Going To Law School

Dude, of course there are disorganized lawyers out there. You should see the desks of some partners. You should hear how many times I've already said to experienced people "Uh, we're supposed to have a conference call this week -- did anyone set that up?" etc.

Still, thing is it will make your life much easier and make your work better to be organized.

I had the same fears about billing, keeping files, etc. Some of it is a matter of simple systems -- e.g. I always do my timesheet from the prior day right when I come in in the morning. If I really have to be exact about hours for something, I just write a start time when I start working on something and a stop time when I stop for a bit -- it's not that hard.

In re keeping an organized file -- depends where you work, but you may have a paralegal or secretary who does this. Also keeping things organized on a computer is pretty easy.

What I've found most of all is that motivation drives organization. If you want to do well then your drive to be organized will spring out of that. You'll find makeshift ways of keeping track of things, however imperfect, that serve your greater needs.

ideally, you should keep time basically contemporaneously. i do, for stretches, but then regress to doing it all at the end of the day (which inevitably means you don't capture all your time).

keeping files organized is essential, but it's also fairly easy, given the division of labor at most firms. assistants handle it, and we have a parallel online index of materials.

don't worry. robots will replace lawyers soon, anyway.

Yeah I'm plaintiff's side so there's slightly less pressure to get it down to the exact 6-minute-increment. But at the other firm where I worked I would sometimes approximate. I think it's reasonable as long as you do it in an honest way, e.g. make realistic estimates of time you spend surfing the net and take those out, etc.

Just finished by 1st month. Estate law seems really rough, not looking forward to going into depth on that subject...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/opinion/are-law-schools-and-bar-exams-necessary.html

Passed the bar.

Hate to sound douchey but I think a lot of the anxiety over it is just people working themselves into a needless frenzy. Passing is not that hard, and pretty much everyone I know passed.

congratulations!

congrats dude!

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2011/11/law_schools_should_pay_students_to_quit_.html

written by yale law profs

Another possible reform would oblige law schools to lend money directly to students—so that defaults hurt the school’s bottom line rather than taxpayers’. While educational lenders are legally allowed to insist on repayment even after bankruptcy, schools are free to renounce this option. Schools that would bear the loss of unpaid student loans would have better incentives to admit students who will avoid bankruptcy. Any school unwilling to lend to its students this way would be sending a strong negative signal to its applicants. Any school that is truly a good deal should put its own money where its mouth is.

^ this is actually a better idea than the main idea but as w/ many things written from a professor's pov they don't approach the idea that maybe we have an institutional-level problem if it takes $150,000 to teach somebody how to be a lawyer

Ugh. After a first year of mixed B's, B+'s and A-'s, we just got our grades for first semester of 2L.

Somehow I managed to get an A- in Common Law Property, which had been kicking my ass all term, and a C+ in Advanced Common Law Obligations, which seemed amorphous and fairly easy to grasp (but which is - obviously - the one that jobs will care about more when applying).

Need to turn the year around this semester. Funny how ten minutes can make you life feel much less in control than it did before. Hmph.

Sorry. This is pointless whining. But it's 1AM and I'm still doing Criminal Law readings, and holding back our grades until nearly a month into the next semester seems needlessly cruel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/business/for-lsat-sharp-drop-in-popularity-for-second-year.html

good

Good news for people already in law school

Negligbly so, imo. There aren't many scenarios in which you'd be competing for work with someone coming up behind you.

If anything, good news for anyone who winds up in a smaller law school class as a result. Although I don't know if the drop is going to be big enough to have that kind of impact.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/9-graduates-lose-case-against-new-york-law-school/?emc=eta1

They sought $225 million in damages — a number that they said represented the difference between what they contended was inflated tuition and the “true value” of their degree.

lol

i sympathize with the plaintiffs and American law schools are really slippery wr2 how they report graduates' salaries, but really the plaintiffs didn't stand a ghost of a chance.

this will be a pr problem that won't wash away anytime soon, however, and will seem far more important when nyls eventually goes out of business

they didn't stand a chance in part because the problem is too big and entrenched. If every law school suddenly had to openly report realistic employment numbers, it would upend the industry.

Also the judicial system is itself kind of invested in the law school-industrial complex. At very least I think judges are likely to have a special kind bias.

