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The NY bar was the only standardized test I genuinely thought I might've ever done badly on in my life. I passed. You will too. Also, for those of you taking both NY/NJ, the NJ bar may as well be the NY bar's vestigial tail so on the off chance you somehow fail the NY bar, don't worry - you'll still be licensed somewhere!
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Jul 27, 2010 16:05
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If you take the bar sober, you're a weenie.
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Jul 27, 2010 16:10
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nm posted:The bar is easy. If you struggle at all, you're going to fail. More or less this. My cohort of grads generally wrote the bar a month or two ago (Ontario, for what a Canadian example is worth), nearly everyone was terrified going in and coming out, but when I was done there was only one person I knew that I genuinely thought might fail. (I passed, they failed.  )You'll all be fine. Good luck!
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Jul 27, 2010 16:27
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entris posted:If you take the bar sober, you're a weenie. Have you ever taken a bar exam, on weed?
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Jul 27, 2010 17:09
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billion dollar bitch posted:Have you ever taken a bar exam, on weed? But have you ever stolen plans, space plans? Have you ever killed a man, with your mind? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYvHpVwIqYY
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Jul 27, 2010 22:35
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I'm not sure if this has been posted yet, but Above the Law had a surprisingly thoughtful summary of the latest NALP figures for salaries right after graduation. http://abovethelaw.com/2010/07/nalp-gives-more-information-on-expected-lawyer-salary/  quote:In fact, NALP has been at the forefront of educating prospective lawyers on the dangers of focusing on “average” starting salaries. The average is meaningless. The median is just slightly more helpful, and NALP has been begging people to pay attention to the bimodal salary distribution curve that tells the true story of how much lawyers are likely to get paid. quote:According to James Leipold, NALP’s executive director, “As a matter of consumer information, especially for students who are considering applying to law school, the adjusted mean provides a better benchmark than the unadjusted mean, because it accounts for the larger number of lower salaries that are not reported. Nevertheless, the overall mean for starting salaries, whether adjusted or unadjusted, is best used to measure the rise and fall of aggregate salaries over time, and not the likelihood of earning a particular salary when graduating from law school. As the distribution of starting lawyer salaries makes clear, very few new law school graduates earn anything close to the mean. Instead, many graduates will earn much more than the mean salary, and many more will earn much less.” quote:A lot of wanna-be lawyers claim that they don’t even want to make $160K. Fine. But understand the curve. If you don’t make $160K, it’s not likely that you’ll make just a little bit less — say, $120K. It’s not likely that you’ll make the average; it’s not even likely that you’ll make the median. If you don’t win the $160K lottery, chances are you’ll be clumped into the left-hand side of the curve, earning somewhere between $30,000 and $60,000 a year. That’s the kind of pay that a lot of people can get without three years of post-graduate education and six figures of debt. Good luck to those of you taking the bar, by the way. Eric Cantonese fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Jul 27, 2010 |
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Jul 27, 2010 22:42
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I remember being taught in high school that the mean is a useless metric for some things, most notably salaries. A small sample size of high earners will always skew the value upward. It blows me away that people with college degrees would consider law school because the mean salary for new graduates is 80k or 90k or whatever.
Draile fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Jul 27, 2010 |
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Jul 27, 2010 22:49
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the only thing that's mean is you guys, to prospective students of our noble profession
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Jul 27, 2010 22:55
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CmdrSmirnoff posted:the only thing that's mean is you guys, to prospective students of our noble profession lol math joke
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Jul 27, 2010 23:11
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So I am pretty pleased with today, except for the final question which I literally knew absolutely nothing about (corporations). I mean, beyond nothing. Imagine the worst answer possible, drag it out to three pages in an attempt to look like the author knows something, and then fail it horribly. Also a pretty big bullshit answer for the fed jurisdiction question, but at least I knew the exact test for diversity and domicile, which was part of the question. Otherwise, 8 out of 10 (including the MPT), so I'm pretty chuffed about the whole bar thing now and can't wait to sit the MBE tomorrow. EDIT: holy poo poo I think I was right, articles of incorporation trump bylaws, looks like I'm the corporations pro now. Lykourgos fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Jul 27, 2010 |
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Jul 27, 2010 23:18
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CmdrSmirnoff posted:the only thing that's mean is you guys, to prospective students of our noble profession A friend of mine smokes weed all day and babysits his little sisters for $250/week for his parents, which barely covers his weed and food bills. He weighs some 400 pounds and smells like a toad's vagina. His life goal is to never work hard and make a lot of money, and he plans to attend law school for 'environmental law'. I am forced to use tough love to convince him that he's already achieved his life goals and explain how much worse he'll be off if he goes to law school.
