Knocked Out the First Day

I had Criminal Law and Torts today, my first two classes of law school. A little side note, we had assignments for the first day of class, not assignment that our prof's gave us the first day, but assignments we had to have completed when we showed up. Criminal Law with Prof Bridge had us reading about 25 cases and Torts with Prof Ryan had about 20 pages of reading. Overall it was good, Bridge likes to call four people at the start of class, have them stand up and then he directs all his questions to those four people for the duration of class. Ryan calls on someone, asks them a few questions, then will move on to someone else. Pretty cool, but it can be intimidating. I didn't get called on, which turns out is probably bad luck, first day of class and the teachers expect less and are more sympathetic. The longer I go and the more challenging it will be. Legal Writing is going to be interesting, they basically told us that if you were a good writer in college, it's going to be tough for you to unlearn what you know. Great. Weekend is here, then I'll hit a full week of class, better get reading.

SMU Orientation

Wow, twelve hours of orientation on Tuesday and six more hours on Wednesday and you'd think I had some idea about what was going on. We did get to eat quite a bit so that was nice, but it was a lot of information to soak in. One thing that was really helpful is that we have some mentors who are 2L's and have a good idea as to what we're going through. I'm pretty stoked to be starting, it's like I've been waiting forever for this day and it's finally here. Not sure if I really understand what I'm getting into, but it's exciting. The SMU campus is gorgeous, I'm going to take some pics and post them, but it's old school traditional and really nice. I've met some cool people that are in my section, seem like a good group and we're all excited to be here and anxious to see what it's like. Friday is my first day of classes, Criminal Law and Torts so I'll get the weekend to figure out what I've got myself into!

1L Fall Schedule

So after my almost being lost in the SMU database scare, it looks like everything is starting to come together. I got my class schedule for the upcoming semester (which starts in a week) and my orientation schedule. Tuesday the 18th I have all day orientation, and when I say all day, I mean all day. It kicks off at 9:00 AM and goes till 8:30 PM and includes breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then Wednesday I come back and get some more from 9:00 AM to 3:15 PM. Friday the 21st is the first day of classes so I get to experience my first two classes from 9 to 11, then I have to stick around till 1 PM for another orientation for Legal Writing.



Civil Procedure TuTh 2-3:15

Torts MWF 10-10:50

Property WF 9-9:50

Contracts MW 2-2:50

Criminal Law MTuTh 9-9:50

Legal Writing TuTh 10:30-11:45

So it's kind of a crazy schedule, lots of breaks so I can get some studying done in between classes. We'll see how it goes.

Close Call

You know that feeling in the pit of your stomach where it seems like something cold and wet is slowly devouring you from the inside out? I just endured a few minutes of that horrible feeling as I spoke with a couple of advisers at the registrars and admissions offices at SMU. I start school on the 18th, so two weeks from tomorrow and I still don't know my schedule. There are two schedules for first year students and we don't get to pick which one we want, they are simply assigned to us. I've been waiting and waiting and waiting FOREVER to see which one is mine, but to my disappointment, I haven't received it yet. So I decided to call the registrars office to get more info. The woman I spoke with was very nice and after telling me that most schedules have been sent, she tried to look me up. From there, the fun began; she couldn't find my name in her spreadsheet so she informed me I needed to speak with the admissions office and then transferred me over there. (This is where that sick feeling started springing to life.) So I spoke with another nice woman and after explaining to her what was going on, she took my info and put me on hold. It was probably thirty seconds, but as the fear worked its way up my stomach and into my extremities, I started imagining what I could do or would have to do if I wasn't going to start law school in two weeks. Finally she came back and advised me that there had been an error (heart stopped working for a split second), on their end (heart went into overdrive) and that everything had been corrected. The rest is kind of a blur, I vaguely remember confirming that everything was fine and that there was nothing further that I needed to do and that I was squared away. She must have reassured me because I started thanking her amidst my laughter and relief. After I got off the phone with her I had to tell me wife, so I called her up at work and told her about what had just happened. After sharing my story, she made the comment that for a moment her hopes had risen thinking that maybe I wouldn't be able to go to school and I would have to get a job! Silly woman, why get a job when I can get us into more debt?

