Most Strongly Supported LSAT Blogs

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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Rumors about the legal profession’s demise have become so common lately that one can almost be faulted for not knowing its dismal state. The WSJ legal blog and Above the Law were among the earliest and most vocal critics of the profession’s future, but recently even the mainstream media have started banging the drum. Both the Los Angeles and New York Times have run a variety of stories about the dearth of jobs for law school graduates, their mountains of non-dischargeable debt, and the responsibility law schools have to reduce their admissions.

I’m not sure if it’s that I like a good challenge or that I can’t stand to be on the winning side of an issue, or simply that I don’t want to have friends, but I’d like to take on the whole world in this debate. I think they’re a bit myopic and unduly alarmist about the relative state of the legal profession.
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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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The second episode of The Deep End aired last night and whereas the premiere was so bad it was good, this week’s installment was merely mundane.

After watching the last week’s episode, I’d expected that the show might turn into a drinking game, in which after each legal error that a seven year-old could spot one took a shot (though one would probably have died of alcohol poisoning by the first commercial break). However, this week simply built on last week’s ridiculous assumptions and failed to add further hilarity.
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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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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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Making choices is a difficult thing for me. Even discounting the omnipresent, everlasting war between burrito and taco, I have a tough time. Do I take the freeway or a side street? Do I drunkenly leap frog this parking meter or do I walk around it like all sober-minded Puritans? Do I go to Vegas and lose all my money playing five dollar blackjack or do I go to Vegas and lose all my money playing ten dollar blackjack? These are the questions that occupy my time, and, after days of agonizing thought, I invariably end up making the poorer choice.
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In this week’s edition of “Be Glad You Don’t Live in China”:

Above the Law reports that law students in China are apparently like history majors in the United States: completely, abjectly unemployable. In the last two years, legal jobs have been the hardest to get in China, mostly because there are just too many lawyers. Supply and demand, you see.

Of course, the issue for China is that law is an undergraduate field of study. If law were an undergraduate subject at UCLA, for example, we estimate 85% of humanities students would at some point major in it. Apparently, the lack of limiting factors on how many people can choose the legal major at Chinese institutions has caused the current issue.

So there you have it. The LSAT is truly what separates the United States from Communism.

MSSers,

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Above the Law, mostly because the content is funny and insightful. So when we heard they were coming to UCLA in order to discuss the big law remuneration system and whether it should be changed, we got very excited. As you know, lots of you want to become lawyers. And lots of you want to become the kind of lawyers who earn $160K as a first year associate. That means you’re interested in “big law” – those firms of 50 or more lawyers that pony up said money in exchange for something called “billable hours”. But in today’s economic climate, the big law model is being rethought and people like David Lat and Elie Mistal are participating in that discussion. So if you’re interested in working in the law, this will be a great event to attend. Here’s the information from the Above the Law website:
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So the legal sphere hasn’t looked all that great recently. But a new story from Above the Law shows recent signs of life. Two big law heavy hitters: Allen & Overy (now there’s a name for an OBGYN) and Akin Gump have “unfrozen” their salaries. Allen & Overy are also paying market level bonuses, citing better economic conditions. Keep reading for their bonus and base salary scale.
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