Questions to Ask a Law Student
Questions for talking with a law student, whether you know one or are thinking of applying: what their year is actually like, how they study, how the curve and the job search work, what the degree is doing to the way they think, and whether they would do it again.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Which year are you in, and does it feel different from the last one?
Why ask it
The three years are not variations on one experience. First year is graded terror and no control over your schedule, second is recruiting and journals, third is often quiet and a little aimless, and asking which one they are in avoids questions that make no sense for their stage.
What made you go to law school?
Why ask it
Answers divide into the ones with a story and the ones that arrive as a resume line about wanting to help people. If you get the second, the honest version usually follows a small pause, and it is worth waiting for.
Is it what you expected?
Why ask it
Almost nobody says yes. The surprise is usually how little of it resembles argument and how much of it is reading, and hearing which specific expectation broke tells you more than a general complaint about workload.
What are you taking this semester, and which one do you actually look forward to?
Why ask it
First-year courses are assigned, so the answer to the second half is a real preference rather than a choice they can be judged on. It is also the easiest route into a subject they can talk about properly.
What is the reading actually like: how many hours a night?
Why ask it
This is the part outsiders never picture, and law students are often relieved to be asked something concrete. Watch for whether they say they keep up, because most people ration the reading and few admit it unprompted.
Have you been cold-called yet, and how did it go?
Why ask it
Being questioned in front of a hundred people is the most memorable early experience for most law students and one of the few they can tell as a story. Someone who has never been called on is telling you something about the class size.
Which class has been hardest, and what makes it hard?
Why ask it
The reason is where the interest is. Difficulty can mean dense doctrine, a professor who withholds structure, or material that unsettles them, and these produce very different conversations.
Is there a case you cannot stop thinking about?
Why ask it
Everyone in law school has one, usually because the facts were grim or the outcome felt wrong. This is the question that gets a law student talking like a person rather than a candidate.
How do you study: outlines, a group, or on your own?
Why ask it
Study method is genuinely contested among law students and they hold opinions about it. The answer also quietly reveals whether they have found people to work with, which matters more to how the year goes than most study advice.
What do people in your section talk about when they are not talking about law?
Why ask it
A section spends most of the first year together, and the answer describes the social world they live in. If the honest answer is nothing, that is worth knowing about how absorbing the environment has become.
Have you done any clinic or internship work yet, and what was the first real client like?
Why ask it
The gap between a casebook and a person with a problem is where most students first feel like lawyers, or first realize they do not want to be. Ask what surprised them rather than what they did.
What kind of law are you drawn to, and has that changed since you started?
Why ask it
Most people arrive certain and shift, often after one course or one summer. The change is more interesting than the current answer, and asking about it lets them say they are undecided without it sounding like a failure.
How are you paying for it, and how much does that shape your plans?
Why ask it
Debt quietly decides who can take a public interest job and who cannot, and students think about it constantly while rarely being asked. Only ask if you know them well enough, and let them keep the numbers to themselves.
How is the job search going, and what is the timeline like?
Why ask it
Recruiting for some paths happens absurdly early and for others not until after graduation, so the pressure depends entirely on which path they are on. If they are in the middle of it, expect a short answer and move on.
Do you have a professor or mentor you can actually talk to?
Why ask it
This one often lands harder than expected. Recommendation letters, clerkships, and research work all run through those relationships, and a student who has not found one usually knows it and has not said so to anyone.
How do you switch off?
Why ask it
Law school rewards continuous work, so many students no longer have an answer, and noticing that out loud is sometimes useful to them. A specific answer, even a small one, is a good sign about how they are coping.
Has law school changed how you argue with people?
Why ask it
Most students will admit, ruefully, that it has, and usually not for the better in ordinary conversation. It is a light way into a real subject: what the training does to habits of mind outside class.
Has anything you have studied made you uncomfortable about how the system works?
Why ask it
Criminal procedure, evidence, and property all contain material that is difficult to sit with once you understand it. Students who have no answer are either early in the degree or not looking, and both are informative.
What do you wish people outside law school understood about it?
