Thursday, March 31, 2011

Standing at the Crossroads

I've been hedging on this law school thing, and this afternoon, I finally realized that all the details are in place, now.  I know I'll go to UT, it was the obvious choice all along.  Any other school was basically a really stupid idea that I'd have been immediately sorry for going to because the commute would have been insane.

I got the scholarship I was hoping for.  (I would have liked a full-ride, but frankly, I didn't think that was realistic, given my GPA and LSAT.) 

Fall semester starts in August.  Its pretty much April, now.  So, basically a little more than 4 months and this thing begins. 

The only other thing that's in the air is that I'll have to wait for my tax return, then go in to talk to financial aid.  Not sure what I'll do there, but I'll have about $10,000 worth of tuition to cover next year.  If the biz is doing well enough, I'll pay it out of pocket, but that's a pretty big "if" right now.  The biz is still having its troubles.

I have six more chapters to go in the E&E.  Will probably try to knock out three of them tomorrow.

Funny, but this whole thing started when I thought I might like to have something to do in addition to my business.  Business conditions have deteriorated pretty consistently over the past two years, though.  Now, I'm thinking this is something I may need to do instead of my business.

Funny how things work out sometimes.  If my business hadn't started sputterring, I would never have pursued this.  Now, I can see that this has a lot more potential than what I'm doing, now.  So, maybe it's all for the best.

Now, to just work my butt off and fight for class rank.

I am starting to get a taste of what this is going to be like.  The E&E book is a great introduction.  Lots of rules to remember.  I'm not to the flash-cards point, yet, but that's coming.  There are simply too many concepts to remember off the top of your head without having something to help you study them.  I can see this will involve a lot of memorization, but it's an orderly system.  I'd rank it as easier, conceptually, than, say, accounting, which is simply an artificial and arbitrarily designated system. 

We'll see.  I should be done with this E&E on Monday.  The Civ Pro should arrive next week.  That leaves two more E&Es, the LEEWS CDs and book and "Getting to Maybe", then I'm fully loaded and ready for 1L.

Scholarship!

I'm not sure if my strategy of holding out while waiting for a scholarship worked, but today I went to put down my seat deposit.  The woman at admissions asked if I would meet her back in her office.  You know what immediately went through my head.  Unfortunately, porno movies aren't accurate to real life, so my hopes were dashed.  However, she said that the scholarship committee reconvened and awarded two additional scholarships, and mine was one of them.

So, after getting scholarship offers to half a dozen law schools, only one of which it was practically feasible for me to drive to, I finally got a $10,000 scholarship to the school I want to go to.  So, roughly half-tuition.  I'm really happy with that.  If I end up taking out student loans, this is the difference between paying off an Accord versus an Escalade if I had gone to school at sticker price.

The requirement for renewal is a 3.3 gpa, which I have been warned isn't that easy.  Other students on various discussion boards equate it to being in the top third of the class, give or take. 

I'm pretty pumped at this point.  Due to geography, there are only three feasible schools that are within an hour's drive.  U of M and Cooley are in Ann Arbor.  It'd be a haul, but not out of the question.  Unfortunately, that's pretty much like saying, "you can go to either the best or the worst school in the country".  (Yes, I know that U of M is, arguably, not the best law school in the country and Cooley is not, arguably, the worst.  However, for the purpose of this discussion, they may as well be.)

Toledo is my only realistic option.  At half price, it's a good deal.  If my biz picks up, I should be able to afford to pay tuition rather easily.  If biz stays bad, it's easier to borrow $10,000 than it is to borrow $20,000.

I'm getting sort of excited to be a Rocket.  The campus is beautiful and I've heard a lot of good things about the law school.  Sounds like the smaller class sizes and collegial atmosphere make a big difference in people's experience, there.  All the profs are from the top schools, like pretty much all the profs, everywhere.  So, I have every reason to believe the quality of instruction will be just fine. 

I have seven more chapters to do in the Torts book.  I figure I'll do one more tonight, and then knock out the next six over the course of Friday and the weekend.  Should be ready for my Civ Pro book next week.  This Torts book has really, really taught me a lot, though.  Did it do more for me than I would have done by simply taking the class without doing the E&E first?  Don't know, but I do know there are things to learn in the E&E and that's that many fewer things to learn during the first semester.  Or, if I re-learn them, they should be all the more firmly ingrained.