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Jul 27, 2010 23:20
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_areaman posted:he plans to attend law school for 'environmental law'. I am forced to use tough love to convince him that he's already achieved his life goals and explain how much worse he'll be off if he goes to law school. I had lunch with a fellow test-taker who went to school in DC somewhere. I don't remember his name, and I hadn't met him before today. Our conversation went to jobs, and he said that although he didn't have one yet, he was confident in finding a job at the UN in international law.
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Jul 27, 2010 23:23
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Lykourgos posted:So I am pretty pleased with today, except for the final question which I literally knew absolutely nothing about (corporations). I mean, beyond nothing. Imagine the worst answer possible, drag it out to three pages in an attempt to look like the author knows something, and then fail it horribly. When I took the bar I was completely and absolutely stumped on the very first essay question. I couldn't spot an issue, I couldn't even figure out which area of law it was asking about. I literally read the fact pattern and thought "uh...yup, this all looks above board to me." I could only write a paragraph, I just could not figure out what it wanted me to say. still passed, you'll be fine Of course I took it in passachusetts and they only give you your score if you fail so who knows how much that actually hurt me
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Jul 27, 2010 23:24
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Ainsley McTree posted:Of course I took it in passachusetts and they only give you your score if you fail so who knows how much that actually hurt me IL only tells you the score if you fail, too; I think the pass-rate for first timers is ninety something, although I don't want to jinx myself. At any rate, overall I reckon today went well for me. Corporations was literally the last question of the day, so it didn't have a chance to slow me down. What was strange that some people just didn't show up for the bar, and the proctors said that every year some people get chucked out for breaking the rules. Did people just explode from stress the day before or something and not make it?
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Jul 27, 2010 23:27
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TyChan posted:I'm not sure if this has been posted yet, but Above the Law had a surprisingly thoughtful summary of the latest NALP figures for salaries right after graduation. This dude had some thoughts on the first dude's thoughts: http://volokh.com/2010/07/25/the-bimodal-distribution-of-lawyer-pay/ Somin's seems slightly more reasonable to me though I think he may come off too much on the rosy side. [I'm also not sure to what extent the tendency of low wage performers to switch fields might play in either.] quote:First, these are merely entry-level first year salaries. In law, as in most professions, pay increases with years of experience. Data on overall lawyers’ salaries compiled by the Labor Department shows that the median lawyer makes some $113,000 per year (meaning that 50% of lawyers make that much or more). Even lawyers at the 25th percentile of pay in the profession make about $76,000 per year. You have to go to the bottom 10% of the profession to find lawyers making under $55,000 per year. Thus, claims that most lawyers can expect to earn “somewhere between $30,000 and $60,000 a year” are misleading at best.
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Jul 27, 2010 23:40
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Lykourgos posted:So I am pretty pleased with today, except for the final question which I literally knew absolutely nothing about (corporations). I mean, beyond nothing. I got a 2 on my Commercial Paper essay for Missouri. I wrote all of 3 sentences, and I still passed. Missouri is pretty easy but still, you have leeway. Lykourgos posted:the proctors said that every year some people get chucked out for breaking the rules. I wish they did this at my New York Bar test center. Some girl delayed the test start quite a bit because she not only brought in a bag - which the Test Center was cool with even though there was supposed to be a No Bag rule, but she insisted it be kept right next to her during the test because it was a Louis Vuitton. They ended up giving in.
