It’s one of the most wonderful times of the year–the October LSAT is upon us. Click through the slideshow below to check out the best legal tweets of the week–LSAT and non-LSAT themed alike.

Priorities

Yeah I know the LSAT is in 4 days, but I just got invited to a Harry Potter function & only have have SIX WEEKS to come up with a costume!

— Darcy (@darcwhale) September 29, 2015

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Check out the best of the week from lawyers and law students on Twitter in the slideshow below.

Whistle When Angry

My judge once told me to whistle when angry at work. Feel like a dwarf following Snow White today after so much whistling. #lawyering

— Ryan Ashley (@Ripe_Ryan) June 15, 2015

Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Check out the best of the week from lawyers and law students on Twitter in the slideshow below.

Lawyer’s Lunch

Can’t seem to get out of this courtroom this morning. Hope they are planning on serving lunch. #lawyering http://t.co/uOx6sTZb8X

— Pabst Law Firm (@Pabstlaw) June 11, 2015

Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Check out the best legal tweets of the week from these lawyers and law students. No summer vacation for you!

Macho Lawyering

My take on #macho #lawyering — dismissing vicarious #trauma ignores fundamental #ableism & #sexism in the #workplace http://t.co/xQGrr2CZQZ

— Jennifer Polish (@JenniferPolish) June 4, 2015

Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Beaches, sun, internships, and vacations; these are some of the highlights associated with Summer. That’s not the case though for thousands of 19 and 20 year olds frantically preparing for arguably one of the most overrated exams looming in the second week of June: the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). By now, every college sophomore and junior has probably heard that getting into law school  is “easier” than ever due to the decline in the applicant pool. Is it really though? Moreover, what does this notion entail once graduating seniors actually commit to their respective law schools? It seems that what used to be a competitive challenge for those truly passionate about law and policy has become an option for the thousands of students wanting to avoid “funemployment” and who are unsure of their post-graduation plans.

Millennials are being victimized by the fallacy that a law degree from a middle-top tier institution will provide stable employment upon graduation. Many refer to the phenomenon of the smallest applicant pool in 30 years as a “buyers market,”  wherein students are sold the idea that applying to law school now is a good idea because they will have a higher chance of attending a top Law School, thus potentially being scouted by a top law firm and earning a six-figure starting salary. Although this sounds very appealing, the “buyers market” leaves out a minor detail–law firms are placing little emphasis on the small applicant pools given the excess law graduates from years past and job demand finally stabilizing.  

Last year saw the smallest class of incoming law students at 38,000–a 37 percent decline from 2010. There is no denying that the smaller applicant pool and decreased percentage of high-test scorers contributes to the evidence that admission into tougher law schools is in fact a more viable option.  Furthermore, these numbers indeed provide an incentive for thousands of students who, prior to the applicant decline, would never have considered taking the LSAT. The formerly serious and competitive reputation of the LSAT, wherein students would prepare months in advance for the arduous five-hour assessment, has become arguably as common as taking the SAT.  The increase in under-prepared students taking the exam is shown by studies conducted on the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) data. Statistics disclose that the number of applicants with higher LSAT scores (above 170) has declined exponentially more than the number of applicants with lower scores, advocating that some students with high LSAT scores do not apply to law school at all while students with lower scores continue to apply.

Moreover, statistics demonstrate that companies are not hiring more lawyers than they were in 2010. Top law firms not only continue to scout and favor aspiring attorneys from top-ten schools, but now have the luxury of choosing from a much wider pool of applicants than just students who have just graduated.

According to the American Bar Association,  in 2013 only 57 percent of all law school graduates found full-time work, meaning the job lasted one year or more and was either a clerkship or mandated bar passage. It is important to note that 4,714 of the jobs reported were in fields that technically did not require law degrees, but rather employers preferred to hire Juris Doctorates (i.e. congressional staffers, labor organizers, or NGO workers etc). An additional 1,724 jobs were completely unrelated to law.

The employment numbers are not expected to differ much for the Class of 2016. There are 36,000 students predicted to graduate in 2016, as opposed to 46,776 in 2013. The ABA further projects that there will be 19,650 jobs available for those graduates. While these numbers convey that fewer people will graduate unemployed, the previously mentioned values do not take into account individual student qualifications and readiness, which prominent law firms rely heavily on before offering employment.

So while at face value the numerical indicators provide an optimistic view for undergraduate students banking on attending a higher-ranked law school, confounding variables such as fierce competition among peers and lack of preparedness factor into the discussion. As Slate’s senior business and economics correspondent puts it:

Most people should not attend law school. Specifically, you shouldn’t attend law school unless: a) you have an overwhelming compulsion to actually become a lawyer and b) you understand exactly what becoming a lawyer entails.

Although not the worst time to apply to law school, do your homework. Completely disregarding the average $122,158 debt law students graduate with–because that is an entirely different topic on its own–undergraduates who are not 100 percent convinced about law and policy might want to think twice about applying to law school. What momentarily may seem like a fantastic educational opportunity to attend a slightly better law school than what would’ve been the case a few years ago could end up being a curse in disguise; a detrimental and slipshod attempt at a legal career.

Symon Rowlands

Symon Rowlands is a member of the University of Miami Class of 2016 and was a Law Street Media Fellow during the Summer of 2015. Symon now blogs for Law Street, focusing mostly on politics. Contact Symon at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Are You Sure Now’s a Good Time to Go to Law School? appeared first on Law Street.

Check out this week’s slideshow of the best legal tweets of the week, I passed the Bar Exam edition. Congratulations!

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

This week’s installment of the best legal tweets of the week feature law students motivated for finals by TV lawyers, contracts-fueled breakups, and everyone’s favorite development: Chipotle deliveries! Check out the slideshow below of the best legal tweets of the week.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

It was a mixed bag for lawyers and law students this week, from legal THOTs to my personal favorite of client “asshattery,” check out this week’s slideshow of the best legal tweets of the week.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Wondering what lawyers and law students were up to this week? Check out this week’s slideshow below of the Best Legal Tweets of the Week.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Remember last week when lawyers everywhere were having the best week ever? Yeah, that’s over now. Back to the grind of endless paperwork and clients who can’t get their lives together. Lucky for you though, it’s fun to read about. Check out the slideshow below for the best legal tweets of the week.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Lawyers, law students, and even a baby who will absolutely be a litigator some day had the very best week ever. Check out this week’s slideshow of the best legal tweets of the week.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Last week’s best legal tweets were pretty much all downers and I chalked it up to the incessantly terrible weather and rampant SAD. But luckily this week, not only is the weather starting to perk up but so are the lawyers and law students! OK not everyone–1Ls are still miserable–but some lawyers are actually having some fun in their professions. Check out the slideshow below for this week’s best legal tweets of the week.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

It’s another rough week in the lives of law students and lawyers everywhere. Check out the best legal tweets of the week in the slideshow below.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Check out the slideshow below for some of the best legal tweets of the week that you might have missed.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Congratulations on making it through Snowmageddon and another week of work. If you’re like any of the lawyers in this week’s slideshow, you earned your vacation. Check out the latest selections of the best legal tweets of the week below.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

First of all let me just say this up front: I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it’s finals seasons. It’s tortuous and stressful and you probably can’t keep your eyes open or your brain at a normal speed. Wish I could help ya, but really all I can say is that the end is near and you totally earned a five-minute break to flip through this slideshow of people who are suffering too. Check out the best legal tweets of the week.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

You made it to the weekend! Congratulations. Have a cup of coffee, scroll through Twitter, and…OK, probably you should get back to work and studying. But before that, check out the best legal tweets of the week and follow these handles for some comic relief.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

It’s finally Friday and I know you need a break. Don’t pretend you don’t. There’s no shame in it. This was a LONG week. Know who it was ever longer for? Law students and lawyers, you poor dears. So go get your sixth cup of coffee, put on your serious space-creating face, and check out the best legal tweets of the week.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Lawyering is tough. If you’ve been through the law school struggle then you know this all too well. And as one of my favorite tweets of the week tells us, you probably have bags under your eyes so major they should have the Chanel logo on them. Need a break? Check out Law Street’s best legal tweets of the week.

