Ask Noah About First Year of Law School, Getting inTop 10%, Law Review

[Dave D]

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Noah,

I was hoping you could expand a little bit more on the topic of preparing for the exam and not for class.

You've alluded to it a few times in other responses. For example, if the profesor says he's not interested in policy, then don't bother reading anything about the case that deals with the policy issues.

But are there other aspects that you could possibly expand on, or is it all just a variation of what was previously stated?

TIA

-Deac

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no answer?

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I'll try to answer it, although I didn't really take Noah's attitude about it per se. Basically the difference between college and your previous acedemic experiance and law school is that it's assumed you know the material, so called "black letter" law, the facts. They're going to throw stuff on there that you've probably never seen before. So spewing the facts back doesn't really help because that's not really getting asked. I haven't read "getting to maybe" but I can see why it's a good title for a book. You're taking A+B that you know, and trying to get to an answer, which is often maybe, and often depends on the particular situation. A lot of the best answers on tests in general were probably along the lines of "if the court follows this theory, it will do this", and also "assuming this, then this, however if not that then this".

I think that's why the LSAT is a pretty good indicator of how people do in law school. The LSAT (and the bar) is a lot like how law school is in that you're always trying to get to C and it tests a lot of really hard to teach ability. I think thats why some people never study for the LSAT and get 172s (and it seems to be waaay more common than for the SATs), and some people can study years and not break 160. Hope this makes sense.

[nickg1532]

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my school does everything by lottery. firms don't get to choose who they interview. you get 35 bids and then can sign up for any open slots. basically people do as many as they want.

I think I did 30ish during 2L. hopefully doing 0 this year.

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just to clarify, at our school, the firms don't choose either. you have to bid by ranking each school 1-50 (or however many bids you put down). if a firm has 10 open spots and 10 people ranked that firm a 1, anyone who ranked that firm 2 or lower gets put on the waitlist.

anyways, i probably won't have 30, but it looks like i'm not too far behind. i would be interested in hearing from others about how many interviews they got (and maybe what % of those ended in call backs)

[bobman0330]

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my school does everything by lottery. firms don't get to choose who they interview. you get 35 bids and then can sign up for any open slots. basically people do as many as they want.

I think I did 30ish during 2L. hopefully doing 0 this year.

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just to clarify, at our school, the firms don't choose either. you have to bid by ranking each school 1-50 (or however many bids you put down). if a firm has 10 open spots and 10 people ranked that firm a 1, anyone who ranked that firm 2 or lower gets put on the waitlist.

anyways, i probably won't have 30, but it looks like i'm not too far behind. i would be interested in hearing from others about how many interviews they got (and maybe what % of those ended in call backs)

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I did something around 20-25, and that was on the high side of the range among my friends. I think I had 7 callbacks. Sounds like you're doing fine.

[jd2b2006]

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I think that's why the LSAT is a pretty good indicator of how people do in law school.

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Maybe I am the exception to the rule, but I do not think the same. I did not break 150 on the LSAT but got into a Tier 1 school, graduated in the top 15%, and received a 4.0 in my first semester in the LLM program. I believe the LSAT is just another standardized test, so if you did well on the SAT, you will do fine on the LSAT.

As for OCI at my school, you bid on firms every week for about 7 weeks. You do not have to rank who you wanted to interview. Generally there are about 20 firms per week. If the firm you bid for granted you an interview, it would take place about three weeks after you placed your bid.

[Dave D]

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I think that's why the LSAT is a pretty good indicator of how people do in law school.

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Maybe I am the exception to the rule,

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You definitely definitely are.

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I did not break 150 on the LSAT but got into a Tier 1 school,

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How?

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graduated in the top 15%, and received a 4.0 in my first semester in the LLM program. I believe the LSAT is just another standardized test, so if you did well on the SAT, you will do fine on the LSAT.

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LLM is different though. Also, that's really not true, SAT is a lot different than the LSAT. You can study for the SAT and increase your score a lot more easily than on the LSAT. Also, a fair amount of the SAT is knowledge based (knowing certain formulas helps, knowing definitions of words etc). At least for me, the LSAT was the first time I didn't do really really well on a standardized test. It seems like a common theme among a fair amount of people I know too.

As for OCI at my school, you bid on firms every week for about 7 weeks. You do not have to rank who you wanted to interview. Generally there are about 20 firms per week. If the firm you bid for granted you an interview, it would take place about three weeks after you placed your bid.

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[jd2b2006]

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I did not break 150 on the LSAT but got into a Tier 1 school,

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How?

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I had a 3.7 GPA in engineering. Other than that, I did nothing special other than working as an engineering tutor and working for the local utility company part-time during my senior year while going to school full-time.

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graduated in the top 15%, and received a 4.0 in my first semester in the LLM program.

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LLM is different though.

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Different than what? People assume that taking tax classes is all about number crunching so you must be good at math. I believe this assumption is false as all tax classes involve is learning how to trace the IRC in order to come up with a solution to a problem. Teachers do not care if you come up with the correct numerical answer as long as you trace the code correctly.