Joint and Several Liability, Law school versus B-school perspective

Today's chapter in the torts E&E was on Joint and Several Liability.  This is one of the things covered in business law classes and I've had it on more than one occassion.  I figured this chapter would be an easy one.  It was easy, but it is striking how differently business schools and law schools teach the subject.

Joint and Several Liability comes about when two people (or companies or whatever, the legal term would be "tortfeasors") do something that causes injury.

So, for instance, let's say that I dig a big hole in my front yard, but fail to erect any sort of barrier around it to prevent people from falling in.

A neighbor is standing on the corner of the hole.  A jogger comes running through, is distracted, and bumps into the neighbor, knocking them into the hole.

A jury finds that I am 70% negligent.  The jogger is 30% negligent.  Total damages come to $10,000.

Now, business school basically teaches it like this:  "Joint and several liability means that even though you are only 70% negligent, you're on the hook for the entire $10,000 amount.  So is the person who is 30% negligent.  So, if the 70% negligent person is bankrupt, then the jogger would have to pay $10,000 even though they were only 30% negligent."

The basic inferrence, here, is that lawyers and people who sue are scumbags who don't care about fairness.  They only want to take money that they're not entitled to and they use the law to do it.

To the business person's perspective, the jogger should be on the hook for only $3,000, and the idea that they could, through this legal trick, be responsible for the entire $10,000 is an abomination and miscarriage of justice.

Now, first, business students tend to be somewhat analytical, especially in matters regarding money.  It's hard to study any field of business without being able to figure out that 30% of $10,000 is $3,000.  So, unlike other majors, the business major is even more disposed to think that 30% negligence should only result in a payment for $3,000.

Also, businesspeople hate attorneys.  I think one of the reasons I waited too long to seriously consider law school is that business automatically conditions you to hate attorneys.  Businesspeople and doctors are probably some of the most anti-attorney populations in the country.  It's bred into our professional DNA that attorneys punish us for doing what we are trying to do.

Now, having read the legal perspective, again, this makes more sense.

In the case of the jogger and hole, the person would not have been injured except for the hole.  And the person would not have been injured except for the jogger.  Who is really to blame?  In reality, both parties are 100% to blame because the accident would not have happened if either one had not done what they did.

So, the person who suffers injury should be compensated fully for their injury.

To give them less than $10,000 is not a fair settlement to them.  Now, is it fair to make the jogger pay $10,000 if the hole-digger is insolvent?  In one way of thinking, yes, it is.  The jogger is really 100% at fault for the accident.  It would not have happened if not for the jogger.  Yes, the hole-digger is also 100% at fault, but that doesn't mean that the jogger is not also 100% at fault.

The law doesn't allow the victim to collect twice for the same accident (by collecting, say, $10,000 from both the jogger and the hole digger.)  However, it does demand that somebody who was to blame for the accident should compensate the victim.

If the alternative solution held sway and the hole-digger were insolvent, the jogger would pay, say, $3,000 and the victim would only get $3,000.

That's considerably less fair (to give the victim only 30% of what they should get) than making the jogger pay 100% of the cost of the accident that would not have happened had the jogger not been negligent.

In any event, law school and b-school are totally different in this regard because the basic premise of both is different.  Business school treats injuries and litigation as expenses to be avoided.  So, the idea that you'd have to pay them is anathema to a business student. 

So, the biz student looks at this and thinks, "The courts do X, and that's total bullshit."

Law students, on the other hand, are trying to determine what the courts will see as a reasonable solution to a problem.  They're not trying to formulate the reasonable solution.  That's a job for legislators.  They're just trying to figure out how the court will likely rule based on the current state of the law. 

The law student looks at this and thinks, "The courts do X.  So, I need to present or defend a case knowing that the law says X."

Deposit Day

Today, I'm heading over to the college of law to put down my seat deposit.  I had hoped that maybe I'd get some sort of partial scholarship, but that hasn't happened.

I think there are some schools that are an hour+ away that I could snag a scholarship to, especially if I retook the LSAT.  However, the more I think about it, this is already going to be hard enough.  No need to make it harder.

It's not a hopeless situation, though.  I just need to do very well and I may qualify for a scholarship after 1L.  Granted, I'd need to do VERY well, but who knows.

I'm done with 20 out of 29 chapters in the torts book.  I think doing all the E&E books is a good idea.  It gives a basic understanding of the topic.  Some of these things are very nuanced.  For instance, wrongful death is not at all what I thought it was prior to reading the book.  If I can grasp a lot of these concepts now, I won't have to wrestle with them later. 

