law school apps = done.

[STPHNSN23]

i finally finished my last application to law school today. i was pissed that it's so late, but what can you do when your recommenders flake out? i ended up applying to dayton, kentucky, iu-bloomington and iu-indy. i've already been accepted at dayton with some pretty sick scholarship money so at least i know i'll be going to school somewhere next year. hopefully, i'll get accepted in indianapolis though. that's my number 1 school. now, i just have to wait to hear from the rest of them.

[oshensurfer]

Congrats and good luck bro.

[Bambamski]

About to be one more useless person in the world..... J/K well maybe not

[DRAGON88]

STPHNSN23, good luck man.

Luckily, I've got a few years to get ready for the application process.

What was your major?

[STPHNSN23]

DRAGON88, I'll be finished with my BA in chemistry in may. i'll also have minors in biology and history, whatever they're worth.

Some advice: ask professors for recommendation letters early. I didn't seriously consider law school until last summer, so i had to scrounge up rec letters when i got back this fall. One of my recommenders totally flaked out on me, and the one i got to replace him was sick for a couple weeks and just now got the letter in. I would have had my apps in 2 months ago if i had been on the ball with my recommendations.

btw, i seriously considered applying to oregon, but i decided it was too far away.....and too many filthy hippies.

[arof]

STPHNSN23, did you visit any of the schools you applied to? they seemed to be all pretty close, right?

[STPHNSN23]

arof, i've been to iu-indy and obviously iu-bloomington. i haven't visited dayton or UK, but i have an admitted student day coming up at dayton. i'm sure there will be something similar at UK if i get in there. dayton was my 'safety' school, and i've heard their facilities and building are really nice. i guess i'll figure that out for sure when i go for the visit. and yes, all of these schools are pretty close. i live about an hour north of indianapolis. UK is the furthest from home at about 5 hours.

[Aubs]

Congrats! That's really exciting. I've got my fingers crossed for ya!

[King of the Tigers]

Congratulations! I hope it works out for you. I'm sure you already know that the first year is HE-double hockeysticks but stick with it and it gets a lot more fun after that!

Wow! I remember when I put my apps in and now I'm in my last semester and have a job lined up!!! (and I'm that much closer to getting a SAN in a few years!)

btw, try playing the game of "I'm in school" and "I'm in law school" when talking with girls. It's pretty fun to see the different reactions you get from the two of them.

[ontrider]

[pet575]

+1 to getting your rec letters nailed down. It seems this problem happened to a lot of people I know who applied to law school. The prof suddenly gets ill or has some issue or something, and doesn't get around to writing the letter. I don't know if they don't like doing them or if they are a PITA or what, but just plan on it being difficult.

[gswake]

re: rec letters - make for dang sure you're getting them from people who know you and will definitely give you a good rec. A friend is a professor at a law school and I know for sure that he makes much more of an effort to get recommendations done early for the people he knows well and thinks highly of. Plus, of course, it will make for that much better a recommendation. (He's also written ones that were "positive" but written in such a way as to convey that he really didn't think the person was all that great. Not tanking them, but portraying them as average.)

Oh, and STPHNSN23, Congratulations! My wife is in law school - and King of the Tigers is right. First year will be the hardest you've ever worked, and you'll really wonder if it's worth it and whether you want this that much. If you get through that, though, it gets easier.

[STPHNSN23]

[pet575]

To add to what gswake said, it is really first semester of first year. After that is over, you know you can survive and you have adapted to things. You'll get grades and know whether you did it right or need to change things. The best way to know what you need to change is to go meet with each professor you didn't get an "A" from and go over your written exam with them. They will tell you right there, "Well, you didn't do [this] well enough..." That is the only feedback you will ever get on a law school exam.

By the time you get that feeback, you can apply it to your second semester and you'll be fine. The best advice I can give you for succeeding in law school is two fold:

1. Just doing all the reading isn't enough. You must understand how to apply the concept that the case you have read stands for to a hypothetical set of facts. So if the case you read has to do with the property rights of a person who finds lost property, it is not important that you remember every little fact and detail about that case. What IS important is that you first understand what the court said about what the law is. Then, you take that understanding of the law away from the case to apply to any set of facts thrown at you during in-class discussion or on an exam.

2. Pay extra attention to your legal writing class. You can know all the law in the world, but if you don't know how to write it in a way that applies the law to the facts given to you in a hypothetical situation you will get a C at best.

[gswake]

pet575 is on-target. But be aware that the classes you didn't get an "A" in might mean all of them, even if you were 4.0 in college - and that's okay, it doesn't mean you can't cut it. As pet says - go get feedback. You'll get better at it. A law education isn't just about the knowledge, but also how to communicate it in legal settings.

And re: 2: so true. It doesn't seem like all that important a class, like it's covering formalities. But it will make a huge difference in EVERY class, because your entire grade is based upon your ability to write in the way they want to see it. Making what would be an air-tight argument on here will get you relatively little credit if you can't express it in the form of a brief.

[King of the Tigers]

STPHNSN23, Arizona State. I have to say that I pretty much now just go with the "I'm in school" and if she's interested enough to ask what I'm studying then I'll tell her law. Make her pull the info out of you and it works best!

Ya, first semester of the first year is worst. And so was getting grades after first semester.

[htownbdr]

First semster was definately bad. And, I thought that it was as bad as it gets because the rest of law school was downhill from there.

However, the Bar is MUCH MUCH worse than the first semester of law school.

[pet575]

Agreed. Sitting for 2 days and taking that test was the second-worst experience of my life. I'm not sharing the first.

