Q&A report

The Evening Division had a Q&A session with one of the Deans last night and some interesting topics got addressed.

Summer School - Yes, we can go. It's a 7 week program running in June/July. The suggestion is to take no more than 2 classes. While this may allow us to graduate early (3.5 years instead of 4 if we go every summer) there is no guarantee and the school isn't promising anything. Also, the class options may only be bar classes, but something is better than nothing, I guess.

Class rankings - the Evening Division will be ranked with the 1L class next year as they are the group we'll match up with for graduation purposes. That's full timers ranked with part timers. That could be good or bad depending on how we do relatively.

Future jobs - Big Law hires from internships that run during the day in the summers. No one knows how those of us employed folks will be able to participate in these internships so we may not be able to get into Big Law. Of course there's a myriad of other options, just not Big Law. Also, we were assured that the Senior Partners at many of the local firms want us, but no one is sure how that translates to overcome the internship issue. Experience is required, but we can't get it. It's a big unknown.

Grades - There's not a school enforced curve, but there's a mean and a standard deviation the class is supposed to fit into. But somehow that's not forced. I didn't follow it either. Also, certain classes mirror their grades from class to class. Others don't.

Unemployed people in the Evening Division - it's become apparent that a significant portion of our Evening Division is not employed full time. That's a shock to those of us who are since that was our expectation. It's also a shock because we'll be measured against people with 2-3 times the ability to study. The Dean's response was something along the lines of "too bad, there's no such thing as a level playing field anyways." Gee, thanks. The result of this was quite humorous last night. Apparently there's a strong desire for these "less employed" people to move to the full time program or to take classes during the day. The school is not going to allow it as a general rule. This was an area of contention for the "less employed" last night and it was pretty funny to watch. The general feeling from the back row was that if you wanted into the day program you should have checked that box on the app.

That sums up the key parts that are either relevant, important, or interesting. I want to stay positive about this since I'll end up with a law degree regardless of what happens. I'm very concerned about the job issues and not as concerned about the measuring/grading issues. I figure I'll either to good or bad but with a 96% hiring rate I'll end up with a job either ways. Besides, we're good enough, we're smart enough (as we were reminded, again), and Senior Partners like us.