Most Strongly Supported LSAT Blogs

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.
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The last video game I played with any kind of verve, regularity, or excellence was Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo when I was ten (and at that, I was a golden god), so I might not be the best guy to opine on this subject, but here goes.

Recently, in West Virginia, a judge by the name of Joseph R. Carico was discovered to be in an illicit video-gaming relationship with a West Virginian felon named Jeremy Hubbard, who had appeared in his court. They were found out because one night, Carico plowed into a tree while driving Hubbard home from a late-night Halo session. Carico has now vanished from his seat on the circuit court, which can only point to a suspension of some kind, or a deep, all-encompassing personal shame.
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The National Federation of the Blind has filed complaints with the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, in which it requests investigations of nine law schools (among them the University of Chicago and Washington and Lee University) for violating the civil rights of the blind.

The gist of their complaint centers around the use of LSAC.com as the primary tool with which to apply to law school. Because LSAC is not blind-accessible, they argue, blind people are being impeded from pursuing their goals of getting into law school.

First reaction: it’s always a fun dip into irony when law schools get basically sued.

Second reaction: I can only imagine legal work is very difficult for blind people, but that certain shouldn’t impede them from going into the field.

Third reaction: This is proof, if you needed any other, that the era of the paper law school application is dead.
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So you may have heard that there are some worries about the legal job market right now. On the other hand, you may have locked yourself into your panic room at the first shudder of Bear Stearns (way back in the aughts) and are just now be stepping back out into the sun, blinking away tears, and stopping first at MSS. If that’s the case, I advise you to round up some more freeze dried food and other necessities and relock that steel door. For at least another half a decade.

Those of you who have been out in the real world, though, probably have some inkling that things are not great for recent law graduates. Of course, I have no better idea than you about what’s going on in the real world, and read all the same blogs and other internet garbage to get my information second hand. So I will leave the discussion about how the world actually is to those who know better than I do.
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I’m currently spending my days in Galway, Ireland – a quaint town where the sheepdogs run free by day, and by night drunks find themselves toppling over bridges and into the cold, rushing waters of the Eglinton Canal. Galway is also expensive, and the awful currency exchange now has me measuring all of my purchases in terms of pints of Guinness rather than Euros.

I came to Galway to pursue an LLM in international human rights law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Now that I’m a semester into the program, I’m trying to figure out whether or not a JD is the right next step for me.
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There is a good chance that if you are reading this and waiting on those final admission decisions, you still don’t know exactly what you are getting yourself into. You have vague dreams of a corner office and using the phrase “your honor”, but are not quite sure what the years between now and then are going to look like. I feel your pain. Last summer, when MSS decided that I should start as their 1L blogger well before I actually started law school, I wrote about fifteen blogs about how I had no idea what to expect. Things got messy. There were metaphors. It was a dark time.

Luckily, I have made it my quest to give potential students all the information they could possibly want as they decide the wheres, whens and ifs about attending law school. To that end, this week and next I bring you a two part series (because two parts = twice the money for the same amount of work) about what classes you will take as a 1L. Much like middle schoolers, first year law school students are not allowed to actually pick their own classes. Instead, the classes are assigned, and the subjects are pretty uniform from school to school. There are some exceptions (my favorite fake law school comes to mind), but these are the six classes that are pretty likely to make an appearance in your life over the next twelve months. So sit back and enjoy.
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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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So I write you this week from about 3,200 miles above the ground, as I sit on a trans-American flight and pound into my keyboard as hard as possible to annoy the girl in front of me who has decided, despite the fact that it is not even seven o’clock, to recline her seat into full sleep mode and co-opt every last ounce of legroom she can. Luckily, I’m vindictive, and figure in the next four hours I can easily scratch out enough blogs that I can finally stop worrying if MSS is going to fire me in the exceedingly near future, and Queen Head Lice Dreadlocks in front of me can feel the wrath from now until JFK. That’s right honey. Enjoy it.

Of course, as much as I’m sure the Pre-Law community would enjoy hearing about my airborne woes for the next thousand words, today I do not bring extended tidings of such issues. (Although, I will say, if I ever do go to work at a firm, you can rest assured that the ability to afford first class seats was one of my primary motivations.) Instead, I hope to share with you some information that may make your future travel plans a little more fruitful, as you jet around the country to check out various admitted student days and other law school events to decide on your home for the next quarter decade or so. Keep these three things in mind, and your experiences should be both enjoyable and help make the final decision a little easier.
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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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Allow me to start with a slightly belated congrats for everyone who took that February test. I got a little bogged down last week in actual law school work, and MSS graciously allowed me a week off. (In other words, I’ve been filtering all their emails directly into my spam box for the past 14 days.) [Editor's note: She really has. And it's not even finals.]

Regardless, I’m back now, and I recognize that many of are you caught in a flurry of admitted student letters, feverish nail biting and mailbox stakeouts. So, as you start to make that decision (to go or not to go), I bring you the closest thing I can to law school reality TV. I’d upload actual footage, but I’ve taken enough questionable videos over the years that I would sooner burn the memory cards than risk an internet leak accident. So, instead, you get my class notes. Don’t get too excited.
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