Going To Law School

Maybe now I can realize my dream and be a "Dude Who Is A Bit Zingy But Never Get Credit For Being So."

Yes Hurting 2, I am currently very nervous out about this decision. I'm having trouble sleeping. I haven't filled out my loan forms yet.

Of course the whole, "you'll never find a job as a lawyer! you'll be a temp slave for life! ahahah!" thing hasn't helped.

Yeah, well you I'm not surprised. No offense. I just mean that you're kind of doing this ultimately for the same slightly murky reasons I'm doing it, so not surprised you feel the same doubts. I only just did my FAFSA yesterday (btw it only takes like 20 minutes so just get it over with).

You've been reading JDUnderground too, haven't you.

Where are you getting this? Is the economy for first-year attorneys that bad?

I've always thought about becoming a lawyer, but what still floats around in my brain is, "yo dude, what about that screenplay maaaan? move to LA and make movies!" and I'm like "brain, I haven't had a good idea in years" and then my brain's like "you're just being lazy" and I'm like, "dude, brain, relax"

haha, mine is "I really should have gone and gotten that composition degree. I could go to a commercial program and do jingles and soundtrack music for bread"

or

"I really should have just dropped out of bourgeois lifestyle and moved into a warehouse in Philadelphia like my friends did and made experimental noise all day"

A friend graduating a top 10 school has been telling me some scare stories, but he's always been a pretty negative guy without much of a long view on anything. I think he's also just freaking out for personal life reasons.

(about the job market I mean)

I suppose it's all regional. In Miami, I've seen cutbacks recently that shocked me (e.g., Holland & Knight laying off administrative staff; Becker & Poliakoff attorneys taking a supposedly temporary 12% pay cut to compensate for poor firm collections). But for all that, my impression is still that the first year job market isn't that bad.

My relative who's a partner for one of those humungo firms in Miami said a lot of the people at his firm had been laid off, and as a partner he had his $$$ cut, etc. etc.

I haven't heard about massive cutbacks, but obv., the bad economy is having an impact on firms, especially in places like Miami, where the real estate meltdown is at its worst. Still, you won't graduate for another three years, which is a lifetime in terms of the economic cycle.

I think Im' going to "bite the bullet" and put down my second seat deposit. My life is currently a bleak, empty void of a blank slate, so why the hell not.

Hey Hurting 2, still bugging out about the law school thing?

On and off. I just read two cases for the mock class I'm going to on Thursday and they were fun trademark stuff, which got me sort of excited again.

My wife is trying to make me swear off jdunderground.com but it's hard to resist

"BLS IS A PISS SOAKED TTT QUADRUPLE TIER TOILET AND THEIR DEGREES ARE TOILET PAPER AND YOULL ONLY USE YOUR DEGREE WHEN YOURE ON THE TOILET". Cardozo doesn't get much better press.

I'm hoping jdunderground is an unrepresentative minority; I've brought up popular concerns on that forum with family and friends in law (representing schools from Rutgers-Newark all the way to U Penn) and they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

Sitting in on classes, law is really interesting. It's like learning the programming that runs our civil society. My issue is: 1) do I still want to do the poor writer trying to his thang that has been unsuccessful so far and 2) the debt man, I'm going to near 6 figures of debt thanks to COL.

From what I've heard about doc review, it's not much worse than my job now, so if that's the worst case scenario I'm no worse off than I am now except three years older. I even have a friend who likes his low-level insurance law job.

Yeah, I'm not sure what people expect out of the world. It seems like 90% of work out there sucks; as a writer for M4TSUSHIBA ELECTRIC INDUSTRIAL CONCERN a subsidiary of M4TSUSHIBA ENERGY CORPORATION CONCERN I basically just regurgitated orders from Haruki-san and took shit from Bill in telecom. The pay sucked, it was dead end, etc. My co-worker was through the ringer in the editorial world in NYC ... an editorial assistant for most of the big Manhattan publishers. The job we shared she considered a gift from god after that experience.

