Tag Archives: law school advice

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The Lowdown on LRAP: Magical Law School Debt Reliever?

Loan repayment assistance programs (LRAPs) are magic wands that make debt disappear for students who are good-hearted enough to enter public service. Sure, you’re earning a quarter of what your classmates are making, but you’re making the world a better place, and karma repays you for that. With your loan repayment, you get a unicorn to ride to work and a lifetime’s supply of free candy canes. Oh, and you officially get to celebrate your half-birthday, which means more presents!

There are many students who enter law school every year with dreams of entering public service after they graduate. The salaries aren’t nearly as high as those in the private sector; your loans, however, will be. So how do most students expect to cover the gap?
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May 8, 2013 - 6:54 pm - By Matt Shinners
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4 Outside-the-Box Reasons Law School is Still a Good Idea

If you’re heading to law school this fall or plan to do so in the near future, you’ve no doubt heard misgivings from those around you. Your parents are mortified at the cost and wonder if it’ll be worth it. Your friends think you’ll be buried under a mountain of textbooks, never to emerge again. Is law school worth it for everybody? Probably not. But here are a few reasons why it could be worth it for you.

Reason #1 Law School is Still a Good Idea: It’s the way to become a lawyer

It seems obvious, sure, but if you want to become a lawyer, you have to go to law school. So, assuming you’ve done your research, taken a good long look in the mirror, and chosen the profession of law, then law school couldn’t be more “worth it” to you.
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Jul 26, 2012 - 6:04 pm - By Alex Davis
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Should You Take a Law School Preview Class this Summer?

Many of you reading this post have either recently graduated from college or will be doing so in the coming days and weeks. While you’re probably concerned with arranging enough tickets for family members you barely know to attend your graduation, the fall of 2012 and the beginning of law school have no doubt managed to creep into that brain of yours.

I’m willing (as my sixth-grade math teacher Mr. Brown once said) to bet dimes and donuts that the prospect of your impending matriculation has caused you some worry. How, you ask, will law school be different from undergrad? Do I need to change my study habits? Will I delve ever deeper into an unending caffeine addiction?

Given your consternation, you may have considered taking one of those law school preview classes that seem to be all the rage with the cool kids these days (how do you like my dated slang?).
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May 23, 2012 - 6:10 pm - By Alex Davis
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What are Law School Finals Like, Anyway?

If there’s one thing that terrifies prospective law students more than the LSAT, it’s law school finals. Even after gaining admission to some of the most hallowed halls in the country, the specter of that first round of exams casts a pallor over their heads.

Authors have written books on how to ace them. Students have created catchy acronyms to approach them. There are even simulated programs in which you can enroll that will take you through a mock semester, including an actual final at the end.

And why is there so much stress over a test? Haven’t you taken a ton in undergrad?

Yes, you have. But nothing like a law school final.

The biggest difference between the law school final and the undergrad final is the relative import of the exam.
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May 14, 2012 - 6:23 pm - By Matt Shinners
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Multiple Tips for Handling Multiple Law School Offers

If you applied for admission to the law school class of 2015 you might now find yourself in the enviable position of having to make a decision between multiple offers of admission (yay you!). For the sake of this blog post, let’s say that you have it narrowed down to two schools. According to Anna Ivey, it’s not a great idea to put down multiple deposits for law school admission. It just confuses those bureaucrats in the law school admissions office anyway. So what’s a soon to be law student to do? Make a f*%#ing decision!

All veiled cussing aside, I’m going to attempt to make your law school admissions decision just a tad bit easier with a list of possibly relevant factors:

Handling Multiple Offers for Law School Admissions Tip I: Location, Location, Location
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Apr 25, 2012 - 6:09 pm - By Alex Davis
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Things to Buy for Law School with Your Tax Refund

It’s Tax Day today, so hopefully everyone out there has already filed. Especially since there’s a demy-crat in the office, so we’re probably all getting some of that sweet socialist money back.

Thanks to the wonders of TurboTax, I’m getting a nice refund deposited directly into my checking account sometime in the next week. But what should I spend that money on? I’m open to suggestions in the comments, dear readers – go to town.

But what should the prospective law student do with those sweet, sweet Obamabucks? The options are quite endless, but here are the top five:

1. Spend it all on one last hurrah. While you’ll have time during law school to go out and enjoy life (if you plan correctly), there will be a lot more work than you’re used to.
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Apr 17, 2012 - 6:15 pm - By Matt Shinners
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Handling Law School Debt II: A Conversation

Last week, I gave you some of my own advice about taking on large amounts of debt for law school.

This week, I interviewed some acquaintances who are currently working full time as lawyers at Big Law firms to see how the amount of debt they assumed to attend law school is affecting their lives, post-graduation. You should treat each of these stories as a best-case scenario; they were all employed at graduation in a large market, at firms that paid at the top of the salary band.

You should also view the responses through a lens of the selection bias finding these lawyers entailed – I posted a query on Facebook, so the responses I received were most likely from those who had strong feelings about the student loan situation.
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Apr 11, 2012 - 6:40 pm - By Matt Shinners
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The Key to Handling Law School Debt: Make it Worth it

There are a lot of studies done in social psychology that analyze the way that we analyze risk. They’re pretty interesting if you’re into that kind of thing; if you’re not, I’ll cut through all the charts and control groups for you. One of the underlying discoveries is that people can’t legitimately conceive of the risk of things that are very likely to happen and very unlikely to happen, so we compress those things to be much closer to our average idea of ‘risk’ than they actually are. For instance, you’re very, very unlikely to die by being struck by a meteor; however, the chance is so astronomically (see what I did there?) small that almost everyone thinks it’s much more likely than the reality because we just don’t have a strong grasp of how uncommon it is.

The same goes for money, especially when you’re 21 years old and looking down a barrel at that $160K of law school debt. It’s a lot of money, but most people don’t realize exactly how much it is.
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Apr 5, 2012 - 6:46 pm - By Matt Shinners
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Six Things to Do in the Final Months of Law School

There’s nothing quite like being in law school and coming down with a severe case of 3L-itis. If you’re smart, you’re taking a couple of Pass/No Pass courses. You’re doing about half the reading you know you should. You’ve already started thinking about taking the Bar. You may even have a job to go to once you (hopefully) pass the exam. In other words, put a stamp on this semester because you’re mailing it in.

So what’s a 3L with way too much time on his/her hands to do? Any motherf***ing thing you like. Just in case you need a little help, here’s a list to get you started:

1. Sleep in. A lot.

Nothing says, “I don’t have to be an adult yet” quite like purposely failing to set an alarm on a weeknight.
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Mar 13, 2012 - 10:55 am - By Alex Davis
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What to Do if You Have a Change of Heart in Law School

You’ve known what you wanted to do your whole life. You grew up with an inexplicable desire to carry and read many heavy books over the course of three years, and then work 60 hours a week for a further three thereafter. You’ve always wanted to draft memos and analyze issues in minute detail. There has never been any doubt in your mind that you’d end up a lawyer.

You can stop reading now.

If the above doesn’t describe you, please read on. And rest assured that it’s not the least bit abnormal to have doubts about your chosen career/life path (or use double negatives). If you’re planning on heading to law school, or you’re already there, you may wonder what effect a change of heart may have on your future.
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Feb 1, 2012 - 6:45 pm - By Alex Davis
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