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Chelsey Goff (@cddg) is Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University in DC. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at cgoff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Shelley Bernstein via Flickr]

Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

What did we learn from lawyers and law students on Twitter this week? That they are sleep deprived, haven’t had a fruit or vegetable since the elementary school lunch line, and are in desperate need of a drink. Oh and also my personal favorite — they don’t wear jeans because they aren’t cowboys. Check out the Best Legal Tweets of the Week.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

From professional power-napping in your car between classes to investing your life’s savings into extra shots at Starbucks, law students across the country struggled toward midterms this week. And while it wasn’t even remotely easy, this crop of tweeters made it entertaining. Check out the best legal tweets of the week.

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Chelsey Goff (@cddg) is Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University in DC. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at cgoff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Coletivo Mambembe via Flickr]

Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

Now that the world has made it through the excitement that was last week’s LSATs and the premiere of “How to Get Away With Murder,” we’re all back to the normal struggle. From autocorrects that prove you’re working too hard to the constant battle of law student versus the finite amount of ink in a pen, check out the best legal tweets of the week.

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Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

With the next LSAT just over a week away, 1Ls settling into that special experience we call law school, and clients wanting selfies in court, this turned out to be a great week in the world of funny legal tweets. Check out this week’s best, and then head over to #300Voices and discover the top accounts to follow for all things law and policy.

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Chelsey Goff (@cddg) is Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University in DC. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at cgoff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Garrett Heath via Flickr]

Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Best Legal Tweets of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

In life there comes a time to hold ’em and a time to fold ’em. This summer, I folded.

A couple of months ago, I was so overwhelmed with projects at work and life that it kept me up at night. I was so consumed with all the thoughts constantly rushing through my head that it affected how I interacted with people and the amount of quality sleep I got each night, and I was having a difficult time managing stress. In addition, I found it extremely difficult to focus at work.

After two months of long hours and groggy days, I learned two very important lessons:

1. It’s okay to ask for help.
2. A good psychiatrist with a liberal view on doling out prescriptions makes everything better.

Keep numbers one and two in mind, because they are important life lessons that it took me 28 years to learn.

It’s Okay to Ask for Help

I work in a very small office, and the work we do should really be taken on by an army at least three times our current size. That leaves a little number of people to do a big amount of work. We get it done, but it takes a lot of effort and many early mornings and late nights.

One day last week, I was feelingly particularly swamped. At the end of the day, I went into my boss’ office for a quick recap of what was going on for the rest of the week. As we talked, I finally came out and said, “this is a lot, and I’m a little bit overwhelmed.” I didn’t even look at her, because I half expected to be fired on the spot.

Instead, she said, “I was wondering how long it would take for you to ask for help! Listen, we work a lot here, but a big part of your professional development will be learning when to ask for help and learning when to say no. It’s okay to say no. Not a lot, but every once in a while. Just, you know…don’t make it a habit.”

A good psychiatrist makes everything better

I really wanted an Adderall prescription to help me focus at work, so I asked some doctor friends what buzz words I should use during my psychiatrist appointment.

Thanks to those friends, and my uncanny ability to memorize key terminology, I walked out of that appointment with two prescriptions for Adderall and Ativan. Ativan, my friends, is an anti-anxiety medication, and it is EVERYTHING. You take it right before bed, and you get a smooth eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. In addition, you wake up with little to no worries. I’m obsessed. Work isn’t super busy anymore, so I’ve cooled it on the Adderall, but my relationship with Ativan is perhaps my most important relationship to date.

I almost feel silly for not being on this winning combination of prescription drugs during law school. If I had to do law school over again, I would definitely get medicated.Seriously. Back then, I was a bit of a hippie; I believed that water and yoga can heal anything. I still believe that to be the case 95 percent of the time, but when the going gets rough…Ativan.

This ends my love letter to stress management. I also promise to be back in a more regular capacity because, really, I have no excuse.

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Peter Davidson (@PeterDavidsonII) is a young lawyer rants about news & politics and raves over the ups & downs of life after law school in the current legal economy. 

Featured image courtesy of [Flickr]

Peter Davidson II

Peter Davidson is a recent law school graduate who rants about news & politics and raves over the ups & downs of FUNemployment in the current legal economy. Contact Peter at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Managing Stress in a Stressful Legal Career appeared first on Law Street.

As a young woman, I have been inundated with advice on how to dress myself appropriately for a professional situation for years now. My first introduction to professional dress was in high school when I did Model UN. We competed at tournaments around the East Coast a few times a year, and every time we were told to wear “Western Business Attire.” For boys, that was easy. They had to wear khakis or suit pants with a button down and tie, with maybe a sports jacket. But for us girls, it was different. The guidelines were clear, but finding clothes that were appropriate and still cute were difficult. We occasionally got in trouble for wearing skirts that were too tight or short, but we still talked about other girls’ inappropriate club-like dresses with a certain sense of satisfaction.

In college, it got even worse. I compete in intercollegiate mock trial, where formality is even more intense. Girls wear suits in grey, black, or navy; collared shirts; conservative heels; and pantyhose. I make younger members of my team show me their outfits before we compete. I do this because I have received comments about my appearance before — my skirts are too short, or my sleeves are too long, or I chose the wrong color blouse.

And as it turns out, the pressure doesn’t change when you make it into the legal profession, because we hear things about women needing to dress more appropriately for court all the damn time.

A few weeks ago, Loyola Law School sent out a memo about female students dressing appropriately at their jobs or internships. The school’s externship director wrote, “I really don’t need to mention that cleavage and stiletto heels are not appropriate office wear (outside of ridiculous lawyer TV shows), do I? Yet I’m getting complaints from supervisors.” Last fall, law firm Clifford Chance sent out a lovely memo detailing how exactly women should dress — and act, and speak, and breathe, but that’s besides the point. (If you missed it, by the way, definitely read Hannah Winsten’s takedown on that memo.) Some of the tips were real winners: “Understated jewelry, nothing jingly or clanky.” “Don’t dress like a mortician: if wearing a black suit, wear something bright.” “If wearing a scarf, make sure it stays tied.”

These are by no means isolated incidents. In fact they’re more common than you probably think. And they’ve once again started a debate about what female lawyers should be wearing, who is allowed to comment on their dress, and why we care. So as someone who someday hopes to be a female lawyer, here are three things I think we all need to keep in mind.

3. ‘Lady in the streets, freak in the sheets,’ anyone? 