[Hey_Porter]

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my school does everything by lottery. firms don't get to choose who they interview. you get 35 bids and then can sign up for any open slots. basically people do as many as they want.

I think I did 30ish during 2L. hopefully doing 0 this year.

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just to clarify, at our school, the firms don't choose either. you have to bid by ranking each school 1-50 (or however many bids you put down). if a firm has 10 open spots and 10 people ranked that firm a 1, anyone who ranked that firm 2 or lower gets put on the waitlist.

anyways, i probably won't have 30, but it looks like i'm not too far behind. i would be interested in hearing from others about how many interviews they got (and maybe what % of those ended in call backs)

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I don't know if this is because there aren't as many firms in the Portland area, and the school isn't ranked high enough to get any big Chicago, NY, LA firms to come to OCI (I think my school is ranked 75th or something), but our OCI was quite a bit different. There were probably 30 firms that would come to OCI, maybe 14 from the Portland area. Due to the size (I assume) there was no bidding involved, you simply wrote a cover letter and supplied a resume to the firms you wanted to apply by giving said documents to career services. I applied to 12 of the 13 firms, and received 11 on campus interviews (I was 5th in my class of 268). The firm I didn't get an interview with had an interesting strategy, as they ended up giving interviews to folks who usually didn't get any other interviews. They're a big firm in town, too. Weird.

Anyway, of those 11 on-campus interviews I got 7 callbacks. Received two offers following my first four callbacks. The second was from my top choice (which happened to be a small firm), I accepted, and canceled my other callbacks, and withdrew from the firm I hadn't heard from.

[hanster]

Noah,
Warning: Rant
I'm sitting here trying to translate a somewhat legal document and I find it that all legal documents are unbelievably wordy and many times unnecessary. Do lawyers/paralegal draft these so commoners would have to read it 10000x before we can understand it?

Example:
At least five days notice shall be given of an annual general meeting or any other general meeting. Every notice shall be exclusive of the day on which it is given or deemed to be given and of the day for which it is given and shall specify the place, the day and the hour of the meeting and the general nature of the business and shall be given in manner hereinafter mentioned or in such other manner if any as may be prescribed by the Company PROVIDED that a general meeting of the Company shall, whether or not the notice specified in this regulation has been given and whether or not the provisions of Article 38 have been complied with, be deemed to have been duly convened if it is so agreed.
I could've said that in:
Must give notice 5 days beforehand. Notice includes date of notice and date, time, place, and nature of meeting. all meeting must follow guideline hereinafter mentioned, or if company agrees.

/rant

[XXXNoahXXX]

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Noah,
Warning: Rant
I'm sitting here trying to translate a somewhat legal document and I find it that all legal documents are unbelievably wordy and many times unnecessary. Do lawyers/paralegal draft these so commoners would have to read it 10000x before we can understand it?

Example:
At least five days notice shall be given of an annual general meeting or any other general meeting. Every notice shall be exclusive of the day on which it is given or deemed to be given and of the day for which it is given and shall specify the place, the day and the hour of the meeting and the general nature of the business and shall be given in manner hereinafter mentioned or in such other manner if any as may be prescribed by the Company PROVIDED that a general meeting of the Company shall, whether or not the notice specified in this regulation has been given and whether or not the provisions of Article 38 have been complied with, be deemed to have been duly convened if it is so agreed.
I could've said that in:
Must give notice 5 days beforehand. Notice includes date of notice and date, time, place, and nature of meeting. all meeting must follow guideline hereinafter mentioned, or if company agrees.

/rant

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If people could write things in plain language then they wouldn't need to pay lawyers $300/hr to translate them now would they?

You better keep your mouth shut or we'll all be out of jobs!


I think its funny that they use these super huge sentences, but sometimes it can prove costly.


"A grammatical blunder may force Rogers Communications Inc. to pay an extra $2.13-million to use utility poles in the Maritimes after the placement of a comma in a contract permitted the deal's cancellation.

The controversial comma sent lawyers and telecommunications regulators scrambling for their English textbooks in a bitter 18-month dispute that serves as an expensive reminder of the importance of punctuation."

[PBear]

Interesting thread. I'm a recent grad from a top law school who did quite well, racking up all the usual honors like law review and an appellate clerkship along the way.

I mostly agree with everything that has been said -- common sense to those of us who have had the experience, for the most part.

I would just add that there is another reason to go to an elite law school if you get a chance: there is no guarantee that you will prove to be good at taking law school exams and getting good grades. Believe it or not, it is a very specific skill and often quite arbitrary. The whole "go to a lower tier school and get great grades" can work just fine, but it can backfire if it turns out you don't pick up quickly on the very delicate art of taking law school exams.

I know very smart people -- who were very accomplished before and after law school -- who could never do all that well on law school exams. I can happen to you almost no matter how smart you are -- it's a bit of a lottery.

Go to a great school, and even if you suck you are going to land just fine though. It's not a bad insurance policy.

It looks like things worked out just as planned for the OP, but it's worth considering the downside.