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Xvimic posted:I would practice law on the side during summers and off time in my own private practice and my search for a job would end. The way in which I did so would obviously be limited due to my schedule and I'm sure I could only do certain things. It would be mostly just to make side cash handling clients in a small town with small issues not in a capacity as a trail attorney or anything. Would I get much work? perhaps none, but it wouldn't matter because I would have another job sustaining me. I don't mean to be mean, since you seem like a chill guy with a pretty good head on his shoulders, and I imagine you'll do decently in law school. And you seem likable/pretty reasonable, and are probably well suited for law school. But this attitude? This attitude is ridiculous. Have you spoken to any "part-time" attorneys? You should really find a few and see if there are any and how that works. The only ones I can think of are mothers, who make it work because, while they are "part time," if they need to get a project done at any point in the year, they can make the time. One of the biggest problems attorneys have is control of their schedule. (and client generation, of course) If they're a litigator, well, motion's due on Monday! Can't put that off just because school started. Oh, think it'll take only three months to go through a lawsuit? Hope you get really lucky and the other side doesn't bother responding to discovery requests. Civil lawsuits take years. Criminal ones I can't speak of, but I can't imagine they fit nicely in a summer break either. Nor are divorces terribly seasonal. Transactional attorney? I have no clue, but I've heard deal-closing season for most businesses (i.e. November/December before the new calendar year starts) is really crazy, and for the most part clients want you involved throughout the entire process rather than coming in as a part-time substitute during the summer when the pressure's not on. In short, there are few legal projects that would fit nicely into a summer and not intrude on your school year schedule, at which point you're working two jobs simultaneously and doing a poor job at both. Possibly planning wills. That you could do while it's summer in Wisconsin and all the old folks are dying of heat stroke. I guess what I'm saying is - Law School sounds good for you. A free education, no opportunity cost since you don't have a job, and it doesn't cost you much? Why not. (though check how much your "free ride" gives you for living expenses, and see if it's enough to cover an apartment, new laptop, netflix, and food for three years) That's why we're all saying it's a decent idea. We are just getting really confused by your post-law school contingency plan of "gently caress it, maybe teach, maybe practice law, maybe sit around and jack off into Lake Mendota while tiny legal projects drop into my lap." Attempting to get a job and practice law, and studying for and attempting to be a teacher, are likely mutually exclusive things. It's technically possible to do both at the same time . . . it's just exceedingly unlikely you'll pull it off well. By the way, as other folks have said, 1) don't underestimate your chances of dragging a good scholarship out of the Wisconsin folks by telling them what you've been offered, (plus, Madison is a way better place to study than St. Louis - sit on the Union Terrace by Lake Mendota a hot summer afternoon drinking a beer and you'll know what I mean) and 2) don't overestimate your chances of moving with a regional law degree. If you are willing to hang out your own shingle in the small town you envision in your head, that's fine, but it'll be much harder without (legal) friends in the area to send you their conflict work or relatives with problems, and it'll be much harder to get any firms to pay attention to you for hiring. That rambly crap aside, congrats!
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Feb 14, 2012 00:09
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entris posted:yes, actually, but I don't have one handy so I can't tell you what it is. BB Rule 15.8(c)(v) The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation R. 1.4(e), at 58 (Columbia Law Review rear end’n et al. eds., 19th ed. 2010). I think it's one of the few books that actually gets it's publisher included in the parenthetical. (and yes, I know that's because it's got multiple editions from multiple publishers. gently caress you too)
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Feb 18, 2012 18:31
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yronic heroism posted:I just had a weird job interview. You absolutely want to send a thank you.
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Feb 18, 2012 21:27
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Agesilaus posted:Again, it's efficient because they do a lot with a little, something that big law cannot achieve. If your complaint is that the circuit court doesn't give enough money to the pd's office to hire sufficient people, or that you don't like the laws that prosecutors enforce, then those are entirely different matters. I think you're confusing efficient as in completes a task with efficient as in provides a high quality service. Can bigger firms produce good quality work for less money than they currently charge? Sure. But I think it's also clear that there is a minimum level of representation, attention, and time given to each case below which the "market" is inefficient because someone's getting screwed regardless of how much (or little) they're paying. I don't mean to knock on PDs - the PDs I know do the very best they can given their caseloads, but also don't know many who don't think they could do a better job for their clients if they could spend more time per client. If, instead, you're just kvetching about the $/hour cost of 'big firm' fees compared to the $/hour of comparable public institutions (PD, DA/US A, etc) then you have a fair point. But I feel less bad about that since most of the people paying the higher fees are larger corporations or wealthier individuals who could shop around to smaller firms that charge lower hourly rates if they wanted.
