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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Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

ahahahahahahaha we're all screwed (even more)

# ¿ Aug 17, 2010 22:08

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 23:15

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

CaptainScraps posted:

gently caress this let's go be professors and feed the beast.

We can give Texas-style deposition lessons to lawyers from the Middle East who want to do oil and gas law and teach them our favorite Jamail-isms

# ¿ Aug 17, 2010 22:19

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

chinchilla posted:

The op is excellent, thanks to everyone that contributed, but one thing wasn't entirely clear. What difference does your focus in undergrad make? Any at all? Would a degree like music history (mine) be a disadvantage?

Science makes a difference to IP firms since you can do patent prosecution (and there's a tier system there with electrical engineers at the top and biologists at the bottom). Other than that there's no difference in either the admissions game or the job market.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2010 04:49

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

I've never heard of Knewton, are they yet another TM/PS/BP splinter group? $100/hr for teaching sounds way too good to be true.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2010 17:09

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

One of my LSAT students has like four black belts and owns an MMA gym. All I can do is shake my head.

Elotana fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Aug 19, 2010

# ¿ Aug 19, 2010 17:55

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Defleshed posted:

Trying to consolidate my student loans is literally the most bureaucracy and red tape and confusion I have ever dealt with in my life and I have worked for the Federal Government.

I am seriously about to choke the gently caress out of someone.

Consolidation automatically forfeits the rest of your grace period, right? My loans are with two different lenders and I'll probably end up consolidating them and commencing IBR in November once repayment starts. What's been so lovely about the process?

# ¿ Aug 26, 2010 21:27

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Undergrad poo poo means nothing. If you were president or founder of a large organization it might be a very slight soft factor tiebreaker, and if you have absolutely no extracurriculars it might be a very slight negative, but beyond that, nothing.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2010 23:24

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

So I thought I was starting at my firm after Labor Day and got a very nice call from the office manager explaining that it was actually the first of the month. How to avoid an awkward first day at work: don't show up!

# ¿ Sep 2, 2010 18:29

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

MINN. ST. SEC. 480A.08(3) - Do you really really want to?

# ¿ Sep 3, 2010 20:26

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Do you have a job Linguica

# ¿ Sep 7, 2010 15:16

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

The only schools on that list you should even be considering are USC/UCLA, and that's only if you have a substantial (>50%) scholarship and would be happy settling for something other than entertainment law (because if you don't have entertainment connections right now, at this very moment, before you start law school, it's not gonna happen for you so deal with it).

# ¿ Sep 8, 2010 03:45

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

E.D. Texas owns don't hate

# ¿ Sep 10, 2010 16:55

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Zealous Abattoir posted:

You assholes. I've wanted to be a lawyer my whole loving life. Ever since I was a little kid. Now here I am, night before the LSATS, having an existential crisis. I hate you all. Now I am unsure about going to law school, and don't know what the gently caress to do. I never thought of myself as not going to law school. I thought of Library Science, but I was going to go do both.

I don't know if the LSAT is giving me cold feet or if it is simply re-reading this stupid thread.

Do well on the LSAT and go to a school that will let you in for free. If you really have always wanted to be a lawyer your whole life then that's what I would recommend.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2010 17:09

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Even once you filter out the utterly irrelevant stuff there's still several boxes' worth of stuff out of that warehouse that will turn out to be relevant.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2010 01:17

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Also aren't straight As the default in grad school or something

# ¿ Oct 15, 2010 21:56

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

stingray1381 posted:

I know I'm being lazy, and I could look this up, but how do law schools differ from med schools? Why are med schools able to control their numbers?

Med schools require tons of infrastructure and equipment that advances with technology; they usually break much closer to even. Law schools by contrast just need a library and a large class building. One-time cost and pure profit afterwards.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2010 15:05

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

When I took my LSAT it was at an HBCU thirty miles south of my university because our LSAT date coincided with a home football game and on our campus it was administered right across the street :toot:

# ¿ Oct 30, 2010 07:57

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

You'll get in everywhere you apply!

# ¿ Oct 31, 2010 01:36

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

CaptainScraps posted:

Mookie raises a good point.

IF IT'S TAUGHT BY AN ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, TAKE IT.

