Father and daughter who graduated law school together await bar results
Sarah Smith credits her father and an LSAT study guide for her interest in law school.
Tim Smith was working with an LSAT study book in early 2014 when his daughter picked it up and started doing some of the problems. “I thought the questions were fun, and it piqued my interest,” she told the Akron Legal News.
The father-daughter duo entered the University of Akron School of Law in fall 2015, taking nighttime classes while they worked their day jobs. They were in the same study group, they both graduated in December, and they both took the bar exam in February.
They will learn the results in April. The Akron Legal News, the Akron Beacon Journal, Court News Ohio and the University of Akron have stories.
“It was nice having somebody I could confide in, vent to, that really gets it,” Sarah Smith, 27, told the University of Akron. “You can’t really understand law school unless you’ve been through it.”
“Personally, I thought it was the coolest thing ever,” Tim Smith, 53, told the Akron Legal News. “It was a phenomenal experience.”
Although they saw the mutual experience as a plus, other family members sometimes found their conversations a bit tedious. Sometimes they were barred from speaking about anything law-related at family gatherings. There was even a “bar jar” that had to be filled with a dollar whenever the discussion turned to a legal topic.
Tim Smith was age 50 and working as a patent agent when he began law school. He thought the next step in his career was to become a patent attorney.
Sarah Smith was working in human resources when she picked up the LSAT study guide. She began working as a paralegal during law school and began a new job in October clerking for an appeals judge. She hopes to continue as the judge’s judicial attorney after passing the bar.
Sarah Smith said she originally had planned to return to human resources in a legal capacity after graduation. But she discovered she loved legal drafting while taking the class in law school.
“Now I’m at the court, and it is by far the legal experience I have liked the best,” she told the University of Akron. “I probably wouldn’t be here if my dad had not decided to go to law school. I love what I do now, and I can’t imagine doing anything different. I ended up where I needed to be.”
Hat tip to Above the Law, which noted the Akron Beacon Journal story.