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Feb 20, 2012 19:04
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entris posted:Ladies, ladies, let's not do this. We are all noble folk here. Fair deuce.
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Feb 21, 2012 06:10
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prussian advisor posted:Come on, you can't not link some favorites. E/N is pretty amazing, what with all the free legal and medical advice being given out, all of which is awful. e.g. Soothing Vapors laughing at people who don't understand family law. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3467427&pagenumber=2#post400798755
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Feb 22, 2012 01:29
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You guys are making me miss living in the bay area. Delicious burritos whenever I wanted.... Instead, the best Mexican I can get here in Utah is next to a construction site. (Don't get me wrong, the trucks/stands are delicious. They're also rare and randomly placed, and none are in walking distance from school)
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Feb 24, 2012 17:49
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I have a new goal in life. Replace a Black's Law cite with an Urban Dictionary cite in something published.
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Feb 27, 2012 17:40
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CmdrSmirnoff posted:I was planning on going solo and renting an office in the chambers I'm articling in now. But my boss made me a job offer, which amounts to a salary of 50% more than I'm earning now, plus 50% of the bill on whatever files I bring in, and he'll pay some of the rent on my office. What Penguins says. Plus if things don't work out, you can stop working for him, hopefully keep your clients and then hang out your own shingle. If client/attorney ethics and transfer work anything like it does in the US, which it might not.
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Mar 8, 2012 05:37
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Schitzo posted:Am i a bad lawyer? I don't see much wrong with splitting it 3 ways, as long as none of the three has some unique issue that needs extra attention. No, i honestly think dividing it by 3 and billing each of them is the correct way to do it, so long as whatever you're working on is useful for all three clients. So if you take 6 hours to do some background research and write a motion, you bill each client 2 hours. It might also be worth looking up some double-billing cases in your jurisdiction - I know you'd be in trouble if you billed each of your clients 6 hours in this example.
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Apr 3, 2012 15:26
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nm posted:Yeah, they just afirm that they will tell the truth and understand the penalty of perjury. Yep. Commonly the oaths are part of satisfying Rule of Evidence 603, or its state equivalent, which is pretty flexible. (Yes, I have an evidence exam in a few weeks. Don't remind me. Ugh.)
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Apr 9, 2012 06:47
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Baruch Obamawitz posted:I've been more taken aback by the presumption that I don't know my way around the contents of a patent application. Hurf blurf I've only examined some 600 applications over the past five years, so it's not like I don't know the difference between a good application and a poo poo application. Can you do some part-time work with a smaller firm while still doing your current job part-time? Or even a solo fellow doing whatever it is that you want to do? It might give you the chance to interact with a single individual, so that you can practice regaining the social skills that your interview failures are telling you that you lack. (or, if I'm being less of a complete rear end in a top hat, it'll let you get some firm experience/application writing experience without going out too far on a financial limb, and is less of a risk for whoever is hiring you) This is a good place to talk to your other friends who are attorneys working in your field.
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Apr 10, 2012 01:59
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Baruch, serious post here. Two things: First, when they say "we're looking for someone with more firm experience," do you ask them what parts of firm experience they're looking for, or why? If they give you a specific answer, you can explain how your background meets that need, and if they give you a bullshit answer, it either means they already interviewed someone better, or your resume is fine but you come across as a weirdo they don't want to work with. Either way it gets you useful information for your next interview. Second, if the only reason you're not working at starbucks is your "triple monitor with headphones and massage chair" setup, why not look into renting some shared office space? There are a bunch of solo practitioners in my city who use a shared office plan, where they each maintain their own practice, and basically lease a single room office, but they share a receptionist, lunch room, conference room, all the major office amenities. For them it's primarily a way to share overhead expenses and make sure they have someone to cover when they need to be at two criminal hearings at the same time, but it might give you a way to have an actual office setup the way you want while still occasionally seeing other people. It might cost you a bit more than you're spending right now, and I don't know numbers but I can't imagine it'd cost you more than $1,000/month (probably more in the $300-400 range, but I don't remember where you live). That seems like a worthwhile cut to take to avoid going insane with isolation and boredom and dying early. Plus, it'll give you a couple more of the "firm life" intangibles that recruiters are looking for.
