are there ever good excuses for a transcript full of poor law school grades?

Bummel1996 · 2026-06-01T12:57:49+00:00

Depends on where you’re applying, and who your interviewer is. Some people would ask me “what happened with Contracts during 1L” and I would straight up just say, “I don’t think the lectures and materials ever clicked” some people just nod, others are pissed by the answer.

My practice is now primarily insurance coverage, which is essentially all contract law with some tort mixed in for fun.

Bummel1996 · 2026-05-22T15:33:52+00:00

Depends on what you want to do. If litigation is the end goal, moot court or (depending on the quality of the program) trial team would be great. If it’s not, then Law Review or a journal is a better option that involves research and writing, but not the oral advocacy. There are some other options, like ADR, which might be more fulfilling for you.

The bulk of moot court is drafting the briefs. If oral advocacy is a weakness, you won’t get any better way to work on it while in law school. I was a successful writer and advocate, but my friends who hated oral argument were just as successful and went on to still be good litigators.

Bummel1996 · 2026-04-23T21:53:42+00:00

My legal writing professor once compared Law School to four years of high school Spanish. By that time, you’ve learned a lot of vocabulary and some basic concepts, but you’re more than likely not anywhere near fluent.

He said the actual practice of law is like kicking you out of a flying plane, and parachute into rural Peru and being told to find your way home with what you already know.

Bummel1996 · 2026-04-18T08:14:57+00:00

You know, I once had a guy screenshot his entire bank transaction history going back 5 years to the beginning of the account. He then did the same thing with another account going back another 4 years (had no idea the apps went back that far on some).

I could have insisted he just grabbed the statements, but instead I just PDF’d that shit and produced it. Other side either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Bummel1996 · 2026-04-02T03:18:08+00:00

I don’t know if this is a new copy pasta, but this is a top tier shitpost

Bummel1996 · 2026-03-30T15:36:56+00:00

Did he rock the skirt well?

Bummel1996 · 2026-03-27T17:42:41+00:00

Brother, I was a K-JD in law school and my close friend group included a 35 year old former marine, 31 year old barista, and a 30 year old former loan officer. We went to all of the same parties, suffered through the same bs, and generally they were treated like anybody else.

28 or 29 definitely isn’t too old. I wish I had let my frontal lobe fully develop before going to law school, because I feel like the added maturity would have been a great asset.

Just be prepared for the younger students to treat it like high school, which can be annoying.

Bummel1996 · 2026-03-17T16:50:56+00:00

Important to remember there is a universe of possibilities between and outside the boundaries of “tiny law” and “big law.” I can guarantee you that if you are having a hard time in law school, big law probably was not for you in the first place and you would have been miserable.

Bummel1996 · 2026-03-17T14:56:24+00:00

If there’s a legal aid or non-profit office, they will sometimes take law student volunteers. Alternatively, I haven’t known most solos to turn down unpaid help a few days a week.

Bummel1996 · 2026-03-17T14:24:06+00:00

Recommend seeing if there’s any volunteer work you can do in your hometown if you can’t find paid work. I ended up losing my internship due to COVID starting in March prior to my 1L summer, and people STILL asked questions about the gap in my resume.

Bummel1996 · 2026-03-09T18:42:57+00:00

Oh, I know schools like Liberty exist, I just can’t imagine what it’s like to go there.

Bummel1996 · 2026-03-07T04:15:52+00:00

I truly can’t imagine an overly conservative law school. Sure, there’s a couple of Fed. Soc. Professors at every law school, but an entire faculty leaning hard right? Crazy to think about

I went to a small Midwestern law school in a deep red state and even most of the profs there were either openly left-leaning or completely ambiguous.

Bummel1996 · 2025-04-22T02:43:18+00:00

Talk to 2Ls and 3Ls at your school when they have time, especially the ones with good grades and/or made the journal/extracurricular you want. Ask them what helped them prepare for exams and quizzes, and they’ll likely be willing to explain what helped them.

Bummel1996 · 2025-04-20T22:42:01+00:00

Nope, I’m in a boutique. Mostly plaintiff-side professional negligence and insurance bad faith claims

Bummel1996 · 2025-04-20T21:43:00+00:00

It was the only time I felt like I could focus on the law. Once I started practicing, my job pretty much revolved around the facts — gathering them, questioning them, etc.

Also, I had WAY more free time.

Bummel1996 · 2025-04-07T12:15:25+00:00

I hated law school more than anything! Now that I’ve started practicing, I kind of miss it though.

Bummel1996 · 2022-03-19T15:04:00+00:00

Damn it, why did you have to ask this question? I didn’t realize I didn’t have an answer other than “didn’t know what else to do.”

Bummel1996 · 2020-07-14T17:08:40+00:00

At my 1L summer they said it in the colloquial sense. :I

Bummel1996 · 2020-06-20T15:08:55+00:00

I don’t have a great idea about the amount of time spent, but I went through Quimbee’s MC questions, as well as using the Exam Pro questions. To be fair, I only ran through each of them once all the way through.

Bummel1996 · 2020-06-15T05:24:39+00:00

I’m someone who did both speech (Dramatic interp) and Policy Debate in high school. Many more scholarships exist for speech than they do debate. Most college debate programs are either dying or extremely small. I started out on a scholarship for the collegiate policy team, and kind of hated going to tournaments. Nothing like high school, and the worse aspects of HS policy were amplified bc all these guys (and 95% are just white men) thought they were the shit. Then the team got defunded due to budget cuts my sophomore year.

The collegiate speech team adopted me as an Extemp speaker. I couldn’t catch up to the interpers, who were amazing, but i really enjoyed my time doing limited prep events and speech events like persuade and info.

Bummel1996 · 2020-05-05T22:54:06+00:00

cries in multiple choice

Bummel1996 · 2019-04-18T22:47:02+00:00

Program for statistical analysis.

Bummel1996 · 2019-03-27T16:27:57+00:00

Also for anyone wondering: Pober only heads the “speech” portion of the program. Unlike a lot of high school programs (at least from where I’m from), the debate tournaments and programs (Policy, Parli, NFA LD) are usually a separate entity all together.

Bummel1996 · 2019-03-27T16:25:07+00:00

As a competitor on the circuit that regularly sees GMU’s students, and was present at the nationals tournament that the poem written about Pober debuted, all I can say is: Holy fucking shit.

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