Graduating Law School in 2 Weeks - Reflections

[Don Vito Corleone]

Originally posted by: Orsorum

The CA bar's a bear to take, my sister and brother in law both failed last July, hopefully they passed this February.

I didn't find it too bad - it's quite a bit easier than any law school exam I ever took (though it is a 3-day marathon). The overall pass rate is less than 50%, but it's actually quite high if you go to an ABA-accredited law school in CA. The lowest overall pass rates are from out-of-state attorneys who try to take it without BarBri.

I'm sorry for your sis and bro-in-law, though - it would not be fun to have to take it again. I wish them luck with the second go-round!

 

[Orsorum]

Originally posted by: Don_Vito

Originally posted by: Orsorum

The CA bar's a bear to take, my sister and brother in law both failed last July, hopefully they passed this February.

I didn't find it too bad - it's quite a bit easier than any law school exam I ever took (though it is a 3-day marathon). The overall pass rate is less than 50%, but it's actually quite high if you go to an ABA-accredited law school in CA. The lowest overall pass rates are from out-of-state attorneys who try to take it without BarBri.

I'm sorry for your sis and bro-in-law, though - it would not be fun to have to take it again. I wish them luck with the second go-round!

Heh, thanks. My brother in law's actually doing work for his firm, he just can't sign off on it yet. My sister's able to do some paralegal work from home.

 

[Orsorum]

I've given some serious thought to going to school in Nevada, more to try and get into a law firm while the area's growing.

 

[lizardboy]

Life at a top-15 school. Show up today for my torts exam. We were told by the professor we could use our laptops during the multiple choice part of the test so I didn't bother printing out my class notes, check lists, etc. Only prinout I had was my outline, which I didn't even bother tabbing so I could find sections quickly. Of course, five minutes in they tell us no laptops. Top it all off with the fact that the questions were ridiculously hard, I can't imagine a worse way to test the material than the exam we were given, I could have gotten them all wrong, I could have gotten them all right, no clue.

As I friend of mine described it, the test was like prison sex without the reach around.
Someone else said, "instead of Control-F, we got Control-F You".

So brain dead, 1 more exam to go.

 

[astroview]

Thats the best thing about law school Lizardboy, every exam is a roll of the dice. You can do great but with the curve a 90% is a B, or you get a 60% and its an A. I have absolutely no idea what my grades will be this semester, except that they most definately will surprise me no matter what I get. Thanks for helping me procrastinate, I don't want to study Estates right now

 

[lizardboy]

Originally posted by: astroview
Thats the best thing about law school Lizardboy, every exam is a roll of the dice. You can do great but with the curve a 90% is a B, or you get a 60% and its an A. I have absolutely no idea what my grades will be this semester, except that they most definately will surprise me no matter what I get. Thanks for helping me procrastinate, I don't want to study Estates right now

I know - thought I bombed a mid term last semester. In effect I did with a 54 (out of 100), but that was good enough for an A-. Last semester my grade predictions were fairly accuarate, I'm hoping that hold true since I felt good after my first two finals.

 

[shopbruin]

Originally posted by: Orsorum
I've given some serious thought to going to school in Nevada, more to try and get into a law firm while the area's growing.

with your numbers NOW you should be able to get into unlv.

EDIT: heck, my bf also got a full tuition ride with those numbers from UNLV. however YMMV.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: digitalsm

Originally posted by: RabidMongoose

Originally posted by: Maetryx

Originally posted by: astroview

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle

Originally posted by: astroview

Originally posted by: DevilsAdvocate

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
Sort of related to the thread, but why are lawyers paid so much better than engineers? Not a sarcastic comment, I'm genuinely curious.

Tremendous liability.

Not to mention 3 years of very expensive schools.

Ummm... going to a top engineering school is also very expensive (and is just as difficult as law school). As for liability, you're kidding yourselves if you think a lawyer is more liable than an engineer; engineers often build devices that could kill their user if it malfunctions (bridges, cars, planes, etc.). I think it might have more to do with tradition than anything else.

