What is the biggest difference in learning experience between business school and law school?

In business school, you traditionally fall into two categories: “Quants” and “Poets” and I was most definitely the latter.  During my first year of business school, I struggled trying to comprehend and understand key concepts in classes like Finance, Statistics, and Economics.  After graduating and receiving my MBA, I decided to attend law school and I thought after 2 years of working to understand the “Quant”, I would easily fit back into the “Poet” culture.  Yet I was shocked to realize how much harder law school was for me.

In essence, the MBA is like the “fleet”.  Even in the most quantitative classes, there was an element of creativity and innovation.  I was expected to come up with decisions with the information I had and stand by them.  If you lacked a skill set, classmates acted like a “fire team” to fill the void.  Everything was done with team work and people could rely on each other.

In contrast, law school is like “boot camp”. The average age of the students here is around 23 (as opposed to the average age of 26 for the MBA) and the mentality of the students is much different.  Unlike MBA students who are attending school with years of experience (business or otherwise), for law students, it’s their time to create the building blocks and foundation of their future law career based on the rigidity of law. Thus the learning method at law school revolves around memorization and the ability to regurgitate the information you’ve consumed at command, rather than the ability to be creative or innovative.

Although I don’t regret attending law school, the experience, especially after receiving my MBA, was quite a shock to the system.

Branch: USMC
MBA: Eller (University of Arizona)
Year: 2011
Industry: Law School (Liberty University)