Just in dissent from this: The patent litigation workshop I took at UT was taught by two partners from Weil in Houston and it was the most useless class I'd ever taken. They gave zero feedback on our written assignments outside of final grades, and it was completely random on a given week whether in-class exercises would be judged by one dude, the other dude, both dudes, or some hapless co-worker of theirs completely unfamiliar with the course's structure and fact pattern.

I'm sure they were competent attorneys, but they were busy attorneys, and totally incompetent teachers.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2010 00:34

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

TX bar results: :smugdog:

# ¿ Nov 4, 2010 21:33

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Hahaha I got the letter with my actual bar exam score back and I think am the most efficient attorney in Texas

# ¿ Nov 10, 2010 09:08

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

CaptainScraps posted:

I have a friend who passed with half your score.

Those numbers on the pass list are exam IDs, not scores

On the plus side I did way better on the MBE so I can still waive into DC if I want to (man my essays must have been poo poo on toast)

# ¿ Nov 10, 2010 17:01

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Law thread what is the best plan to study for the patent bar. I have a month left to take it and I don't want to spend a lot of money on a self-prep course (I'll buy secondhand materials off eBay if someone recommends their books specifically but that's about it).

# ¿ Nov 17, 2010 17:00

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

NJ Deac posted:

Also, I hope you've mailed in your application to the PTO, because they take at least a couple of weeks (longer if you're a CS grad from a non-ABET college) to process, and then you have to schedule time at a ProMetric facility (which can be annoyingly difficult if you don't want to drive hours to a remote facility on exam day). The patent bar is no joke, so if you haven't started to study, you need to get on it immediately. Most of the home study programs are about 50 hours of lecture and a ton of sample questions, so if you're going to get through one before the end of the year, you're running out of time.

Yeah all my PTO stuff is in, what I meant is I have a month-left in my three-month window to take it. I went ahead and scheduled it for 12/17 since that had dates free in nearby Prometric centers.

When I was on the IP journal in law school I was told by students that if you took a bunch of patent electives, a week of solid studying is enough to pass and that the main skills are familiarity with the MPEP and a solid grasp of CTRL+F for the online copy you get. I don't really have much interest in lectures since I always learn best by reading which is why I'll likely buy some secondhand materials from one of those courses off eBay and cram for a week and call it good. Worked for the TX bar. :shobon:

# ¿ Nov 17, 2010 20:06

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Don't read any casebook three days before, that's stupid. Grab some good outlines (or buy some if you're asocial, outlinedepot has drat near everything if your casebook isn't popular enough for commercial outlines), and spend those three days reading those instead. Maybe do some highlighting and tabbing in your book if you already bought it but let the outline be your guide as to what's important.

Unless your professor is the actual author of a casebook there is no need to buy them after your first semester of 1L. The only exceptions I can think of are small, new or rarely offered classes that are heavy on policy, where having access to cases on Lexis won't help and there aren't any outlines available. Between the availability of outlines, the availability of cases, and the availability of old editions in your library, there's just no excuse for being a chump and enabling the textbook hustle.

Three weeks is a very long time. IMO three days of cramming is just fine for open-book or open-note exams. I never dipped below a B on an open exam and net a fair share of As.

Elotana fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Nov 28, 2010

# ¿ Nov 28, 2010 23:10

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

evilweasel posted:

I really disagree with this. I find that long outlines for open-book exams are a hindrance: you want a short outline, and for the esoteric topics, you want the page number. That means you have the important stuff there, summarized, and when your professor pulls some small detail out you can re-read the four pages in the book and know everything you are expected to know about the subject.

Open book exams are all about information management and accessibility: you have all the information you need, so the trick is getting it as quickly as possible. Get yourself organized so you can easily access the information you need, and know the subject well enough to recognize things well enough to know what to look up.

I didn't say grab a 100-page outline, that might as well be its own book. People have different levels of dexterity with referencing stuff. My favorite outlines were usually around 25 pages. I'd grab the two or three most recent ones of that length, spend a day or two combining them, and call it square.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2010 09:45

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Did you try outlinedepot? BK is a pretty common class, if there aren't old outlines there for your professor specifically there's almost certainly commercial flowcharts keyed to your textbook.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2010 17:51

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Lilosh posted:

I've seen a bunch of stuff on Outline Depot that looked relevant (Outlines keyed to my casebook, etc), but Outline Depot seemed a bit sketchy, and "Outline depot scam" came up when I went to google them.

