Law School Advice Thread

Well, we have a family member planning to become an attorney, and we're looking for as many sources of advice as possible. He's scheduled to take the LSAT in June, AFAIK.

Hopefully this thread will be an ongoing thing, kind of blog-like but focused on advice.

More to come...

I think we have some lawyers here at the Forge.

LSAT has 3 parts: analytical reasoning, reading comprehension, and logic games. The reading comp has to be a gimme. Sure, some of the questions are sneaky, but if you can read quickly while critically retaining the information, which you really should be able to do if you expect to do well at law school, it's easy.

The reasoning is a little tricky but practice makes perfect. Again, reading quickly helps because it's timed and you can't afford to be getting ANY wrong because of time out if you want to get in the 170 range.

Logic games, this is pure practice. I spent several weeks just doing old tests and getting the feel for these games. They have 4 games, each with 5-8 questions on them. It is *very* difficult (IMHO) to finish all the questions, but being able to do so separates a 160 (low 90s percentile) and a 170 (98th-99th I think). The beauty about these questions is that you can be pretty confident that any one you answer is correct, so if you can get good at them you are guaranteeing yourself a shitload of right answers.

Get the games down, bank on having 2 wrong answers or so in the reading comp, and then you're leaving room for 4-5 screwups on the analytical reasoning which can be tricky when you're going quickly, and that's still 6-7 mistakes which if memory serves is enough to get a really solid score.

The key is practice practice practice, as it's the same shit every time but with the words changed. Get good at recognizing the patterns and you'll be golden. I am a dumb son of a bitch and still managed to pull a good score on the test, and firmly believe I could train a monkey to get in the low 160s.

IMHO

Shit. I don't need to go back to school, spend more $$ and get another degree, but the LSAT actually sounds kinda fun.

Yeah, yeah. I'm a freak.

Here's my advice: Don't become a lawyer.

What El Chup said. Definitely what El Chup said.

I work with lawyers daily in my job of corporate research. Plus, I was an office assistant in a small law office. In my observations, going to law school drains you of any and all practical knowledge, like how to make a pot of coffee or how to use a fax machine. It's amazing how often I (who has no law training) have to explain to lawyers and paralegals the ins-and-outs of corporate filings and searches (in both corporate and UCC fields).

I thought the logic games part of the LSAT were the most fun. I was consistently getting most of them right in practice.

Then I took the test.

My advice - don't.

Well, a few of the responses in this thread prompted some Googling, which turned up the following...

/From legalundergound

Well that's for damn sure.

Interesting. I had always planned to be a lawyer, but then headed elsewhere mid-way through college. Now, everytime I interact with one, I think two thoughts: 1) how fucking easy is that job (aside from the time commitment); 2) how fucking boring is that job?

Are those the issues, or is there something else, too?

Whether or not the job is easy depends on your area of law, the type of client you act for and the jurisdiction you practice it. I can say that it's certainly not easy doing what I do, but then lawyers over here are very different from the american version.

My exposure has mostly been for real estate closings and other totally boiler plate contract issues. I'm sure other areas are far more interesting. My uncle represents VC clients, and I think his work sounds interesting, but he has to give 70 to 80 hours a week. He doesn't even know my cousin as a consequence. So if I were a lawyer, considering what I demand for my personal time, I'd likely be one of those board document reviewers and nothing more.

I have yet to meet a judge, and only few lawyers, who actually tries to apply facts, law, or reason to cases. Anything even slightly complex stands about as much chance of being properly decided in court as by lot. Legal argument is the most futile form of masturbation known to man.

If I sound bitter, I am. The job isn't hard; it is, however, completely mindless. If you think and you're a lawyer, you will end up wanting to kill someone pretty much all the time.

Which is why the US system is a joke. Judges here do that all the time and there are a greater number honourable practitioners applying their time and mind to cases. That's not to say that there aren't still those who wing it, but I think the absense of the likes of the contigency fee in our system breeds a far more honest and skilled lawyer. It's why I've always been highly critical of civil litigation in America.

I've also had a number of multi-jurisdictional cases involving both federal and district courts, particular in Chicago and South Carolina, and I was astounded by the sheer lack of legal application displayed by the judiciary in those cases. Very dissapointing.

