I hate networking. It is one of my least favorite parts of the law school experience. And that’s saying a lot. I even hate the word “networking” and especially hate people who talk about “growing their network.” Unfortunately, networking is an essential part of the law school experience, and it is a great way to foster important relationships. If you’re an extrovert who loves engaging with people you don’t know, then this post isn’t for you. This is for my fellow introverts.

During my tenure as a summer associate at a large law firm, I have heard time and again the value of networking. Partners often tell us that, down the road, our best sources of client development will be our friends and colleagues from school. We’ve heard stories about the firm getting staffed on matters based on the higher-ups personal connections. As much as I don’t want to admit it, it does seem that networking is a vital part of the process. I have already seen the benefits in my own, albeit fledgling, career. I’ve received interviews and gotten offers based on the connections that I’ve fostered in undergrad and grad school. All this is to say that this isn’t just something that people say you should do — it is something you actually should do.

Fortunately, the opportunities for networking are constantly present at law school. Speakers from firms and organizations will come to your school, firms will host events, and you’ll meet people with attorney siblings and parents. You can use all of these to your advantage. As I mentioned earlier, networking really isn’t my cup of tea. I often find myself having to grit my teeth and bear it. You should go to the events, talk to the speakers after their presentations, and take a genuine interest in the opportunities available to you. Think of it as part of your education. Law school is, after all, professional school, and you should do everything you can to help succeed in your chosen profession.

In terms of concrete guidance, I think the best way to try to improve your networking skills is to educate yourself. Whether you need to learn more about sports, food, current events, or arts and entertainment, try to brush up on some conversation topics that can be readily at your disposal. It goes without saying that everyone is different, so having a breadth of understanding will help avoid those awkward pauses. You should also prepare some questions that you can ask any attorney. For example, “why did you choose x firm,” “what was the most helpful class or clinic that you participated in at law school,” etc.—think of it like prepping for an interview.

At the end of the day, networking at a large event is a lot like speed dating. You want to come across as interested and engaging, but you don’t want to know too much and come across as a stalker.

Networking isn’t just for the extroverts. As long as you motivate yourself properly by understanding the benefits, and take the time and care to become marginally interesting and memorable, you’ll be fine. Just please, for the love of all good things, don’t talk about “growing your network.”

What a time to be alive… and to be attempting to focus on your LSATs when there are so, so many legal and political firestorms raging in the world today.

Turkey’s democratically-elected government has been overthrown in a violent military coup, but actually nvm; Cleveland has devolved into a veritable trumpster-fire over the course of the GOP Convention; Ted Zodiac Killer Cruz admonished us to “vote our conscience” during an endorsement that was anything but; Michelle Obama’s platitudinous 2008 Convention speech now apparently is the hallmark to which all other FLOTUS speeches should aspire (or plagiarize).

But so in an attempt to integrate a socially-conscious, politically-involved theme into an LSAT-edifying exercise, I’d encourage everyone to read this anonymous exchange between a group of disgruntled law school students and their apparently thoroughly-gruntled lawschool professor on the subject of Black Lives Matter – more specifically, on the professor’s wearing of a BLM shirt to lecture.

On one level, the question in play here is whether or not wearing a “hateful message” (as described by the students), is appropriate in the classroom. But, as the professor elucidates in his response, the students’ grievances implicate a host of deeper issues. Centuries of racial prejudice, economic exploitation, pernicious structural exclusion, certainly – but also some profoundly flawed analytical reasoning in the form of leaping assumptions, shaky inferences, and unrecognized premises.

Ultimately, the professor leaves me convinced that the aggrieved students didn’t perform too well on the LSATs. That no one ever assume the same of any Blueprint student, consider his address of the invisible “Only” that some of his students perceived as preceding the words “Black Lives Matter” on his t-shirt. In the professor’s own words:

“There are some implicit words that precede ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and they go something like this: Because of the brutalizing and killing of black people at the hands of the police and the indifference of society in general and the criminal justice system in particular, it is important that we say that…”

There’s a bunch of geeky philosophy and psychology PhDs out in Pennsylvania whose literal vocation is trying to trip up aspiring young lawyers who are too quick to assume, too willing to force deduction from inference, too susceptible to grand words and enticing conclusions. These nefarious nerds craft this thing called the LSAT and, as much as it’s a pain in the ass, it really is a decent indicator of who can avoid these logical pitfalls (at least in the context of a three-hour proctored exam). The authors of this complaint are law school students: clearly they figured out some way to get through the test. But it seems to me they’ve since dropped the ball when it comes to applying some of the principles they learned to their professional and academic lives.

What do you think?

Going to law school is very risky. The Law School Transparency movement has helped a lot of people make the right decision.

Most law school aspirants are looking at $250,000 to $320,000 in debt and a 30% or more chance that they will not be working as lawyers after they graduate. There are over 100 law schools where your chances of not getting a full-time, JD required job are 30% or greater. Just look at the LST stats for yourself.

Keep in mind that a full-time, JD required job is a very low bar—most of these jobs won’t pay enough to help you make the required $2,000 to $3,000 in monthly loan payments.

If you can look at these numbers and you still think law school is a good idea, great. But you should at least know what you’re getting yourself into.

Precisely because of these numbers, law school enrollment has been going down since the financial crisis. And a lot of law schools are hurting.

Take Vermont Law School as an example. VLS is trying to get a $15 million loan form the USDA Rural Development Community Facilities Direct Loan Program to help it deal with a 33% drop in enrollment.

Here’s what VLS looks like on LST:

It will cost you about $250,000 for about a 2% chance of paying back your loans (add the Federal Clerkship Rate with the Large Firm Score for a reasonable estimate).