I never said top schools, did I? You can always go to a cheap state school and get an engineering degree. Lots of lawyers have 100k+ in loans, from the best to the worst law school. I do know some engineers that do have lots of loans, but overall it's a lot less common than lawyers with lots of debt. As for the difficulty I agree, it is similar. I went to a top engineering for undergrad and I saw how hard it was. But then again do engineers have a bar exam they need to study 2 months for?

Engineering malpractice suits are also relatively rare compared to medical or legal malpratice suits. It happens, but not as much. Just curious, do you or your engineering employer/friends carry malpractice insurance? FYI "engineering malpractice" popped up only 29 hits on lexis nexis searching every law review, CLE, and legal journal, one example its not that common.

1) Yes, we do have a "bar" exam. It's called the PE Exam or Professional Engineers exam. It is desinged by the NCEES, is held twice a year, and is an 8 hour exam. For a civil engineer, the first 4 hours is general civil engineering, and the second 4 hours is selected from 5 disciplines: water resources, environmental, traffic, structural, geotechnical. And you have to have 4 years of qualifying experience on top of your 4 year engineering degree before you can take this test. 40% of test takers fail it. Also you have to hold the FE certificate which you get by taking a test at the end of your bachelor's degree. So we have TWO "bar" exams for engineers.

2) Professional Engineers in practice often have professional liability insurance, as do Professional Land Surveyors. Do a search on "professional liability insurance" term instead of malpractice, which isn't a term I've heard related to engineering. This link for example.

This doesn't really apply to 95% of all engineers. The same couldn't be said of lawyers.

It applys to almost any engineer working as a govt employee. Though you are correct, it doesnt apply to all. Texas recently allowed non certified engineers the right to use the title of engineer. Engineer was/is a professional and licensed title.

IIRC patent lawyers have to pass both the PE Exam and thePatent Bar. The Patent Bar is a bitch from what I have heard. And like the other guy said, the PE Exam isnt all that easy.

I don't think you need to have the PE, but it might qualify someone to take the USPTO test. It doesn't make sense that a PE is required since you can have a science background.

 

[DigDug]

Thats the best thing about law school Lizardboy, every exam is a roll of the dice. You can do great but with the curve a 90% is a B, or you get a 60% and its an A. I have absolutely no idea what my grades will be this semester, except that they most definately will surprise me no matter what I get. Thanks for helping me procrastinate, I don't want to study Estates right now

I don't think itsfair to say "a roll of the dice". The real dice roll is whena professor makes anexam too easy, and then every kid in the class will be able to do "well" on the exam. Then the professor has no choice but to stratify the class based on one or two point distinctions. The difference between an A- and a B+ could be a point or two....

The flipside, however, is that such exams benefit the slackers like me - in the last two years, I've done VERY little work.

 

[Orsorum]

Originally posted by: DigDug

Thats the best thing about law school Lizardboy, every exam is a roll of the dice. You can do great but with the curve a 90% is a B, or you get a 60% and its an A. I have absolutely no idea what my grades will be this semester, except that they most definately will surprise me no matter what I get. Thanks for helping me procrastinate, I don't want to study Estates right now

I don't think itsfair to say "a roll of the dice". The real dice roll is whena professor makes anexam too easy, and then every kid in the class will be able to do "well" on the exam. Then the professor has no choice but to stratify the class based on one or two point distinctions. The difference between an A- and a B+ could be a point or two....

The flipside, however, is that such exams benefit the slackers like me - in the last two years, I've done VERY little work.

lol Way to go.

 

[Greg03]

>>Not true. Only the top 25% of this year's class at Fordham got the BIGlaw invite.

Biglaw or no, the money is there. I was going from the Fordham website job stats, not anything else. Accd to Fordham's own site, it appears a s though a 50% finish gives you a good shot at 100+, no?