Are they legit? Did you buy the outlines, or upload your own?

I sunk about $80 into it over my last four semesters and it was the most cost-effective money I spent in law school. It wasn't a scam in 2009.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2010 17:50

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

I forget, did the majority opinions address the obvious incentive for cops to just train dogs that indicate all the time (or at least massively err on that side)?

# ¿ Dec 2, 2010 20:27

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Daico posted:

Texas Civil Procedure can blow me.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, gently caress you guys, we're the Texas Supreme Court and we don't give a drat what the law is, we make the laws! of nature! Green is blue and cats are now the only ones with the right to vote!"

Haha do you have Albright

"Hmmm how can I get everyone to buy my awful book despite my final exam having jack poo poo to do with what we learned in class or what's on the bar exam. I know, weekly homework assignments and randomly selected group discussions!"

# ¿ Dec 11, 2010 03:27

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Daico posted:

You or Scraps got any info on what's *actually* on the exam?

CaptainScraps posted:

Appellate procedure. Know it.

Yeah the final is like 75% appeal deadlines and 25% everything else. Because so many of us are going to be handling appellate work coming out of law school as opposed to, say, discovery.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2010 20:42

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Anyone have any classmates become landmen (landwomen)? (This might be a Texas-specific question.)

# ¿ Dec 14, 2010 20:33

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Ainsley McTree posted:

Don't you have to have a whole bunch of qualifications before you even get admitted to med school though? Like undergrad courses or something I dunno. Or is it like law where you can just* take the MCAT and hope you do well?

*by "just" I don't mean to imply that the MCAT is as easy to do passingly well on as the LSAT

Nope. Since everyone gets jobs rankings don't matter as much and so schools don't need to slavishly game their numbers. The MCAT is a barrier to entry but not a ticket. Soft factors like recommendations are a much bigger factor than they are in law school.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2010 01:42

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

NJ Deac posted:

The partners at my firm recently got a bug up their rear end about having all of the associates finish their USPTO registration. Of the four of us studying to take it right now, three of us are using the PLI program (one of us bought the materials on eBay and saved a couple grand, I and another guy paid full sticker price, minus a partial reimbursement from the firm), and one is using Omniprep.

Here was the prevailing wisdom when we were each deciding what course to take:

PLI: The "cadillac" of patent bar prep, or at least it sure is priced like one. This is the one most big firms send their associates to for prep, but it costs around 3 grand. The lectures have been alright, and the material seems pretty decently organized. However, it also tracks the MPEP pretty closely, so it's hard to quantify the value added from the organization provided by the course materials. If you have no background in patent law, this is probably the way to go, but I find myself skimming through a lot of the lectures since I've been doing this for a couple of years already. Definitely worth it if you can find a set of used materials on Ebay or wherever, but I'm not sure about paying full price. If you do decide to buy the retail version, make sure to mention you're an IP Watchdog reader for a 10% discount.

I primarily chose PLI because my firm is tying our bonuses and raises this year to how many tries it takes us to pass the exam, so I didn't want to take any chances with a "lesser" set of materials.

Also, don't worry if you can only find the audio cds. The DVDs are just John White standing in front of a blue background speaking - there's no benefit to watching the videos over listening to the audio on cd or MP3.

PRG/Kayton: Almost as expensive as PLI, and probably about as highly regarded. I didn't consider this program as fully as PLI, so I don't know as much about it, but seems to be in the "upper" tier of prep materials.

Patbar.com: A friend of mine used this program, as did one of the partners at my firm. They each said it was horribly boring and was basically a dude reading out of the MPEP for hours on end. However, they also both passed the first time. The advantage is that it's considerably cheaper than PLI or PRG, but the tradeoff is that it supposedly isn't organized as well.

Omniprep: The cheapest of all, and they offer some kind of pass guarantee. The materials are entirely online, and they verify that you've been through all of the lectures and answered the practice questions. If you do, then they'll give you a 110% refund if you fail the exam. In practice, I'm not sure how worthwhile this guarantee is. I used Micromash to study for the bar exam, and they had a similar guarantee. In order to qualify for the guarantee though, you had to do so much studying and so many practice questions that you'd almost certainly end up studying way more than you needed. I imagine the Omniprep guarantee is similar. My coworker says it's pretty dry/boring, but that's may be more related to the subject matter than the quality of the program.

