Inhale. Exhale. Breath. Relax.

So I just realized my twitter handle's acronym is LSD. Awesome.

Anyways, 1Ls around this time generally get very fearful and anxious about their grades. Rightfully so, I suppose, when you consider that for many top law students, the participating firms at on campus interviews during the beginning of 2L year look at only your 1st year grades. Since 3L interviewing is mostly dead, your 1st year grades can, in effect, determine whether you make it to Biglaw, a prestigious federal internship, or whatever. In general, for clerking, the first 2 years matter.

There's also a strange concern about finding a job for their 1L summer. I find this laughable, for the most part.

Here's 2 quick thoughts I had on 1L grades and the 1L summer job search when I was supposed to be outlining.

1) It's definitely not the end of the world if you don't do well first semester.
While it is true that this can impact your 1L summer job, you'd be surprised at how little your 1L job matters most of the time. The important thing, if you do poorly, is to work hard 2nd semester to counter-balance it. Remember, it's better to do bad 1st semester and to do well 2nd semester than the other way around. Positive trends.... everyone loves them!

Oh, and your post-finals panic? People, you probably didn't do as bad as you thought.

2) STOP WORRYING ABOUT YOUR 1L JOB
Maybe I need to stop lurking on TLS, but it amazes me that people are concerned about 1L jobs right now. At the end of the day, the kid who RA'd for his professor over the summer is not really going to be at much  more of a competitive disadvantage than the kid who interned for a judge over the summer. It's just not that big of a deal. It's all about how you present it during the interview. There are plenty of good jobs to be had even if you don't start applying until after finals. Hell, some of my friends didn't find their summer jobs until March or April.

Finding a job for 1L summer is cake compared to the future job search...

Joy of Cooking

If I weren't in law school, I'd probably be in culinary school.

Ok, that's not true because my cooking skills are not very good, but if I wasn't in law school, I'd WANT to be in culinary school. Heck, I kinda wish I was in culinary school now. My life would probably still be busy and stressful, but it would also be DELICIOUS!

Anyways, I find myself experimenting with food more with finals approaching. This is probably because achieving some sort of success in the kitchen gives me the sense of accomplishment that I'm not going to be getting from finals, heh.

So, hopefully I'll get back into this blogging thing. The mission/context of this "blawg" has changed somewhat so I guess that requires some explanation at some point.

Brief Thoughts on Admitted Students Weekends and UVA

Hmmmm, so Above the Law recently reported a bit on the Virginia 3Ls who were protesting their unemployment by wearing shirts intended to scare off 0L's from attending UVA.

First thought: UVA 3L's are certainly justified in expressing how they feel.

Second thought: Hearing from disgruntled students isn't all bad for a 0L.

When I visited schools last year, I remember one school where a 3L, who was obviously not part of the group of volunteers that guide 0L's around, was rather bitter and cynical about the whole law school thing. I ended up attending that school. I'm not going to say that it's a good thing to have your 3L's badmouth your school (it's not), but schools go really far to shower you with all of their good aspects and none of the bad. Or if they do tell you bad things, they're minor and inconsequential. It was actually useful to hear some dissenting opinions, if you will. From two extremes you can get a better sense of the actual picture!

I volunteered for my schools admitted student activities and I mean, yeah, I glossed over some things. The more opinions you can get, the better.

'course, my disgruntled fellow didn't go so far as to make t-shirts.

An Aside: The LSAT

Ah, well, another long gap between posts. It's sad that I have many things I want to talk about, but either little time or willpower to write about it.

However, right now I am short on time but full of the desire to write, so I just smacked down my more reasonable side and have decided to write a post.

So when I last left off I was preparing for the LSAT. There's been some rumblings that the ABA might want to abandon the LSAT as a component of admissions. To this I react....

A) What the fuck
B) What the fucking hell?
and
C) You idiots!

