Going To Law School

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.

mostly otm, but clinical work, trial practice, negotiation, etc. help.

i like lawyering a lot more than law school. cutty's exam advice otm.

there is a very specific art to (taking) the law school exam and to some it doesn't become apparent right away.

Very true. Knowing law school test-taking skills is a must.

yeah ok i sorry for lolling @ u. i remember way back when. sometimes i do like cases but not in the oh isn't this so fun kind of way.

i do examples and explanations questions and that has worked well for exams but some professors emphasize totally different things so they aren't always useful

i love trial practice

another thing i loved: 1st year civil procedure

w-w-w-what?

civ pro was like the oasis in the desert of common law study

also best case names ever

re: professors emphasizing totally different things--

many professors pride themselves on making insane hypotheticals and fact-patterns, so the trick is finding every single nook and cranny they have introduced as opposed to rote memorization of the law. it obviously varies from professor to professor.

the bar exam is another story, where it is all rote memorization of law. let's discuss that in three years.

I am almost a lawyer guys (4 more days)

All the comments made are all OTM. Get previous exams, do them ALL.

Then make up your own with other classmates, and trade them with each other. The more fact patterns you look at, the better chance you will have of doing well.

Also, don't get caught up in stupid section bullshit. Be friendly to EVERYONE, and just kick ass on the tests. They really are the only things that matter.

I can say that I graduated with a pretty positive rep among my classmates, a very good one among my professors, but only a middle-of-the-road GPA. I know for a fact that I am 10x happier with my job than those in the top 15% of my class - I keep in touch with several of them regularly.

One foot in front of the others, pre-counsellors. It sure as shit ain't brain surgery.

how many feet do you have?

For some obnoxious reason they have classes on top of 7 hours of orientation BS this week, classes that require briefs tomorrow. Already puts me in a bad mood... either have classes and no orientation or orientation and no classes.

when you say "require briefs" you mean they are requiring you to brief cases and hand them in? ha

Yes, and classes haven't even officially started yet. My Elements professor: official turd.