This entire thing reminds me of that saying, because that’s what women are taught. Women are expected to dress conservatively in the courtroom, but still retain femininity. They’re expected to be professional in the work place, but not dress too masculine — after all pantsuits have only become acceptable for women in the last couple decades. Think about how women and men dress up throughout their young lives in Western culture. Little boys wear little suits to say, a cousin’s wedding. Girls wear puffy, pink frocks. Young men wear nice suits or tuxes to prom. Girls wear ball gowns. Men wear tuxes to their wedding. Women wear gigantic white dresses.

For every single part of our lives, we’re taught that different things are acceptable, while men wear essentially variations on the exact same outfit. And that’s because women are taught that their roles are different at each of those events. At prom, be a princess. At your wedding, be a pure virgin. In court, be strong and masculine.

2. Pop culture and societal pressure.

Think about youngish female lawyers on TV and in movies. They’re all gorgeous. We have Reese Witherspoon’s immortalized portrayal of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. Casey Novak, played by Diane Neal on Law & Order: SVU. Calista Flockhart’s Ally McBeal.

The only way female lawyers are ever portrayed otherwise is the sort of elder stateswoman type, but still incredibly attractive. Think Diane Lockhart in The Good Wife, for example.

Now, it is pretty fair to say that everyone on TV and in Hollywood is attractive. But the men on legal shows usually wear pretty basic suits. The women wear incredibly expensive and well tailored outfits, all beautifully put together. This just continues to propagate the issue of balance. Most women don’t look like the fictional lawyers we see on TV, and that’s completely okay. But that fine line between feminine and too sexy, or between professional and stuffy is not helped by the images of female lawyers in the media.

1. Apparently men can’t control themselves. 

Now, women should dress appropriately in the courtroom. There are  no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It takes some effort, but it’s not that hard. I absolutely judge grown women who cannot dress themselves appropriately. When you walk into a courtroom, you need to impress the judge, and you need to impress the jury. But judges are mostly men — women usually make up roughly 1/3 of the bench. But one of the big issues, as XoJane points out, is that women’s clothing in the courtroom is not standardized the way men’s suits are. Every judge has a preference: “Some never want to see pants, for example, while others abhor specific hemlines or colors.”

And some of these male judges say BS, like District Judge Richard Kopf. He recently published a blog post in which he described how he leers at one of the attractive young women around the courthouse, and suggested, “You can’t win. Men are both pigs and prudes. Get over it.”

I can win. I can look professional, despite all the ridiculous double standards that abound in women’s clothing choices. But that doesn’t mean that I have to get over the fact that I’m held to those double standards. Why do I have to accept that a male judge is either going to mock me for being too frumpy, or eye me for being too sexy? And, most importantly, why in this day and age do we focus more on how smart, capable women dress than what they say?

So new rule, everyone. Let’s all dress appropriately…and all treat each other like respectable human beings. Deal?

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Martijn Schornagel via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Three Reasons to STFU About Female Lawyers’ Clothes appeared first on Law Street.

For anyone going to law school in the fall, that April 15 matriculation date is quickly approaching. As a senior in my last month of college, my workload is starting to thin. Instead of worrying about papers and exams, most of my time is spent trying to figure out where I want to study law for the next three years.

Before I even applied to law school back in January, one of the first things I did, like most people, was check the rankings. Earlier this month, U.S. News and World Report released their 2015 Best Law Schools rankings. At first glance, the new rankings maintain the status quo. The top 20 schools remain largely unchanged, with giants Yale, Harvard, and Stanford leading the pack. As you scroll down the list of prestigious schools, you’ll notice several ties. Columbia University and University of Chicago share the number four spot, while both UCLA and Vanderbilt occupy slot 16.

Anyone can view the schools’ rankings, tuition, and enrollment numbers; however, if you want to see any of the really useful data (LSAT scores; GPAs by percentile; acceptance and bar passage rates; percentage of students employed immediately and nine months after graduation; and peer and professional assessment scores) you’ll have to spring for the $30 annual membership.

Granted, these overall rankings certainly provide some valuable information. But you’d be crazy to base your decision solely on numbers. Here are five important factors, besides just rankings, to consider when choosing which law school is right for you.

1. Reputation both regionally and nationally

Rankings are only a piece of the puzzle, albeit a substantial one, when it comes to a school’s reputation. Another factor to consider is a school’s reputation on both a regional and national level. If you attend a law school in Boston, for example, odds are employers along the East Coast will  not only be familiar with your alma mater but more importantly will respect it. Conversely, a law degree from a Boston area school might not have the same clout in, say, California. While this isn’t as big a deal for those who plan to attend a top-20 law school, it’s definitely something to consider.

2. What type of law you want to practice

Talking to both peers and parents about where to go to law school, this is probably the most common question I have been asked. For someone like me, who’s not quite sure what type of law he’ll pursue, this question can be frustrating. Similar to when relatives ask you what you plan to do with your life after only one semester at college, this inquisition can leave you feeling lost, confused, and annoyed. While it’s impossible to know exactly how your career will unfold, it’s not unreasonable to have a game plan, or at least a tentative one. If you love the environment and want to change the way it’s treated, consider schools that boast strong environmental law programs. One reason not to rely solely on overall rankings is because they provide just what their name suggests – an overall rank. Take the time to do the research – a school may be ranked 80^th overall but might have the third best environmental law program in the country. For those of you, like me, with little to no idea where your law degree will take you, don’t fret. In your first year of law school there’s little room, if any, for electives. Your first year will focus more on the fundamentals – the meat and potatoes, as they say.

3. Where you want to practice

This is the second most common question I’ve been asked. While I may not know exactly what I want to do, I do have a general idea of where I see myself living and working. I mean this in both a geographical and organizational sense – both the location of where you want to work and the type of company or firm you want to work for. If you want to live and practice in New York City, go to school in the big apple. If you want to live and practice in New York and work in “Biglaw,” then a New York school is an even better fit. If you see yourself working for a smaller firm in a less competitive market, a top-tier school might not be the right place for you. To reiterate my first point, always consider reputation – both regionally and nationally.

4. Where you want to live for three years

Law school is tough, no one is denying that. During your three years as a law student, you’ll undoubtedly spend a large portion of your time in the library. But eventually you’ll leave the library and, hopefully, have some semblance of a social life. If nightlife is important to you, a school in Boston, Chicago, or New York might be a good fit. If you absolutely abhor the cold, a school in Florida or California may be the best match. I realize that yes, you are first and foremost a dedicated law student. But after an exam or a marathon library session, you’re going to need to blow off some steam. Whether your idea of a break is a bar or a beach, go to a school where you will be able to enjoy yourself outside of class.

5. How you’re going to pay for your education

Scanning tuition prices, paying for law school can seem daunting – and that’s because it is. Like your undergraduate education, law school is a big investment. But unlike colleges and universities, law schools are sometimes stingy with merit money or financial aid. Without a full ride, a sizable scholarship, or a hefty financial aid package, paying for a $45,000-a-year education can look pretty bleak. Many law students inevitably graduate up to the their necks in debt, but the hope is that you’ll have worked hard enough to secure a job with a salary that will make paying off loans bearable. In an ideal world, money shouldn’t deter students from attending their dream schools. In reality though, educational debt can’t be ignored. Most law schools have similar price tags, but here are some things to consider:

• Schools located in major cities will cost more, with regard to both tuition and living expenses.
• Keep in mind that many law schools offer an in-state tuition discount. Decide if the state school where you live is the best fit for you, and if it isn’t then figure out the eligibility requirements where you do want to go.
• If money is very tight, attending law school part time might be a better fit. The more flexible class schedule allows you to work while you’re in school.
• If you’re dead set on being a full-time student, be sure to apply for financial aid and scholarships – though most law schools automatically consider every applicant for merit money.
• Research different types of loans – many law schools offer low-interest loans through the university itself.
• In the end though, the best way to pay for law school is to build as strong an application as possible. A high GPA and LSAT score will not only get you into a good school, but will provide you with the best possible chance at receiving a scholarship.