Survival statutes (where either the plaintiff or the defendant die before the a trial is brought forth or concluded) are also very nuanced with some concepts that aren't necessarily that easy to grasp.

As I read though this book, it has cleared up some misconceptions I had about the law.  A lot of the litigation that we see as frivolous and stupid might not be.  Granted, it might be, too.  However, sometimes what we read in the popular media is not an accurate representation of what the claims were in the litigation.

Take the famous McDonald's coffee case (Liebeck v. McDonald's).  I always objected to the verdict because it appears that the jury handed down a product liability verdict against McDonald's.  What I felt was that all Mickey Dee's did was sell coffee, in a manner that everybody else sells gourmet coffee.

Plaintiff's counsel argued that the temperature made the coffee unnecessarily dangerous.  However, there are defenses in the law for dangerous products if, by making them less dangerous, you also change the nature of the product so that it no longer is what it is.

(For instance, a knife is inherently very dangerous.  However, to make it safer, it would no longer be a knife.)

Now, I'm not so sure it was the wrong verdict, though I think it was granted on the wrong grounds.

I think there was a failure to warn.  I doubt anybody realized that McDonald's coffee was capable of creating such severe burns.

I also think that the coffee, itself, wasn't defective as a product.  If you want good-tasting coffee, it has to be brewed and kept very, very hot.

But if you consider the product to be coffee, in a cup, with cream and sugar, (which is what the plaintiff bought and intended to consume), then it was dangerous.  It could have been made much safer if the employees at McDonald's had simply put the cream and sugar in the cup for the plaintiff.  She wouldn't have put the cup between her legs to add cream and sugar and she would not have been burned.

When you have a way to make something much safer, and you make a conscious decision not to, that's pretty much the definition of a dangerous product that should subject you to a lawsuit.

Granted, I think the plaintiff got her award based on faulty logic:  essentially, her attorneys argued that McDonald's was negligent because they served coffee too hot.  I disagree with that, entirely.  They served coffee at a temperature that is customary for gourmet coffee, and to serve it at a lower temperature would have changed the nature of the product so that it would not be suitable for it's intended use. 

(Seriously, people don't pay $2.00 and sit in a drive thru to wait for a cup of Sanka brewed at 150 degrees.)

However, they did have a duty to warn her of potential injury.  They also could have made the product much safer by simply adding the cream and sugar, themselves.  I notice that they do this, now.

Okay, enough of that.  I should have the E&E book finished by early next week and my Civ Pro E&E should arrive in the next few days.  Lots of baseball in the next few days.  So, I won't be able to do as much as I might have hoped.

I'm also thinking that Civ Pro won't be nearly as interesting as Torts, but who knows. 

I wonder if I should be outlining already.  I am highlighting the book, but putting together an outline of a 600+ page book would take some time even though it's outlined.  At this point, I'm doing a detailed reading of the E&E, but mostly am hoping to take away the major concepts. 

At this point, I'm leaving the outlining as something I'll do once class starts, using the Prof's text and the Prof's lectures as a guide on what to emphasize.  I'll probably only refer back to E&Es if there's a concept I'm having trouble with.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Starting to get interesting...

One very interesting thing about the law is that it encompasses the entire spectrum of human behavior.  As I read these cases, it jumps out at me that writing intelligently on these topics actually requires that you know a little bit about them.

For instance, in one of the examples, a product liability claim was being made against the manufacturer of a motorcycle.  To draw the right conclusion, you really had to know that the type of injury (in this case, getting a leg trapped underneath) is avoidable if the bike has engine guards on it.  (Large tubular things that protrude from the left and right.) 

If you didn't know that, or you couldn't think of another way that the product design could be improved, you were going to answer the question incorrectly.

I can remember another example where I thought, "I really don't know enough about this subject matter to answer this question".  Sure enough, in the answer, it was obvious that having some knowledge on the subject was required to answer intelligently.

Most of these things are closer to being common knowledge type things.  However, some of them aren't, and some specialized knowledge is clearly beneficial.

Also the whole "there are four elements to X" and "there are six elements to Y" starts to make sense.  You get these scenarios and you have to judge whether they qualify or not.  It's not reasonable to just say, "well, no, that's not negligence because it just doesn't seem like negligence."  You have to be able to say, "that's not technically negligence because you weren't harmed".  If you don't know the elements that are involved, you really can't give a definitive answer.