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Apr 10, 2012 18:21
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Baruch Obamawitz posted:Drafting a specification, and no, I haven't done it and the best I can bullshit my way to it is "About 90% of my time over the past four years has been spent reading specifications." The second part of my post was the more important one  . And yes, I realize it's silly to list my main point second.
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Apr 10, 2012 19:38
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Baruch! Look into leasing shared office space today. DO IT!
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Apr 12, 2012 15:17
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prussian advisor posted:
I'd second this request. With regards the discussion on privilege and CRT/CLS: I'm almost entirely in favor of people at least getting a cursory look into those subjects. However, I think there's a preliminary point that people like dos4gw need to pick up. There is a difference between institutional racism and individual racism. (Insert bias axis of your choice for racism) What that means is that you can have a whole system of great, wonderful people who are not racist or sexist or biased and are just getting along with their lives, and they can, as a group, produce a system that marginalizes minority groups, rendering them powerless. What's more, most of the literature on this subject refers to institutional racism, but most people entirely unaware of privilege assume that the literature is talking about individual racism, and get defensive because it feels like a personal attack. It might be in the smaller sense that these theories call upon people in privilege to take the time to learn about their institutionalized bias, but it certainly is not a personal attack in the larger sense of calling individuals racist. This distinction? It comes from race/gender studies (yes, dos4gw, those are social sciences). But interdisciplinary movement of ideas is critical to the richness and further development of legal academia.
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Apr 15, 2012 16:51
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EDIT: Old stuff. Sorry, I'm not sure if this crossed a line. I'll stop discussing it.
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Apr 15, 2012 19:44
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SlothBear posted:So to change the subject, Andrew Thomas, former Maricopa County Attorney (that's Phoenix, AZ for those who don't know) and one of the most evil Americans alive, was disbarred recently. The Opinion and Order Imposing Sanctions from the Arizona Supremes is pretty dramatic. Too much journal work has turned me into a terrible person. The first thing I saw reading that? Typos & bluebook errors.
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Apr 15, 2012 21:29
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Baruch Obamawitz posted:Prepare to be surprised. You should look into shared office space this evening.
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Apr 17, 2012 22:16
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A job or an interview? Also, even if you're hitting the gym you should still look into shared office space. Gym is still good, though!
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Apr 17, 2012 22:39
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evilweasel posted:Partially because of the incredibly complex arcane undocumented nature of the game, partially because it enables and rewards being a sociopath. Possibly because it's really boring. The game is like a ww2 submarine simulator in space. It's terribly boring 99% of the time, then exciting for a moment, then you lag out and get instagibbed. In between, you grind missions or rats.
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Apr 18, 2012 19:24
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Cwapface, nobody in this thread is gong to come beat you with a herring if you go to law school. You don't need to be that defensive. That said, if you're in the rare position of being able to go to law school for free, maybe it's worth it, especially if the Aussie legal market isn't as poo poo as the US one is. Even in the US market it's possible to find a job if you work your rear end off and/or are a good networker. As far as law grades go, I can only speak to US grades, but law school grades are massively deflated compared to undergrad grades. I had fairly poo poo grades coming out of undergrad, by which I mean a B+ average. Even in my major I wasn't super pleased because I had just under an A- average. My law classes that are over 15 people have a mandatory 3.1-3.3 GPA mean (i.e. B to B+). That means our 50th percentile is probably somewhere near 3.3 (haven't checked recently).
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Apr 24, 2012 04:56
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Ani posted:Yes - if it is possible for an interest to vest more than 21 years after a life in being at the time of the bequest, that interest is invalid because of RAP. Yep. If it is possible for an interest to still be contingent after everybody alive at the granting has died, then it violates the rule and is invalid.