 

[Greg03]

Originally posted by: DigDug

That is very misleading. There are no real guarantees in life, but you get what you put in. My brother is a single parent and has been the entire time he has been in school. He has worked his ass off and getting what he worked for, a good job for good pay

THIS is very misleading. Your brother's performance is commendable, however, you population sample for your conclusion consists of just one person! There are MANY people who work their assess off, don't make the top 10% cut and are effectively screwed. Law school ISN'T a sure bet - predictions of success based on LSAT and UGPA (in comparison to one's peers at a particular school) are useless. The truth is, you just don't know if your good at it, until you do it. Combine that with the inaccuracy/uncertainty built in to the subjective grading system, and its most definitely, NOT a guarantee.

In sum, everyone at the top of the class busted their ass for sure, but that does NOT mean that everyone else didn't.

Re: implication
Does the above statement really imply that all others didn't work hard?

Re: Subjectiveness
This is the bad student crutch/rationalization. At most law schools, grading is subjective AND anonymous. That way, even if you get screwed by Professor A in semester 1, everyone gets the same overall chance of being screwed, thus your grades at the endof law school are pretty much fair (relatively so). You can't argue with much conviction that the professor (every single one) screwed you, if the screwing is anonymous, how does each professor know to screw YOU? They don't. However, this mindset does help the student who consistently does poorly and is looking for an explanation that doesn't involve all others performing better (note -- not being "smarter" just doing better).
The grading system is fine, you get what you deserve and what you don't deserve, you get in a random and roughly equal amount).

Re:LSAT and UGPA unfair!!!
Get real. I know of NO ONE at my school that were in the top 25% who did comparatively poorly earlier. This was a big topic at my school and we had fairly open discussions about it. A professor challenged the assertion that LSATs and UGPAs/previous work don't predict anything by having everyone in the 1L class bring in their LSAT scores and UGPAs (actual paper, not self report) and then had one student keep them and run the stats after the entire year was over - when we saw the two bell curves overlap, it was nearly perfect visually. The correlation was in the mid .80s for LSAT and upper .80s for UGPA, not too shabby for a correlation.

There were a few people with LSAT a LITTLE lower, but most people at the top were at the top LSAT and UGPA wise. I have come across very few people who were underachievers in UG and suddenly blossomed in law school.

 

[jeremy806]

One thing to keep in mind, when a company hires someone with no experience and agrees to pay the person $125k per year, the company needs to minimize the risk involved. An unproductive $125k employee could be a real problem. Companies look to top school because those persons are less risky. Think about hiring an incoming class of associate lawyers, and you just spent $1M / year. Now, if that was your money, I bet you would be very picky about who you hired in. That's just life.

jeremy806

 

[DigDug]

Re: implication
Does the above statement really imply that all others didn't work hard?

As a law student, your lack of careful reading is surprising. Look at the sentence again.

Re: Subjectiveness
This is the bad student crutch/rationalization. At most law schools, grading is subjective AND anonymous. That way, even if you get screwed by Professor A in semester 1, everyone gets the same overall chance of being screwed, thus your grades at the endof law school are pretty much fair (relatively so). You can't argue with much conviction that the professor (every single one) screwed you, if the screwing is anonymous, how does each professor know to screw YOU? They don't. However, this mindset does help the student who consistently does poorly and is looking for an explanation that doesn't involve all others performing better (note -- not being "smarter" just doing better).
The grading system is fine, you get what you deserve and what you don't deserve, you get in a random and roughly equal amount).

This is the good student rationalization - that you got your honors and top rank fair and square and solely based on your ability. Sorry, bro, this isn't the case. You fail to take other variables into account for the receipt of an unfairly low grade. It may surprise you, and the rest here, to learn that professors consistently grade people with poorer handwriting, lower. Told to me by more than one professor. That writing style is very important to the professor. Told to me by more than one professor. And of course, none of this has any connection with the substantive knowledge being tested. That said, your "randomization" falls apart simply because you are assuming truly random grading. If a random blue-book WAS assigned a grade randomly without opening it, some of these kids would stand a BETTER chance than consistently being heavily downgraded for things other than what they are actually saying. Another point, which adds to the mix, then is the format in which tests are taken. Many have grown up learning to write, having a "cut" and "paste" function at their disposal. When being forced to write an essay in a book, under time pressure, the ability to neatly formulate an essay is being tested, again, in addition to the substantive knowledge. At a test run at our school with laptop exams, I know kids whose grades JUMPED two letter grades up because of the ability to write as they are accustomed to. What's being tested, my friend? And is ANY of this connected to "hardwork" and "intelligence"?