Yeah, there's probably, by all accounts, a glut of lawyers right now, and law schools are enrolling more and more and opening more and more law schools. The LSAT remains a "barrier" (although, I'm pretty sure there are schools out there you can get into regardless of your academic statistics)

But my main bone of contention with removing the LSAT is that it's so very very clear that the academic standards are various universities are not the same. For me, getting an A at my undergrad was.... easy. I've walked into interviews with my undergrad GPA shining on my resume. Employers are impressed. I'm happy that they're impressed, but the secret truth is- liberals arts majors in general are a joke and many undergrad institutions themselves are jokes in terms of how difficult it is.

It is very easy in undergrad to use sites like ratemyprofessor or whatever it is that they're using to find the easy classes. I had one class where I think there were only a small handful of people who didn't get A's or high B's. I mean, it was friggin ridiculous. It was a required course too.

Plus, if you go to one of these state schools, no offense, but let's just say the student body does not exactly consist of the best and brightest. There are, of course, brilliant people amongst the general populace. But, taken as a whole, it's nowhere near as competitive as an elite private institution. 'Course, there's grade inflation at a lot of these elite institutions.

There's 2 counters to this I suppose. Your LDAS score report will give you an approximate percentile ranking in terms of LSAT takers from your school, or something like that. And then there's the LSAT itself, where you can find out just how good someone is academically. I mean let's not kid around, you can "learn" the LSAT. So really, the LSAT is mostly a judge of how well you can learn critical reading and logic. But, it's better than just relying on GPA and school reputation. It's just like high school with the SAT. I saw valedictorians and other highly ranked people do terribly on the SAT. And honestly, I didn't think those people were all that smart. Their high schools were not that great. Standardized testing has problems, but it does kind of even the playing field a bit.

So you didn't get into Harvard undergrad. So what? You can still make a 180 on the LSAT and then who the eff cares where you went? Otherwise, schools really have no choice but to weight GPAs differently (not that they don't already do that, but LSAT scores can help "verify" a good GPA from a questionable undergrad.

So that was rather long-winded and unfocused, but it's the best you'll get from me on a wednesday morning. I'm hungry.

Reminiscing (Part 1?)

Mmmm. So, I guess technically I'm young (22). Lately, though, I feel old. I've felt like time has just been flying by. It's hard to believe that the first year of law school is essentially 3/4 over. In just a few months the first year will have come and gone and I'll be just 2 years from being (I hope) an actual lawyer. Geez.

Let's rewind time some. I didn't blog or tweet or anything like that when I was in undergrad (I miss college soooo much), so y'all missed out on the joy that was my "0L" year. Now, like an old man, I feel like reminiscing a little bit about the joy that was not being in law school (because applying for law school was soooo much more fun). This is not because I am procrastinating (I am), it's because I feel nostalgic, honest!

Officially (in interviews, applications, etc) I have wanted to be a lawyer ever since I was a wee little one watching JAG and The Practice. Because, driving jet planes and having sex with fellow lawyers on desks was totally what I wanted to do. Ok, at that age, it was really the jet planes.

Ok, but really, I guess it started with doing the whole debate thing. Typical, eh? Although, I never did do mock trial in high school or undergrad. I've never really felt the compulsion to do it either, not even in law school. Methinks I won't be at trial attorney. Anyways (if you've read me at all, you've seen I digress easily and frequently) I decided in high school that I wanted to do this law thing. I was interested in public policy and government back then thanks to my debate experience (oh, young and idealistic young(er) me. So naive. so innocent. If only I could go back in time and warn you about the harsh realities).

More digression! Anywho, I went to undergrad and majored in government related things. The idea for most of undergrad was to do this lawyer thing. I took a logic class (somehow part of my poli sci requirements.... I have no idea why?) and I'm guessing that sucker was pretty useful on the LSAT. At the end of my sophomore year, I knew I had to start getting serious about the lawyer thing, so I joined a few legal related organizations and started reading more about the process. Of course, I didn't know nearly enough when I applied. I know much more about the whole thing now then I did then,

So, my plan was to begin padding my resume in my junior year (good god, did I do anything sophomore year? I guess going to sport events on campus and attending parties doesn't count for anything) and then take a Kaplan course in the spring. The goal was to take the LSAT in June of 2009. And now that the story has been set up a little bit, we'll continue it next time I feel like procrastinating, which, y'know, won't be long.