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It can be incredibly isolating to feel like your experience is dramatically different from that of everybody else around you and that few others will understand where you come from. That can feel especially true in law school, where the vast majority of students are young, single, child-free
Contrary to popular opinion, there are advantages that come with age, and they can help in law school.
Law school isn’t tailored to students with kids, so create an academic experience that works for your family.
A nontraditional student for her time agreed to challenge a school admissions policy for a cause “so right, so just.”
These lawyers trusted their instincts and took a leap of faith to find their perfect career.
Insurance defense litigator Emily Albrecht digs into a specialty that would mortify other lawyers.
That long-term career plan? It can be limiting. Instead, start with a shorter vision.
Your career may not be a straight line. But if you know what you’re good at, you’ll get where you’d like to be.
These first-in-their-family law students reveal how they built the foundation that many other students already have as they begin law school.
I first developed survival tools and then figured out how to survive without them.
A first-gen law student had no idea how far behind he was in the networking and career category.
Sure, students whose family members are lawyers have advantages. But not as much as they think.
Lawyers who participated in moot court and other competitions explain how they’re still benefitting in their practice.
Tradition, especially in the law, means a lot. Traditions connect us to people and ideas that came before. They can add meaning to the things we say and do. But tradition can also hold us back from addressing choices that need rethinking. It’s OK to start fresh every
You can use a social media campaign designed by the ABA to communicate your messages to Congress—and your representatives are listening.
Intensive bar preparation is a “long, strange trip” (apologies to the Grateful Dead). You need your Bar Success GPS—something you don’t want to be frantically pulling together in June and July. Start early. Start now.
Only 314 law school applicants for the 2017-2018 academic year—not even a half a percent— were music majors, according to the Law School Admissions Council. Dana Musial, a 3L at the University of Cincinnati College of Law in Ohio, was one of them.
Achievements matter, but opportunities offered and provided to others have rich rewards, too.
How I’ve learned and been motivated by those who break from tradition.
Find out how the ABA is helping immigrant families get due process at the border and survivors of natural disasters recover through the YLD's Disaster Legal Services program. Plus, students tell their pro bono stories and offer their advice on how you can begin making your own legal
A system based on due process should offer immigrants no less, argues the ABA’s Judy Perry Martinez.
Six minutes and 13 seconds are now seared into the memory of a student whose experience has been forever changed by pro bono work.
With drive and commitment, you can make a difference after floods, fires, tornadoes, and other disasters.
Students tell their pro bono stories and offer their advice on how you can begin making your own legal impact.
It’s never too early or too late to start thinking about paying off law school loans. In some cases, if you go to the right school, make the right amount of money, and follow confusing steps that may go horribly awry at any point, you
Before the Bar is the blog of the ABA Law Student Division. It brings together a diversity of opinions, experiences, and voices from those associated with the law anywhere in the world and is targeted to law students, current, past and future.
Unless stated, the opinions shared by our writers do not reflect the official position of the American Bar Association.
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