Re:LSAT and UGPA unfair!!!
Get real. I know of NO ONE at my school that were in the top 25% who did comparatively poorly earlier. This was a big topic at my school and we had fairly open discussions about it. A professor challenged the assertion that LSATs and UGPAs/previous work don't predict anything by having everyone in the 1L class bring in their LSAT scores and UGPAs (actual paper, not self report) and then had one student keep them and run the stats after the entire year was over - when we saw the two bell curves overlap, it was nearly perfect visually. The correlation was in the mid .80s for LSAT and upper .80s for UGPA, not too shabby for a correlation.

I am real, and as a student at the top of my class, I work closely and intimately with the others in the same position. I know almost all of their scores and gpas, and it is CLEARLY not as you say. In fact, many of the kids at my school, mirror my own experience, as someone who screwed around in college, did pretty well on the LSAT (or vice versa with a good GPA and low LSAT) and than got my act together for law school. The ONLY consistency I've seen among top students is that those who've MATURED - either through working before law school, or taking time of during college - are the ones who do very well. Nearly ALL of the older students in our school are at or near the top, and many of them have families to support. Conclusion? Discipline factors into law school succes as much, or even more than intelligence does. After all, the law isn't conceptually difficult.

I have come across very few people who were underachievers in UG and suddenly blossomed in law school.

As I explained above, I have come across 20 or so. Me included.

 

[Greg03]

>The ONLY consistency I've seen among top students is that those who've MATURED - either through working before law school, or taking time of during college - are the ones who do very well.

What about the other factor? Handwriting?

>That said, your "randomization" falls apart simply because you are assuming truly random grading. If a random blue-book WAS assigned a grade randomly without opening it, some of these kids would stand a BETTER chance than consistently being heavily downgraded for things other than what they are actually saying.

Not really, what I'm saying is less strict than it may appear. All I'm saying is that throughout 3 years of law school, you take a lot of tests. Your undeserved crappy grades are here and there. If they are consistent, then maybe you are right, maybe your handwriting is the culprit. Can't really argue that point, becuase I know from experience that it is true.

However, the fact that we got such high correlations in our school, for an entire class, based only on LSAT and GPA indicates to me that there is a lot of consistency and alot less random assault on our dignity than you seem to believe.

Now, your concern about handwriting is valid, and that's something that we have to live with. I took many of my exams on laptop and found that there were those who complained about the faster typists vs the slower typist. I guess this is one area that we'll just have to live with until everyone is using lappies for the exam. And even then, the faster typists will have a better shot.

So it boils down to this, X is a skill that you know you have to excel at to be good at law school exam taking, so X is the skill that you should work on. Having bad handwriting isn't like temrinal cancer, it can be improved with practice. The same with the slow typists. So there it is, unfair and yet it still exists. Be a good law student and work with the factors you can to over come it.

>Discipline factors into law school succes as much, or even more than intelligence does.

I'd agree wholeheartedly. I'd also say that the concept of intelligence is very poorly defined for academic reasons. We all know that super academic acheiver who we wouldn't trust to feed our dog, but seems to get straight A's in school, and the otherwise really birght person who struggles with tradiitonal learning.

>As a law student, your lack of careful reading is surprising. Look at the sentence again.

I'm not a law student, but a lawyer out in the world. The lack of careful reading shouldn't suprise you, just wait until you have a job and see your damned readnig skills go all to hell ;-). You should see some of the work I have to read every day from terrible lawyers...whooo.

 

[DigDug]

Hey Greg, thanks for being a good sport. My tone was a bit harsh in that message.

I am just annoyed with the legal industry. There was so much I thought I'd learn that I didn't, and so much that I didn't care to learn about, that I had to. From my limited experience, law school is not even close to the real world. Noone gives two craps about your policy discussion on property allocation out there.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

I have been out of law school for 2 years now, and I have a little bit of a different take on things.