The LSAC

The Law School Admission Council, basically everything you need to apply for law school. Personally I think it friggin' rocks, but I understand and have friends who think it's just there to make a profit and force law students to do things their way. It's kind of the Walmart for law students, but there aren't any other competitors, just the one-stop shopping experience. Basically, you sign up at lsac.org, fill out all your information and then it tells you what you need in order to apply. You'll have to get your undergraduate school to submit your transcript, all your letters of recommendation have to go to them with an official cover sheet, your resume and personal letter, you sign up for the LSAT through them and can check your scores after they have been submitted and you can apply for law school through the website. I say you can, but I'm fairly sure that you have to. You can fill out the paper form that each school requires, but all the other information has to come from LSAC, if I'm not mistaken.

What I thought was great about LSAC is that when you start applying to schools, it will autofill most of the information for you, so you don't have to type in your name and social and all that stuff a hundred times. Saves a ton of time, but I'd recommend reading over everything since it does tend to make a few mistakes here and there. There is a charge for each application you submit, even if you get a fee waiver from a school. I think it's like $12 for each application you submit and again, this doesn't go to the school, it goes to the LSAC for sending all your information to your chosen law school. If you need to pay to apply at your selected school(s), most will allow you to do that through this website and some schools will even waive the fee if you do everything through LSAC electronically. I'd imagine this is where some people start getting upset about the close connection between law schools and the LSAC, but at this point I don't really care any more.

I'll break down all the stuff I had to submit when I applied and the rough time frame that I had in my next post. Let me know if anything has changed since I did it all, I know the LSAC website itself is going through some changes, but I don't know if the requirements or anything have changed.

My LSAT

I started getting ready for the LSAT by going to a free class the Princeton Review offered. It was a few hours one night and the guy there answered all our questions and gave us some pointers and beginning advice. You can sign up for various classes ranging from private tutoring (it'll cost up to nine grand) to online programs and small groups to the regular classes lasting anywhere from four to sixteen weeks. I never did any of these since I didn't have $1200 to spend on it. I didn't really check out Kaplan when I was getting ready so I don't have any advice on that program. I did take advantage of the free LSAT tests that The Princeton Review offers, usually once a month. They administer previous tests which have been released in a test-like atmosphere so it's pretty solid practice and did I mention free? I did sign up and take a weekend course, where they try and give you a basic understanding in a couple of days. It was like $400 and honestly not worth it for me or my brother-in-law who took it with me. Our instructor wasn't all that great, he was more interested in telling us how disappointing his law experience was so far (he worked for the DA) and how we shouldn't expect to make the big bucks. Others might have had a different experience, but I found that I learned a lot more from my individual studies and practices.

There are a few books that I personally found really helpful, one of them is the Princeton Review Book. It may sound like I'm endorsing these guys or something, but honestly that's just the direction I took and it helped a lot. I took the July 2008 LSAT after doing some person training and the weekend course and scored a 159. That was about seven or eight points lower then what I was scoring on my practice tests, so I was pretty upset. That's when I bought the PR book and starting to really study. I signed up for the October test and despite feeling like I bombed it, I actually scored a 166, right where I thought I'd be. If you don't know the difference in percentile that those seven points are, it's pretty crazy. A 159 puts me in the 78th percentile, so 21% of the people who took the July test did better then me (it only goes up to the 99th percentile). A 166 put me in the 93rd percentile so 6% of test-takers scored higher then I did. So yeah, seven points is a huge difference. The link titled "Chances of Getting Accepted" is cool, you can punch in your GPA and LSAT score and based on the previous years enrollment, it calculates your chance of getting accepted to every ABA law school. Schools are required to take your highest test score, something that changed in the past few years, so don't be afraid to take the LSAT more then once. With my new score, I started finalizing my applications and narrowed down which schools I wanted to apply to.

