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I appreciate Howard's link below to my friend Mike Dorf's post talking about law school as a continuation of one's undergraduate degree.  Mike writes that "Law students who regard their legal education as a continuation of their undergraduate (or in some cases, graduate) studies will be doubly rewarded."  They will both enjoy their time in law school and, presumably by virtue of the added energy and attention that enjoyment brings, realize a practical payoff as well.

This is right, I think, but it's advice that needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  I always tell incoming students to be aware that law school is not simply part two of their undergraduate degrees.  That may seem to be in some tension with Mike's advice, but I don't think it is; note that Mike also makes clear that legal study as part of a full liberal education is a secondary aspect of law school.  

What needs to be taken into account is how different people treat their undergraduate educations, and how different people treat their legal educations, partly in consequence of that prior experience.  If you treated your undergraduate education as an engaging challenge to which you brought your full intellectual and emotional energies, then by all means bring the same spirit to law school as well; I might add that the same advice would hold if you had brought that spirit to life as a motorcycle mechanic or a taxidermist instead of an undergraduate.  But that, of course, is not everyone's story.  (It wasn't always mine.)  It is also possible to drift, relatively passively, through one's undergrad years; to do quite well with a relative minimum of effort; to wait and see what time will bring instead of seizing the reins of your own education.  And regrettably, some students start law school (and probably even more finish it) in something of this spirit.  They come to view law school as no different than their undergrad education, no more purposeful, and no more demanding of personal input; as something whose primary good lies in its credentialing function provided they can last through three years of classes.  They don't fully see its link to a professional acculturation, and viewed as a general course in the humanities they don't take full advantage of what it has to offer in this realm either.

This is all quite human and understandable, and I'm not affecting a superior position here.  Indeed, it was very much my experience for my first semester of law school.  It was only after I took it fully seriously as its own commitment that I began really experiencing its rewards, both as a system of transmission into the traditions of a profession and as an intellectual experience of its own.  So I'm a little leery of describing law school to new students as simply undergrad part two.  Not all of the old tricks one got by with in undergraduate education will get one as far in law school (although, with Mike, I agree that there is nothing deeply distinctive about legal reasoning, and those tricks can get some people pretty far).  It shouldn't be viewed just as three more years of the same old thing.  It's a new endeavor, one that far more than undergraduate education is linked to a particular professional and intellectual tradition, and on balance students may get more out of it if they realize this up front and commit to the enterprise.  It can certainly be as rewarding as one's undergraduate experience, if one found that rewarding; but it's not necessarily the same thing, and one shouldn't be complacent about it.  

I'm not trying to be too mystical about it; just to say that it requires a new sense of commitment rather than just trying to slide through it, in a way that is eminently possible for both undergraduate and legal educations.   

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