It seems to me that law school tries to beat it into you that you have to do x, y, and z in order to succeed. There are also plenty of magazines out there ("L" being the worst) that also reinforce this message.

A lot of you guys are buying into too much of this stuff.

As many of you know, I opened my own firm earlier this year. Opening up my own firm is the best decision I have ever made. I am on pace to outearn my BIGlaw brethren this year without the stress.

Was I law review? No. Journal? No.

There are many ways to make an outstanding living as a lawyer. You can take the road less traveled. If you are not law review, do not despair... there is a place for you, albeit outside the ivory BIGlaw tower.

We shall all own Jaguars and laugh at the little people. j/k

Best of luck, y'all.

 

[astroview]

Congrats I didn't know you opened your own firm! What kind of firm is it?

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Originally posted by: astroview
Congrats I didn't know you opened your own firm! What kind of firm is it?

I practice primarily family law I stack 'em deep, and divorce 'em cheap

 

[SuperTool]

What about patent law? If you are an engineer, is it easy to get into patent law in your field if you go to lawschool?
Just evaluating my options.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: SuperTool
What about patent law? If you are an engineer, is it easy to get into patent law in your field if you go to lawschool?
Just evaluating my options.

I posted about it before in this thread, check out my post. Not sure how much of it is valid though, it's just a bunch of rambling thoughts patent lawyers have told me.

 

[axelfox]

Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Originally posted by: SuperTool
What about patent law? If you are an engineer, is it easy to get into patent law in your field if you go to lawschool?
Just evaluating my options.

I posted about it before in this thread, check out my post. Not sure how much of it is valid though, it's just a bunch of rambling thoughts patent lawyers have told me.

Patent litigation is where the action is. All others in the patent field are boring as hell.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: axelfox

Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Originally posted by: SuperTool
What about patent law? If you are an engineer, is it easy to get into patent law in your field if you go to lawschool?
Just evaluating my options.

I posted about it before in this thread, check out my post. Not sure how much of it is valid though, it's just a bunch of rambling thoughts patent lawyers have told me.

Patent litigation is where the action is. All others in the patent field are boring as hell.

Are you trying to get into patent law? I'm pretty interested in the other form of patent law, including the strategy side of it all.

 

[axelfox]

Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Originally posted by: axelfox

Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Originally posted by: SuperTool
What about patent law? If you are an engineer, is it easy to get into patent law in your field if you go to lawschool?
Just evaluating my options.

I posted about it before in this thread, check out my post. Not sure how much of it is valid though, it's just a bunch of rambling thoughts patent lawyers have told me.

Patent litigation is where the action is. All others in the patent field are boring as hell.

Are you trying to get into patent law? I'm pretty interested in the other form of patent law, including the strategy side of it all.

I am a legal clerk for a patent attorney. I do not have a hard science background, so working in patent law is pretty much nixed. Besides, after taking Patent Law this semester, I'm rethinking the whole IP field anyways.

My boss does mainly patent applications and some IP litigation. The cool thing is that he's got a room full of samples that he's patented or working on.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: axelfox

Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Originally posted by: axelfox

Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Originally posted by: SuperTool
What about patent law? If you are an engineer, is it easy to get into patent law in your field if you go to lawschool?
Just evaluating my options.

I posted about it before in this thread, check out my post. Not sure how much of it is valid though, it's just a bunch of rambling thoughts patent lawyers have told me.

Patent litigation is where the action is. All others in the patent field are boring as hell.

Are you trying to get into patent law? I'm pretty interested in the other form of patent law, including the strategy side of it all.

I am a legal clerk for a patent attorney. I do not have a hard science background, so working in patent law is pretty much nixed. Besides, after taking Patent Law this semester, I'm rethinking the whole IP field anyways.

My boss does mainly patent applications and some IP litigation. The cool thing is that he's got a room full of samples that he's patented or working on.

So, how hard is it to get into patent law? Is what the other people saying true, that you basically have to graduate in the top 10% of your class? Does your boss like it? How did you find it (even though you can't enter that field)?

I'm getting my MS in Electrical Engineering and I really want to go law school to pursue patent law.