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Matt DiCenso (@mdicenso24)

Matt DiCenso

Matt DiCenso is a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Matt at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Rankings Aren’t Enough: 5 Important Factors to Choose the Right Law School appeared first on Law Street.

I recently read a quote that said something along the lines of, “Choosing the right job is nowhere near as important as choosing the right boss.” When I first read that in early 2014, I had no idea how significant it would become in my life. As I’ve chronicled here, much has changed, and I now recognize the importance of a great supervisor and mentor.

As with everything in 2014, I have lucked out in the “right boss” category. The legal department at my job is very small, and I interact with my boss more than ten times a day. Our exchanges are so informative, and I told her recently that I have learned as much in my month of employment under her than in the entire last semester of law school.

Did you catch it?

A supervisor will give you a vague idea of what he wants and expects you to piece together the statements to paint the picture that he has in his head. A good boss, on the other hand, makes sure that you understand what she wants you to do and why. This tiny distinction makes a huge difference in the formation of a great lawyer, as opposed to a good one.

For example, I was tasked with drafting a contract that required very specific language, part of which was a provision that I never learned in law school. I’m not knocking my legal education at all, but this particular contract term was never part of our lectures. (I double checked with a couple of first-year section mates, and they were as clueless as I was.) Anyway, as I sat in my boss’ office, she mentioned the term that she wanted me to add to the contract, and my face must have given away my cluelessness.

Instead of firing me on the spot for being a bit of a himbo, she instead took ten minutes to explain the legal foundation behind the term, the reason that many law schools don’t cover it in a first-year Contracts class, and why it mattered for our particular line of work. It was among the most informative discussions I’ve ever had about a legal concept, and I valued the time she took to show me the ropes.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a good boss.

In my office, we are all working toward the same goal. Everyone is passionate and works really hard, and there is a real sense of teamwork everyday. In addition, egos are checked at the door and competition is not a word we use. Instead, we all humble ourselves and prepare for ten-to-twelve-hour days figuring out how to help our company continue to prosper. It is an awesome work environment, and it’s the first of all of my legal jobs to be like this.

As I started thinking of the subject of this blog, I wondered why my office is so collegial, and I came up with these three important reasons.

1. Size: Our company is very small — fewer than twenty people. We put on large-scale events all over the world, and we contract out a lot of the help, but the core team is very contained. We all know what the goals are for the event, our divisions, and the company as a whole, and everyone truly recognizes that he or she is an important cog in the machine.
2. Location: I work in Miami Beach. Let’s call a spade a spade: winter sucks, cold weather sucks, freezing rain sucks, and heavy jackets suck. My co-workers and I don’t have to deal with any of that, though; we work in Miami (yes, I’m still rubbing it in)! It’s gorgeous here and, as I said last time, it doesn’t get better than wearing shorts in January. Jealous? #OurManInMiami
3. Comprehensive Interview Processes: My interview was very long, and the people with whom I now work spent a lot of time figuring out how I think, how I work, and whether my personality would mesh well with everyone else in the office. I’m used to working for large government agencies where it’s easy to avoid contact with co-workers. At this job, it’s the complete opposite. Not only will I see all of my co-workers in a given day, I’ll see them multiple times. For that reason, our company really strives to make sure that everyone will work together.

On a final note, having the right boss who knows when to delegate really makes everyone’s job easier. We work long, hard hours, but there is very little stress. Everyone knows what his task is, and the completion of the task helps us reach the goal faster. I guess what I’m trying to say is, teamwork makes a dream work, and my beach is better. Capiche?

—

Peter Davidson is a recent graduate of law school who rants about news & politics and raves over the ups & downs of FUNemployment in the current legal economy. Tweet him @PeterDavidsonII.

Featured image courtesy of [TheMuuj via Flickr]

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Peter Davidson II

Peter Davidson is a recent law school graduate who rants about news & politics and raves over the ups & downs of FUNemployment in the current legal economy. Contact Peter at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Choosing the Right Boss appeared first on Law Street.

Somehow, I only recently encountered Adam Liptak’s scornful treatise of American law reviews in the New York Times (and, I must confess, my Law Street Media colleague Peter Davidson’s indignant response to it). Frankly, I agree with the criticisms of many judges and attorneys and even some law professors: law reviews really do produce far too much intellectual masturbation with precious little useful application in legal practice. It is rather odd that law reviews, unlike journals in other professional fields, are compiled and edited by relatively untutored, inexperienced students rather than by seasoned practitioners. I would add that much of the content of the average law review is—like so much else in the legal field—unconscionably dull. I remember having an easy time deciding whether to try out for a journal or Moot Court as a 1L: all I had to do was peek inside back copies of my school’s various journals and see how long it took for them to put my lights out.

Yet I see all of those complaints as reasons for law students to think twice before trying to claw their way onto Law Review, not reasons for journals not to exist (or to be edited by students) at all. Ultimately, in my mind, those flaws take a backseat to different questions. I fear that law review membership does too little to prepare students for legal practice, and that law firms are too preoccupied with journal membership as an indicator of student applicants’ potential to be great lawyers.

What, after all, do students on law reviews do? Not having touched a journal with a ten-foot pole myself, I have only secondhand familiarity with this question; but I’m confident that research and interaction with schoolmates who were on journals have led me to the right answer. Typically, journal members edit and cite-check articles that the editors have decided to publish, ensuring that references actually provide proper support for authors’ claims and that footnotes are properly Bluebooked. They also write “notes” or “comments” of their own that may end up being published in the journal alongside law professor’s contributions. The journal editors generally review submitted articles and select them for publication and supervise the editing and note-writing processes.

Perhaps such endeavors would help make real lawyers out of law students if either the content of law review articles or the process of writing and editing them bore much resemblance to what most attorneys do on the job. Unfortunately, that resemblance is scant at best. The system gives professors no incentive to write articles — and gives student editors no incentive to publish pieces — that are consistently relevant to real-world legal practice or useful to real-world practitioners. For professors, law reviews serve primarily as expositions of academic mettle in the quest for adjunct and tenured professorships. For students, journals serve mainly as signaling mechanisms to law firms, padding their resumes with credentials that they know employers want to see.

Therein lies the problem. It makes no sense for law firms to put as high a premium on journal membership as they do, especially in these times, with competition so stiff and clients demanding so much more — and more experienced — bang for their bucks. Firms seem to view the challenging process of making law review as an effective way of separating the academic wheat from the chaff, and the research, writing and editing that journal members do as critical to their development into lawyers. Yet this view is largely mistaken, if only because it doesn’t apply to all journal members. 1Ls in the top five, ten or 15 percent of their classes who grade on to law review do so due to their skill at spotting and analyzing issues in turgid and fanciful exam fact patterns, not because they are skilled at doing the kind of research, writing or editing that academia and legal practice require.