In short, I think it boils down to how much you're looking to spend and how badly you need to pass the test the first time. PLI is the most highly regarded, possibly swapping with PRG depending upon who you ask, but it'll cost you. Patbar and Omniprep are budget alternatives, but if you need to pass the first time you probably want to skip them unless you already know your way around a file wrapper pretty well.

Also, I hope you've mailed in your application to the PTO, because they take at least a couple of weeks (longer if you're a CS grad from a non-ABET college) to process, and then you have to schedule time at a ProMetric facility (which can be annoyingly difficult if you don't want to drive hours to a remote facility on exam day). The patent bar is no joke, so if you haven't started to study, you need to get on it immediately. Most of the home study programs are about 50 hours of lecture and a ton of sample questions, so if you're going to get through one before the end of the year, you're running out of time.

Ideally, you want to be able to take the old exams listed on the uspto.gov website and get a passing score before you sit for the test itself. I've heard stories of just studying using the free materials provided by the PTO and reading the MPEP, but the failure rate on this test is high enough that you really need to take it seriously.

Holy crap your firm is wasting a lot of money

Baruch Obamawitz posted:

Having taken and passed the patent bar right after law school, I can confirm that this is the case (minus the week of studying).

Honestly, the only important thing is knowing what chapter of the MPEP things will be in, because you can't search the entire MPEP during the test, only within a chapter.

This turned out to be accurate! Here's how you pass the patent bar y'all (Linguica put this in the OP):

1. Be a nerd under the age of 30 who can intelligently construct search strings based on unique phrases, if you are old or not a computer nerd ask one to help you (they don't need to know anything about patents or whatever)

2. Download the MPEP (individual PDFs for each chapter) and Acrobat 5 (it's what Prometric uses) and make your screen resolution tiny so your interface will be similar to what it is on the exam
3. Go here and spend a few hours walking through the 2003 repeats so you can be :smugdog:

and answer instantly when they give you a recognizable repeat question, this will also get you familiar with what to search for each subject

4. Take the patent bar: Congratulations you've passed!

Note the complete absence of "prep course" or "patent electives" or even "knowing jack poo poo about law and/or engineering" in this method.

Elotana fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Dec 20, 2010

# ¿ Dec 20, 2010 23:14

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

NJ Deac posted:

I'm not sure I'd agree the prep course was entirely worthless, though. It helped a bit knowing what sections of the MPEP to focus on and what to ignore, and there were quite a few repeat questions I saw in their software that weren't on the 02 and 03 practice exams.

Thing is once you take 50 or so practice questions you've already got an idea which sections are gonna be tested.

God Tier: 700, 2100
High Tier: 600, 1200, 1400
Mid Tier: 200, 500, 800, 900, 1500, 2200
Low Tier: 100, 300, 400, 1300, 1800, 1900, 2000, 2300, 2500
Not Tested: 1000, 1100, 1600, 1700, 2400, 2500, 2600, 2700

# ¿ Dec 20, 2010 23:54

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

There's always a ton of PCT bullshit but most of it isn't actually in 1800, since 1800 governs the functioning of the actual treaty but the questions are mostly about how the USPTO treats PCT filings for prior art or critical dates on our end. 2136.03 was where I ended up for at least three different PCT questions.

Elotana fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Dec 21, 2010

# ¿ Dec 21, 2010 00:08

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Baruch Obamawitz posted:

Second pop quiz: what's the filing date of a national stage filed 30 months after a PCT application when they forgot to file an oath?

# ¿ Dec 21, 2010 00:30

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Baruch Obamawitz posted:

I've cited Something Awful before as a reference because I'm just that lazy

please tell me this is a published application

# ¿ Dec 21, 2010 00:32

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Oh my god that is dogshit, speaking as a Former Moderator� those claims are 103 as fuuuuuuck

# ¿ Dec 21, 2010 05:28

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 23:15

Elotana: Dec 12, 2003; and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account

Realtalk if you're good at taking tests you can pass the bar by buying a used Conviser book on eBay and studying that for two weeks

# ¿ Dec 22, 2010 23:37

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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