Persistence In Passing The Law School Essay

It's never to late for law school. This is the story of a close personal friend of mine who decided at the age of fifty, that it was time to go to law school.

It was something that he always wanted to do. Like many, time and finances were not on his side until he reached the tender age of 50. In his first year at school he worked as a social worker for the same agency as me but he was also taking three classes. I don't know how he was able to keep up with the workload as well as performing in a highly stressful job but persistence and dedication saw him through. The only task he wasn't really ready for was the dreaded law school essay. Tests never seemed to faze him and he always performed well, but the law school essay was a real challenge and one he did not find easy.

The first two classes simply had one grade and that was the mark he would receive on his written exam at the semesters end. The whole point of the law school essay is for student to show what they have learnt in their own words and is part of the training because tasks like this are designed to train students for writing briefs for court hearings. It also aims to help students defend their own stance and opinions on certain point of law. Not everything is black and white in law and if approaching a grey area it is important to have the ability to provide a valid argument. In most cases, students are allowed to bring a lap top computer to their class for timed tests. Having said this, my friend's computer was scrutinised to ensure that he was not cheating. I was actually to hear that most students still prefer to hand-write their law school essay instead of using a computer.

One of the worst points for my friend, (probably even worse than the law school essay itself) was the waiting afterwards. Due to the fact that the teaching professor is required to carefully read every students law essay he had to wait for a long time before getting his test results. The same procedure is also used for the bar exam that each student has to pass before they can become and actual practicing attorney. Given over two days, the bar exam has one day of answering multiple-choice questions and this is followed by one day of law school essay questions. Both sections of this exam are timed and the second section, (law school essay) includes five different key areas of law. When my friend took the exam he unfortunately failed on one part. This was the tax law section. The reason for the fail was partly because this is not an area he is particularly interested in. His interest was in family law, and in particular child custody. But the fact is this one essay prevented him from passing the bar. Because of this he had to do further study and then wait an additional six months before re-taking the test.

But, despite age, and all of his setbacks, my friend pulled through. He re-took his test and passed his law school essay the second time around. He is now a fully-fledged practising attorney and one, which I have actually recommend to a family member.