Part 1 of the How Not to Succeed in Law School

This is a very long and hilarious law journal article. This is not done by me but is definitely worth reading whether you're in, out or never plan on going to law school.


How Not to Succeed in Law School
By James D. Gordon III, Professor of Law, Brigham Young University

100 Yale L.J. 1679
Copyright © 1991 Yale Law Journal Company.

I. SHOULD YOU GO TO LAW SCHOOL?

Would you like to help the less fortunate?

Would you like to see liberty and justice for all?

Do you want to vindicate the rights of the oppressed?

If so, you should join the Peace Corps. The last thing you should do is attend law school.

People basically hate lawyers, and with good reason. That's why you'll rarely escape from a dinner party without hearing at least one lawyer joke. Indeed, literature reveals that people have always hated lawyers. Samuel Coleridge wrote in The Devil's Thoughts:

He saw a Lawyer killing a Viper
On a dunghill hard by his own stable;
And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind
Of Cain and his brother, Abel.

Even other species detest lawyers. Carl Sandburg wrote:

Why is there always a secret singing
When a lawyer cashes in?
Why does a hearse horse snicker
Hauling a lawyer away?

It is true that some lawyers are dishonest, arrogant, greedy, venal, amoral, ruthless buckets of toxic slime. On the other hand, it is unfair to judge the entire profession by a few hundred thousand bad apples. In fact, there are many perfectly legitimate reasons for going to law school. For example, ask yourself the following questions:

Do I want to go to medical school but can't stand the sight of blood?

Are my inlaws pestering me to death to do something meaningful (i.e., lucrative) with my life? Have I considered circulating petitions to ban inlaws, but realized that it would only spawn stupid bumper stickers saying, "WHEN INLAWS ARE OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE INLAWS"?

Did I major in English and have absolutely nowhere else to turn?

If these questions ring a bell, you might feel that law school is for you. Lie down for a while until the feeling goes away. If it doesn't go away, prepare yourself for the consequences. For example, your grandparents will immediately scrape off their bumper sticker that says, "ASK ME ABOUT MY GRANDCHILDREN." You see, they grew up in a time when a person's word was his bond, when a handshake was enough, when disputes were worked out amicably and quickly among people of good will. Fortunately, you don't live in such primitive times! Today, you can make a handsome income exploiting other people's personal tragedies and society's declining sense of community. And just in time, too -- right when you are graduating from college. Talk about lucky!


II. TAKING THE LSAT

Before you can go to law school, you have to take an exam called the LSAT. Nobody knows whether the "A" in LSAT stands for "Admissions," "Aptitude," or "Arbitrary." The LSAT basically measures how well you can use a number 2 pencil to fill in the little circles on the computer sheet. Be sure to fill in the circles completely and carefully. Do not make any stray marks on the paper. This will lower your score. The instructions at the top of the exam carefully explain that these are the grading criteria, but hardly anyone ever pays any attention to them.

The old LSAT scores went up to 800, but a few years ago the LSAT people (whoever they are) changed the exam so that now the highest possible score is 48. This looks pretty suspicious, if you ask me. I mean, why 48? Why not a nice round number, like 100? The secret truth is that a group of law professors who scored 48 on the old exam lobbied the LSAT people to make 48 the highest score.

The old LSAT had -- I am not making this up -- a math section. After conducting an exhaustive nationwide study, however, the LSAT people finally realized that no one had asked a lawyer to solve a quadratic equation or find the cosine of an angle for, probably, several centuries, and so they eventually deleted it. This action was taken against their better judgment (using the term loosely). After all, the math section provided a handy way to discriminate among people of equal intelligence.

Frankly, the current LSAT isn't much better. It asks questions like, "Compare Madam Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities with Huckleberry Finn in Huckleberry Finn." This makes no sense at all, since lawyers rarely address this question.

Another typical question on the current LSAT goes like this:

Assume you have a fox, a goose, and a bag of corn. You need to row them all across the river, but the boat will carry only you and one other thing at a time. If you leave the fox and the goose alone, the fox will eat the goose. If you leave the goose and the corn alone, the goose will eat the corn. How do you get them across?

The answer is so simple a child could get it: you beat the goose silly with an oar, and then take the fox across before he flees for his life. This question is so stupid I don't even know why they include it.

It never seems to have occurred to the LSAT people that their test might deign to include a few questions that actually relate to a lawyer's work. For example:

(1) Abe is a lawyer who wins a personal injury lawsuit for Betty, a quadriplegic. Abe should take a contingent fee of:
a. 30%
b. 50%
c. 100%
d. (The correct answer) 100%, plus a bonus for taking a public service case.

Or:
(2) The judge receives a bribe of $ 5,000 from the plaintiff's lawyer. He then receives a bribe of $ 10,000 from the defendant's lawyer. The judge should:
a. Notify the state bar association
b. Notify the police
c. Notify the FBI
d. (The correct answer) Return $ 5,000 to the defendant and try the case on the merits.