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Jul 27, 2010 23:44
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Maryland essay day update. Other than being unable to masturbate for a week due to handcramping from handwriting 10 essays and an MPT, I'm pretty pleased. Way easier than BarBri. Lucked out and got no commercial paper or secured transactions. My civpro and ethics were mixed into a single question with an extract (woot). One sales (UCC art. 2) question that had an extract but I didn't need it because it was a simple 2-207 question. Downsides: family law question I had no idea on, guessed and turns out my answer was mostly correct. Speedy Trial question in Crim that I had no idea on, guessed and turns out my answer was at least partly if not mostly correct. Also, not a single corporations question... All in all, I'm pretty pleased. Hopefully I can keep it up with the MBE.
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Jul 28, 2010 00:31
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SWATJester posted:All in all, I'm pretty pleased. Hopefully I can keep it up with the MBE. I'm taking the ncbe MBE online test, I took one already and it was pretty helpful, especially compared to the barbri questions. The Barbri sample MBE questions really don't feel like the real MBE (at least, NCBE makes the MBE and they say this is like the real one) at all. It's fairly nice software, too; you take the test timed, and then it generates a PDF that discusses all your answers in relation to what choice you picked, rather than a general catch-all answer. It's twenty something dollars, which is a tad steep, but I didn't pay for any other service so I guess it's okay to lose 20~ instead of 2,000 dollars.
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Jul 28, 2010 00:54
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Nah. Tonight I relax, enjoy my percoset, watch futurama.
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Jul 28, 2010 01:04
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If it makes any NY&NJ bar takers out there feel any better, I'll be sopping up the fail all by my lonesome this summer. (Started studying a week ago, only still taking the exam out of a need to not see my app fees completely wasted.) So buck up! You can't do worse than me! EDIT: I forgot to mention that I've already soaked up all the fail for NY essays, so feel better NY bar folks. pnumoman fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Jul 28, 2010 |
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Jul 28, 2010 02:05
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pnumoman posted:Started studying a week ago, only still taking the exam out of a need to not see my app fees completely wasted I wouldn't lose all hope yet, pnumo. I started studying in earnest about 10 days before the bar, and although a full fortnight would have been best, it doesn't automatically mean that we're going to fail. What study materials did you use? If you spent the time to read the barbri conviser and do a lot of practice essays, then you ought to be fine. EDIT: Just get 200 on the MBE and it probably won't matter
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Jul 28, 2010 02:11
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Daico posted:This dude had some thoughts on the first dude's thoughts: http://volokh.com/2010/07/25/the-bimodal-distribution-of-lawyer-pay/ Fortunately, I'm slightly better at statistics than the average lawyer, what with doing basic statistics for a living: quote:First, these are merely entry-level first year salaries. In law, as in most professions, pay increases with years of experience. Data on overall lawyers’ salaries compiled by the Labor Department shows that the median lawyer makes some $113,000 per year (meaning that 50% of lawyers make that much or more). Even lawyers at the 25th percentile of pay in the profession make about $76,000 per year. You have to go to the bottom 10% of the profession to find lawyers making under $55,000 per year. Thus, claims that most lawyers can expect to earn “somewhere between $30,000 and $60,000 a year” are misleading at best. Did you know that when lawyers can't find a job, many of them quit law? Neither did I, but that may just drag these numbers down a tad. Unlike the schools whose job it is to train lawyers, the Labor Department *does* differentiate between law grads at Starbucks and law grads in the legal profession. What does this tell you about the validity of these figures? quote:Furthermore, the NALP data for the class of 2009 show that the median graduate has a salary of about $72,000; in other words, 50% of first year lawyers can expect to make that much or more. Even if you adjust the figure downward a little to reflect reporting rates skewed in favor of large firms, you still get a level of perhaps $65,000 based on the formula that NALP used to recalculate the mean salary (reducing the initial estimate by about 9%). That’s not bad for an entry level salary in the middle of a deep recession. Let us in fact assume the median salary for the class of 2009 is $65,000. First, we should take judicial