More importantly, although law review editing definitely hones students’ proofreading, Bluebooking and cite-checking skills, in terms of formatting and content, it is a far cry from the kind of day-to-day work attorneys do. Editing treatises of groan-inducing intellectual abstractions — such as “the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th-century Bulgaria, or something,” as Chief Justice John Roberts once wittily put it — bears little or no resemblance to performing pretrial discovery, negotiating plea bargains, drawing up contracts or doing real estate closings. Perhaps law firms themselves deserve much of the blame for the unpreparedness of so many law school graduates for actual lawyering. What do they expect, when they so strongly incentivize students to participate in a painstaking and time-consuming extracurricular activity that does precious little to teach them how to practice law?

Law firms would be wise to look further and wider for extracurricular experience in their prospective law student hires. Any number of other activities available to law students would inculcate real lawyering skills in them far better than editing law reviews’ tedious treacle would. I’ve already written in this blog about how my Moot Court experience disabused me with the idea of practicing law, but those misgivings were due to my own skills, interests and idiosyncrasies. Anyone who decides, for the right reasons, to become an attorney — and particularly a litigator — should eagerly welcome the opportunity to learn the vagaries of brief-writing and oral argument. Certainly no law review teaches how to format and structure briefs for maximum persuasive effect, how to give straightforward answers to judges’ questions, or how to keep one’s cool when being bombarded with hostile questions from a “hot bench” (or, for that matter, how to fill up 15 minutes of allotted speaking time in front of a quiet, “cold” bench).

Nor does any law journal editor learn experientially how to negotiate deals and mediate disputes or how to exonerate wrongfully convicted prison inmates and secure their release. Yet a number of my classmates were able to do so, through bar association competitions and clinics like Cardozo Law School’s Innocence Project. These tournaments provide the opportunity to be judged by experienced lawyers and judges and to win accolades, and clinics like the Innocence Project involve providing support in real-life cases. Such advantages only makes these activities even more deserving of prioritization over the glorified grunt work one is relegated to doing on even the most prestigious law reviews.

The moral of the story is that many extracurricular activities can prove far more valuable to a law student’s training as an attorney than journal membership. Law firms and other employers ought to take note. In this jarring period of change and adjustment, it’s not only law schools that need to think outside of the box.

Featured image courtesy of [Nic McPhee via Flickr]

Akil Alleyne

Akil Alleyne, a native of Montreal, is a graduate of Princeton University and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. His major areas of study are constitutional and international law, with focus on federalism, foreign policy, separation of powers and property rights. Akil is also a member of Young Voices Advocates, which connects students and young professionals with media outlets worldwide to facilitate youth participation in political and social discourse. Contact Akil at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

The post Law Firms Take Note: Law Reviews Aren’t All They’re Cracked Up to Be appeared first on Law Street.

I spent much of this past holiday season mulling over a sob story about a JD who got screwed by the law school racket. Though the media landscape of the past several years is strewn with such wreckage, this particular tale of woe stood out for me. For one thing, the victim went to an unspecified top-20-ranked law school and yet is still struggling on a $45,000-a-year salary, living with his parents and staring almost $200,000 of debt in the face. For another thing, he met with this fate after spending two years working at “miserable small law firms” for one abusive, larcenous boss and for another who made him work for nothing for 3 months, for a paltry $1,000/month for the next 3 months, and for a measly $2,000/month for another 3 months after that.

Though this poor man ended the article on a self-blaming note — “At the end of the day, it’s my own fault for being a sucker” — the gist of the piece is that his dire straits are really his law school’s fault. The school fed him a slew of misleading, half-true statistics about his post-graduation employment prospects, never informed him about the demoralizing nature of much legal practice work or the non-transferability of legal skills in the job market, etc. The tireless law school detractor Elie Mystal at Above the Law agrees: “If we’re going to blame the guy for something, blame him for believing the hucksters who were selling him on legal education. It’s fine if you want to look down on the fool who buys the snake-oil thinking that it will cure cancer, just don’t forget that the real culprit here is the snake-oil salesman.”

As an underemployed 28-year-old who also wonders whether law school was the right choice for him, I sympathize with my compatriot’s quandary. Yet I must confess that I’ve never felt that kind of resentment toward my law school, and never felt as if anyone were to blame but myself for the challenges I’ve faced in the job market. More broadly speaking, I’ve never joined wholeheartedly in the chorus of condemnation being directed at the legal academy.

Admittedly, it may be because I haven’t yet suffered quite the same misfortune as the subject of the article. My status as an international student (I hail from Montreal, Canada) slammed the federal student loan door shut in my face when I applied. While this had the obviously detrimental effect of saddling me (oh, hell, who am I kidding — on my mother, really) with a vastly heavier up-front tuition burden, it also required me to rely on my school for its modest financial aid grants and loans. As a result, I’m facing maybe a third of the student loan debt that the average law school graduate has to shoulder.

Also, my extracurricular activities and my post-2L summer internship plugged me into a network of public-interest and public policy organizations and foundations inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway. Those connections have so far netted me two back-to-back legal internships with nonprofits in the nation’s capital that have kept me employed since I graduated last May. I obtained the first position through an internship-stipend program that paid me $10 an hour during the summer — $1,600 a month. Last fall, I did a stint at a prominent D.C. think tank that was able to pay me a stipend of $1,400 a month. Each sum was too stingy to enable me to do much more than scrape by, especially after taxes…but scrape by I’ve so far managed to do, and without having to work for any bosses from hell, either. In those respects, I’ve been luckier so far than the hapless JD from the Business Insider article.

Yet I have a broader reason for steering clear of the “damn law schools” bandwagon. It is the applicants’ responsibility to conduct thorough research into the academic programs to which they apply and the careers to which they grant access, the better to ensure that they’re investing their time, tuition/loan money and work in the right places. More specifically, I think applicants have always borne that responsibility, since even before it became fashionable for pundits to pillory law schools for their purported racketeering.

Consider, for instance, this Business Insider interviewee’s own story. He rightly advises prospective law school applicants to “work for a law firm for at least a year before going to law school and see if it’s something you want to do.” (Sound familiar? I sure hope so.) Yet he seems to have learned this lesson the hard way, since at the interview’s outset, he answered the question, “Why did you decide to go to law school?” with “Because I wanted to be a lawyer. I also wanted greater career opportunities than my BA offered me.” Left unmentioned is the issue of what made him want to be a lawyer, or why he thought that a JD might be a ticket to any careers beyond just practicing law. It’s a pity the interviewer didn’t ask about it, for the answer might have shed some light on whether he had any business going to law school in the first place, regardless of the current state of the legal job market.

He further mentions, “I believed the legal education industry’s sales pitch circa 2007-08 that lawyers will always be in demand and that bankruptcy will be a hot practice area when the economy is poor.” Insofar as this pitch was misinformed or even downright dishonest, I sympathize — but only so much. These claims were certainly plausible and believable, especially from the vantage point of that period, when the economic crisis was just taking off and the arguable folly of law school wasn’t yet obvious. Nonetheless, these were law school officials leading our man astray — not actual lawyers. While he can be forgiven for listening to this advice, given its supposedly reputable source, it’s fair to blame him for falling for it hook, line and sinker. He shouldn’t have believed the hype without consulting some practicing lawyers who could have set him straight. They would have been much less biased sources of advice; after all, as he himself puts it, “law grads do not have an economic interest in your attendance at law school. The law school always does.”

