Most Strongly Supported LSAT Blogs

Well, it’s been about four days since practice exam number 3, aka, the once in a blue moon test, and I’m still tending my wounds. I was on the receiving end of an epic beat down, LSAT style. We’re talking swaths of logical reasoning and logic game questions gone wrong, a few questions left blank, the riding of the Four Horsemen, and the end of the world. Ok, maybe not those last two. I know I’m being a bit overdramatic, but everything seems dire when go time for the October test is T minus 37 days away. Take some advice from Douglas Adams though: “Don’t Panic!”

Thankfully, class is like my very own Hitchhiker’s Guide to the LSAT. Last session, we went over the once in a blue moon test (aka the “LSAT of Equivocations and Double Negatives,” as it was named in class because practically every flaw in it was an equivocation and it had so many double negatives that it made the English language beg for mercy.) It also featured a couple logic games that seriously crawled out of the depths of Hades simply to ruin your day.

The new school year is just about upon us. Students across the United States will be back in classes in seven days, including yours truly. This week, as I wind down the very final days of summer and try to get back into the school mind-set, I have been spending some time considering my classmates. You see, law school attracts some interesting people (in all senses of the word) and I’ve missed some of those buggers over the past few months. So to celebrate their general awesomeness/entertainment value I bring you this non-exhaustive list of all the people you will ever meet in law school! (It’s non-exhaustive primarily so I can recycle the idea next time I am too lazy to come up with a real topic. Also, full disclaimer, I got my inspiration from this piece, which is both more original and funnier.)

Enjoy, and be sure to let me know who I’ve missed and where you fit.

It’s getting to be that time again. The time when you realize that the LSAT is LESS THAN SIX WEEKS AWAY, OH JESUS. That’s right, there’s a mere 40 days until the most important test you will ever take. But fear not, for 40 days is actually quite a bit of time.

If you haven’t started studying at all, you’re in a far from ideal situation. All is not lost – if you really hit the books now, and work for hours and hours per day, you can still improve a lot by the October 9th. But it’s not going to be easy. Unless you have overflowing rivers of time, you should strongly consider studying for December instead. If you could score significantly higher then, that would more than outweigh any advantage afforded by being able to apply early with an October score.

First, some nuts and bolts:

Darrelle Revis is a cornerback for the New York Jets. But not just any cornerback. Revis is, by most standards, the best cornerback in the NFL. He guards the opposing team’s best receivers and, more often than not, shuts them down. He’s the best at what he does.

Revis, 25, is currently holding out on his contract, meaning that he is not participating in training camp until the New York Jets give him more money. He is currently getting paid about $5 million a year, which is a very large amount and more than you or I can realistically hope to ever get paid. If the Jets do not give him a new contract, he is threatening to sit out the season.

It seems that summer weather has finally hit my little corner of the East Bay with a vengeance. Apparently it’s making up for months of below average temperatures and cloudy skies in one fell swoop. To make matters worse, the streets of Berkeley now resemble some post-apocalyptic wasteland of discarded flyers and moving boxes, but instead of zombies the streets are clogged with nervous freshmen and even more nervous parents shuffling around in the sweltering heat.

The heat has an interesting effect on LSAT prep. For one, it’s too hot for coffee, and without my caffeine fix focusing on several pages worth of logical reasoning questions becomes difficult if not impossible. Secondly, approximately fifty or so people in a classroom generate a lot of heat on their own, and that added to already hot temperatures made last Tuesday’s workshop a test of endurance and willpower.

Remember the good old days, when people would go on hunger strikes to promote good causes, or to actually evoke change, or to do away with stretch marks? Gandhi. The Tibetans. Various dissidents throughout history. Ah yes, those were the days.

Well, it appears the degeneration of our society has struck again!

Zenovia Evans, a 28 year old law school graduate, has begun a hunger strike ostensibly to increase law school transparency about the job market for recently graduated students. One could surmise that the actual reason is something closer to “because she doesn’t have a job.”

The new school year is just around the corner. Back to the old grind, as I like to call it.

I’m actually pretty excited for the semester to start up again. During the summer, I often feel unproductive and sluggish. My summer mornings are always unpredictable. I would wake up anytime between 7 a.m. and noon depending on what, if anything, I had planned later that day. Now that school is going to be in session, I’ll be up bright and early every day.

Back to hitting the books and evenings at the library. Back to laughing with friends over the day’s second cup of coffee and the latest grapevine gossip.

It’s good to be back.

You probably didn’t notice, but just about a week ago LSAC rolled out a fantastic new service seemingly designed solely to increase your general levels of stress and discomfort. Now, in addition to getting letters of recommendations, you can also request… Evaluations! The world of pre-law let out an excited cry of “damn it, really? What the hell is this?” What the hell is this, indeed.

What They Are

An Evaluation, as it’s so creatively called, is something that’s being offered by LSAC, which schools can choose to accept or ignore. With evaluations, you have people judging you in a much more measured manner than they do with letters of recommendation. In multiple different categories, your evaluator ranks you on a scale ranging from “Below Average” (bottom 50%) all the way to “Truly Exceptional” (top 1-2%). There are thirty different areas in which you’re measured, including intellectual curiosity, trustworthiness, and motivation. There is a place for additional comments, so it’s not wholly quantitative, though that is seemingly the thrust of it. This is all done online by your evaluator. For the details, check out the LSAC site: http://www.lsac.org/JD/Apply/evaluations.asp.

Hello my friends, it has been a while. I’m finally done with my first summer of pretending to be a lawyer, which means exactly two things: 1) I have time to blog again and 2) I can now definitively say that being in law school is not very similar to actually being a part of the legal world. Also I drank a lot of coffee. But that wasn’t really anything new.

This weeks post is, therefore, born of a combination of the first two things. Because I’m now convinced, more than ever, that there is one essential task that every single LSAT student should undertake before they fill out their applications:

Figure out what a lawyer does.

I was watching Legally Blonde the other night as a way of taking a break from LSAT prep, only to realize that one of the LSAT questions Elle is shown working with her tutor on is from a logic game that we just did in class the other week. Sounds like somebody did their research. So maybe watching a movie about law school isn’t exactly the best break I could come up with, but I was still pretty shocked to hear that question.

Sadly, I’ve been seeing more ads for backpacks lately, and that can only mean one thing: the end of summer and the return of classes. Oh dear God, say it ain’t so! The end of summer means actually having to remember what day of the week it is, that my long hours spent at zombie genocide will be curtailed, and that I’ll have to start balancing my Blueprint homework with Berkeley homework. I’ll get back to you later on how that’s working out. Thankfully, I’m not taking too many units. Unfortunately, Berkeley cancelled my German class so I had a bit of a scramble a few days ago trying to come up with the minimum number of units. Between this being my senior year and the budget cuts, I can say that I’m kind of ready to say good-bye to Cal.