I'm just one data point, but I did spend one semester in law school (at Columbia) before taking a leave of absence (in good academic standing, B's in everything) and enrolling in a PhD in engineering (Berkeley).

Law school was not hard. At an elite school, it's very easy to get B's in your courses, which won't get you on law review, but will generally land you a job at a top firm from an elite school. Failure rates are astoundingly low. I would guess 97+% of the class gets a B or higher, and failing out is almost unheard of (again, at elite schools). Lower ranked schools, from what I've heard, do grade on the harsher scale you mentioned.

My PhD program at Berkeley, on the other hand, was a horror show of attrition and failure. It was so much more brutal than law school it's completely silly to compare the two. My dept at Berkeley said that 40% fail to get the PhD, but that's not counting people like me who were awarded masters degrees and so are considered to have achieved their degree goal. I'd guess that the failure rate is well above 50% - and keep in mind, this is for a very elite program that is extremely selective.

Graduate programs in math, science, and engineering are littered with the broken dreams of exceptionally smart people. It's exceptionally unusual for med, law, and mba students to fail out at elite programs. It's commonplace in top PhD programs.

I would agree with you for the most part. Top schools ("T14" for us law nerds and "the Top 14 law schools" for the lay people!) are fairly easy to get B's in given effort is extended, but A's are still hard to get. I don't know many T14 schools that have curved and capped classes. I wasn't in an extremely lower ranked school (top 30) but it was a hardcore school in terms of the curve. They've since relaxed a bit (now A's are capped around 18% I believe). I do know people that went to Boalt and got D's so it's possible but failing out is pretty unheard of in law school, period. Also the legal job market has shifted dramatically in the past 4 years so those B students at high ranked schools can't bank on an offer from a big firm based on the name of their school anymore--I know too many who are unemployed for that to be the case.

Funny thing is my husband did his UG in ME at Berkeley and that department ( and the College of Engineering in general) was a sheer nightmare. The unimaginable things that took place and the workload he endured (while working 20 hours at LBNL) blew my mind and that was just a BS. I can imagine a PhD would be insane.

But my point wasn't that one is harder, just that law is hard and it's not an easy thing to grasp because they ask you to learn and be tested in a way that is very non-traditional, at least in my experience. It makes babies out of people who thought of school as a cake walk. It was actually funny at times to see the emotional breakdown over their first B or C because they were so dramatic about it.

But I commend you on your choice to leave law school, probably smartest thing you ever did! ha.