Lawyer & Law School Megathread #12: Started Out Barrister, Ended Up Barista

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Lawyer & Law School Megathread #12: Started Out Barrister, Ended Up Barista

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Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Feces Starship posted:

You're not boned, Holland, but you will asymptotically approach boned if you begin waiting another week. Use the time before school starts next Tuesday and just get it done.

if u know who i am and u need any advice, email me (i don't know if we've met at the school before face to face)

I got the fear of god put into me and sent out six apps today so that's a start, I guess.

I'll make sure to email you if I have any questions but I unfortunately don't know who you are. What's your email address?

# ¿ Jan 13, 2011 08:16

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 07:07

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Got it.

Also, should I go through the NYU Public Interest Fair's site for jobs or just contact the employers there on my own to see if I can set something up sooner?

# ¿ Jan 13, 2011 08:24

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

I got an interview with the Manhattan DA's Office! Is there a good reason why I shouldn't promise the interviewer that if they offered me a job, I'd accept it?

# ¿ Jan 14, 2011 17:02

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

prussian advisor posted:

Ugh you dickweed. Im literally jealous. Wish I had a grade

I have zero grades too. Very annoying.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2011 04:36

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

GamingHyena posted:

I have to agree with your professor on this one. She isn't calling you out because of your habits as a student, she's calling you out because of your habits as a (future) attorney. I don't care if you "just remembered things" for your final in underwater basket weaving in undergrad, failing to take notes and failing to go over the notes in a client's file IS irresponsible and unprofessional.

Taking detailed notes of client telephone calls and meetings isn't pointless busywork. You may THINK you have a good memory of what the client said because during the clinic you probably had, at most, a few uncomplicated cases. When you have dozens of clients calling about complicated legal matters that could stretch out for months/years, there's no way you're going to remember every conversation you have. Plus, a contemporaneous record of client interactions is invaluable not only for allowing other attorneys to see how the case is progressing, it will also help you when filling out time sheets. Most importantly, should the client should sue/grieve you in the future, having a contemporaneous record of who said what (and when) could potentially save your law license.

When your client sues you for malpractice after an unfavorable legal battle alleging you failed to inform them about a potential issue/defense 12 months ago, then I hope your memory is as good as you claim because "uh, I think I remember saying something about estoppel issues in January...maybe?" isn't going to cut it.

If your note taking got better over the semester then go ahead and appeal, but I do want to stress to all soon-to-be lawyers the importance of documenting client interactions.

Thanks for posting this, I'm going to try to remember it once I start dealing with real legal work. I'm normally not a big fan of super detailed notes in class but that'll need to change soon.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2011 02:55

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Archilochos posted:

Any current or past NYU/Columbia students around that might have some time to talk about their experiences? I haven't heard back from Columbia yet, but regardless of the decision it looks like there's a good chance I'll be heading to Manhattan next year. I know there used to be a list in the OP but it looks like it didn't survive the new thread iteration.

I'm a CLS 1L.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2011 22:46

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

HamDel also doesn't put marinara sauce on their meatball subs. So, so wrong. The lady who works the counter at night is really nice, though.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2011 20:22

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Does a hiring freeze mean that they aren't hiring anybody period or that their number of employees will stay where it is now?

# ¿ Jan 26, 2011 01:25

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

I only have one grade so far

The one grade I have is an A- :smug:

# ¿ Feb 1, 2011 03:19

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

CLS people: How bad is an A- and two Bs for fall semester of 1L?

# ¿ Feb 3, 2011 16:47

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Lilosh posted:

Based on the the fact that you're mentioning three grades and not four, I assume CLS is Columbia and not Cornell?

Yeah, Columbia.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2011 22:29

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Trash Can Man posted:

Just Michigan, they gave me half tuition. Not sure this is something CLS would care about.

Columbia didn't DENY me money, but I was under the impression scholarships came with admittance letters.

Named scholarships come with admission letters but merit aid comes later after you apply for financial aid.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2011 07:42

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

There's no way HLS would have wait-listed instead of rejecting me if they averaged LSATs.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2011 08:58

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Does anyone have recommendations on hornbooks for Criminal Law and Property?

# ¿ Feb 26, 2011 10:57

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

cendien posted:

I'm using Dressler's crim hornbook and its pretty good. Especially if you use the Dressler casebook, but it would probably work for you anyway.