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Apr 29, 2012 01:57
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Yeah, computer science majors can often apply for the patent bar and do IP work, which opens up a whole bunch of firms that the other students can't apply for as easily, so it improves your job prospects. If you whole-hog swap majors, you lose access to the patent bar and IP stuff, but it might improve your GPA. As far as a 3.14... It's not great. You can get into a school ranked 30-40 with a 3.1 and a 170+ on the LSAT. It's an option, but not an amazing one. Those schools are likely to have regional prominence (if in a gently caress where am I state like Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wisconsin, etc) so you have a chance at a job in your area (if you are in the top third of your class, which you cannot in any way guarantee). However, schools in that range will still have great difficulty getting a job in the large legal markets, meaning places like LA, SF, Chicago, DC, NY, probably Boston. If you can improve your GPA substantially over the next three years and get an excellent LSAT score, however, you might not be totally screwed. With one year of a 3.14, and two or three years of 3.5-3.7 on your transcript, you'll be more in the 3.4-3.6 range, which improves your chances drastically (again, requiring a solid LSAT score; how did you do on the SAT?). tl;dr. Chances of a mediocre school are decent, but that will leave you in debt and sad unless you get lucky. Chances of a good school are slim, but the possibility exists. Patent options open up more jobs.
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May 4, 2012 16:44
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gret posted:I got into a bunch of T14s with a low GPA/high LSAT split and an engineering degree around 10 years ago. Is admissions much more competitive nowadays? I don't know if admissions is that much more competitive these days (it may be), but part of it might be your engineering degree. My experience was for a high LSAT, low GPA plus humanities major background, which it sounds like the poster might be if he shifts from Computer Science to English. Actual science/engineering majors might get cut a little slack (but not too much - about half my credits, and most of my bad grades, were engineering classes) AgentSythe posted:Hey gently caress you buddy, Wisconsin is not that podunk and UW graduates do JUST FINE in Minneapolis and Chicago, thank you very much Sorry, I was mostly listing the schools I got into, since I'm a low GPA, high LSAT student. (But while Madison is a great city, can you really compete in Chicago against the other four or five law schools there? Minneapolis I can see, sure, but U. Chicago seems like tough competition unless they all disappear to coastal firms)
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May 4, 2012 16:53
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flymonkey posted:Thanks for the advice, everyone! Yeahh I definitely plan on raising my GPA. I know a lot of you are saying that staying in comp sci opens up more opportunities, but the truth is that if I stay in computer science, my grades will most likely slip more and more. I'm not doing so hot with my more mathematical courses, and I heard that those would only increase in number as time passes and as I get further into the curriculum. Right now the courses I'm getting As in are my humanities and intro to programming ones. SAT scores don't really reflect possible LSAT scores, but one thing I often find common among low-GPA, high-LSAT folks is that they have excellent standardized test skills, and may have trouble with longer papers or essay type exams, which are most of the law school exams. Also, while most people are recommending sticking to CS, I might recommend against it if you're completely miserable. You just have to be absolutely sure you know what you're doing. If you change away from CS to English, 1) you have not improved your odds at law school, 2) you have not improved your chances of getting a paying job post graduation (for humanities majors, those come through networking, extracurriculars, and non-academic stuff), and 3) you have lost the chance to do any sort of IP work.
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May 4, 2012 17:33
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commish posted:Uh.. what? That's not even remotely true.  This is why I shouldn't post between finals.
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May 4, 2012 23:28
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nm posted:I strongly recommend seeing if you can avoid starting working until October or so, particularly if you won't have bar results until then. How was the weather down south that time of year? My fiance and I are thinking of going somewhere for our bar trip/honeymoon, and New Zealand was on the list. We were just concerned that it'd be winter that time of year, so wouldn't be able to do as much snorkeling as we'd want.
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May 5, 2012 02:21
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HolySwissCheese posted:Don't print all of the outline as one doc. Copy each section to its own word doc and give it a really descriptive one-line header that repeats on top of every page. This is key. I also go a little overboard, adding a tab to the top of each mini-outline so you can find the front page quickly and easily, and I'll sometimes use a labelmaker to print a one or two word label for each tab. That way I can look at my stupid pile of mini-outlines and find the one I want by just flipping through the tabs.
