 or something low this year, my average will still be ok.

Don’t go to law school, even for free, if you don’t want to be a lawyer. It’s no wonder you didn’t get an offer at OCI if you had in the back of your mind you might just go to evening school and do something else.
Maybe get a leave of absence if you can keep your scholarship.

[lawhopeful100]

This sounds a little like my experience. I was near the top of my class at a T1 regional and struck out at oci. It wasn’t that I didn’t want big law, I just was going to have 130k or so in debt, and wanted the highest paying job possible. To apply for other jobs and because I was down about my interview results, I skipped a bunch of class. To your question on that, some teachers cared, some didn’t, it really didn’t affect my grades that much honestly. Once you know how to outline and take an exam there won’t be too much variation if you cram come exam time. To your other point, as others have said, despite my good grades, I couldn’t get finance positions to interview, being partway through law school was a bad look. Ultimately, I ended up starting at a small to mid size firm, and lateralled to big law about 6 months ago. If you really don’t want to be an attorney, maybe stick it out and try for compliance or something. If you would want big law still though, consider trying to land a legal job and lateralling over later.

[Aptitude]

Struck out at OCI but full ride at my regional T40/T50 in a major market. I've realized I don't want to do big law and am also not seeing public interest as worth it. I'm thinking about just taking evening classes, and going to just a couple days of class this year. I would like to get some non-legal day job. But don't necessarily want to drop out since I'm on a full ride.

What are your thoughts? I have a couple irrelevant nonprofit experience from prior to law school. Hoping to swing some marketing job or something?

Do schools care about law school attendance?

I had a 4.0 last year so even if I get a 2.5 or something low this year, my average will still be ok.

Are you K-JD? It will be hard to score a marketing job without prior experience. As a prior poster said, 6 digit jobs are out the window if you don't have prior experience.

I wouldn't go as far as to say a JD is a scarlet letter, especially if you have good grades (you can argue you could be a lawyer due to your grades but you hated the experience - most people don't like lawyers enough to believe you if you're convincing). But a JD doesn't help as much as people think. In some instances, neither does an MBA in some white collar jobs these days.

These days, a lot of marketing jobs are based on either sales experience (and results). Some marketing jobs at startups or companies looking to establish their brand will value social networking clout. They'll check your Instagram and see the amount of followers you have, your influence.

It's really tough to get in, without getting in on the ground floor and being stuck with a job most people here would find non-glamorous. I know some Marketing Managers at Fortune 500 companies and they started out making cold calls all day, in a sales support role or working retail and climbing that ladder. One went to get her MBA while still working to accelerate the process, but it took her like 5 years of sales before she got a "marketing" title.

[unsweetened]

Marketing jobs are basically the most disposable positions in a company (because you don't generate traceable revenue), everybody above you tells you how to do your job (because they know just enough about marketing to think they know best), and inordinate amounts of time are spent arguing over the most trivial topics (like what color a banner should be on an web site). There are some awesome marketing jobs out there, but those generally involve working a ton of hours (literally everything else in your life gets put on hold) and you have to know a lot of the right people (to get the job and get results instantly).

OP, if you want to practice law, stay in law school. Striking out at OCI isn't the end of everything if that is what you want to do. Mass mailing and networking are important to getting more interviews. More interviews means more opportunities to get an offer.
If law sucks, see if your school offers a JD/MBA program. You might have to take the GRE or GMAT, but it would give you a year to do something that isn't law and an MBA might be helpful in pursuing a business career if that's something you really want.