Could he have been expected to know any of this back in his younger, more callow days? I think so. Anytime a school that mires its students in debt to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars paints a glowing portrait of its program, without mentioning any caveats or sounding any cautionary tone, one should always take its cheerleading with a grain of salt. Is his naiveté nonetheless understandable? Certainly it is…but there is a more general principle here, one that applies to the analysis of whether one should apply to any academic program. The people running these programs have a vested interest in getting you in their doors; what they tell you isn’t necessarily to be trusted. You should never base your decision entirely on their word.

None of what I’ve said here should be taken to mean that law schools themselves don’t deserve a hefty share of the blame for so many of their graduates’ predicaments. It’s only right to criticize them for their lack of transparency, which can and does have destructive consequences. Yet that doesn’t absolve applicants of their own responsibility to do their homework before jumping in with both feet. That principle holds truer than ever these days, with law school enrollment plummeting and law school-bashing so popular. I salute all those who continue to warn young people of the perils of going to law school unprepared, or for the wrong reasons, or at all; they are performing a valuable service to the public. I just hope that the intended beneficiaries of these warnings continue to be smart enough to listen up — before it’s too late.

Featured image courtesy of [Michael Fleshman via Flickr]

Akil Alleyne

Akil Alleyne, a native of Montreal, is a graduate of Princeton University and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. His major areas of study are constitutional and international law, with focus on federalism, foreign policy, separation of powers and property rights. Akil is also a member of Young Voices Advocates, which connects students and young professionals with media outlets worldwide to facilitate youth participation in political and social discourse. Contact Akil at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

The post Are Law Schools to Blame for Graduates’ Struggles? appeared first on Law Street.

Leave it to an actual lawyer to give decent advice to young people thinking of applying to law school. On the U.S. News & World Report website, Shawn P. O’Connor, a Harvard-trained attorney and the founder and CEO of a test-prep and admissions counseling company, has penned a bang-up article about how prospective law students should decide not just whether, but when to apply. When I stumbled upon this article through a link over at Above the Law, I almost cheered out loud when I read the four main questions that Mr. O’Connor says would-be applicants should ask themselves before taking the plunge: 1. Will time off between college and law school hurt my odds of getting in? 2. Am I ready for law school classes? 3. Should I take my parents’ advice? And, 4. When should I take the LSAT? Having gone through the whole brutal, three-year slog myself, I was especially gratified to see people in the know encouraging college kids to consider questions two and three in particular.

Of the four questions, the final one is of the least interest to me, but I’ll happily defer to Mr. O’Connor’s advice — that it’s a good idea to take the LSAT while still in college — which rings true enough. If you’ve followed my commentary here at Law Street Media at all so far, you already know my answers to the first and third questions. So let me turn my attention to the question that I found most important, and that I think has gotten nowhere near enough attention in the recent discourse about the wisdom of law school: the nature of law school classes. Think of my existing advice as the “Alleyne doctrine” — people should learn as much as they can about lawyers’ work before applying to law school — and of the following as the corollary: People should learn as much as possible about the law school curriculum before applying.

A recent article at Salon.com has put American law schools on blast for adopting a “hyper-capitalist” approach both to the law itself and to teaching it. I don’t buy the piece’s central thesis, if only because of my own law school experiences (but that’s a story for a later article). Author Benjamin Winterhalter did, however, have me nodding through most of an early paragraph that describes the Socratic method of lecturing as “a mode of instruction whose sole discernible purpose is to torture students through the elaborate belaboring of obvious points” and that bemoans “the end-of-semester exam, a three-hour rite of passage that is graded anonymously, covers an entire semester’s worth of material, and counts for 100% of one’s grade.” These are two critical aspects of law school classes that distinguish legal pedagogy from most other forms of higher education, and for which many law students (most definitely including yours truly) are insufficiently prepared.

Actually, I’m not sure where or when Winterhalter attended law school, or what else possessed him to write about “three-hour” final exams. The briefest exam I ever took in law school — my 1L Torts final — lasted three and a half hours, and it was obvious that the professor only cut it that short to make it artificially harder, thus making it easier for him to grade it on a curve. (Bastard.) Otherwise, in 3 years of law school, every in-class exam lasted either four or five hours. I remember my Property professor saying that he used to give his students six-hour exams until the Registrar made him stop. Three hour exams seemed long and torturous to me in college, all right, but law school certainly disabused me of that delusion.

Then again, as much as I dreaded each four-or-five-hour ordeal beforehand, once in the classroom I found myself wishing the exams were actually longer. Many law school exams, you see, are based on lengthy, implausibly convoluted “fact patterns” — which is weird legalese for “hypothetical” — full of countless juicy legal issues just waiting for you to spot them and sink your teeth into them. Skilled professors, however, are adept at hiding these issues in fact patterns in ways that make it hard to spot them, to do them analytical justice within several hours and to avoid second-guessing one’s own analysis of them. (This is especially difficult for naturally ungifted test takers like me.) Combine these factors with the incredible dryness of most of the subject matter involved and the fact that each single exam will probably count for the entirety of the respective course, and you’ve got quite a challenge on your hands.

I’ve always strongly doubted the wisdom of this approach to teaching law. The competitiveness of the system isn’t the problem; legal practice is a highly competitive field, and the more law schools prepare their students for the struggle to stay ahead of the curve, the better. Yet I do question the intellectual usefulness of the byzantine hypos to which many of my professors subjected us. The facts in real-world cases, mind you, are often very complex, but in all the legal research I’ve done, I have yet to encounter a case with a factual history that approached the pretzel-like contortions that characterize law school exam fact patterns. Real-life lawyers certainly don’t have to decipher these cases and judge the legal claims within them in a matter of several hours. And at the end of the day, making an entire course grade dependent on one exam is a recipe for inaccurate evaluations of each student’s true lawyering potential. Test-taking aptitude is one thing; lawyering skill is another. The insistence on assessing the latter according to the former may very well contribute to the inadequate preparation of students for legal practice that plagues law schools today.

I don’t have much to say about Socratic dialogue, other than that I greatly appreciated my Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure professor’s practice of not calling on students at random in class. I forget his rationale for that policy, but I agree with Benjamin Winterhalter’s criticism of Socratic dialogue for its “belaboring of obvious points.” While I sympathize with professors’ desire to maximize class participation, Socratic interrogation generally consists of professors asking students for answers that are obvious to the questioners but painfully elusive to the hapless respondents. Undergoing the exercise often feels like being asked to read professors’ minds, a process that encourages students to second-guess themselves even when they actually know the right answers. That sort of professor-student interaction works splendidly in class discussions in which there is room for debate about what the law is or should be. In the context of larger lectures designed to teach basic, indisputable legal doctrines, however, students could probably do without it.

All of this advice may be wasted on the legal academy, of course. God alone knows how likely professors and administrators will ever be to change their ways. For the time being, at least, the law school curriculum as we know it is probably here to stay (with modest variations, of course, from school to school and from professor to professor). As long as the status quo prevails, anyone thinking of becoming a lawyer should first try to learn not only what it’s like to practice law, but also what it’s like to study it. Visit law schools, sit in on lectures, ask current students or graduates for copies of casebooks or old exams — do whatever it takes to make sure that once you walk through those doors, you’re not flying blind.

