2L. Job search complete. I’m behind, but it seems like everyone is.
What I need is a good kick in the pants to get me going again. Anyone else feeling like this?
Pretty much the entire 2L class at Cornell has expressed this sentiment recently. Don’t care about classes. Don’t care about journal work. Not a single fuck is given about law school anymore.
Everyone got jobs then? 
I really can relate to what you are saying. Let’s face it, law review and the ability to transfer schools are based on 1L performance. Moreover, it is easy to get burned out as result of the hard work required by the first year of law school. Thus, I really do get where you are coming from.
HOWEVER, I strongly urge you to rethink your priorities. 2L and 3L are considered the most important years in law school for several reasons. First, you get to take classes that you want to take that can help your overall GPA, which intern helps with jobs. Secondly, and even more importantly in my opinion, really important legal skills can be gotten in the second and third years. This is where you will learn about negotiations, family law, tax law, advanced drafting and research and litigation skills, not to mention honing and improving skills that you might not have strengthened sufficiently as a result of your first year of law school. Moreover, if you are writing for law review, the quality of your article and the topic selected can be of help to you for the rest of your life, especially if you want to teach. A quality article that gets used by many lawyers can really enhance your reputation.
The second and third years are NOT the years that you should ignore. In fact, you should put even more emphasis on them since they will inculcate the practical skills of being a lawyer.
The first year, other than learning to read cases and do legal research , is only important for bar exam passage since those courses provide the majority of informaton tested on the bar, among that of a few other courses. It is the second and third years that will hone your really important skills. Moreover, you get to choose what skills to hone via electives. If you are paying 30+K per year in tuition, don’t waste this money and your time sliding through your upper class years of law school. I promise you that if you heed my advice, you won’t regret it. You will, however, regret blowing your second and third years of law school by simply sliding by and not inculcating the skills that you should really have.
Always remember, “It isn’t our successes that make us stronger. It is how we handle our failures and challenges that determine who we are.” I urge you and others who read this to overcome your lethergy and rise above it.
Only a few students per year get published, and it is possible to learn/take practical classes and not give a fuck about grades.
Do not agree with this sentiment or with the use of “inculcating.”
For rebuttal evidence, I would like to offer the 2L gunners in “Law Governing Lawyers.”
If you struck out at biglaw, your priority should be gaining work experience, not grades. The vast majority of shitlaw firms don’t care about grades/journals, they care about how much time they have to spend training you on the job. The more work experience you have, the less time they have to spend training you to do routine tasks.
What if you get no offered next year. You have a SUCKY GPA what are you going to DO?
If you’ve got no motivation to clerk and your firm isn’t requesting transcripts, then by all means, cruise/don’t fail. Moreover, if you think you’re bored and don’t care now, wait until 3L when you’ve got your biglaw offer. It’s brutal.
An energy shot: Firms look at your 2L grades before they extent you an permanent job offer.
False. Some do, but they’re in the minority.
Feeling this. Really wish I could snap out of it. I had grand ambitions to raise my GPA, but now I have a V100 job and I’m not sure what the point is. Not on law review or MC so nothing to do outside of class. Not interested in clerking at all. Yikes!
Came in here thinking mths was OP.
Read the first post and definitely knew it wasn’t mths.
Zero motivation is the goal.
Well, I do have motivation to clerk. SO LET’S DO THIS.
It’s just so hard when, you know, Breaking Bad is on.
Im a 1L.
Some firms don’t look at your 2L grades? Does that mean most people have jobs lined up a good year or more before they graduate law school? When do most people start looking for jobs? I was expecting it to be midway 3L…
yikes
do your research son.
And you know this how? Part of your training at American Eagle?