Most Strongly Supported LSAT Blogs

I am a big sports fan. I commonly watch three or four episodes of Sportscenter in the same evening. (For those of you who are not sports aficionados, Sportscenter plays the same highlights of the same games over and over each night.)

As a sports junkie, this is my favorite time of year. The Super Bowl has become little more than a commercial for Bud Light and Doritos. The NBA playoffs will begin soon and a champion will be crowned some time in mid-November. In college football, the bowl season is plagued by the whole “debate” over the BCS versus a playoff system (one plus: at least Tim Tebow is gone). The World Series is, well, baseball. But then there is college basketball and… March Madness!
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In an era where Humanities faculty are dropping like flies, law school faculty members have flourished. A study from the National Jurist indicates that the average law school increased its faculty by 40% over the past ten years.

This is a good thing, as it allows students to be in smaller classes with more access to the instructor and provides law professors with more time for scholarship. On the other hand, the increase in staffing accounts for 48% of the tuition increase from 1998 to 2008. Hmmm.

If asked, would a student desire a lower student to faculty ratio for lower tuition? Based on a highly technical and carefully conducted office survey that included two receptionists, a marketing assistant, and the IT guy, the answer was a resounding yes.
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Not to be alarmist, because we are not in the business of inducing panic, but I would like to direct your attention to the situation currently arising with LSAT test centers in New York:

Mother****ers are filling up. Fast.

In fact, if one were to use a word to describe them, if one really wanted to hit the nail on its head, as it were, one might use the word “full”.

This obviously presents a bevy of problems for the average test-taker in Manhattan (i.e. you) but you do have a couple of options.
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If you ever feel bad that you’re going to law school as a simple extension of getting a relatively useless liberal arts degree, console yourself with the fact that plenty of Olympic athletes are joining or have joined you.

Olympian lawyers run the gamut from pseudo-sports like biathlon, curling, and race-walking to real sports like triathlon. No doubt their Olympic training has prepared them well for the trials and tribulations of litigation. If you’re looking for analogies:
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You have until Friday to decide. No, I am not talking about your destination for Valentine’s Day or your excuse for making this weekend a super-long weekend. Friday is the deadline to cancel your February LSAT score.

For some students, this decision brings sleepless nights and lots of overeating. A bad LSAT score is not a great thing to have on your record. Not as bad as a conviction for international espionage or anything, but not great.
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Last night ABC aired its new legal drama, The Deep End. I could argue that The Deep End demonstrates that screenwriting as a serious craft is dead, but if you’ve watched any three-letter network lately (other than HBO), you know that already.

Every decade or so, someone in TV land who narrowly escaped a career in law decides the world would be fascinated by watching the lives of lawyers. In a better world, we would cast stones at such people and leave their utterly implausible and trumped up shows unwatched. In our world, LA Law was a Thursday night staple for nearly a decade in the late 80’s and Ally McBeal helped establish Fox as a serious network in the late 90’s.
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As many of you know (or should know), today is the day we observe Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. Before his assassination on April 4, 1968, King had become the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (for efforts ending segregation and discrimination through non-violent means, back before the Nobel Peace Prize was rendered meaningless by Barack Obama winning it for…well, we’re still trying to figure that out).

King led initiatives such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, the Albany Movement, marches for African American’s right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and reportedly once wrestled a tiger shark into submission. He had received at least 7 awards, some even posthumously, and around 50 honorary degrees from universities around the U.S. His legacy lives on by continuing to influence equality in the U.S. and other countries, as well as having his name on more streets and boulevards than almost any other public figure.
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The LSAT talks about a lot of different subject areas. Fractal geometry, the mating habits of sage grouse, diapir eruptions, “group think” behavior, and even unicorns have all been the topic of discussion at different times.

But they don’t talk about sports. Well, not much, at least.

And I think I might know why. There are certain issues in sports that I believe can poke holes in the reasoning used on the LSAT.
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The New York Times reports that the number and percentage of minority students enrolling in law school is declining. According to Columbia law professor, Conrad Johnson, Mexican American and Black students accepted to law school decreased from 1993 to 2008. Hispanic Americans in general made negligible gains in enrollment during the same period.
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There isn’t much I wouldn’t do for free food.  Once I faked a free email address to cadge a free hotdog from the Stanford Undergraduate Karate Club (SUKC). So when Above the Law editors David Lat and Elie Mystal came to Southern California to discuss law firm compensation, I was intrigued.  When I heard they were serving turkey wraps, I was sold.

This is more or less how I ended up at UCLA law school to hear a Federalist Society sponsored debate about the so-called “lock-step” vs. “merit” bases for associate bonuses at BigLaw firms.  A lock-step structure entails that everyone from the same hiring year gets the same bonus, regardless of any other factors.  First year associates make x, second year associates make y, et cetera.  The good part about all being paid the same is that it tends to breed less competition and unfriendliness among associates.  The crap part is that if you do something great (bill lots of hours or write a brief that rivals the Upanishads), you get paid no more than the schlep down the hall who sniffs glue all day long.
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