I dunno they have a bias for 'the system works! look at me, for example' and not necessarily 'lol let's ensure that middle class kids continue to graduate w/ 6 figures of debt and no job prospects'

like they're not getting paid under the table by law schools and in fact it's in the best interest of people w/ jds to slow the creation of new jds a la the AMA

That's what I mean though. They're all people for whom the system worked out quite well. They also all graduated at a very different time in legal education and the job market.

I actually don't think the AMA comparison works. A partner in a law firm has an interest in a huge pool of potential associates.

I think that if the current biglaw hiring cuts keep going in the mid-to-long term, it's realistic to think that better financially endowed universities will demand that their law schools reform their financial aid so that it's not modeled on the "into the firms you go! You'll be rich!" nonsense that's around at the moment, and poorer universities may have to dramatically shrink their admissions.

That sounds backwards. Law Schools are cash cows for universities.

Think it through, counselor: they are cash cows under the current "get loans and pay us in full, you'll be ok" model. IF that model is dying, as it would have to be if the current hiring crisis continues...

well, the ABA certainly isn't going to push for it ... in fact, their accredidation standards are arguably one of the factors for law schools' tuition hikes over the years. on this and a zillion other things, the ABA may be the most useless guild/trade association ever.

also hurting OTM wr2 the mindset of old-school lawyers/judges wr2 younger lawyers and their debt loads/job problems.

I actually don't think the AMA comparison works. A partner in a law firm has an interest in a huge pool of potential associates.

― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Friday, March 23, 2012 4:20 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk, a small law firm in a small market does not benefit from the market being flooded, and a big law firm in a big market doesn't really have anything invested in how many students there are at nyls.

The firms are going to lose their leverage if they start messing with big universities' credibility, is what I'm saying.

That isn't true, necessarily xpost. Discovery requires a huge supply of relatively cheap JD labor. Big firms, in fact, do rely on armies of NYLS graduates who work for them via contractors. And the more of those you have who are desperate for work, the better quality you get and the less you have to pay.

The firms are going to lose their leverage if they start messing with big universities' credibility, is what I'm saying.

― Three Word Username, Friday, March 23, 2012 5:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh I guess maybe at some point that becomes true. It's hard for me to think of a university right now whose law school's reputation is in danger of being enough degrees worse to drag it down.

graduates-lose-case-against-new-york-law-school

haha explains why they were they ones who didnt get jobs amirite

yeah I guess I wasn't thinking about that, tho I've gotten the sense that the work can eventually be automated xp

There is early talk of something called "computer assisted document review" right now which might eliminate some of the need for some of the most basic document coding jobs. It sounds a little questionable to me unless they've invented AI and not told anyone.

people who don't care about this subject can't tell you what schools have good law schools anyway. there are relatively few schools w/ any sort of national prestige, and only some of them have law schools, and they're all schools that will survive the wildfire regardless.

xps

What I suggest is not going to happen this year or next year, but the current crop of mid-level partners never saw the law firm life in the 80s and may not believe that the good times will come back -- so they might keep hiring levels low after a recovery (as their clients figured out in '02) -- and that would definitely force the issue.

So, cash cow gives no more green milk and people start bitching loudly about the credibility of the placement and financial aid departments: reform it or close it.

well the lawyer-population ratio today is unsustainably high regardless and regardless of doc review, various forms of legal automation will prob lower what the 'sustainable' lawyer-population ratio would be anyway

besides lol "computer assisted document review," there's the specter of "old-school" document review being sent to India -- which is a much more real short-term threat than automated.

and of course there's good old legalzoom.com -- if you REALLY want to see small firm/solos go ballistic, mention that name and break out the popcorn.

yeah thats what I meant w/ various forms of automation

yeah thats what I meant w/ various forms of automation

fwiw, i know of no small number of litigators who are smacking their lips in anticipation of the massive anticipated legal clusterfucks from the cheapskates who used legalzoom for whatever reason.

I'm planning on using siri as my lawyer if I ever go to court

lame brag, but I kind of feel like I "leveled up" at work today. Busted my ass on a really hard assignment, got an understated "I thought it was good" from a partner who is usually critical, and then got a new challenging assignment from partners I haven't worked for before.