The USDA thinks that “Vermont Law School is a great example of an essential community facility that not only provides a vital service to Vermonters, but also anchors the community’s economy and culture.” Looking at VLS’s numbers, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

Some law schools should close down. If a law school cannot attract students, they should downsize or close down. We have too many law schools and not enough jobs. The USDA shouldn’t be in the business of propping up failing law schools.

I’m a rising 3L at Columbia Law, and I just completed a summer program at large law firm in Los Angeles. This post is going to discuss my experience at the firm.

I’ve often heard that the time you spend as a summer associate is the best job you’ll ever have. I can now wholeheartedly attest to the validity of that statement. At most large law firms, you receive the market salary for a first year associate for the ten to twelve weeks you work at the firm. You generally aren’t expected to “bill” that many hours (I put that in quotation marks because most of the work you do isn’t actually billed to the client). Essentially, you’re getting paid an exorbitant rate to work a 9-5 job with little to no stress.

While the salary and hours alone are enough to make the position an enviable one, that’s not the end of the story. You’ll also get wined and dined at your city’s finest restaurants. Over the course of my ten weeks, I bought lunch only three times. You’ll also get to experience a variety of social events. My firms took us wine tasting, indoor skydiving, and bowling, among other activities. There are also a variety of impromptu happy hours and dinner opportunities that crop up over the course of the summer.

Last, but certainly not least, the summer associate position is a great way to learn about the practice of law. It is a rare opportunity to speak to associates and partners about the work they do. Even though the work is largely not indicative of the work you do as a first-year associate, you will get the chance to gain some insight into a variety of practice groups (or, as I did, to specifically target work in one practice group). Given that most people end up back at the firm they spent their summer at, you can also build important professional relationships and become close to the professionals you’ll be working alongside.

One partner at my firm joked that a law firm is hierarchical, like a pyramid, with the summer associates at the top, followed by the partners, counsel, and associates. If you choose to do biglaw, take advantage of your weeks as a summer, when you’re on top. The salary, perks, and opportunities are unparalleled.

Business Insider has ranked law schools by the proportion of their class that go on to clerk for federal judges. Here’s what you should think about when looking at such lists.

1. Who should clerk?

A clerkship is a great opportunity for a lot of writing experience, training, and connections. Most clerks go on to work in litigation, whether in private practice or in government. However, it’s not wholly unusual for corporate or transactional attorneys to clerk, especially if that means clerking for a Delaware chancellor.

If you at all think you’d like to clerk, set up an appointment with your law school’s clerkship office and soak up as much info as you can about the application process. Your clerkship office will be your best resource.

2. When to start seriously thinking about a clerkship?

You should start thinking about clerking as early as possible. Some very sought after judges will hire clerks after 1L, and to even be in the running you have to line up an appropriate writing sample and three recommendation letters. So the sooner you start gathering your application materials the better. This doesn’t mean that you’re out of luck if you don’t have a clerkship secured after 1L, in fact most clerks don’t, but don’t wait if you can help it.

3. What to think of the Business Insider ranking?

One way to read the Business Insider “ranking” is to think that only Yale and Stanford are worth going to if you’re set on clerking.

This isn’t quite right. A federal clerkship (or the like) is incredibly difficult to line up—but it’s not as difficult as the Business Insider ranking may suggest. The main reason is that many (most?) judges now prefer, if not require, clerks to have a year or so of work experience. So in any given year there will be more active clerks from a law school than the Business Insider numbers suggest, since the latter only track folks who go to clerk directly after law school.

Moreover, many of your law school classmates will have zero interest in clerking; so dividing the number of direct-out-of-law-school clerks by total class size, doesn’t give you your chances of clerking out of any given law school. It’s just a helpful indicator.

4. What are your chances really?

Your individual chances are really hard to figure and will depend on whether or not you get on your school’s law review, how good your writing sample is, whether you can befriend the right professors, where you’re willing to go geographically, and your GPA. The Business Insider numbers are a helpful rule of thumb, but may vastly overestimate or underestimate your chances. Figuring your individual chances at the law school admissions stage is impossible.
Most of you will have no idea if you want to clerk or not. If that’s you, one of the best things you can do is spend your first summer interning for a judge. Don’t worry about clerkship rates too much at the admissions stage.

As the number of LSAT takers has been going down, some law schools have gotten creative. The move? Just admit applicants who’ve never taken the LSAT. Brilliant.

LSAC, is not a fan. To prove that this is a very bad idea, LSAC is flexing its muscle.

You see, law schools have to report their LSAT and GPA 25th and 75th percentile ranges to the ABA. But the ABA doesn’t trust law schools not to cheat—and it’s law students that have to take ethics courses? Sheesh. To ensure law schools don’t cheat, LSAC has up ‘til now been certifying the accuracy of the reported ranges, free of charge. But it has had a change of heart.

Now that some law schools will be admitting a significant portion of non-LSAT students, LSAC says that its certification service cannot be sustained. LSAC’s fear is that law schools will fill up on low GRE or low MBA score students, instead of low LSAT score students, thereby boosting their 25th and 75th percentiles. So LSAC is just not going to certify the LSAT and GPA ranges anymore.

The idea is to pressure the ABA to come down on law schools and back the LSAC in requiring “substantially all” (what?) law school applicants to take the LSAT, or else the ABA has to deal with potential cheater law schools on its own.

What does all this mean for you? Hopefully nothing. If you’re applying to law school without an LSAT score, I just hope you’ve done your homework first and aren’t applying on a whim. If you have, and you want to go the non-LSAT route, go for it. No one knows your pain threshold better than you.

If you’ve already taken the LSAT and regret it—thinking, ah shucks I could have just used my GRE score—or you’re postponing your LSAT hoping you’ll gain admission without one, you should think again. Most law schools worth going to will require you take the LSAT to gain admission. An LSAT score will also be your best chance at ball-parking how you’ll do at law school—combined with your GPA an LSAT score is a great predictor of your 1L grades.