notice that this number bears a suspicious relationship to the number firms pay to their hires to go away for a year (or two, or forever) and further revise this number downward based on the "do you really think most of these people have a bright future in the legal industry for the next 10 years?" principle. Second, we should once again point out that unlike the Department of Labor, these numbers include everyone working in everything. Working as a lawyer for $50,000 is bad, but not life-changingly awful even with big loans, since you have some kind of career path and your resume is not automatically discarded when you try to move up. Working as a grocery store clerk because you couldn't get a legal job for a year? You're hosed forever. Once you're out of this profession long enough there's no way back in. Third, we should of course point out that the majority of lawyers making above $113,000 have no real loans (having gone to law school during a time when law schools didn't charge $200,000) and, in any event, had a way to declare bankruptcy and wipe those loans away up until the last decade. The majority of new graduates have nothing of the kind and the median amount owed is above the median yearly salary for a lawyer (counting only those people actually employed as lawyers, mind you). In closing, gently caress you e: I looked in the comments: quote:Data on overall lawyers’ salaries compiled by the Labor Department shows that the median lawyer makes some $113,000 per year (meaning that 50% of lawyers make that much or more). Even lawyers at the 25th percentile of pay in the profession make about $76,000 per year. You have to go to the bottom 10% of the profession to find lawyers making under $55,000 per year. awesome it's even worse than I thought and these numbers are not just garbage, they're discounted toilet paper Adar fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Jul 28, 2010 |
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Jul 28, 2010 03:15
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gently caress all y'all and your easy bar exams. Alaska has mandatory ~40% failure rate. Also, our first question was an hour long essay on AKRCP 14(B)(1)(d)(iii)(x). Christ that was painful. I almost guessed the right rule too. I nailed the other two hour long essays and the two MPTs though so meh.
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Jul 28, 2010 03:18
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Adar posted:Working as a lawyer for $50,000 is bad, but not life-changingly awful even with big loans, since you have some kind of career path and your resume is not automatically discarded when you try to move up. I'm a lawyer working for roughly $50,000 and I wouldn't classify it as "bad." I live quite comfortably. So...what exactly did you mean by "working as a lawyer for $50,000 is bad"? Personally, I think many lawyers are overpaid.
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Jul 28, 2010 03:55
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NoodleBaby posted:I'm a lawyer working for roughly $50,000 and I wouldn't classify it as "bad." I live quite comfortably. So...what exactly did you mean by "working as a lawyer for $50,000 is bad"? If you are making $50K, I hope you love your job, because even if you went for free you're currently about $200K behind someone getting a job out of college and won't be making that up until you hit your mid-40's. Nevertheless, you're still a special snowflake because you went for free and/or are living in a rural area with very low COL. If neither of those things are true, you're in for a rude awakening when your loans stop deferring.
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Jul 28, 2010 04:02
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I've been paying loans every month four years. I live in Oklahoma City, which has a fairly low COL. And I'm not too concerned with what other people are making out of the gate. I represent people who really need help, I have wonderful coworkers, I travel around the country for the job 3-4 times a month on the company dime, and I rarely work more than 40 hours a week. So if that puts me behind everyone else...I'm okay with that. Most lawyers I know hate their jobs, which is unfortunate. This profession has the potential to be very fulfilling if you do it right. Focusing on salary isn't it.
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Jul 28, 2010 04:11
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Which would be nice if law schools didn't constantly refer to salaries as justification for their exorbitant tuition
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Jul 28, 2010 04:13
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NoodleBaby posted:I've been paying loans every month four years. I live in Oklahoma City, which has a fairly low COL. And I'm not too concerned with what other people are making out of the gate. I represent people who really need help, I have wonderful coworkers, I travel around the country for the job 3-4 times a month on the company dime, and I rarely work more than 40 hours a week. Good for you.