I feel a little better now that I have some clarity on the path ahead.  Tomorrow, I go to campus to put down my seat deposit.  It's pretty clear I won't be getting a scholarship, which makes it all the more imperative to try and do what I can to finish tops in my class in 1L.  I may be able to get a scholarship for 2L and beyond.

I'm sending back my LSAT prep book.  I don't need that on my plate.  I have enough to work on with the E&Es, LEEWS and Getting to Maybe.  The E&Es aren't bad.  It's easy enough to finish one chapter a day.  More than that gets tricky.  Takes a lot of time.  I have three more after this one.  If they end up taking about a month, each, that will take me to mid-Summer.  LEEWS and Getting to Maybe will take up the remaining time. 

Plus, this is sort of my personal busy time.  Business should, in theory, pick up during the Spring.  Of course, it hasn't done that in a long time, but this may be the year.  I have a lot of Navy stuff to do between now and the start of the Fall semester.  (Two trips to Ft Worth, a Supply Conference in June and probably my annual training which will be a DAWIA class.)  Plus, travel baseball season is in full-swing.  We have a ton of scrimmages lined up and the season starts in earnest, soon.  That's a part-time job in and of itself. 

So, even though school doesn't start until August, that's not so far away.  I have a lot to do between now and then.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

News from Case! And halfway through Torts E&E

Got the notification from Case.  They thanked me for applying and told me I should probably go to someplace that isn't there.  In a way, this is good.  It was sort of pointless for me to apply because I simply can't swing it, logistics-wise.  I just wanted to know if I could get in.  I can't.

So, I can go to Toledo without any sort of angst that I should be going somewhere else.  Lately, I've been thinking I should just forget an LSAT re-test.  I'm in where I need to go and I should focus on that. 

If I pay sticker at Toledo, what I just need to do is get high enough grades that maybe I'll get one of the continuing student scholarships.  Supposedly, they can award a scholarship to the top 10 students if any of them didn't get an initial scholarship.  (Though they are very cagey on whether they will, or what the scholarship would be.)

Finished half the Torts E&E and I can see what's going on, here.  There really is a lot of detail to master.  Like a lot of things, it isn't so much that one class is all that bad, but when you have to take 5 of them at a pop, that's a biggo mountain of stuff to master.  I should have the book finished this week or maybe next.

Not sure if this is a bad sign of what, but it's making me take a good, hard look at what else I could do, other than law school.

3 years is a chunk of time.  One more year, and I could have an electrical engineering degree.  Trouble is, I'd have to take every single moment of all 4 years since engineers don't take the same classes that other college students take.  Darned ridiculous academic programs that make students take classes related to their major and produces employable graduates.

The one that makes the most sense would be to go back and knock out the classes I need to become a CPA.  I'm not that far off, really. I think I only need like 9 credit hours or so.  If I could pick up a master's of tax or something, that might be the way to go.  We're talking one year instead of three.

Though I will say:  judging by the E&E, studying the law is a lot more fun than studying EE or Accounting.  Which is probably why so many people want to go to law school and so few people want to go back and get an engineering or accounting degree.

Anyway, just got back from my grandfather's funeral.  So, I need to clear my head and think long and hard about this whole thing.  Right now, I'm full speed ahead, but I feel like I should make one last gut-check to see if this is something I really want to commit to.

Added:

After thinking more about it, this is going to be hard enough to do without adding 2 hours of driving (round trip) to the mix.  So, I'm not going to re-take the LSAT.  I'll return the prep book to Amazon.  All re-taking would do for me is perhaps give me a scholarship to a school I wouldn't attend, anyway. 

Also, it dawned on me that the torts E&E is probably not that bad as far as these things go.  I mean, torts are sorta interesting.  The basic idea being that Joe-Bob does X to Mary-Sue.  Can Mary-Sue take him to court and get some money? 

This is also the part of the law I want to practice.  (I'm not giving much weight to that, though.  I have no idea what areas of the law will be interesting to me after I take a few classes.)

I just ordered the Civil Procedure E&E.  I will probably be done with Torts in the next week or two.  Civ Pro is probably a lot more boring and might be a better indicator of what law school is really like.

Plus, although I finished another chapter in Torts, I really wasn't that motivated today.  That was probably a good taste of what Law School will be like.  I'll be trying to stay current with a lot of material, and most days, I would bet, I really won't want to.

In any event, it would probably take me a few weeks to prep for an LSAT re-test.  That's time better spent going through LEEWS or E&Es or "Getting to Maybe". 

