B) A Wake Forest student is not happy with his law school, but the law school ain’t backin’ down. JD Journal.

C) Thanks to law school students, couples in Sacramento can get divorced in mere seconds. Wall Street Journal.

D) And case of the Pop-Tart gun continues… Huffington Post.

E) Facebook is so popular, even our grandmas use it. And for that, we thank you, Mark Zuckerberg. BuzzFeed.

What You Should Know if You’re Ready for the June LSAT

Your best practice LSAT score is still ahead of you. We still have three and a half weeks of prep time for the June LSAT. So, you shouldn’t let your current practice LSAT scores determine whether or not you’re ready to merely register for the June LSAT. At this point you’re probably still struggling with timing. If your accuracy is pretty high (the ratio of correct answer choices to questions attempted), you’re going to enjoy a pretty sizable LSAT score improvement once you get your timing down.

If your current practice LSAT score is not a great indicator of your readiness, how do you decide if you’re supposed to register for the June LSAT? Well, here are some skills you should have acquired in some measure by now:

• Identifying Logical Reasoning question types by prompt
• Identifying Necessary and Sufficient keywords
• Identifying Logical Force and using it appropriately
• Breaking down arguments into premises and conclusions
• Identifying and not committing Logical Reasoning flaws
• Strengthening and weakening causal claims
• Combining and simplifying Ordering and Grouping rules
• Playing the numbers
• Identifying opportunities for scenarios
• Marking up and tagging Reading Comprehension passages
• Anticipating the main point For Reading Comprehension passages

You probably don’t have all of the above skills mastered, and that’s just fine. However, if you feel like you don’t know how to do any of the above tasks, then the June LSAT is not for you. You cannot cram for the LSAT. Don’t be upset, there’s always the October LSAT. If you feel pretty good about most of the above skills, then you should register for the June LSAT. Remember, registering for the June LSAT is merely necessary and not sufficient for taking it. You can still change your mind about taking the June LSAT by 11:59 on the night before the June LSAT.

Some Other LSAC Deadlines For Your Calendar

You have until 11:59 p.m. this Sunday (May 19) to change your LSAT test center location. You should look up your June LSAT test center in our LSAT blog guide to Blueprint Prep-area June LSAT test centers. If it sounds like your June LSAT test center is noisy and offers only small desks, then you should find a better one. Making this change will cost you an extra $35, but it is definitely worth it.

If you decide to postpone the June LSAT, you’ll have to make that change by May 26 — but it will cost you $80.

If the approaching June LSAT has you stressed out, it might be time for you to take a mental-health day. Go have a night out, spend the day cuddling with your dogs, or browse cute pictures of cats online. Whatever you do, make sure you stay far away from complex conditionals and their contrapositives!

* Registered By Phone AND Registered Online —-> Take June LSAT

1) Go up to that cute guy/girl and tell them exactly how awesome you are.

2) Cry into your appletini because you’re too shy to approach a stranger (and if this applies to you, I assume you drink appletinis).

3) Send over a friend to talk you up.

No. 1 will result in you coming across as arrogant, and no. 2 will result in your appletini being watery and salty, neither of which will make it any better.

But if your friend is talented in the field of wingmanery (or homoalarology, if Latin or made-up words is your thing), method no. 3 might just land you some time with the guy/girl of your dreams (until they see your appletini, that is, so chug it and put the glass down before your approach).

What’s this have to do with law school? Other than needing to hone your dating skills before classes start, those who write you a law school letter of recommendation are like your wingmen, and you should choose them wisely. They’re going to be saying the nice things about you that you can’t, and while they most likely won’t land you a date an acceptance letter themselves, they can certainly blow it for you.

First off, always pick professors who know you best. I don’t care if you took a class with 300 other people taught by the President of the United States – unless he knows you well, the letter won’t carry any weight (plus he’d probably just steal your thunder, anyway). Go for the professor of that 6-person seminar, or the TA whom you worked with extensively. As long as they were in a position to judge your work and scholastic ability, it won’t matter who they are.

Second, when in doubt, pick the English teacher. Or anyone with writing experience. If you send your friend who can barely string together a sentence, you’re not going to have much luck at the bar. You’re much better off sending Cyrano de Bergerac, the original wingman, to woo your crush (plus he ain’t stealing anyone’s thunder). Similarly, a law school letter of recommendation that’s written by someone who knows how to write well will be clearer, more concise, and actually pleasant to read. These will all have a positive impact on the reader.

Finally, ask right now. If you wait too long to get a wingman, the best ones will already be flying in pairs, Goose-and-Maverick style. Or they’ll be too drunk to be very effective at the art of magnanimous seduction. The best professors will also get bogged down with dozens of requests for letters, and they might take a while to get to yours or just flat out tell you they don’t have time. Ask now; be proactive. Hey, that’s even something positive they can say about you in the letter!

B) Responses are coming in regarding Harvard Law School’s new accelerated admission plan. Above the Law.

C) If you’re going to do a law school internship, don’t mess around. Go for gold (after you bring back coffee). US News and World Report.

D) Here’s a real-life law school dean giving a real-life interview about LSAT scores and stuff. The Careerist.

E) Remember Kai the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker? Yeah, he was arrested for murder. ABC Local.

In a turn of events that my students find appalling, I ended up getting a 178 LSAT score after taking a Blueprint LSAT Prep course — but decided not to apply to law school after all. But I’m not writing this post to brag about my LSAT score (or not primarily for that reason, anyway). Instead, having once been in your shoes, I want to discuss an ailment that afflicts some people who are applying to law school.

Let’s call it “forum frenzy.”

