Author: Tatiana Becker

Don’t Let The Curve Make You Unkind

/ Tatiana Becker / 2 Comments

Coming into law school, I had many choices to make. Several of them were financial: where I would live, how much I would take out in loans, and whether I could hold a part time job during 1L (that final one was a no, which made things very tight during those many months of learning how to Bluebook and outline). I had to decide who I would befriend on the first day of orientation, who I would trust as study partners, and who I would go to when I was having a horrible time with my lot in life.

One thing I was determined NOT to do was to allow the confines and constraints of law school to turn me in to someone I would be ashamed of, or someone I just didn’t like.

And then I met “the curve:” the infamous, fixed grading system that pits section mate against section mate and keeps many law students up at night.

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Starting Over in the Middle: What It’s Really Like to Transfer Law Schools

/ Tatiana Becker / 2 Comments

Ask anyone who has gone to law school: the application process is a nightmare. It’s (digital) mountains of paperwork, recommendation letters, editing your personal statement and supplemental essays fifty different times, and coordinating transcripts on LSAC from undergrad and beyond.

And then you submit your applications, get in (hopefully) to a few different schools, contemplate your options, submit your deposit, and dive right in to 1L year. But what about people who transfer? There’s lots of speculation and whispering about whether it’s a good or bad choice, with the potential loss of scholarship money, class rank, job prospects in OCI, and the fear of having to start all over again with new teachers and new classmates.

For me, transferring was always my plan, but I had not anticipated how emotionally arduous it would actually be.

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