So much of my fate will be tied up in my 1L performance.  Plus, although I want to go into practice for myself, if I had a chance at a good job, I'd certainly take it the way my business is currently going.  Job search really begins the middle of 2L year.  So, 1L looms pretty large.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Trespass to Property, Law School Choice, Computer Programmers and Attorneys and their Ideas of Code

Just finished the section on Trespass to Property and it was harder than it would appear at first.  I guess that's what all this "studying the law" stuff is about.  Not everything that's commonsense matches up with what's in the law.

This is part of the torts book, and torts, generally speaking, are acts by people that harm other people.  Battery wasn't as straightforward as it might have seemed.  Assault was pretty straightforward. 

Trespass to Property was sort of wierd.  It had a couple of concepts that are a little off if you ask me.  For one thing, for something to be a tort, the tortfeasor (person doing the tort) has to have "tortious intent", meaning they have to be trying to do it.

For instance, with assault, if I try to hit you with a baseball bat, that demonstrates that I had intent:  I tried to hit you.  However, if I'm in the on-deck circle, swinging my bat, unaware that you're jogging back to the dugout and I accidentally strike you, that might be negligence, but it's not assault since assault requires tortious intent.

With trespass to property (what most folks think of as "trespassing", but called "trespass to property" to keep it distinct from "trespass to chattels" which is a different tort), you have to intentionally trespass.

However, if you walk on to land and you think it's yours, but it isn't, that's considered tortious intent.  The logic behind this is just sorta wierd.  The idea being that you meant to walk on the property.  The fact that it was a mistake ends up being no defense.  This is completely counterintuitive because you didn't mean to commit a tort. 

There's logic and history behind it, apparently rooted primarily in property rights law.  However, this is one of those cases where what you think the law means, and what it actually means are two differen things.

Okay, enough law nerd talk.  I just turned off everybody but a handful of 1Ls.  The non-legal types couldn't care less.  Anybody beyond 1L couldn't care less.

I've been looking at other law schools and thinking about re-taking the LSAT and applying to different schools.  I'm already accepted at University of Toledo.  I think with a higher LSAT, I can get scholarship offers to other schools.  However, I don't think Toledo will give me a scholarship.

In a way, I made a mistake by applying without having my best possible LSAT in the application process.  If they had denied me admission, I could re-apply with the higher LSAT.  For scholarship purposes, admitting me turned out to be a bad thing because there's really no point for me to come to them later, when already admitted, and say, "Hey, I have a better LSAT.  Why not give me a scholly, now?"

The other schools I can apply to, and that will probably accept me, and which might give me a scholarship, are really far away.  They're basically an hour and 15 minutes away.  That's one of those things where it doesn't sound that bad when you're just looking at it on paper, but in actual practice, it'd probably be akin to unholy hell.

The closest other city with a law school is Ann Arbor, which is only about 45-50 minutes away, and only a little more than a half hour from the warehouse where I work.  Although "the school that shall not be named" is there, there's also another school in the town:  Thomas Cooley.  If I re-take the LSAT and get 4 points higher, I can get a full-ride there.

So, I think I'm going to re-take the LSAT, but my primary plan will be UT at sticker price.  The best I can hope for at UT is that I might do well enough that I get a scholarship sometime later down the road.  We'll see.  I still would like to have the full tuition scholarship available, though, at Cooley.  This issue isn't decided, yet. 

Once, a long time ago, I was talking with a law student about code.  She thought I was talking about legal code, and I was talking about computer code.  The two are totally different, yet, oddly, they're pretty much the same thing. 

Both legal and computer code is a set of rules that are designed to provide a decision framework that gives you consistent output given various inputs. 

I've written code for a living.  It's hard stuff.  Now, I don't know how much to infer from the E&Es, but learning legal code is a hell of a lot easier than writing computer code.  The major difference is that instead of having to write a bunch of decision rules, I'm just learning what somebody else's decision rules are.

Plus, legal code is written in English.  Trust me on this, when computer programmers say their "language" is "english-like", they are showing you why computer programmers are not generally regarded as being mainstream humans. 

Unless your mother used to say things to you like, "dimension backpack as array from 1 to 20.  traverse array setting kount to 1.  begin loop.  If backpack (kount) value = lunchbag, then set variable has_lunch to "yes" (etc, etc, you get the idea)..." then no, computer languages are not English-like.

The other thing is that yes, legal code is detailed.  I can see what people mean when they say that you can't miss details. 

