Thanks to JCA at Sua Sponte for her awfully nice response to my response to her post about law school advice (below).

She writes, "never, never underestimate the force of law school culture. Pay attention to culture when you're choosing a law school. It's every bit as important as the professors' pedigrees, if not more so..."

I definitely agree in principle -- I just wonder (a) if it's really possible to tell anything about the "culture" of a law school before you're a student, and (b) what exactly "law school culture" means -- I guess there must be schools that on the whole are more competitive than others, or have more or less of a feeling of community, or have friendlier / more social / more relaxed people... but I think a lot of it is determined by the person. I'd think that just about any law school (or undergrad, or job, or life...) can be either wonderful or horrible depending on what you make of it. There are people in my class who are miserable, there are people who are in heaven... it's not the school's fault for the former or to its credit for the latter... it's that people have either found or not found what works for them within the school... and I guess some schools do fit people better or worse... but, going back to (a), I think that's probably really hard to know before you're there. Heck, even after a year I have no idea what Harvard's "culture" is, and how it really compares to anywhere else in terms of lifestyle. What vague advice I seem to have just provided...