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Featured image courtesy of [George Serdechny via Flickr]

Akil Alleyne

Akil Alleyne, a native of Montreal, is a graduate of Princeton University and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. His major areas of study are constitutional and international law, with focus on federalism, foreign policy, separation of powers and property rights. Akil is also a member of Young Voices Advocates, which connects students and young professionals with media outlets worldwide to facilitate youth participation in political and social discourse. Contact Akil at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

The post Law School Classes and Their Discontents appeared first on Law Street.

Seeing as how I’ve already argued that law schools should put more emphasis on teaching law students how to practice law, it’s only fair that I respond to a certain contrary viewpoint circulating on the interwebs. Above the Law blogger Elie Mystal—whom I’ve seen speak and whose commentary I enjoy—has dismissed as a “myth” the idea that students can graduate ready to practice sure-footedly right out of the law school gates. “I think the pedagogical infighting over ‘theory’ courses versus ‘practical’ courses,” Mystal writes, “is irrelevant when people are graduating from lower-ranked law schools with $100,000 (or more) in student loan debt.” In this critique, Mystal echoes University of Maryland law professor Robert Condlin, who in a recent research paper called the practice-ready concept a “millennialist fantasy.”

As Professor Condlin writes in the abstract to his paper, post-graduate job placement “is a function of a school’s academic reputation, not its curriculum, and the legal labor market will rebound only after the market as a whole has rebounded (and perhaps not then).” It’s the shortage of legal jobs out there that has got current law students and recent graduates (like me) at such a disadvantage, he points out, and “producing more ‘practice ready’ graduates will have no effect on the supply of jobs.” At any rate, “legal practice” itself is a multi-faceted thing, one that cannot be fit into a simple package that law schools can teach to all comers: “There are as many different types of practice as there are levels of readiness for it, and proponents of the proposal do not say which of these various possibilities (and combinations of possibilities) they have in mind.”

The problem with Mr. Mystal’s and Professor Condlin’s position is not its substance, which seems pretty sound to me. Rather, they go wrong in their choice of target: the notion that training law students to have at least some clue of how to practice law is meant to be “a panacea to the problems with legal education,” as Mystal puts it. Now, I’ve done a great deal of (highly worrisome) reading on this and related subjects over the past three-odd years. (Warnings about the follies of law school—including a lot of pretty snarky and entertaining ones—have been circulating widely through media both old and new since at least my 1L year.) In all that time, I’ve never heard or seen anyone suggest that more vocational legal schooling will be a cure-all for the problems in the legal job market.

Perhaps one shouldn’t blame Mystal, Condlin and their sympathizers for thinking otherwise. Many observers calling for law schools to operate more like trade schools don’t make it clear enough that they’re only addressing one particular problem with legal education, not all of its problems. Yet even if correcting this systemic error won’t boost the post-graduation employment rate by itself, that correction is still an inherently worthy goal. I always remember with amusement the early scene in the 1992 blockbuster My Cousin Vinny in which Joe Pesci’s titular character tells his long-suffering fiancée that law school teaches you what the law is, but not how to make use of it in the courtroom. As John Marshall Law School professor Alberto Bernabe has written, “Vinny is terrible at the things we do teach in law school, but very good at the things we don’t…[such as how to] interview clients, to gather facts, to prepare a theory of a case, to negotiate, to know when to ask a question and when to remain quiet, to cross examine a witness forcefully (but with charm) in order to expose the weaknesses in their testimony.”

Without exactly being an expert on the subject myself, I gather that Mystal and Condlin are essentially right on the facts. Common sense alone suggests that no greenhorn can emerge from any school already knowing exactly how to get the job done. At least some experience is a must for success in any position; there’s no reason to think that lawyering would be an exception to that rule. Even professional schools that focus on teaching practical skills can do only so much to prepare their students to hit the ground running after graduation day. As for law specifically, there are also many different kinds of legal practice, and law schools would be logistically hard pressed to teach all of the skills that are needed for work in all of those fields. Moreover, Mystal is right when he caustically points out that “Seton Hall could produce the most ‘practice ready’ graduates in the country, and those students still aren’t going to do as well as Columbia law students.”

Nonetheless, too many students nowadays graduate not really knowing how to be lawyers—including many who actually get jobs after graduating as well as the ones who don’t. This fact is problematic for overcharged clients and overworked attorneys who need even rookie associates to be able to walk and chew gum. Even if more practice-oriented education won’t magically conjure up a cascade of new law jobs, the legal academy should still adopt a more vocational approach, if only for the sake of productivity. It may not be possible to prepare students to practice with 100% competence when they’re hot and fresh out of the law school kitchen, but they can be made readier than they typically are today. Newly minted lawyers should not be put to shame by a Vincent LaGuardia Gambini.

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Featured image courtesy of [UBC Library Communications via Flickr]

Akil Alleyne

Akil Alleyne, a native of Montreal, is a graduate of Princeton University and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. His major areas of study are constitutional and international law, with focus on federalism, foreign policy, separation of powers and property rights. Akil is also a member of Young Voices Advocates, which connects students and young professionals with media outlets worldwide to facilitate youth participation in political and social discourse. Contact Akil at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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This morning, I opened up my Facebook account only to be swamped by a flood of bar-exam-passage-celebrating statuses from my former law school classmates. What better occasion can there be to reflect on my own decision not to take the bar exam (at least not yet) and to pursue a career outside of legal practice — as well as the idea of going to law school?

As my blogger spotlight hopefully shows, I’ve never been completely sold on the idea of being a lawyer. My experiences in law school only solidified my goal of putting my substantive legal knowledge to use in another field — legal analysis at think tanks and media outlets, if I have my way. If your life experience is anything like mine, then this goal should remind you of another piece of advice that you’ve probably heard a million times: “You can do lots of things with a law degree.”

It’s hardly a myth that law degrees are versatile; Lord knows plenty of lawyers go on to make their marks in business, politics, banking, and sundry other occupations. The question is whether this versatility makes it a good idea for someone who would rather not become a lawyer to go to law school.

I’ve already gotten a very blunt answer to this question from an actual lawyer, and an Ivy League-trained one at that. Almost three years ago, I met a fellow alumnus of my alma mater who had graduated from Harvard Law about six months earlier and was working — surprise, surprise — as a highly-paid corporate lawyer in Manhattan. When I inquired as to how work was going, he said, “It’s funny you should ask that. I actually just gave my two weeks’ notice last Friday. I can’t take it anymore.” Taken aback, I asked why, and was treated to a litany of the horrors of corporate practice: the grueling (billable) hours, the grinding tedium, the office politics, the pressure to make it rain. Having gotten just a taste of the lawyer’s life, he already wanted out.

Presently, the conversation turned to my motivations for going to law school. I explained that, while I still considered public-interest litigation a goal of mine (I was still a 1L, young and foolish), I was exploring career options outside of legal practice as well. I mentioned that I had gone to law school in large part out of sheer intellectual interest in legal issues, primarily constitutional and international ones. With a rueful laugh, he interjected: “That’s a terrible reason to go to law school. If you’re smart, you’ll go to law school only if you really, really want to be a lawyer — period.”