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Jul 28, 2010 04:33
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Lykourgos posted:So I am pretty pleased with today, except for the final question which I literally knew absolutely nothing about (corporations). I mean, beyond nothing. Imagine the worst answer possible, drag it out to three pages in an attempt to look like the author knows something, and then fail it horribly. Whatever. Too late now. Edit: And they had a whole goddamn question about larceny by false pretenses. What the gently caress. deathdrive83 fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Jul 28, 2010 |
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Jul 28, 2010 04:35
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NoodleBaby posted:I've been paying loans every month four years. I live in Oklahoma City, which has a fairly low COL. And I'm not too concerned with what other people are making out of the gate. I represent people who really need help, I have wonderful coworkers, I travel around the country for the job 3-4 times a month on the company dime, and I rarely work more than 40 hours a week. Sweet, will your life lesson pay my student loans and feed my family? Cause if they will, I'd like to cash them in for.... cash.
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Jul 28, 2010 07:39
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Roger_Mudd posted:Sweet, will your life lesson pay my student loans and feed my family? Cause if they will, I'd like to cash them in for.... cash. Noodlebaby's experience is a lot easier to handle if one has a spouse with a decent salary. Obviously we all want large salaries, but $50,000 combined with -let's say- $70,000 isn't too shabby. Certainly enough to get by on even with kids.
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Jul 28, 2010 08:05
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Leon Kowalski posted:Noodlebaby's experience is a lot easier to handle if one has a spouse with a decent salary. Obviously we all want large salaries, but $50,000 combined with -let's say- $70,000 isn't too shabby. Certainly enough to get by on even with kids. Do you want to buy a house? Do you want to travel? Do you or your wife want to take a few years off when the kids are young? Do you ever want to retire? Do you want to pay for your children's college education? If you want these things, do your math over. My wife and I make a lot more than the numbers you posted, and it is not enough.
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Jul 28, 2010 10:54
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I'm scraping by on a combined $170k a year, heh. white problems
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Jul 28, 2010 13:07
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Solomon Grundy posted:Do you want to buy a house? Yeah, but do you live in Oklahoma, though.
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Jul 28, 2010 13:08
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Is anyone familiar with filing social security claims? I need to create an assignment for one of my classes and am just looking for what the basic steps are, because I have no idea. PM me if you could hep me out.
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Jul 28, 2010 14:24
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quepasa18 posted:Is anyone familiar with filing social security claims? I need to create an assignment for one of my classes and am just looking for what the basic steps are, because I have no idea. PM me if you could hep me out. Try the Social Security gov website, I'm sure it has a filing guide for laypersons.
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Jul 28, 2010 14:36
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Neon Belly fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Sep 27, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2010 14:36
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My meager salary combined with my wife's equally meager salary allows us to scrape along, occasionally take a vacation, and have cable. My kids can play sports, and we have a car. Life is good. Thank gently caress for IBR In other news, my wife's boss wants me to file a trademark application for her. I have a client agreement and I have some malpractice insurance. Guess I'm gonna do it. From what I can tell it amounts to nothing more than gathering some information from her and then filing the paperwork. Defleshed fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Jul 28, 2010 |
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Jul 28, 2010 14:42
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Leon Kowalski posted:Noodlebaby's experience is a lot easier to handle if one has a spouse with a decent salary. Obviously we all want large salaries, but $50,000 combined with -let's say- $70,000 isn't too shabby. Certainly enough to get by on even with kids. Neither is 160k combined with you're loving fired, you have half an hour to clean your desk and security will escort you to the exit; now get out of my office. I kid, firms are much kinder and gentler when they fire/defer people.
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Jul 28, 2010 14:43
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Found this old-but-good blog post about legal education from Liz Warren. evilweasel, you'll like this: Elizabeth Warren posted:What is a Fact? See also: Johnson & Kwak (and Posner, albeit in a dissent) taking down Easterbrook with regards to whether the free market will solve mutual fund fee manipulation, and a supremely  blog update on how "this is a problem in legal education thought not so much at Yale" by Kwak.
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Jul 28, 2010 14:57
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