[htownbdr]

2? Mine's 3. 1st day is procedure and evidence. Second is MBE. Third is essays on Texas law.

I am actually not dreading taking it. It is the studying part and being worried about flunking it part that blows.

[pet575]

Look, if you made it through law school you'll be fine. What a lot of people don't do is put in the study time, make sure they know the material, and take as many practice exams as possible. If you do all of that, you'll be just fine. Treat it like a full-time job and don't put it off and get behind. If you do that, it won't be that bad and after you pass and look back on the work you did studying you'll know it was worth it.

In MO, they crammed your first day and third day into one day. MBE was the second day. Good luck. Put the work in and you'll be fine.

Are you doing Bar/Bri and PMBR (or MBE equivalent)?

[htownbdr]

That's what everyone keeps saying. But, at this point, I am having a hard time believing them. I might feel different when I actually have time to study as opposed to just keeping up with the bar review class.

I did PMBR. In Bar/Bri now.

[pet575]

You've got to do more than just going to the lectures and following along with the outlines as they go. You've got to commit that stuff to memory afterward. My method for doing that: after the lecture, I would spend the rest of the day making notecard flashcards using the outlines while it was still fresh in my head. The beauty of that is that you are absorbing the material as you put it on the notecards, so it isn't a waste of time.

After all of the lectures were over, I had a little stack of rubber banded notecards for each subject. I could go back and repeat memorizing as many times as I needed until I had them all down. After I felt pretty good about them, I would take the practice essays. I wouldn't write out the answers-I would just outline the issues and the rules that applied to them that I had memorized.

Take every single possible multiple choice practice exam that you can. They are the very best thing you can do for the MBE portion. You'll be fine. Just don't wig out or have a nervous breakdown. Instead, do your work and laugh at the others having breakdowns.

Also, don't forget to have a little balance in your life. My daily routine was lecture in the mornings, workout with my buddy, eat lunch, independent study at the law library, drive home and have dinner with my wife and maybe watch 1/2 hour of TV, then a few hours of independent study at home at night. The last week beforehand is when you have to cut out all the distractions. Until then, keep some sanity and balance and treat it like a 9-5 job with some weekend hours.

[Dragonlady8]

My friend is studying again for the bar exam in CA. Missed it by 6 pts.
Worse thing was studying for the bar 1st time around and clerking for 2 potential law firms, she found out that she hated billing .

as I said to ..." well that a lot of money you spend/borrowed to find that out."

[STPHNSN23]

you guys sure are making me excited for next fall with all this talk.

[King of the Tigers]

Eyes on the prize STPHNSN!

Just think of the wake boat you want most!

[pet575]

STPHNSN23, I read this quote the other day about football coaches, but it most definitely can apply to schooling and real jobs as well.

"Great coaches get players to do things they don't want to do that will make them the players they want to become."

[Aubs]

I'm going to start studying at the law school library on campus. Need to find a smart, cute, rich guy and I'm thinking that's a good place to start.

[pet575]

Good idea. You're probably going to get at least 2 of the 3. In my case, I wasn't rich and wasn't smart (if I were I wouldn't have gone to law school). But, I am DAM pretty though.

[htownbdr]

pet575 - I think that came across wrong. When I said keeping up with the class, I meant the class and the homework that the class assigns. Then add to that the homework PMBR assigned.

When I leave class I review the notes for the day. Then do the questions they assign. Then, if I have time I will do some PMBR questions.

I was planning on starting the notecards when self study starts.

I would really like one of those "fast forward" buttons for life right about now.

[pet575]

OK, just making sure. Would hate to see someone go wrong if there was some advice I could give to help them out. Sounds like you're putting the work in, though.

[STPHNSN23]

i just thought i'd let everyone know how frustrated i am still waiting to hear back on my applications. like i said before, i'm already in at dayton so i know i'm going next fall. i still don't know where though. i got rejected at kentucky which, after looking at the numbers, shouldn't have been a surprise. i still haven't heard from either IU-B or IU-indy. hopefully, i'll find out in the next couple weeks.

[DRAGON88]

STPHNSN23, Good Luck! Hope you get into IU-B or IU-indy. I really need to start working on making connections with the instructors at my school to get some good letters of rec. I am not looking forward to the LSAT either.

Funny how it's so hard to get into programs that people claim are hellish for the first year.

[pet575]

STPHNSN23, hang in there. I think it took until late April or early May for me to hear from one of the schools I applied to. Tough part about that was that another school I'd been accepted at required a deposit be paid on like May 15th (EARLY!) so I had to make a decision between the two if I got the notice in time.

Have you talked to anyone there to verify that they actually have your application and all of the info required? Might be a good idea.

[STPHNSN23]

pet575, ya. since almost everything in the application process is online, you get several confirmation emails. one comes when lsac gets all your stuff in. another comes from each school when they get your completed app. i got another email a couple weeks ago from IU-indy saying they expect to make all decisions by the end of april. and ya, seat deposits suck. dayton's first one is due april 15.

also, for DRAGON88, Aubs, and whoever else is interested, check out these websites when you're looking for information on applications and such.

www.lawschoolnumbers.com - this is a database of applicants and their stats. it's useful to see how you compare with other people and get an idea of where schools are in their admission process.

www.lawschooldiscussion.org - discussion board that covers everything you need to know about law school from applications to admissions to deciding where to go, etc.

[pet575]

STPHNSN23, thank you for making me feel old. Although it wasn't THAT long ago, when I applied to law school they didn't have any electronic systems in place for stuff like that. You still had to do everything by paper and regular mail and call and follow-up on receipt of materials and all of that crap. Good to know they've made it easier while still taking their sweet time to decide.