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May 6, 2012 06:52
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Was finishing up work this evening when the fiance called. Her: "X invited us to dinner, want to go to his place?" Me: "Sure, what time?" Her: "Well, I just put a cake in the oven, so I'll be an hour late picking you up from work, will it be okay if you have to stick around there a while longer?" Me: "Yep, that way I can get some more work done." Two minutes later, in my head. "I just told my fiance I was glad she couldn't come say hello, so that I can stay late and get work done..." 
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May 10, 2012 05:01
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John Romero posted:I don't know dude. My gpa is just brought down by idiotic gen-eds, I am much better in my major (polisci). I did a bunch of soul searching over the past semester and realized that nothing would make me as happy as making a go at this, I've always wanted to be a lawyer since I was little. I was planning on taking a year off anyways and I already have a job on a campaign and some other stuff going so that'll probably help me out. Have you taken a practice LSAT? Smashing the LSAT isn't as easy as it looks. Why do you want to be a lawyer? "Always wanted to be one" isn't terribly specific, and describes a lot of folks having trouble getting work. What do you think the daily practice of law is like? What parts of that do you think you'll enjoy?
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May 21, 2012 15:00
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Agesilaus posted:Was that quote from the arrest report? Because I recently had one that literally stated that the defendant was ” escorted to the ground”. I used to hate public domain cites, but since I've been forced to use the Utah ones (2012 Utah 12, at P12) with the paragraph symbol for the P, they're pretty nice except for needing to bind a new key to type the paragraph symbol.
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Jun 16, 2012 00:51
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Also, age becomes a lot less relevant in law school than it is in undergrad. My school's a little different, but I think our median age for 1L's is 25 or 26, and I know a bunch of folks who are in the top 10-20% who are 30 or older. There's no rush. Take your time.
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Jun 27, 2012 17:29
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Texas attorneys do throw a shitfit every time someone proposes that they adopt the model ethics rule that you can't sleep with your clients (unless you sleep with them before you represent them, etc etc gently caress you I take the MPRE in two months).
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Jun 28, 2012 04:24
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evilweasel posted:6-3 uphold, dryly insane dissent from Thomas, frothing at the mouth insane dissent from Scalia. I agree. Possibility of a 5-4, with the same dissents, which I'm voting for because it'd throw more fuel on the "It's all polarizing! The Supreme Court and politics and the world and the sky is falling!" fire. When the Supreme Court has had a smaller proportion of opinions with dissents under Roberts than Rehnquist. It's just that most of the unanimous cases are things like "how many days do I have to file briefs?"
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Jun 28, 2012 15:16
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My favorite thing is that it was the under-briefed argument that nobody bothered to make.
Arcturas fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jun 28, 2012 |
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Jun 28, 2012 16:39
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He gets bodyguards which is pretty sweet. Though I suppose partners have associates. So let's call that a wash?
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Jun 29, 2012 03:07
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What Roger_Mudd/woozle said. Money, then report. You should also see if he tries to get you to settle, and asks you to promise not to report him to the bar as part of the settlement. I think it's an independent ethical violation. Either that or it's unenforceable...I forget and am not bothering to study for the MPRE for another month or so.
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Jul 6, 2012 16:42
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Feces Starship posted:barstudychat: Somebody make that person a professor of torts, immediately! Or criminal law. Or both!
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Jul 10, 2012 22:04
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Napoleon I posted:So, now that the bar is over, I'm on to apartment hunting.... Some of the Mid/SmallLaw associates (30-50 attorney firm, which is mid to large for the market because we're not coastal) at my firm get a bit of doc review done on public transit. Typically one hour each way. It really depends on how well you can focus with distractions, and the type of reading. I'd also recommend printing four to a page; it means you'll be flipping pages less often so you don't have to move as much, and it helps you distinguish your doc review binders from everyone else's. What kind of transit are you thinking of using? I'd say train > light rail > bus for the transit around here; I'd probably slap subway in with light rail, depending on how crowded it is.
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Jul 27, 2012 22:30
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