I'm using a casebook written by Bonnie, Coughlin, Jeffries and Low but I'll look into Dressler.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2011 21:45

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Now the people who really need to see this thread won't stumble across it.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2011 04:42

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Do any of the UVA people have access to Elizabeth Scott's Crim Law practice exams or an outline for her class?

# ¿ Mar 6, 2011 22:56

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

I agree with what everyone else says, go wherever gives you more money.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2011 02:42

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Adar posted:

You can get a studio relatively close to the N in Astoria for $1000-1200 and be more than all right for NYU with a 30-40 minute commute, although your social life might suffer a bit.

Columbia is much tougher because you can't do Queens without a car.

I pay $850 a month including utilities for my apartment at Columbia.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2011 00:28

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

If I have zero interest in working for a firm and all I want to do is work for the government after graduation, should I bother doing EIP? I know I'd be miserable at a firm but all the talk about getting good training from a firm and moving on to something else after a few years is making my resolve waver. I'm going to have about $60k in Stafford loans after I graduate and I really don't have any need to make a lot or even a decent amount of money. My grades for the first semester of 1L were at about the 50th percentile at Columbia.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2011 04:13

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

evilweasel posted:

I would.

Biglaw hires first. You can get the biglaw offer, then try to get a government offer. You can't do the reverse: if you pass up biglaw, you don't have it as a fallback option. A biglaw job is also usually a good path to government/in-house work: much of the hiring the federal government does isn't entry-level - and that means a lot of the summer programs aren't a good route to get hired. It also means that your third year you can potentially have a job offer in your pocket as you look for that government job, which makes things significantly less stressful.

Average grades at Columbia give you a good shot at biglaw jobs but I suspect means you're not a lock for the government posts that are hiring: it'll be a significant risk to pass up any chance at getting a job.

Lastly, with the current "cut spending" craze I wouldn't consider it a good time to be looking to get hired by the federal government, freezing entry-level hiring is a pretty easy way for an agency to deal with budget cuts.

Thanks everyone, you've all convinced me to do EIP.

Also, is there a shared drive with outlines at UVA or Texas? I have two professors who taught there and we don't have any materials at all for them here.

Holland Oats fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Apr 11, 2011

# ¿ Apr 11, 2011 01:37

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Should I do a Child and Adolescent Advocacy Clinic during my 2L year instead of doing a journal? Or do I have to do them both?

# ¿ Apr 14, 2011 02:48

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

I know a couple of the girls in the Korean student election and they're pretty strong-willed and cool people. I don't know Richard at all, though so vote for whoever you like.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2011 05:50

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

flog montresor posted:

Can any Columbia lawgoons comment on any first- or second-hand knowledge about the Lawyering in the Digital Age clinic? I applied and enrolled without really giving too much thought to it, and now that I've actually talked to some people about it, the clinic sounds disturbingly like a seminar on e-discovery (which is pretty much what I did full time prior to coming to law school).

I've heard that some people worked on creating stuff like searchable databases for nonprofits which is worthwhile but something that an IT person could do better than a law student. Overall, I heard that it's not terribly worthwhile but at least it's not incredibly time-consuming.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2011 01:24

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

cendien posted:

A little late here, but I knew this kid in High School. Seeing his updates on facebook is infuriating a majority of the time. And yet, he's at a better school and will probably do better in life. poo poo.

He'll lose in life eventually when he's arrested for soliciting a teenage boy.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2011 05:59

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

How strictly are word count limits enforced? My Crim Law final yesterday had a word count limit and I spent the last five minutes getting my answer within the limit. It occurred to me that other people who break the limit could have spent that time writing more stuff and if they're not penalized for it, I'm essentially punished for following the rules.

# ¿ May 5, 2011 00:30

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

drat Phantom posted:

Wish I could say the same. gently caress law review write-on, right in the ear. Right. In. The. Ear.

I hate it so, so much. Why am I doing this? I don't have the grades and I definitely am not writing something good enough to get on. Ugh.

# ¿ May 19, 2011 04:19

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Lilosh posted:

I read what you wrote and had to look to see if I wrote it.

10 days (due the 27th)
725 pages of research material to write a note.
Another 200-300 pages of material to reference when doing the editing test.

fuuuuuck

There's no way I'm grading on (and even if I get all A+s and manage to be magically one of the 16 best GPAs in my class, we still have to be "not in the bottom third of the writing competition")

I've mentioned being lovely at legal writing, right?