But do keep an eye out on this fighting between LSAC and the law schools. It might end up in court with the law schools suing LSAC for antitrust violations.

Two years ago, I started law school. I was terrified. I didn’t think I fit in with the group of highly motivated, successful students around me. I didn’t have any exciting resume lines, I hadn’t participated in any humanitarian ventures, and I hadn’t gone to a fancy private school for undergrad. If you’re starting your law school journey, you might be experiencing similar bouts of self-doubt and fear. Here’s my advice for how to ease your way into this newfound scholastic endeavor.

First off, don’t compare yourself to other people. A tremendous amount of people’s stress in law school comes from feeling behind the pack. There inevitably will be students who talk about spending twelve hours in the library every day or taking practice exams starting the second week of the semester. Ignore them. It doesn’t matter how much anyone else studies, and you don’t have to try to win some arms race of misery. Do your work, don’t fall behind, and ask questions if you’re confused. Beyond that, try not to stress about the gunners taking caffeine pills in some dark recess of the library.

Second, heed the advice of others (like yours truly). When I was a 1L, I talked to other students and I listened to their advice, but I somehow always managed to think that I was different or that my experience was unique. It wasn’t. And yours won’t be either. For example, at my school, there is a three-week intro course happening right now. Almost universally, the upper-classmen told me not to worry about it and not to take it seriously. I, however, decided to do all the reading, attend every TA session, and generally spend way more time than I should have on it. At the end of the class, everyone passed the “exam.” The takeaway here is just to realize that you’re walking a well-trodden path, and you should follow the advice of those who have walked it before.

Third, find a group of friends (but don’t stress about it). Everyone at orientation is in a similar position—they are all afraid of the haunting specter of first-year exams, and they all want to find friends. I have no doubt that everyone will find their group, but you do have to put in a little effort to stay social and put yourself out there. If I hadn’t found a strong, core group of friends, I would’ve been miserable. I was lucky enough to find my best friends early on, and they have vastly improved my overall experience in school.

The first year of law school is difficult. For me, it was the most challenging academic experience I have ever faced. But I got through it, and so will you. There’s a lot of built in pressure associated with 1L, so don’t put extra stress on yourself by comparing yourself to others. Listen to the advice of the 2Ls and 3Ls, and find a group of friends that will help you deal with the unpleasantness that necessarily comes with learning the law.

Not all is well in Berkeley. If you walk around, nothing seems amiss. People’s park still smells like weed. The school year at UC Berkeley just started, so the campus is abuzz with students. Many of those students have just signed over the right to their first-born child to rent an apartment nearby. All normal, around here.

But business as usual has a lot of students very angry, since it’s become apparent that business as usual includes not taking sexual harassment allegations against professors very seriously. Sujit Choudhry, former dean of the Berkeley Law School, has just returned to work as a professor after resigning his leadership position over sexual harassment allegations.

Before we get into Choudhry coming back to campus, a little background. Choudhry isn’t the first recent high-profile sexual harassment case in Berkeley. Geoff Marcy, famous astronomer and former Berkeley professor, appears to have been a grade-A, first class creep for years. The university’s response? To call it a slap on the wrist would be an insult to slaps on the wrist. We talked to him and made him promise not to do it again, and if he does it again there will be consequences. We swear. Marcy ended up resigning amid the outrage.

Even before Marcy’s case became public, UC Berkeley was already under federal investigation for mishandling cases of sexual violence. Then came Choudhry’s case. An executive assistant accused him of repeatedly giving her unwanted long hugs, kisses, and massages. He swears the contact wasn’t sexual. Not one bit. Sure. And I bet the only reason he jerks off is to ward off prostate cancer.

The university found that he had violated policy, and responded with the harshest of harsh punishments: he’d have to write an apology letter and take a 10% pay cut for a year. He’d be down to a salary of only $373, 500. To be fair, that might rent you a shack in People’s Park these days.

His victim is suing. Janet Napolitano, president of the UC system, has demanded a second disciplinary hearing with an eye to imposing harsher penalties. Choudhry, as you’d expect, is protesting that suggestion. Amid all this, two UC Berkeley administrators (one of them the chancellor) have chosen to step down in response to protests over how they’ve handled these and other cases. The chancellor is also in trouble for improperly having a university employee work for him as a personal trainer.

Choudhry resigned as dean and agreed to stay away from campus for a little while. But he’s still a tenured professor in the law school. No way he’s giving that tenure up if no one makes him. So the news this week is that he’s back on campus. Just working in his office and advising students (I’m sure he gives great advice).

To celebrate his return, he wrote a tone-deaf and very lawyer-y open letter, published as an op-ed in The Daily Californian. Many students were unhappy about that. The Daily Cal then took pains to clarify that their publication of the letter should in no way be construed as an endorsement of Choudhry’s return. The mood on campus isn’t exactly high.

Will things change? There’s turnover in the highest levels of the administration and stronger pressure from outside to make things right. Those are good signs. But the cynic in me thinks that the strongest incentive for Berkeley to change might come from the admissions market. If strong law school applicants start choosing other law schools over Berkeley and Berkeley’s numbers slide (taking the school’s rankings with them), then the administration will have to send strong signals that things are different, now. But I’m sure Berkeley Law students are hoping it doesn’t come to that.

Oh god, not another law school. It’s hard to believe, but new law schools continue to sprout up even as application numbers fall—a reflection of the poor job market for lawyers.

Enter the University of North Texas Dallas College of Law. Founded in 2014, this young law school promises to be different: it boasts a low cost of attendance and a commitment to public-interest law.

Let’s take a look.