Hasn't goldeneye backed up for you everything you have just paraphrased there??

^ yeah, yeah, yeah.... he keeps going on about how great England is, too....... Besides, you're Scottish..... aren't you people still trying to secede?

How about you practice law and deal with cases in both jurisdictions before deciding whether or not my comments are questionable?

I'll say this, if they don't allow lawyers in the UK to advertise on tv, then that puts you one step above us.

The worst thing they did over here was allow lawyers to start pimping themselves on tv. That's all I hear are commercials for accident lawsuits, medical malpractice lawsuits, etc.

Thank goodness the AICPA still has some standards.

Go if he thinks he can end up near top of class. Then he'll have a decent chance at finding a job.

Alternatively, have a specialty going in - e.g. engineers have a much easier time because they become patent lawyers, or a CPA who wants to focus on tax law, particularly if he would consider joining a big accounting firm (where he wouldn't technically be practicing "law"). Or maybe programmers have a few routes they can pursue, I'm out of date on the potential of such a background.

With a poli-sci degree or something equally general (like liberal arts or mushy stuff like that), finding a job will be real hard without graduating in top few % and law review, or top 1/3 or so of a top school (maybe with a journal). Perhaps the top schools are still placing top 1/2 or more into jobs out of school, but I doubt it.

Obviously pick the best school they can get into, and determine from the start if there's a chance for a top 10% in the class if it's not one of the top 20 or so schools. If your shooting for making top 10% in a second-tier school and there's a choice, check how many employers recruit on campus (that includes mainly big law firms, government, and a few companies), the key is to get an internship or clerkship between school years, especially before the third year.

A good way to improve career options is to get a job out of college first, then find a night school program at an accredited school, and be prepared to bust ass for five or so years. Assuming he can find a job that leads to some area of legal practice or a related area of business.

Obviously the same applies if it's a she, except the tits could help give an edge, especially if they're attached to some decent packaging. The right race can also sometimes give a career boost.

I got an MBA at the same time as my law degree (my school had a 4-year program, instead of 3+2), but to be honest I don't think it helped much in my legal career - I can't be certain. I did start at the SEC, so maybe they cared.

I've been doing it since 1989, I like it just fine, and it can pay plenty of money once you get a job and develop some skills in a particular area. About half my carrer I was not practicing "law", I've been a "compliance officer" (a role in the business, not in the legal dept.), and even ended up as CFO and head of an investment team for brief periods, so flexibility is very much part of the territory if you want to stay fully employed. I was unemployed for over 40 months during two separate incidents although 2 years of that I was part of a four-man business that eventually closed-up.

Apparently the news is "intellectual property". Whatever the fuck that is.

My advice would be to skip law school and do something constructive. The world needs doctors, engineers, and scientists. It does NOT need another fuckin' shyster.

Well, the world does need more honest-to-god lawyers--only a tiny percentage of legitimate civil claims ever see compensation, and the criminal system is tremendously short of lawyers on both sides given our penchant for criminalizing trivial matters like marijuana possession that belong nowhere near a courtroom--but that's not what law school and the legal system are about. They're not really about shysters either, so much as they are about creating a vast horde of mid-level bureaucrats who do nothing productive to justify their existence and who, like all mid-level bureaucrats, live by skimming a percentage off the top in return for that nothing, something even worse than shysters. Law schools exist to create the functional equivalent of Dilbert bosses in mass quantity.

I so need a career change.

There's always the Law Enforcement side. Several years ago I knew a guy who went to work with a local PD after graduating with a bachelor's degree. He worked at night and went to law school during the day for four years.

He was approached by the FBI his final year (that was his goal) and they hired and credentialed him as a trainee bound for Quantico the day he graduated. Last I heard, he was a Special Agent in the Chicago office.

I can't be a Special Agent. Too old.

Well, I start law school next semester and my suggestions are to either take the Kaplan course, like I did, or buy a few different LSAT reviews and do practice tests every weekend but study for a couple of hours every day. Also do research into the law profession because it's important to at least have a general idea of the scope of what a lawyer can do and all the specializations that exist.

I took Kaplan for LSAT I think...I just ordered the books and studied at home though. I was pretty anti-going-to-class in College so another class on how to take a standardized test (and that is what the LSAT is) sounded unappealing.