The most important thing that is taught in law school is the art of ass busting.
— Jansen on the art of ass busting. Go read the rest of the post. I could just fill the queue on this thing with quotes for that post for a good two days.
My current wallpaper. <3
OH MY.
Law students are returning to school all across the country and starting to buckle down for the home stretch.
It’s go time.
4. Follow the guidelines. Many times applicants attempt to tweak the font size, spacing, or margins in their application essays in an attempt to stay within the various schools’ page limits. The admissions committee, however, will not be fooled. Rather than playing with the formatting, focus on making your discussion clear and concise.
— Clear Admit with the single best piece of advice on admissions you’ll get. If you’re at the point where your essay is a major factor getting admitted, you cannot afford to shoot yourself in the foot by not following the rules.
10. Relax. Nothing freaks law students out more than a fellow law student who seems totally relaxed.
— Katie Luper saving the best for last in a list of 10 things to do on a law school campus during finals
Get it done and move on — you’ve got finals you should be studying for instead of doing this memo which is probably ungraded or pass/fail depending on your school, and if it IS graded, it is certainly a small portion of what? A one or two credits class? F**k that. Get it done and study torts.
— Butterflyfish with some tough love for 1Ls trying to buy a memo.
That said, if you’re jumping into law school to defer the inevitable difficulties holding a job down, you’re getting exactly what you are paying for. You have three years off of the job market, after which you’ve got a terminal degree and a second chance to get a job or move in with mom. It seems to me that worrying too much about what will happen right after you graduate law school is a moot point. In this scenario, you’re not really attending law school for the purpose of being more employable, or at least you shouldn’t be.
—
Louis Grobe on whether 0Ls should apply to law school
To me, this is explains the gap in logic when countless law students moan about not being employable. A large portion of law students came to law school because they had nothing better to do, and now they want the guarantees and professional training? This goes doubly for anyone who applies to law school for those reasons at this point.
Inappropriate Venue: Sweet Revenge - Above the Law →
New weekly series on ATL about how law school thinking pops up in the worst places.
Tech Tips for Law Students
Laura Bergus, now writing part time for the Lawyerist, has some productivity tips especially for law students and lawyers:
1. CiteGenie. I learned the hard way how much I depended on CiteGenie my first year of law school—when I was at a computer without this great Firefox extension installed and I had to actually copy down a case citation. When you copy something to your computer’s clipboard, CiteGenie knows if it is from Lexis or Westlaw and includes a Blue Book-compliant citation. Before using CiteGenie, you should consider any ethical implications. Is it “cheating?” You decide.
It’s not cheating. Case citations are a way to help people find the information you are relying on to make an argument. Anything that makes them more accurate is a good thing. Anything that makes them faster is an added bonus. Automating that process is not only ethical, it’s a best practice.
On Law School Curves, Part Two: The Students — Fearfully Optimistic →
This is part two of my essay on curves, focusing on how the quality of the students in a class can affect the curve.
On Law School Curves, Part One — Fearfully Optimistic →
This is part one of an essay on curves and how law students should approach classes I wrote on the long-form blog. Part two will hopefully be up tomorrow.