Cost

In-state tuition at UNTDCL will set you back only about $14,000, whereas you can expect to pay about $46,000 at the infamous, yet ABA-accredited, Thomas Jefferson School of Law.

The price tag at UNTDCL is definitely something to envy. And while they do have a typo in their grants/scholarships disclosures, they don’t seem to be too stingy either:

Class Profile

While your LSAT score and GPA aren’t everything, they’re pretty darn good predictors of how you’ll do in your first semester of law school. These may also color the way your employers perceive you and your fellow graduates.

Here are the 25th and 75th percentiles for UNTDCL’s full-time and part-time programs:

Full time GPA: 2.67 – 3.40
Full time LSAT: 143 – 149

Part time GPA: 2.64 – 3.36
Full time LSAT: 142 – 150

That’s not great, but they still beat TJ.

Anyway, you don’t have to be a genius to do a lot of legal work. As long as the school sets students’ expectations well by being as transparent as possible about employment outcomes, law school applicants can make the right choice for themselves. And it’s here that UNTDCL has a slight problem.

Employment Outcomes

UNTDCL says that it will begin reporting employment outcomes in May 2017. That’s when its first full-time class will graduate. They can do better than that.

True, most public interest hiring tends to happen very late in law school. But to have a decent shot at full-time legal employment you need at least two summers’ worth of legal experience, if you’re a full-time student. Are UNTDCL students getting this kind of experience? Potential applicants have no idea.

I would also like to see more about what the school is doing to help its students pass the bar exam. If you don’t pass the bar exam, you don’t get to practice law, so the bar exam is very closely related to employment outcomes.

Here’s what the school says:

We believe that a rigorous, competency-based curriculum can and should include moving toward readiness to pass the bar exam. Substantive knowledge of law, legal reasoning, and writing are primary areas covered on the bar exam (taking into account both the national and the state portions of the exam). Thus, while our educational goals are not identical to preparing students for bar passage, these goals do include much of the knowledge and skills needed for bar passage.

What da heck does that mean? How much is “much of” the knowledge and skill need to pass the bar? (By the way, on the LSAT that would mean “some” or at least one skill/bit of knowledge.)

The school does list several bar-prep books in its “Course Book” list, including this gem: If I Don’t Pass the Bar I’ll Die: 73 Ways to Keep Stress and Worry from Affecting Your Performance on the Bar Exam.

But is it offering students an actual, proven bar prep class? Kaplan? Barbri? A local company with a proven track record? It doesn’t seem like it.

Verdict

I doubt we need another law school, even one committed to public interest law. Full-time legal public interest jobs are EXTREMELY hard to find. But at least one law professor is pulling for the school to succeed. Transparency wise, the school is doing the right ABA-required things, but nothing I’d consider special.

The 2015-2016 saw Harvard Law School embroiled in some challenging debates over race and diversity. In the fall, portraits of tenured black faculty members in the main building were defaced with black tape, and in the spring semester an organization of students and faculty called Royall Must Fall led a movement to change the Harvard Law School crest, which had its origins in slavery.

With brainstorming for a new insignia underway, Law School Dean Martha L. Minow has also launched a new lecture series called “Diversity and U.S. Legal History.” The 10- week series, which began September 14, combines the efforts of the administration with those of various faculty members, including Professor Mark Tushnet who leads a reading group at the law school that bears the same title. Tushnet, a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, has long made civil rights a thematic focus of his courses at Georgetown and Harvard Law Schools.

The proposed lecturers come from diverse ideological backgrounds. Randall L. Kennedy, for example, published an oped in the New York Times last November that elicited the ire of many campus activists for its unsympathetic tone. Noting as “disturbing” certain students “tendency to indulge in self-diminishment by displaying an excessive vulnerability to perceived and actual slights and insults,” Kennedy cast aspersions on the “rhetoric of trauma” invoked by some of the school’s activists.

Kenneth W. Mack, a classmate of President Barack Obama’s in their time at HLS, will also speak. Mack has taught Critical Race Theory, among other courses, at Harvard these past few years. Michael Klarman, a constitutional professor particularly well-received throughout the student body, will also speak, likely drawing on concepts and context expressed in his book “From Jim Crow to Civil Rights.”

Harvard, both as a university and a law school, has had a lengthy and challenging history with race and diversity – it’ll be interesting to see how this series advances the conversation in the next few months.

This post was written by a former Blueprint student and current practicing lawyer.

Law school is not just a big investment of time and money, it’s a life-shaping experience. To ensure that experience is positive and healthy, there are a few things that any prospective law student should do. There is some overlap between each of these, but that’s to be expected.

1. Spend more time thinking about the schools you would actually go to.

So many of us just blanket apply. Don’t do that. Really think about what type of law you wanna do. Think about where you wanna practice. If you want to practice in California, don’t apply to George Mason. You want to put yourself in a position where you can find a job come graduation. GMU is a great (bites tongue) school, but only if you wanna practice in the Virginia area.

2. Only apply to schools you think you’ll go to.

I know and felt the deep urge to apply to as many schools as I could. I think when all was said and done is spent over 1000 on applications alone, and applied to 21 or 22 schools. Silly. Absolutely silly. I would have been much better off if I focused on three of four schools, tailored my application to each school, and visited each school. It would have cost me roughly the same amount of money, it would have increased my chances of getting in to each of those schools, and it would have made me take the whole application process more seriously.

3. Take the application process more and less seriously.

When you are in the research phase, you must take it more seriously. Many people I hear are applying to law schools that they don’t know the first thing about. Leme ask you this: if you knew you were going to spend $100,000 on a car, would you buy one without taking it for a test drive? Hell no. So why would you do the same thing here? $100,000 on a legal education is getting off cheap nowadays, and yet prospective law students are largely not taking the application process seriously.

