LawSchool.Life

a little surprising this had to get a memo. i had thought that only the fbi (and presumably fbi's malformed clones like ATF and DEA) had a zero historical use policy

Yeah, just got to keep grinding it out. The certainty of having a job lined up is part of what you rejected when you turned down your summer firm, just have to own that now and trust the process. I don’t know what your wife does, but unless she’s got a job she really doesn’t want to leave I’d consi...

Yeah, just got to keep grinding it out. The certainty of having a job lined up is part of what you rejected when you turned down your summer firm, just have to own that now and trust the process. I don’t know what your wife does, but unless she’s got a job she really doesn’t want to leave I’d consid...

when you say doing well, how many misses are you referring to in official or in PTs? i think with the new computer-based test, RC has become more difficult than paper, just due to having to read on the computer. but even worse is LG on computer, where one would need to constantly look back and fort...

Yeah, pretty much the only way to fuck your response up is by being too defensive (or suggesting that the workload had anything to do with it.)

I vaguely recall doing well by not reading the passage at all except to find the answers.

Yeah, the unpredictability is what makes the job hard. You can't really say to yourself "I'm going to do all of this work by 4 pm tomorrow so I have my evening free to do X and Y." For example, I finished up a bunch of stuff at 4:30ish yesterday, but I got asked to do something again at 6:30 that a...

I don't even think this is that hard of a call if you want to be a prof but if the goal is biglaw it's a no brainer.

Yup, as everyone's already said it's the combination of potentially brutal hours and the fact that you might be called upon to complete more of them at any time with little or no notice. Or, alternatively, you might sit there not billing and devouring yourself with anxiety over how you're going to ...

It’s less the hours and more the constantly being on call (except for busy months when it’s both). It’s tough to say more than that with any precision.

I mean it totally depends what you're interview for. I don't think its outrageous to say that you didnt know much about law school/law jobs going into law school and you had to make a decision about 2L summer at just the end of your first year, so you tried finding work you enjoyed at a firm. You r...

You apply to a specific office during OCI and it's generally seen as wise to focus on a market or two by the time you get to OCI. At some firms it may be possible to transfer from office to office, but by and large it's good to signal that you have ties to a city and that you're likely to stick arou...

p. much anything you don't have to go to trial.

Story wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 18, 2021 3:25 pm

Yep. AUSAs are much lower paid when you think about the work they do.

it's all worth it for that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you've successfully leveraged a draconian mandatory minimum to force someone to take a 15 year plea deal.

look up the AD payscale and then add 32% locality pay (though, of course, good luck figuring out where you fall in the relatively wide range that establishes): https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/pay-executive-order-2021-adjustments-of-certain-rates-of-pay.pdf. I've ne...

I'm considering the following fields of study: Tort, Liability (I know that's general), Constitution, Estate, Civil RIghts, Public Policy (although not really law), Labor.. I have heard those fields are generally low paying. Is that inaccurate? If you're going to a U.S. law school than your field o...

Yea, I absolutely agree that OP's career prospects do not depend entirely on getting a federal clerkship. It could really help in this case, though, since they are a 3L without anything lined up for post-grad. I am curious what OP did 2L summer. Yeah, at this point eggs should be going into literal...

I’m sure it’s helpful for some jobs and perhaps even essential for very certain career opportunities (that most clerks do not end up pursuing) but I think even that’s overstated. But I brought it up here because I want to push back against OP’s premise—they are not screwed if they don’t get a federa...

But on the whole, a federal clerkship is a federal clerkship. I.e. a highly overrated and unnecessary rite of passage. People will tell you that a clerkship is worth it because you learn things you wouldn’t pick up in practice but spend more than a month litigating and former clerks will have taken...

You’re going to have to be way more specific here regarding your choices. But generally, good legal writing is not really the same thing as good writing, and this is especially true for law school writing which is largely word vomit during exams. Also, employers know how to decode schools grading sy...

Law school is definitely not the time to explore. It’s a dumb grind that teaches you almost nothing about the actual practice of law. While non-traditional routes to law school aren’t necessarily bad, It’s absolutely essential to be clearheaded about a) what you want to do with a law degree b) wheth...

Surprised that they’re already pushing you to hit that many hours and it sounds like your firm might just suck. I do mostly lit and while 200 hour + months are certainly not unheard of, they’re certainly not the baseline expectation either and an 1800 hour year wouldn’t be frowned on at all. I thin...

But also with 200k in student loans you’re well past the point where aggressively paying down your loans makes sense. You should either be doing an aggressive minimum payment REPAYE strategy or it sounds like going into a PSLF eligible job would have huge lifestyle and financial benefits for you.

Surprised that they’re already pushing you to hit that many hours and it sounds like your firm might just suck. I do mostly lit and while 200 hour + months are certainly not unheard of, they’re certainly not the baseline expectation either and an 1800 hour year wouldn’t be frowned on at all. I think...

I think if you have the grades to go HYS and don’t really care what you do with your career it’s true that law school’s a fine career choice but like you should be aware that there’s a reason so many lawyers choose to to take 50%+ pay cuts after a few years with a firm. The key to maximizing your we...