Question about studying law?

I love angels

Hi everyone,
I was just wondering how much work is a law degree as opposed to an Arts or Social Science degree? Roughly How many books would you have to read for each module and are there any books that you could avoid reading or do you have to read all of them? How many hours study would you need to do for Law? How do you find the workload and how do you manage the workload?

Thank you

MaryPopins

A law degree is very few hours a week (usually about 10). You are supposed to read for each class, although I never did and got by just fine. It's a heavier work load than both of your comparators, from my experience in college. While those folks were putting together magazines and drawing pictures we were learning land law. It's a great primary degree though, you can go virtually anywhere once you have it. It's difficult to say how many hours you have to do, as it will depend on the college. We had approximately 3 essays to do each semester. They would take about a week each, doing full days. Some people did them in a day though. Then the two weeks before exams were hectic. I often said to myself I wish I'd studied Arts and had more craic, but then again I have a job now while most of my friends in those disciplines have had to emigrate to work in cafés. Don't shy away from a bit of work. The State pays for you to do one degree, make it a good one and get the most out of it. You can do virtually any Masters from a law degree. You'd be hard pushed to get into an MBA program after an Arts degree (no disrespect, just certainly more difficult).

LowKeyReturn

It very much depends on what you want to do with the degree once you have it. I scoffed at the poster above comments about ten hour a week, then on reflection I realised that actually that's not far wrong, as an average, as far as reading for lectures go.

What takes up the time is CV building if you want to enter the legal profession. For barristers it's not as tough for entry, it's finding work. For solicitors though firms are getting amazing CVs. I have spent in excess of 40 hours a week on extracurricular some weeks and that's aside from study.

If you just want a law degree as a means to a masters or for the craic the work load isn't that taxing. If you want to enter the legal profession it's a different story, as far as I'm concerned anyway. Perhaps I'm wrong and perhaps I didn't need to get involved with the various things I do, but worst comes to the worst, I've had some great experiences.

LegallyAbroad

A law degree is really just an arts degree on steroids, to be honest. Of course not a whole lot of lawyers and admit this, for obvious reasons. But with both, it is easy to pass and hard to do well.

My law degree has worked out amazingly well for me and I only did reasonably well (high 2:1). However, I have to laugh about how naive I was when I started with regard to the chances of it being a great degree success. It worked out for me, but to be honest, for most it doesn't. So, if you're going to do one make sure you're coming out with a high 2:1 at a minimum, and preferably a first.

Basically, not that hard to do a law degree and pass. Very hard to be a successful lawyer.

Manach

I can compare achieving a law and an arts degree. For the former there was a higher workload (about 25 hours pw compared to about 20), more focused on a tighter subject range and arguably a more diverse range of mental skillsets. However the arts was more wide ranging, and I felt easier to study and at a personal level more enjoyable.
As a secondary skill set in industry, I found the law of more relevance.