Holy poo poo, that's way worse than ours. Our packet is 76 pages long, closed universe. But it's also due tomorrow

drat Phantom posted:

Hang in there. Actual completion rate for law review competitions tends to be pretty low + the fact that everyone's brains are scrambled by going direct from finals to competition = a lower bar than you think.

On the bright side you didn't forego writing on to your current school's law review in order to try writing on to your reach transfer school's law review (rumor has it that a kid who wrote on to the competition still got rejected anyway, but eh, I'm pretty sure I'm transferring somewhere else no matter what).

Wow, going through all this work for a school I might not even get into sounds insane.

# ¿ May 19, 2011 22:58

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

quepasa18 posted:

I think you probably have a better chance than you think. When I was on the board of our Law Review and grading the submissions, it was staggering how bad some were. However, of those, I suspected most didn't take it very seriously and spent little time on it. So if you're putting the time in, you'll likely be OK. As a tip, and this might not work universally, but we tended to be impressed with people whose submissions had footnotes that were more than a string of ids. Put some effort into those, and your submission will look like a law review article should, even if the writing isn't quite up to par.

Do you have any other tips? We're not allowed to do anything with footnotes other than citations.

# ¿ May 20, 2011 16:20

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

I need to figure out what firms I should bid for during our Early Interview Program. The problem is, I really don't want to work for a firm, I'm just trying to keep my options open. My dream job is getting into DOJ Honors and work for the Criminal Division but I know that I have close to no chance at getting that. I'm pretty sure I want to work in Crim no matter what. Are there any particular Big Law firms that have strong criminal defense practices or are they all mainly focused on finance and M&A work? I really don't know much at all about Big Law since I've never wanted to work in it but if I wind up there anyway, I'd like to work in a field that I at least find interesting. I'm going into 2L at Columbia.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2011 16:25

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Thanks for the help everyone. And for those who are interested in Barrow, Alaska, I just read a really good article about its high school football team. Barrow's a really interesting place. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=tundra

# ¿ Jun 13, 2011 21:43

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

What's a good distribution of classes and seminars for 2L? Right now, I'm at four regular classes and one seminar. Should I swap out a class for a seminar since they're graded more leniently? If I get my top choices, I'll be taking Federal Criminal Law, Evidence, Law & The Political Process, Admin Law, and Telecommunications and Media Law (the seminar).

# ¿ Jun 21, 2011 16:01

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Should I always try to hit 15 exactly?

# ¿ Jun 21, 2011 16:05

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

3.65 is still a really high GPA. I'd imagine that being a Stone Scholar looks really good.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2011 16:19

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Draile posted:

The Harlan Fiske Stone Scholars are the best example of title inflation I can think of. You were in the top 1/3 of your class for one year? Congratulations, you are a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.

Really though I'm just mad because GULCs equivalent of the Stone scholarship is the "Dean's List." Which sounds like something that goes on a bumper sticker.

My child is on the Dean's List at Georgetown University Law Center.

And with my last grade just in, I missed getting the grade inflation title by something like .04. Sad.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2011 07:10

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

CLS people: is there a real dividing line between Stone Scholars and everyone else? I missed the GPA cutoff by about .04 for 1L year. Is it a big deal to have Stone on your resume or is it just some meaningless award that's shorthand for a good GPA?

# ¿ Jun 28, 2011 18:51

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

So what are these GPA cutoffs generally? I know that places like Wachtell won't look at you unless you have incredible grades but what kind of shape am I in if I have about a 3.38 with 3 A minuses, 2 B plusses, and 2 Bs? I really have no idea what counts as good when it comes to law school. Do I have a good shot at getting into SLIP if I want to work for the federal government?

Holland Oats fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jun 28, 2011

# ¿ Jun 28, 2011 21:10

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Does anyone know of any government offices or nonprofits that give job offers to their 2L summer interns? I know that the New York City Law Department does but that's the only one I've heard.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2011 15:05

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Feces Starship posted:

3.75 and a 174 got me into columbia with a big ol scholarship for some reason

A 3.65 and a 174 got me a $40k scholarship too.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2011 04:47

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 07:07

Holland Oats: Oct 20, 2003; Only the dead have seen the end of war

Trash Can Man posted:

So my friend:

Has pretty good numbers ~170 LSAT 3.8 gpa

and is going to a tier 3 law school with like a half scholarship (not exactly but some situation like that)

They've already sent in their deposit and all -- is it too late?

He'd lose his deposit but it's not too late.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2011 23:20

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Lawyer & Law School Megathread #12: Started Out Barrister, Ended Up Barista

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