The LSAT people say that LSAT preparation courses do not help, since the LSAT tests knowledge and skills that cannot be improved by last minute cramming. Regardless of what the LSAT people say, however, you will notice that there are several suspiciously solvent LSAT prep course companies who are happy to take your money. Of course, you can always choose to "go bare" and take the LSAT without any prep course at all. People who have done this in the past are called "nonlawyers."

You take the LSAT in a stifling room crammed with five hundred sweating people. It is immediately apparent that none of them has ever watched a deodorant commercial in his or her entire life. Through a strange quirk of fate, you have to sit right next to some moron who chomps loudly on Corn Nuts throughout the whole exam while wearing those artillery-range ear protectors that make it impossible for him to notice anything less than 7.5 on the Richter scale. They also make it impossible for you to tell him what an inconsiderate imbecile he is. Notice your feeling of panic and nausea as you take the LSAT. Get used to it.

After you take the LSAT, they send you your score and a statement explaining which "percentile" you are in. The "percentile" is the inverse percentage chance you have of spending your life doing something honest.


Look for more to come tomorrow!

Launch of a Law Search Engine

So I started something I think could be really neat. It's a search engine geared specifically to law school. Anyone can join and help moderate the search engine. I would love for this to take off and hopefully be a very useful tool for law school fun, help, and survival.

Check it out here - Law v. Life - Law School Search Engine

Also for all those that were wondering. I feel like my interview went really well. It was much more like a conversation then an interview which I think typically means a good interview. We shall see though.

Big Interview Tomorrow With a Law Firm

So tomorrow is probably one of the bigger steps towards my career as a lawyer. I have an interview downtown with a fairly small but well known law firm. Luckily, through personal contacts I was able to send in my resume so that I could even get the interview. I think this will have to the path I go down to get most, if not all my internships and eventually my first job at a firm. Career services at the law school don't seem to do all that well in placing students with these firms.

Anyways, I should probably be sleeping right now. Wish me luck and cross the fingers. Five lawyers each get their own personal chance to knock me out tomorrow.

A little funny law humor for the holiday season

This comic is pretty good.



Again, you see how I am spending my time on my break.

Very Helpful Site for Law School

Again, I spent another night surfing the web looking at various legal stuff. It is really funny how much law school information is out there. I know during the semester I looked around for various sources to help me with exams and just something that would help me kinda find my way.

Anyways, I think I found probably one of the best informational sites for exam help, legal analysis, etc. so far. It even had some information on grand ole IRAC and other helpful tips.

If you're interested or looking for law school help on exams or analysis then read up on this site.

InLawSchool.com - Law School Exam Help, Legal Analysis

Hope it helps!

Law T-Shirts and More

So I ran across these law school t-shirts. For those that haven't seen these then this is a must.

Personal favorites are:
- You Down With the UCC - Yeah You Know Me!
- You Got SERVED! FRCP4
- I Use Your Mom So Often I Should Have a Prescriptive Easement.

Funny Law School Tees

I thought these were much better than the typical jokes like "Why did the Shark not eat the Lawyer? - Professional Courtesy"

Enjoy!

Another one of those law blogs

I have recently finished up my first semester of my 1L year and probably one of the most unenlightened ideas popped into my head.

Why don't I start a blog to ramble about lovely law school?

I mean whether I'm a law student come February is still to be determined but I figured that I'm invested 40k into law school already so why not throw a blog in to add to the pile.

Christmas break comes around so you go home to your family and friends then realize you are struggling for conversation topics. I mean who wants to hear about TJ Hooper, Eastern Gulf, or about some doctrine that is Erie.

I really once was a pretty big talker. My father loved to call by the nickname "Motor Mouth" but now it seems I'd rather sit still and listen then try to argue two sides to some issue. The best is when I dive into a conversation and start off stating an issue (whether this...) and receive the most perplexed looks in return. I mean give a 1L the hypo 1+1=2 and they'd probably try to argue that it is a very complex legal question by using 3 and 4 word jumbles (insofar) or just some cool Latin speak (res ipsa loquitor). It is hilarious though, hearing res ipsa said by a good country boy or being written on the board by your prof as a kid rambles on about why you should vote for him for honor court justice.

So far, I've enjoyed law school. I have found my passion and have worked harder then I ever imagined possible. I have probably read more in the past six months then in my life time but it for the most part has been interesting topics. Sorry but sometimes Civ Pro is painful. I learned that undergrads will most likely kill 1Ls in flag football but felt redeemed by the us beating the 2Ls in the Battle for the Chattel (Law School speak for Super Bowl).

Anyways, I do hope to write much more about legal issues then reflections but I guess it is that time of year.