Other 1Ls, faced with this advice from this high-achieving graduate of one of the two or three best law schools in America, would have seen the handwriting on the wall and left law school for sunnier climes. Though I wouldn’t have blamed them, I saw it through to the end, since I knew that much of the politically-oriented analysis that I wanted to do professionally would require firsthand familiarity with the laws of the land. As a general principle, however, I eventually had to concede his point — for the most part, at least — based on what I learned during the rest of my legal schooling. Given the stress and hard work that it entails and, above all, the sheer cost of enrollment, law school generally really is best suited to those who go through it in order to do the one kind of work that one absolutely needs a law degree to do: lawyering.

As law schools gravitate toward more practice-oriented instruction, traditional J.D. programs are less and less appropriate for people who want to know what lawyers know without necessarily doing what they do. Yet as University of New Mexico law professor Carol Parker recently noted, legal knowledge comes in awfully handy for people throughout the whole workforce. Law schools are now churning out thousands more new graduates than there are new legal practice jobs each year, with countless graduates ultimately putting their legal knowledge to use without actually practicing law. This development is unsurprising given the overall climate in the country. As the regulatory state continues to grow and governments and courts continue to pile rule on top of law on top of regulation, there is less and less reason for familiarity with this tangled web to be the exclusive preserve of attorneys, judges, clerks and law professors.

Professor Parker advocates “creating exciting programs that combine legal information with the arts, sciences, and other professional programs.” This idea makes sense to me. I would have been delighted to find a non-J.D. academic degree program — in a political science department, for instance — that would have focused on a more intellectually-oriented study of the law. The deal breaker for me, however, would have been that the program provide the same depth of familiarity with constitutional and international legal doctrines law that actual attorneys have. The ideal setup would have taught me fundamentally the same material that I learned in the constitutional and international law-oriented courses that I took in law school, but in a very different style, one more similar to the kinds of study — independent as well as course-based — that one finds in graduate school programs. There should especially be less emphasis on courses in which the entire final grade is based on one final exam result (a topic on which I plan to comment at greater length in the future).

In my last post, I argued that J.D. programs should focus more on training students to practice law and less on teaching them abstract values like “educated citizenship” and “leadership for the future.” In addition, either law schools or grad schools should consider offering “Master of Law” programs that would take the approach I advocate above. Let those who want to be lawyers learn just that, and let those who want to learn about the law for other purposes do likewise. To each, his own.

Featured image courtesy of [Marc Baronnet via Wikipedia]

Akil Alleyne

Akil Alleyne, a native of Montreal, is a graduate of Princeton University and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. His major areas of study are constitutional and international law, with focus on federalism, foreign policy, separation of powers and property rights. Akil is also a member of Young Voices Advocates, which connects students and young professionals with media outlets worldwide to facilitate youth participation in political and social discourse. Contact Akil at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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As luck would have it, the nonprofit work I’ve done since graduating from law school last spring has situated me among hordes of college students and recent graduates a few years younger than I am. The question I’ve gotten from them most often has been “Should I go to law school?” Without answering the question definitively for anyone, I gladly offer the advice that I wish I’d been given as a youngster. “Whatever you decide,” I tell them, “know this: being a skilled communicator or arguer, by itself, does not a lawyer make.”

I’ve had a knack for writing and oratory since I was young, excelling in public speaking and debate competitions and Model UN conferences throughout high school. In law school, I joined the Moot court Honor Society, participating in tournaments that simulated oral arguments before appeals courts. Over the years, I also became a decent writer (though of course, you can be the judge), contributing to student newspapers, opinion journals and online blogs. I’ve also been a history and politics buff since childhood, and many of the issues that enthralled me required legal knowledge to do them justice.

So what career development advice did I get from countless grownups around me? “Do law,” they said. “You’re good at speaking, writing and arguing; you’re into politics and history; you want to make a difference in the world. What better career could you have?”

From a young age, then, I leaned toward law as the most sensible career path for me. The fact that I developed a genuine interest in constitutional and international legal issues in college only further steered me in that direction. So after struggling to find other decent work for two years after graduating, I bit the bullet and went to law school.

A rude awakening awaited me. I found most of the course material—particularly during 1L—mind-numbingly boring; the four- or five-hour final exams, punishing; and the overall cost, staggering. What I learned about legal practice in summer internships and Moot Court didn’t shine much light at the end of the tunnel, either: demoralizing Bluebooking; poring through reams of cases, statutes and regulations written in stultifying prose; the endless formatting that goes into any halfway decent brief. Scandalously for me, even oral argument proved a letdown. You have no idea how aggravating it can be to argue with someone who outranks you and can crack the whip over your head at will. After years of debating my peers, I balked at the almost slavish deference that lawyers have to pay judges in court.

I also found that making losing arguments perfunctorily is not my strong suit. I know, I know—debaters are supposed to be good at that, no? Unlike academic debate, however, the law straitjackets its practitioners with binding rules that may have little actual merit. Together with real-world facts, these rules often require lawyers to make downright ridiculous arguments on their clients’ behalf. I still remember with annoyance my last Moot Court tournament, in which I had to argue with a straight face that my client, a fictional Pacific country, had somehow not violated international refugee law by apprehending boatloads of people who had gotten lost at sea while fleeing a series of natural disasters, detaining them for years without processing in an overcrowded, grimy facility with asbestos in its walls, and then transferring half of them to a neighboring country with a horrific human rights record. In the real world, although such lawyering is a dirty job, someone has to do it; I just increasingly doubt that I am that someone.

Once disillusioned, I remembered the days when elders urged me to study law because of how articulate and argumentative I was. Only then did it dawn on me that none of them were lawyers; none of them were especially qualified to recommend it as a career. I also realized that none of the actual lawyers I had known had ever encouraged me to follow their lead. Although they didn’t mention what a stressful, expensive bore law school is, none of them ever suggested that because I was a skilled writer, speaker and debater, law was the way to go. They knew better.

It’s not the fault of the first group that my decision to go to law school was so uninformed. They gave me the best advice they could (deluded as they were by television and films, which conceal the sheer mundanity of lawyers’ work). What’s more, I have no excuse for not contemplating the humdrum nuts and bolts of legal practice from the beginning. In the eleventh grade, my high school let me spend a day shadowing a high-powered attorney while she and her colleagues defended a tobacco company in a civil trial. The experience didn’t get my juices flowing. A bailiff had to admonish me to stop slouching and sit up straight; later on, I actually dozed off and had to be nudged awake by one of the attorneys. Yet I unforgivably missed this chance to learn a critical lesson the easy way. One necessary attribute for success as an attorney is, quite frankly, a very high tolerance for tedium—a quality I’ve never possessed in abundance.

The moral of my story is that students should find out what lawyers actually do daily before deciding to become one. Succeeding in law takes a lot more than an argumentative streak, a golden pen and a silver tongue, and not all attorneys even need those qualities. Drafting contracts and wills, doing real estate closings and other transactional legal tasks don’t require a gift for the gab. Moreover, lawyers aren’t the only ones who get paid to write, speak and argue well, or to advocate for deserving causes and people. The earlier prospective law school applicants are alerted to this reality, the less the workforce will be plagued by the scourge of mismatch—and the happier and more fulfilled a lot of people will be.

Featured image courtesy of [Flickr]

Akil Alleyne

Akil Alleyne, a native of Montreal, is a graduate of Princeton University and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. His major areas of study are constitutional and international law, with focus on federalism, foreign policy, separation of powers and property rights. Akil is also a member of Young Voices Advocates, which connects students and young professionals with media outlets worldwide to facilitate youth participation in political and social discourse. Contact Akil at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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