The LSAT

The Law School Admission Test, the ultimate in standardized tests. Each school has its own way of calculating your future success as an attorney, but let's be realistic. The LSAT is the single most important test in your path to law school; regardless of your GPA, your essays and resume, no matter how many hours of community service you provided, nothing compares to a solid LSAT score. There are a total of six sections on the test and you're allowed 35 minutes to complete each section, no working ahead or going back. The test is multiple choice, other than the writing section which is not scored, but is reviewed by the schools you're applying to. One of the remaining five sections is an experimental section where they test out future questions on you. You have no idea which section this is however, so you have to approach each section as if it's the real deal. The other four sections are broken down to one reading comprehension, one analytical reasoning and two logical reasoning sections.

Without going into too much detail (sorry this isn't an LSAT Prep blog), the reading comprehension is either a long passage followed by six or seven questions about that passage or two shorter passages with questions comparing the two passages. Honestly, we've been doing this kind of reading comprehension since elementary school, so if you're not good at it by now, there's not a whole lot you can do to master it quickly. My only advice is that the questions are meant to trick you and try to get you to use information you know from outside the passage to answer the questions. Just remember to only refer to the information provided, even if you know it's wrong, to answer the questions. The test makers try to bring up topics that spark bias and strong opinions so they can get you to pick wrong answers. Logical reasoning is another tricky one, but something you should be familiar with. It consists of small paragraphs followed by a question or two. Again, only refer to that paragraph when answering these questions. There are a number of questions that can be asked, but most of them are similar to the types of questions you'll be asked in the reading section. The best advice that I was given was to look for the wrong answers to the questions and never the right. It's easy to convince yourself something can be right when it's not, however it becomes more difficult to convince yourself that something is wrong when it's really right. I just stupified myself writing that, so you might want to go back and read that again. Mark off the wrong answers and what you're left with is the BEST answer, not the right answer.

The last section, Analytical Reasoning, is insane, but for dorks like me it was pretty fun. Some people refer to this as the games or logic section; it can be pretty challenging, but it's also the area you can improve on the most. Here's a sample question:

An attorney is scheduling interviews with witnesses for a given week, Monday through Saturday.
Two full consecutive days of the week are reserved for interviewing hostile witnesses. In addition,
non-hostile witnesses Q, R, U, X, Y and Z are each interviewed once for a full morning or a full
afternoon. The only witnesses who are interviewed simultaneously are Q and R.

X must be interviewed on Thursday morning.
Q must be interviewed before X.
U must be interviewed before R.
Z must be interviewed after X and after Y.

I know what you're thinking, what on earth does this have to do with being an attorney? As far as I know nothing, but they tell me that it shows the ability to think analytically and that it compares all test takers at the same time with the same problem on a level playing field, blah blah blah. Fact is, you have to take it, so buckle down and start breaking it apart. After giving you this information, there will be five to seven questions based just on this info, such as:


Which of the following is a sequence, from first to last, in which the non-hostile witnesses
could be interviewed?
A. Q with R, U, X, Y, Z
B. Q, U, R, X with Y, Z
C. U, X, Q with R, Y, Z
D. U, Y, Q with R, X, Z
E. X, Q with U, Z, R, Y

The principle here is that you should create a chart or diagram to collect all the information you can so that you can fly through the questions as quickly and painlessly as possible. Another good tip I was given on this section and on the others is to answer the easiest questions first. Each question has equal value, so if you answer all the easy ones first, you'll hopefully get all those correct, then you can work on the harder ones.

The average LSAT is like a 151 I think, and it's a bell curve, so they take the average number of questions answered correctly, make that a 151 and then curve the rest of the scores. The scores range from a 120 to 180 and there are four times a year you can take the test: February, June, September or October and December. This is getting to be an essay and not a blog, so you should check out LSAC, Wikipedia, Kaplan or Princeton Review for more info.