So uhhh... yeah. If you do the same shit for 4x more money, whatever. Dreams are stupid, too, if you have to move back to your parents if you get laid off.

As in, I'm on the verge of hanging myself living at home with my parents. All it took was getting laid off in a shitty job market, and wallah, I'm 8 years old again. So if law school helps me never, ever to come back here ever again, good.

In every law school preview/admitted student day ever:

-Career services people making it sound like they will find you a job

-virtually meaningless list of sexy-sounding places where graduates work in some capacity or other

-"We have lots of different organizations!"

-"We have lots of different kinds of classes!"

-"One time, a 1L student did this really wacky thing in a class!" (uproarious laughter)

Also, "the students here are all so nice to each other; they help each other out unlike [higher ranked or rival school] where they break laptops and steal library books".

At least at the American University students day the 3Ls were like, "guys, we're not going to kid you, a lot of you are going to start out making $40,000/year."

i feel bad cause i think i introduced you guys to jdunderground haaaaaa

nah, actually I'm kind of glad I read it. I'm using it to manage my expectations but not taking it too seriously.

Yeah, I had no idea about any of that in regards to law school. I thought you'd graduate and be all like $_$

A little over two weeks before I start.

What ever happened to BLAM and his Fantastic Bar Exam?

i have 1 more year left. i'm going to get a government job lol! i am excited about lawyering sometimes.

I'm a little excited for school to start; I've been sitting on my ass like a bum for the past few months and going crazy with boredom. I'm also starting to see into the horrifying darkness of my soul, so a distraction would be nice.

ugh, I already have homework. Goodbye, unemployed wasting time on internets.

i had homework the day BEFORE school started :-/

:-/ Apparently my final exams are in October! Uhhh, is that typical for law school?

Nevermind, read that wrong. I've just failed out of law school.

I've already done 120 pages of reading, 40 pages of which were cases that I briefed. And that's just assignments for ORIENTATION.

Move tomorrow, start classes the 18th. FUUUUUUCK

Wow, I just got my assignments a few hours ago. I'll probably start nerding it up tomorrow myself.

i suddenly regret not doing work tonight

just to round this thread off, seeing as it bore witness to my exam stresses and whatnot. i am now a lawyer! yay

Just had my orientation. Law school seems like it might be fun; I mean, the work is already piling up, but the other students are cool and the members of the opposite sex are very friendly. I suppose people buy into the stereotype of meeting their spouse at law school or something... looked like people were already pairing off.

Congratulations, Gem. Good luck, Burt and Hurting. I liked law school a lot, but it isn't an experience I'd want to go through again (by contrast, if I could, I'd happily go back to school to get a master's degree in another discipline).

I'm pretty alright with it so far. I know the work hasn't really piled up yet, but right now compared to the working world it feels like a vacation.

I like reading cases - it's kind of like being an English major again except there's a point to it.

Plus I just really like the area of the school. Living and studying somewhere pleasant makes a huge difference.

y'all are so naive. kudos, though. be strong.

cutty otm. "i like reading cases"! lolling @ u

eh, I know it sounds naive. I'm aware of the more cynical views but sometimes you just have to become cynical for yourself, over time.

um

some legal jobs (eu&competition; environment) involve reading hella lots of cases so lolling @ u

i'm sure we can all relate to hurting's enthusiasm in some way. i just want to protect him.

getting slammed over here :-/

do the work. there's no easy way out of the first year.

the most learning you will have to do is HOW to take these tests--there is a very specific art to the law school exam and to some it doesn't become apparent right away.

it's always best to find a professor's old exam's, and what they consider an A+ paper to be. study that shit.

then you must combine that actual aubstantive law that you have learned, with the analytical process of examining a hypo/fact-pattern, and writing a cohesive essay.

law school sounds like the opposite of (the first two years of) med school.

we don't get to do any kind of analysis, per se, for a long while

law school is all analytical, with no actual practical instruction on how to be a lawyer. you'll graduate with no knowledge on how to do anything law related, EXCEPT of course, reading a case and underlining things.