Why ask it
This invites the correction they have wanted to make since term started, often about the television version of the job. Expect it to be the most animated answer of the conversation.
Where do you want to be five years after graduating, and what would have to go right?
Why ask it
The second half is what makes this different from a job interview question. It lets them describe the plan and its weak points at once, which is closer to how they actually think about it.
What made you choose this school over the others you got in to?
Why ask it
The real reason is often money or geography rather than anything in the brochure, and students say so readily. If the answer is that this was the only acceptance, the rest of their view of the school is still useful but differently framed.
What does a normal Tuesday look like, from waking up to going to bed?
Why ask it
An hour-by-hour account is much harder to gloss than a question about workload. You find out how much of the day is class, how much is reading, and what has quietly disappeared from their week.
How does the curve work here, and how did people take it?
Why ask it
Ask for the median grade and how many students sit below it. The second half of the question is where you learn whether the effect shows up as competitiveness, quiet demoralization, or nothing much.
How did your first semester grades compare to what you expected?
Why ask it
Most students arrive having always been near the top and land somewhere in the middle, and that adjustment is the hardest part of the year for many. Someone willing to describe it plainly is worth more than a tour.
How much did the legal writing course teach you compared to your other classes?
Why ask it
Writing is the skill first employers actually test, and it is often the course with the least prestige and the largest sections. Students who got real feedback say so with some warmth; students who did not tend to describe it as busywork.
Which part of the first year would you warn me about?
Why ask it
This gives permission to be negative about something specific, which general questions about culture do not. Common answers involve one course, one professor's grading, or the stretch between Thanksgiving and finals.
Has anything about the way law is taught here frustrated you?
Why ask it
Complaints about being taught doctrine with no practical application, or exams that reward speed over thought, are common and legitimate. A student with no criticism at all after a year has either been lucky or is still recruiting for the school.
Who does badly here, and why?
Why ask it
A blunt question that gets thoughtful answers: people who came for the wrong reasons, people who never found a study group, people who needed structure the school does not provide. Compare that description honestly with yourself.
What do you know now that would have changed how you applied?
Why ask it
Answers often involve applying earlier, negotiating aid harder, or taking a year off first. This is hindsight from someone one step ahead of you, and it is the most portable thing in the conversation.
Would you do it again?
Why ask it
Ask it last and let the silence run. A yes with a qualification attached is the most common honest answer, and the qualification is the part you came for.
Talking with a law student
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Know where they are in the year
- Exam periods are short and total. In the weeks before finals, almost any question about the future is an unwelcome one, and the kind thing is to ask nothing and feed them.
- First-year students have no grades yet and no idea how they are doing. Questions about class rank or job prospects have no answer and cause anxiety.
- Second year is recruiting season for some paths. If they have offers they will say so; if they do not, the question stings, so let them raise it.
- Third-year students are often waiting: for bar prep, for a start date, for the job to become real. They usually have the most time to talk and the most perspective, which also makes them the ones to find if you are asking before you apply.
- Graduates studying for the bar are effectively unavailable. Anything beyond how it is going is too much.
Making it a conversation
- Ask about a case or a class rather than the profession. Specific material gets specific answers; the state of the legal industry gets a shrug.
- Let them explain something. Most law students spend the year being tested and almost none of it being listened to, and being the expert for five minutes is a genuine relief.
- Follow the part they said with energy, not the part you planned to ask next.
- Accept a non-answer about grades, offers, or debt on the first pass. If they want to tell you, they will come back to it. If you are asking before you apply, ask about their class or their year rather than about them, which takes the sting out of it.
- If they say they are struggling, do not solve it. Ask what the week looks like and who else knows.
What not to do
- Do not ask for free legal advice. Students are not licensed, it puts them in an awkward position, and it is the thing they are asked most often.
- Skip the lawyer jokes. They have heard them, and the joke usually ends the conversation you were trying to start.
- Do not compare their school or grades to someone else's. Law school has enough of that internally.
- Avoid asking how much they will earn. It is a common opener and it flattens the whole exchange.
- Do not tell them what they should do with the degree unless they ask. They are already receiving that from several directions.