And if you apply to a school and get in, you absolutely must visit the school. I would say I met maybe a third (I’m definitely on the high side) of the students that ended up as 1Ls at the school I go to. That is ridiculous. If you don’t visit a school before you go there for law school, I have no sympathy for you. Talk to the career services people, talk to the students, talk to random students if you do visit. The recruitment programs at schools pick their favorites to give tours, they don’t pick the embittered average law student.

That said, take the visit less seriously. If you go to a school, relax. The students there are no different than you are, and if they act like they are, don’t go there. Actually be yourself, don’t put on this “this is what I think a law student acts like” facade. Nobody likes that guy. You don’t even like that guy. If you have the “pleasure” to sit in on a class, keep your mouth shut. Sit there, and don’t say a peep. You are likely the only person excited to be there. Remember: anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion should you decide to go there. (I’m so sorry about that law joke, I couldn’t help myself.) The chances of you saying something intelligent, pertinent, and not annoying to every student in the class is zero. What you want to happen is for someone to go “Wow, that was really insightful, you should go to law school.” And that has happened to precisely zero people in the history of ever.

4. Ask a 3L.

Too often law students ask to be put in touch with a law student at a school they are interested in and they get put in touch with a 1L. Ask to speak to a 3L (especially if you are there on a tour.) First, the 1L is as lost as you are. Second, a 3L is much more adept at knowing what the market is like for jobs when graduating from the school, and s/he will know how many friends are employed, what career services is like, etc. Third, the 3L is likely to have more time to actually talk. The 1L’s are generally much more concerned about grades, and their classes are way harder (generally). Fourth, a 3L is much more likely to give you an honest assessment, and is the only person who is capable of giving you an assessment of their entire law school experience.

5. View the law school application Process as a three or four year endeavor, not a six-month sprint.

**This is the big one, but I promise, if you actually follow the advice here, you will guarantee yourself a happier law school experience, a happier/easier time finding a job, and you will have an unbelievable amount of confidence for your all-important first year.**

Calm down. Breathe. Read. Yes, you want to go to law school nownownownownow. All that does is guarantee that the best law school you get into this application cycle is the one you will go to. This does not mean that this is the best law school that you can possibly get into. If you were to slow down, keep some shitty job (if you have to) for a couple years while you really find the best law school fit for you and your future career, you will be a thousand times better off. Yes you will be “postponing your life.” To which I respond, so what? Postpone away. A couple things will happen:

A. You may find a job outside the law that you actually really like and realize that the law is not what you think it is.

B. You get yourself into the best possible law school you can get into. Take and retake the LSAT. Really devote yourself to getting up into the 160’s or 170’s. It is a learnable test. Take it enough times and you will get up there.

C. You will be able to do some self reflection. If I were to break it down into percentages of my fellow 2013 graduates: 40% would say they didn’t really know this is what they wanted before taking on $150,000 in debt, 58% are lying, and the final 2% did the required research. (That 2% somehow correlates to the 2% that have good gigs after law school.)

This may sound like a lot, but law school is a huge commitment. 50% of marriages end in divorce, but law school debt lasts forever-ish.

A couple weeks ago, we covered the case of Sujit Choudhry, former Berkeley Law dean. Then, the news was his return to campus. There’s a new development: he’s suing the university.

A quick recap to get us up to speed: Choudhry was dean when his executive assistant, Tyann Sorrell, accused him of sexual harassment. Choudhry claimed that all those long hugs, kisses, and massages were strictly nonsexual — sure they were; you’re dean of a top-10 law school and that’s really the best defense you can come up with? The university found that Choudhry had violated policy, which isn’t surprising given the conduct, and then gave him a comically light punishment, which isn’t surprising given UC Berkeley’s recent history of not taking similar allegations among other creepy old male professors seriously.

Choudhry resigned his position as dean but kept his job as a law professor and his tenure. Janet Napolitano, president of the UC system, pushed for a second disciplinary hearing — one that might actually get Choudhry fired — and the university reopened the investigation. Choudhry filed a grievance back in April and now he’s suing.

In his lawsuit, he complains that he’s being punished twice for the same offense and alleges racial discrimination. The university let all the white lechers off with lighter punishments, so this drive to hold Choudhry accountable must have to do with his South Asian descent.

If you’re studying for the LSAT, you probably recognized the jump from correlation to causation in that reasoning. You also should know to think about alternate causes. Here’s one: UC Berkeley has been under fire for treating these kinds of cases too lightly in general. The chancellor is resigning as a result. Choudhry’s case coincides with a push from the UC system to get more serious about sexual offenses and with the departure of the administrators who didn’t take these cases seriously.

LSAT students should also know that one way to weaken a causal argument is to show the effect without the cause in a relevantly similar situation. To that end, let’s look at the case of former vice-chancellor Graham Fleming. He, too, was punished lightly for sexual harassment and shuffled out of his administrative position and into a sinecure that allowed him to expense global travel. Napolitano intervened in his case, too, demanding that he be fired from his new position. Choudhry could reasonably point out that Fleming’s tenure was never threatened. But Fleming’s case shows that Napolitano has been intervening in other cases, too, to combat the university’s lax punishments.

I’m not a lawyer and so I won’t comment on Choudhry’s lawsuit’s chances. Whatever happens in the end, this whole thing seems destined to drag on for a while. While I can’t muster much (any) sympathy for Choudhry, he’s right about one thing: the university should have gotten his punishment right the first time. But I’m certain he and I have markedly different opinions about what that means.

Are ya done yet?

In the words of the Immortal Bard, “brevity is the soul of wit.” Brevity, however, is not the soul of law school exams, given that wordier law school final essays apparently end up getting higher grades. I am currently in my third year of law school, and I am not a fan of this phenomenon for a couple reasons.

