my real name could be Noah...

Well you look nothing like me:

Done bitches! Somehow I luckboxed my way into having all my exams this week and will be able to property celebrate my birthday for the first time in 2 years.

I've made $57 proctoring exams and $1400 playing poker while proctoring exams today. Didn't get any studying done, but who cares?

S- X
S- X
M- Study
T- Study
W- Final 1
T- X
F- X
S- X
M- Study
T- Study
W- Final 2

Damn. Nice to be a 3L.

I have a weird multiple choice type test on Monday. One paragraph, then four statements I can mark as true or false, or leave blank. I get +1 for every correct response, 0 points for leaving a statement blank, and -1 for every wrong response. I'm wondering what do in a spot like this:

one answer says X and the other answer says not X. How sure either way do I need to be to pick one instead of hedging by not answering? My guts saying 66%, but idk.

Thoughts?

full point off for wrong? that's cold-blooded.

my first calc midterm had a T/F section that was right +1, wrong -2. mean on that section was -2, I got a -1. bbv?

Yeah I like professors who just give positive points and ignore the wrong stuff. Took one guy for 3 different classes 'cause all I had to do was outline dump and he'd give a little check mark for every smart thing I said so long as it was even remotely germaine to the question

Reminds me of the AP Government test I took way back in high school. You lost nothing for putting down wrong information. You just gained points for putting down all the right information, regardless of what order it was in or how many wrong answers were around it. EZ 5.

That's how the essays are scored on the CO bar exam too.

Done with law school as of May 1. Hey Eyedea do you still have your biglaw job or are they paying you not to come in like this clown: http://www.boston.com/news/education...ad_to_success/

So glad to be getting out of this state.

TBA. Also, if my firm hands me a public interest job and pays me $60k plus health for a year, I'm fine with that.

anyone have any experience doing a clinic?

i signed up for one next fall

everyone said its alot of work, and i'm not really into working hard my 3L year, buts its a 6 credit A...which is nice

I'll be doing the Prosecutor clinic this summer. Unfortunately, it's pass/fail here :-(

I haven't heard about them handing you that, I think you have to go out and poach one of those jobs yourself. It'll probably be harder than you think though, especially in Boston, given the mess everything is in right now.

I think this year is going to have a tremendous impact on the future in terms of re-adjusting the whole biglaw thing. Especially with the 10 year program going now. All the people that were going to be pushing paper this year are going to get a year of real experience. It's going to be interesting to see how many actually go back to big law (especially people without loans) after seeing what public interest is really like. Never mind that they're now going to have a lot more real skills that the big firms make them do anyway, just over a longer time period.

My firm provides the public interest jobs (or we're free to find our own and they'll pay if they approve it.) If you do it, you get $5k bar expenses, $5k moving expenses, $5k advance, $60k + health starting Fall '09, start at firm Fall '10. If you start in Winter '09, you get $5k+$5k +$10k advance. They have like 100+ PI jobs lined up. I've given up on stressing and trying to figure out which is the best life/career move and just going with the flow.

Done wit property and civ pro today, I've got contracts and con law left!

Chemerinsky for Con law is great, to the dude who asked about supplements. I have Examples and Explanations for Ks, and it is so-so.

Just found this thread and read first 150 responses. Good stuff so far.

I'm a 30 year old licensed architect in Texas who is entertaining the thought of Law School, probably at my alma mater, University of Houston.

But I know nothing about the LSAT. It looks like you need to get between a 130 and 170 on this test? I'm interested in taking it...how much does it cost? Can I take it whenever?

Also, my GPA from architecture school was low. Frankly I don't even know what it was because architecture firms don't give a sh*t about your GPA so nobody worried about it. We were busy spending 60 hours a week in our 5-credit design studio class trying not to get kicked out of school. I want to say it is 2.65, and this was for a 5-year accredited professional degree.

I think my IQ is around 130 and I've always done well on standardized tests. To get my architecture license I had to pass 9 ridiculously hard tests and I only failed 1 of them (took 1.5 years with a 5 month break in the middle). One of my friends had 10 fails with his 9 passes (took him 2.5 years), and another had 3 fails with 9 passes. Their IQs are all above 120.

What is the chance I could do well enough on the LSAT? Do you have to take a class to prepare for it or just buy books and study?

Thanks. In the meanwhile I will read the rest of the thread.

Why are you interested in law school to begin with?

phb,

Here is a full length sample LSAT (pdf)

Take that, score it, see what happens. Score is 130-180, with 170+ all being in top 98/99 percentile. If most of your wrong answers are in logic games those are easy to master.


Median GPA seems to be 3.4 and LSAT 160. Obviously your GPA sucks, but the longer you've been out of school, the less it matters. Also, professional degree should be a big help. They still love the numbers/rankings games, however.

What type of lawyer do you want to be?

Are you ready to invest three years and $100k in tuition and lost wages?

Full-time or part time?


Need some more info.

Seriously the GPA thing is tilting the hell out of me. Back in design school everyone put all their energy into 1 class because the professor could kick you out of design school at any moment. Nobody cared about grades other than passing the other classes. lol. Of course back then I had no idea I may one day go to grad school. Grad school is pointless for architecture and I didn't know I'd want a career change anytime in life.

No idea what type of lawyer, just interested in the thought. I'm unemployed right now and this is twice since I graduated in 2002. I basically hate the irrationality and idealism in the career of design and I can no longer work for supervisors who aren't logical. I figure there are more logical folks in law, who also actually enjoy making money, which is the complete opposite of an architecture firm, who basically undercut so they don't lose clients and bend over and take it in the a** continually from clients. I doubt lawyers do so much non-billable work on a billable project for fear of losing a client, and even if they did, their profit margins on the billable stuff is high enough for it not to hinder salaries much.

The 3 years/100K is a big decision obviously. Especially considering I may have kids soon. It looks like my alma mater charges $18K a year so maybe it's $54K+ for a degree from UH. UH is very cheap, my 5 year degree from 1997-2002 was only $17K!

Full-time or part-time...I guess it would change based on our family needs. Right now it could be full-time as my fiancee earns enough to keep us afloat, and we have some $ stashed away.

Well since you'd presumably apply to start in Fall 2010, you should take the LSAT this coming Fall. Gives you plenty of time to crush it if you're good at standardized tests. If you're set on UH then busting your ass and getting 170+ might get you a bunch of free money.

So it's like a standardized test, yet one you can improve on by studying?

In other words the more I would study, the more I would understand "how they think"?

This was how my architecture licensing exams were, you had to be able to decipher where they were coming from in their question. The more tests I took, the more I learned how to take the tests. Some people wouldn't get it, and struggled mightily.

I will try that LSAC or whatever you linked but it looks like I need to block out about 2.5 hours for it.

I took this quiz last night but I only finished 17 of 25 questions in the allotted time, but got 14 of those 17 correct.

phb,

well the logic games section can be perfected because there are only so many types of games and combos and strategies for each.

Try this one. If you get stuck, check out the clues on how to set it up.

http://www.west.net/~stewart/lwsample%5Bq%5D.htm



then take the full test and see how you do cold. ignore the writing section, its not scored and doesn't matter.

Should I take that west.net one before the other LSAT you linked?