Perhaps you’ll recognize the symptoms. For me, they manifested in the form of frantically checking the Top Law Schools forums every day, comparing my LSAT practice test scores to everyone else there, and jealously reading the “Harvard-admitted students” threads while convincing myself that I was way smarter than all of those guys. I also trolled Law School Predictor far more often than necessary, entering every possible LSAT score and GPA combination that I might have. I was a bundle of anxiety, changing my mind every day about my chances of being admitted to whatever law school was my focus at that moment. And all of this was before I even had my real LSAT score!

I still visit those forums occasionally, but now I read them to laugh at the bad advice being posted. Here’s the thing: If you, too, are afflicted with “forum frenzy,” keep in mind that almost everyone else on those websites is just as clueless as you are. Despite the confident tone of their posts, they’re really just repeating something that their cousin’s girlfriend’s pre-law advisor once said. And if their “advice” is actually pretty worthless, and you find (as I did) that reading those websites increases your law school application anxiety…is it really worth visiting them?

Of course, there are some ways in which these websites can be helpful. For instance, Blueprint LSAT Prep’s very own Matt Shinners holds “office hours” every week on his own TLS thread, where he answers any LSAT- or law school-related question under the sun. Matt has a 180 LSAT score, went to Harvard Law, and has worked for Blueprint LSAT Prep for about a million years, so he knows what he’s talking about. Posting on his thread is a great option for anyone with questions, especially those who are self-studying and can’t just ask their own instructors.

Pre-law forums can be a great resource if the advice is coming from a reliable source (like Matt). But if you see a post from someone named futureYLSgrad13* claiming to know everything about someone’s odds of being admitted or the absolute best way to study for the LSAT Logic Games section, take that recommendation with a very large grain of salt.

*Not a real username, I hope

B) Northwestern law school professor Steve Harper has a new book about law school. Its theme: lower your expectations. PBS.

C) US News and World Report’s law school rankings take another hit. National Law Journal.

D) No surprise here. Jodi Arias found eligible for the death penalty. USA Today.

E) Are you ready to graduate? These 30 cats and dogs sure aren’t. BuzzFeed.

It turns out that Ramsey was convicted of domestic violence more than 10 years ago. But if we were to try to deny him credit for his recent good deeds on that basis, we’d be committing an ad hominem fallacy, attacking the person rather than the argument. There’s no defending what he did way back then, but we can’t assume anything on that basis about his motivations last week. For his part, he acknowledges his past and claims his past transgressions helped him become who he is today.

On the other hand, it would be just as wrong to claim that his heroic actions last week absolve him of past wrongdoing, or that they cast doubt on what really happened between him and his ex-wife 10 years ago. It’s entirely possible for someone to behave commendably in one situation and contemptibly in another.

There’s been some dispute over how responsible Ramsey was for the rescue of the three women. In his own interviews, he acknowledges that others were part of the rescue, but centers the narrative on himself. Some neighbors who were also there claim that they deserve more credit, and that Ramsey wasn’t the central figure he claims he is, though no one disputes that he was there and helped out.

It’s hard to figure out who’s telling the truth in such a situation. If we were to deny Ramsey credit just because his version of the events has been disputed, we’d be committing an absence of evidence fallacy. Even if his version of what happened isn’t entirely accurate, he might still deserve credit for participating in the rescue. And it’s possible that his version of events is the accurate one. It’s certainly the funnier one.

If you haven’t yet, you must check out this interview with Anderson Cooper the day after the rescue. While Ramsey certainly enjoys his moment in the limelight, he makes clear that he doesn’t want any material compensation for his good deeds. As he makes clear, after all, he has a job. With a paycheck. You’ll have no doubt about that after watching the interview.

B) Millennials, am I right? (Subscription required) Time.

C) Cheers? The NTSB wants to lower the legal blood alcohol limit for driving from .08 to .05. Washington Post.

D) An entire school district in Michigan just called it quits. Yahoo! News.

E) Bill Hader says he’s leaving Saturday Night Live. Here are his characters that fans’ll miss most. Huffington Post.

Mom’s Law School Question I: What are you going to practice?

You can try to placate relatives with assurances that you’ll have it figured out by the time you graduate, but mothers generally require answer of greater depth. Just pray she knows just as little as you do about what you’re actually going to do with your law degree and tell her that you’re probably going to end up doing some “transactional” work. Any more detail than that is almost certainly a lie, especially before you have any real experience.

Mom’s Law School Question II: What are you going to do for food?

Good news for you: free food is even easier to find in law school than it was in undergrad. Lexis, Westlaw and any number of other product peddlers and organizations will almost certainly try to curry your favor with pizza, burgers, cookies and the like. You can lie to Mom all you want about how much you’re going to cook for yourself and bring lunch to school, but you and I both know that nary a law student can resist the call of free pizza.

Mom’s Law School Question III: Are you going to find a wife/husband in law school?

I’m going to give you the advice I’ve given everybody else I’ve met: don’t date fellow law students. The answer to Mom’s question here goes something like, “I’m lawyer enough for myself. I’ll find a mate outside of school.” No doubt some of you will fall into the trap of dating for convenience, but few of those relationships will last. Find the yin to your yang, rather than just a bunch more yang. You’ll be better for it and Mom will love seeing you happy.

A belated Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there, and the best of luck to all the future law students who have to answer their questions.

B) The Supreme Court has sided with Monsanto in a big patent case. USA Today.

C) They say most White House scandals occur during your second term. President Obama is finding this out the hard way. Washington Post.

D) Not all Craigslist are completely honest with you. This ad for a used Subaru sure is, though. Huffington Post.

E) Animals will do anything to escape their cages. Even the adorable ones. Huffington Post.