First, it rewards fast typing. This might seem like a whiney excuse for some of my poorer examination performances, but hear me out. I am a relatively fast typist—I’ve been honing my skills since the days of AOL Instant Messenger. But I am simply incapable of putting four thousand words on a page in a matter of a few hours. On some exams, it is an undeniable advantage to be able to just dump your outline on the page. If you can type faster than your peers, this will probably earn you some extra points (assuming, of course, that you’re writing coherently and have a baseline understanding of the material). Professors usually say that they reward a student’s ability to prioritize the issues and recognize the most salient features of the tested material, but, at the end of the day, getting down every jurisdictional discrepancy or every possible twist and turn of an issue spotter is more achievable if you can type more words.

Second, building off the first point, rewarding extra words discourages the cultivation of good legal judgment. Writing briefs for practice is all about getting directly to the point and succinctly persuading the reader. If a practitioner tries to cram every single detail into a brief, the brief will lose its impact and become less persuasive. Judges don’t want to read sprawling, voluminous briefs. Now, obviously, law school exams serve a different purpose, but there are ways to use the exams to create more practice-ready attorneys. For instance, implementing a word limit forces students to decide which issues deserve more attention than others (this is my preferred form of exam). Moreover, a word limit levels the playing field and it doesn’t create the same mad scramble of clacking keyboards as seen in unlimited word exams.

With all that said, I’ve never been a law school professor, so it is impossible for me to know whether the better performance of wordier students is a product of the fact that they know more, or whether the added length alone gets them higher scores. It could very well be the case that professors immediately see through an examination that simply dumps all of the student’s knowledge on the page without exercising proper judgment. But, given the study cited above, and my anecdotal experience, I tend to think that this is not always the case. And that is a problem.

I recently read a disconcerting article on sexism in law school. This post is going to discuss my observations on the subject, as well as the ways the national dialogue about sexism, rape culture, sexual assault, and the like are making their way into the law school consciousness.

Now, before I delve into those topics, I feel the need to provide two disclaimers. First, I am not going to pretend that I, as a white male, have any real experience with sexism. I am absolutely confident that my female classmates encounter unconscious biases and deal with issues of gender inequality in myriad ways that I cannot fully relate to or understand. Second, my experience at Columbia Law is probably different from a lot of other schools and perhaps even from that of some of my classmates. I have taken classes taught by faculty members like Suzanne Goldberg, who is one of the foremost experts on gender and equality law, and other equally aware professors. I am by no means holding up Columbia Law as the pinnacle of equality, but I have not personally observed instances of sexism as reported in the article cited above.

Gender issues are certainly making their way into law schools. In my criminal law class, we spent weeks discussing Columbia University’s sexual assault policies, going over various state laws on the subject, and engaging in normative discussions about potential reforms. My professor seemed particularly attuned to the issues surrounding the subject, and he did a good job of handling those issues with sensitivity and respect. He set up a screening of The Hunting Ground for interested members of the class, and he did his best to ensure that we understood the national dialogue on the subject. Moreover, the dean of Columbia Law did not permit professors to ask questions about sexual assault or rape law to avoid triggering anyone in the school (a move some viewed as erring too much on the side of caution). My constitutional law professor focused heavily on equal protection in both the race and gender contexts. I would say that a large percentage of my first year of school was spent learning about gender issues.

From talking to people at schools like Berkeley, UCLA, and Harvard, it seems that my experience was not necessarily a unique one. All of those schools have class offerings, clinics, and lectures on gender issues. As you can probably tell, however, my sample size is relatively small and largely made up of schools in highly liberal, cosmopolitan areas. Without naming names or discussing particular parts of the country, I am sure that other schools may not be approaching the issues in the same way, as is borne out by the article above.

The legal profession is still dominated by men. In some cases, this absolutely leads to sexism and unfair practices. I hope that less progressive schools emphasize and engage with the national dialogue on subjects like rape culture and sexual assault. The law students of today will one day change the guard when it comes to firm leadership, and an awareness of these issues will hopefully help create a more inclusive legal industry.

C’mon lucky number 6!

What if you could spend one fewer year to get a law degree? Sounds tempting, doesn’t it? That’s the lure of 3+3 programs, which let you finish a BA or BS and a JD in a total of six years.

As with many things in law school admissions, it’s worth looking at this from the law school’s perspective. The appeal to applicants is obvious. But law schools don’t do many things just to be nice. What’s in it for them?

To skip a year off your undergrad degree, you can’t just pick any law school. You have to commit to your university’s law school or, if your college or university doesn’t have one, to a partnering law school. Check out the list of 3+3 programs. Notice the law schools involved. With a few very prestigious exceptions, the list isn’t exactly a mirror of the top 14.

In most cases, you’ll apply to a 3+3 program your junior year of undergrad. You generally have to be fairly well qualified by the standards of the law school you’re applying to. And bingo! There’s the appeal to law schools. 3+3 programs are a way to lock in applicants who help a law school’s LSAT and GPA medians. Those applicants might well choose another law school were it not for the perk of skipping a year.

That’s also why you, as a prospective student, should proceed with caution. If you go to an undergrad with a 3+3 program, take a close look at the law school you’d commit to. How are its employment prospects? Be honest with yourself — if you didn’t get to skip a year, where would the law school in question rank among your choices? Where else could you likely get in?

If your undergrad has a 3+3 program, you know you want to go to law school, and the law school in the 3+3 program is one that would rank high among your choices anyway, then go for it. Skipping a year of school and tuition is great if it gets you where you want to be anyway.

