While law students may consider their education a daunting commitment, students and professors at Boston University said they disagree with some of the stereotypes perpetuated about law school.
A group of law students from the University of Calgary posted a YouTube video on Feb. 26, called “Dear Me, Don’t Go To Law School.”
The video was a parody in which the students told their 16-year-old selves to avoid attending law school.
Christine Marx, associate dean of students at BU School of Law, said the video focused on some stereotypes that revolve around law students.
“Some of the video has some of the students saying you’ll never see your family [and] you’ll never see your friends, and that’s kind of an old law school,” Marx said. “That’s kind of a stereotype.”
Lyra Haas, a first-year student at BU Law, said the workload at law school can be difficult.
“I might tell 16-year-old me to start doing my constitutional law reading,” Haas said. “[Law school] sometimes does seem like a stress test to see how far they can push you before you break, but it hasn’t
happened yet.”
The parody described law school as a place for insecure over-achievers who need to put their liberal arts degrees to use. Once there, they struggled to get a “B” and alienated themselves from friends not in
law school.
However, Haas said law school can be a rewarding, enjoyable experience. Despite a friend’s warnings about the first year of law school being awful, Haas said she found herself pleasantly surprised.
“Given that perspective coming in, I’ve enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would,” Haas said. “I really love all my classes. The professors at BU are phenomenal.”
Stephanie Grebas, another first-year BU law student, said many students know BU’s law school, a three-year program, isn’t an easy journey.
“It’s three years, [and] most grad schools are only two or one. It’s pretty stressful,” Grebas said. “Generally, I would say when everyone goes into it, they know that it’s not going to be an easy three years.”
Marx said while law school involves a lot of work, students have time to participate in campus activities and enjoy themselves.
“It’s a professional school like medical school, so anytime you’re going on to a professional school where you’re going to go out and work with, in this case, clients, there’s a lot of work and it’s difficult,” Marx said, “but it’s not insurmountable.”
BU law students are able to fit in extracurricular activities, Marx said. BU Law offers free yoga classes from the dean’s office and a 5K race each spring for faculty and staff. The students can take part in a number of student organizations including a human rights law society, an international law society and a public interest student organization.
“There’s more of a balance than what was presented in the video,” Marx said.
While the video said law students are destined to help rich companies become richer through acquisitions or to conspire with a client to draw out nasty divorces, BU law student David Linhart said having the right intentions will get him the outcome he wants.
“That intentionality has helped me build honest professional relationships based on what I personally care about and what I’d like to accomplish in life,” Linhart said. “If lawyers are nothing else, they are connected.”
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Your article fails to mention that the video is a direct parody of a video produced by the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund (http://dcmf.ca/) designed to raise awareness of Melanoma, a very serious form of skin cancer. While I have no affiliation with the fund, I was compelled to make a donation to help them continue raising awareness of Melanoma, especially given the amazing job they did on that video.
Whereas I was deeply moved when I first saw the DCMF video (because I had a recent brush with Melanoma myself , and was rather fortunate to find my melanoma very early), I was outraged and saddened when I saw the parody. It is extremely insensitive, whether deliberate or not (and I can only imagine – or rather choose to believe – it was not meant to offend). At one point in the parody, a woman is crying over something about law school, and in the next scene a little boy holds up a picture of his daddy who is hasn’t seen in 3 years because of law school. In the original, the woman is crying because her husband died (and before that suffered immensely) from Melanoma; and the little boy hasn’t seen his dad in years, because he’s dead.
I really do totally believe in free speech, and have a sense of humour (despite being paranoid about every single mole and blemish since last September). In this case, I think human decency should have won out, plain and simple. And while I am glad the video was replaced with an alternate version with certain scenese removed, I really do wish it would just come down from youtube altogether. I was rattled to the core by this video, and I hardly had a taste of what sufferers of invasive melanoma and their frieds and family have had to endure. Imagine how they must feel.