If, on the other hand, the only thing that draws you to a 3+3 program is getting to skip a year, hesitate before you dive in. It’s not worth it if you would otherwise get to choose a law school that would put you in a much better position to get the kind of job you want. That one year of school you’d get to skip isn’t a big deal compared to career outcomes that will last through your life.

Heading into the second half of the semester, it was time last week to submit bids for Winter term courses. Six classes, ranked in order of preference, strategically reranked and fretted over to optimize the odds of a sufferable professor or subject, and – most importantly – submitted to Mrs. Burns promptly at noon on Monday.

Except that last part didn’t happen. In the early afternoon I received a very gentle call from one of the law school administrators patiently reminding me that their office wasn’t yet in receipt of my course listing and that also, really, I should get my shit together.

Of course I vowed not to make the same mistake when it came time to submit bids for Spring courses. Constant vigilance. A list masterfully tailored to my personal sufferability metrics, and submitted before morning coffee.

So you can imagine my self-disgust when yesterday the very same thing happened again. (Wish I could insert an eye-roll emoji here). Again the call, the kind attention, again sliding into the course-selecting randomizer at the eleventh hour… So turns out all’s well, I will in fact be enrolled next semester, but the whole thing got me thinking a bit about the role of the kindly lady on the other end of the line.

Any school administrator’s got a challenging job, naturally: shepherding the youth of America through the system while said youth’s attention is diverted to lab write-ups, networking, finishing readings, etc. Or Tinder or what have you. More difficult still at Harvard, I’m sure, where half the students have some kind of a complex and all of ‘em have an ego wider than Widener.

But law school must be uniquely challenging, because it’s the one school where the egotistical attention-diverted students were selected specifically for their argumentativeness. I can absolutely see any number of peers of mine citing the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and claiming they weren’t provided adequate Notice about the submission deadline. So I don’t know, perhaps propounding on my appreciation will help me to not inconvenience them next time course listings are due. But something tells me I’ll likely find myself in receipt of another pleasant, emburrasin’ phone call.

The law school equivalent of the water cooler.

Law school is a lot like high-school. There are lockers, people carry backpacks, and everyone knows about everyone else’s business. We all know that high-school has certain defined social groups (see “The Breakfast Club”). This post is going to discuss the types of people that you meet at law school, both good and bad.

Now, we all know the classic variety of law students — the “gunners.” These are the students who stay late after class to talk to the professor, raise their hand for every volunteer question (and, evil of all evils, ask questions in the last two minutes), and brag about spending every waking moment in the library studying. Some of the gunners are relatively innocuous and might just have a general enthusiasm for learning (weirdos, right?). Others, however, are the adult version of teacher’s pets—the Martin Prince of law school.

A second, lesser known, group in law school are the “secret gunners.” These students try to maintain an aura of nonchalance, even in the throes of studying for finals. They will loudly announce that they got a full eight hours of sleep, even when they are running on Red Bull fumes. These students are afraid of falling into the gunner category, and do everything they can to make you feel like you’re working more, and care more, than they do.

Finally, there are the students who feel like they’ve made it just by getting into law school. Now, I assume this particular breed is probably confined more or less to the upper echelons of law schools (those ranked in the top 14). These students feel that they already have their golden ticket to employment simply based on gaining admission to a prestigious school. They’re the ones you see at every bar review (i.e. weekly drinking night) and the ones you don’t see until your class’s final examination.

Students aren’t the only ones who fall into certain distinct categories—faculty members also tend to come in one of two flavors. First, there are those professors who try to “hide the ball.” They think their job is to make you question everything and begin to “think like a lawyer”—a phrase you’ll hear more often than you can imagine. These professors rarely discuss the “black letter law” and focus more on the fuzzy, doctrinal grey areas. Good luck relying on a commercial outline or supplement if you want to understand them.

If there are “actor’s directors,” there are also “student’s professors.” These professors provide a strong contrast to the ones discussed above. They just give you the law, as it is, which is usually confusing enough. They don’t focus as much on theory, or pontificate on other lofty thoughts that make most students’ eyes roll. Now, I have a relatively small sample size, but I’d say that these types of professors tend to be ones who aren’t teaching a class in their main area of expertise (e.g. they’re teaching property law, but their true focus—the one they publish on—is criminal law).

Law school has fewer jocks and more nerds, but you’ll definitely find a pretty clear set of social groups wherever you go (there are even theater kids—they put on the “law revue”). If you’re planning on attending, just remember: no one likes a gunner.

The light at the end of a seemingly endless tunnel.

It’s Election Day! You might be wondering how this election will affect law school grads. We’ve combed through the troves of secret, leaked documents and insider tips from both campaigns to deliver our predictions.

If Trump Wins

Whispers out of the Trump campaign: President Trump will form a new legal unit within the Department of Homeland Security nicknamed the “Enemies List Group.” The Enemies List Group will do double duty as a prosecutor’s office and presidential defense team.

The Group will be staffed exclusively by graduates of the Donald J. Trump Law Center—a member of the Trump University Companies, a limited liability Delaware corporation. First year classes at the Law Center include Twitter and the Law, Defamation Law, Tax, and an innovative clinic called Toxic Hair Torts. The clinic will work with a historically underserved group—the bald-but-not-yet-ready-to-accept-it community. The community has long suffered at the hands of charlatans peddling false promises of hair regrowth and scalp concealment and it’s nice to see that finally someone will get sued. Larry David has already committed to endowing a professorship.

To promote the Law Center, Trump will force the Supreme Court justices to hire their clerks exclusively from the Center. The campaign predicts that within three years the Law Center will leap to the front of the U.S. News law school rankings, as even the most ardent Trump-hating law student won’t be able to resist the “yuge” prestige bump of attending the President’s law school.

Trump, aware of the distain with which law students view the third year of law school, will do away with all classes during the third year at his Law Center. Instead, students will spend the year after their graduation working for the new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Masonry Unit as it oversees Mexico’s construction of the Great Trump Wall.

If Hillary Wins

Hillary Clinton’s “First Day Memo” has been making the rounds on the major networks. It purports to be a list of action times for Hillary’s first day in office. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media seem to have missed the big story though.

Still bitter over failing the D.C. Bar Exam and barely holding her public face on the issue together, Hilary plans on doing away with the D.C. Bar Exam all together. Instead, the Clinton Foundation will be accepting donations to form a special action committee—staffed by other Yale Law School grads who flunked the bar exam—to investigate the issue.

The First Day Memo also hints at some of the activities of the First Lord, Bill Clinton. While the Memo has been very vague, one thing’s for certain: the First Lord will install a gazebo and hot tub on top of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Whitehouse vegetable garden. Rumors out of the campaign suggest that First Lord Bill will run and host his next speaking tour entirely from the gazebo. And yes, there will be blackjack.

The new speaking tour will focus on promoting the First Lord’s new textbook on jurisprudence. Perhaps the First Lord might advance the metaphysics of jurisprudence, finally helping us come to grips with what the meaning of “is” is.

Please keep the tips and rumors coming in throughout what could very well be our final election day.

There are too many law schools in the USofA today. They are taking too many students, and charging too much money, to too many people who will never be able to payoff their law school debt with money earned in the legal profession. In the wake of the White House’s crackdown on for-profit colleges, I’m curious to see if we might see the discussion turn towards law schools in the near future.

Of course, in light of the Department of Education being turned over to the administration of an unscrupulous orangutan who himself perpetrated one of the most illegitimate for-profit college schemes to date, we may not see them operating as the vanguard of unsophisticated consumers in these next four years. But I digress.

Indiana Tech! Indiana Tech is among those law schools, referenced above, that should make your eyes be like o_0 After enrolling only thirty students in their inaugural year of 2013, they were denied accreditation in 2015 before receiving provisional accreditation earlier this year. Just recently, thirteen of the twenty students from the school’s first-ever graduating class (which, you’ll notice, means a 33% attrition rate) took the bar exam. Three passed.

This the school did two weird things, in quick succession. They enrolled their largest class to date and then, on Halloween, announced that actually, instead, they’re closing.

So I try to consider some triage here. On the one hand you feel for the professors. Poor sympathetic geeks who were lured to Indiana, of all tragic locales, to sharpen little legal minds and who are now out of a job. But worse, what of the children? Poorer (financially, cuz loans and things) geeks left clutching a hapless third of an illegitimate law degree. Also they, too, are stuck in Indiana, most likely, which, really, remains the most heart-wrenching thing about it all.

Could this be a trend for sketchy schools in the coming years? Inchoate Indiana Tech was compelled to close by its crushing debts and poor enrollment prospects, but will longer-standing institutions be so willing to go quietly? Might we first see more of the last decade’s ugly, deceptive practices? Leave a comment with your thoughts below!

Last year, bar exam passage-rates fell to a near all-time low, leading some to question whether bar exam administration is a problem or whether schools are failing to do enough to prepare their students. Both states and schools are trying to respond to the issue by making changes. For example, New York just opted to join the ranks of states adopting the Uniform Bar Exam. Some schools, for their part, are making certain bar courses mandatory. I don’t think of these changes will magically restore plummeting passage-rates—the problem lies elsewhere.

Now, before I go any further, I have not yet taken the bar exam. I am going to undertake that harrowing journey shortly after graduating this spring. I cannot speak personally to the process, but I have spoken to many new lawyers about their experience, and I have kept track of the bar exam situation over the last few years, including the downturn in passages rates (and the subsequent panic attacks it has induced).

I think the culprit for the decline are the schools, but I don’t think they can solve the problem by rethinking their curriculum. Rather, schools need to either maintain their admission standards in the face of declining admissions or close down altogether. During the recession not too long ago, a large number of new law school graduates couldn’t get jobs. This, in turn, led to a decline in applicants to law schools. Law schools responded by lowering admission rates. As a result, a large number of under-qualified students ended up receiving offers of admission. It really should come as no surprise that those students struggled with the bar exam. I often tell students that LSAT scores are not indicative of performance in law school, but they do correlate with bar passage rates.

If I tried to get a CPA, taking preparatory classes would only do so much for me because I am pretty terrible at math. Consequently, I have a hard time accepting that a change in curriculum will lead to better results. The students at many lower ranked schools—those who got in on the strength of a well-below median LSAT score—are, generally speaking, probably doing themselves a disservice by going to law school. Making bar courses mandatory might improve things a little bit, but it is still often going to be like fitting a square peg into a round hole. Law schools had no business lowering their admission standards—I, and others, place the blame squarely on their shoulders.

Now, flipping to the bar examination itself, there are changes taking place in test administration. As I mentioned earlier, New York decided to join 24 other states in adopting the Uniform Bar Exam. Basically, the UBE is a standardized bar examination that is portable across state lines—if you pass it in one jurisdiction, you can use your score to become barred in another UBE state. I think the UBE is great, and I am all for the increased portability. But I don’t think this makes the situation easier on students. The bar exam is still an incredibly difficult exam, regardless of whether it is administered in a more standardized way. The results from new UBE states support this position.

At some point, schools are going to have to stop blaming the bar exam, the students, or the course offerings for their low passage rates. It is their own fault for seeking profits by allowing in students who are statistically more likely to underperform on the bar. It should come as no surprise that the top law schools have passage rates well above ninety percent. Those schools did not lower admission standards, and they have seen no downturn in results. These schools haven’t implemented mandatory bar courses, and their students take the bar in UBE and non-UBE jurisdictions. For the lower ranked law schools, they need to start with the man in the mirror.