For instance, Joe Blow tells you that Farmer Brown is letting you pick strawberries for free.  You pick the strawberries.  Farmer Brown never said anybody could pick his strawberries.  Is Joe Blow guilty of trespass to property?

If you say "no" on your exam, then when you get your exam back, your first reaction will be "Mutha ****er!!!!  I forgot that you trespass if you intentionally take actions that cause things or other people to enter property that you don't have permission to enter".

So, yeah, missing that small detail will bite you.

Again, you have to take my word for it, but compared to debugging computer code, that's not a small detail.  That's a huge friggin' item.  A small detail is dimensioning a variable as double precision floating point instead of a decimal which makes your output go wonky, but only when you have more than 9 decimal places in the answer. 

Again, I'm speaking after only having studied a few chapters of an E&E book, which is basically a study aide, not a primary text.  However, I've seen study aids on computer stuff and I assure you that the study aids that teach you Ruby on Rails are not this easy to comprehend.

If legal code were computer code, the code would be simpler than the backpack code above.  It'd be like, "if tortious intent = yes and unwanted_contact = yes, then battery = true".

And you don't have to write that code.  You just have to understand it.

Plus, the law changes over time, but major changes are few, far-between and usually make the evening news.  Computer languages?  They're pretty static, but if you want to earn your living as a programmer, you'll probably have to know 3 or 4 completely different languages just to do your job.  To be a COBOL programmer you had to know COBOL (and variations thereof), JCL, at least a little Assembly language, maybe a couple of database languages like DL1 and DB2 and probably a  handful of programming utilities that were pretty much languages in and of themselves. 

Plus, about once every 10 years or so, chances are you'll have to learn and master an entirely new set of programming languages.  Not many folks are learning COBOL these days and that's because the jobs are drying up ever since Y2K came and went.  If you really want job security as a programmer, you have to update your skill set constantly, by learning entirely new skills constantly.

An old mainframe programmer like I was has next to nil in common with a new guy programming in html, asp, javascript, c-sharp, and flash.  (Yes, those are all different programming languages, and yes, it's pretty typical of the set of skills somebody would need to learn to hold down a job in that sector.)

Now, on the other hand, it doesn't take 3 years of graduate school to learn a programming language, either.  Most of them, you can learn in a year of college work, and some you can learn pretty well in a semester. 

Still, as far as detail orientation and understanding decision rules, law seems a lot easier.  Of course, this is the 0L perspective.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Assault and Battery and a Big F*** You to all the Gunners

Poor gunners get no love.  An attorney friend of mine has been commenting on my preparing for 1L and sent me this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQsPC2n4T6Q

I wonder what she was trying to say to me? 

Everybody in law school is smart (okay, there are degrees of smart, but seriously, if you've made it past first semester, you're smart.)  Even so, seems like a lot of folks really resent the guys and girls going the extra mile to be at the top of the class.

I know I'll try, but I can't say I will succeed.  I haven't the foggiest notion of what law school is like.  However, I'm still a little surprised there's so much resentment towards gunners.  Gunners aren't your typical suck-asses.  We see ass kissers in school and work and frankly, we really do sorta hope that something heavy falls on them sometime.  The fact that they're brown nosing all the time only highlights that they lack talent.

Gunners are a little different.  People think of them as annoying suck-ups, but they actually do rock the class.  It's not enough to just want to be a gunner.  That may make you an annoying suck-up, but it doesn't make you a gunner.  To actually be a gunner, you have to get the grades, which, begrudgingly or not, all law students will tell you requires more than a little bit of chops. 

Like I said, I don't know if I'll be in the top of my class or not.  Right now, I'm at that phase where I'm no different than all the other 0Ls.  We all think we're smart because our mom thinks so, and all our friends think we are, and we even had a college prof or two who said, "dang, you're sorta smart".  Every 0L thinks they're top 10% material.  90% of us are wrong.

If I did become a gunner, though, it could be problematic, because that would be a combination of perhaps the two most wholly annoying types of people in all of law school:  the old guy and the gunner.  I mean, yeah, you wish you could strangle the gunners but you know you better not because someday you might want them to help you get a job. 

The old guys?  You want to hate them because... well... because they're too damned old to be doing this.  They don't accept that the minute they became a 1L, then everything that makes them interesting and unique, in their minds, is completely inconsequential.  They're a 1L just like everybody else, regardless of how many paper clips they sorted at ABC, Inc., during their zillion years of corporate experience, where they almost got promoted to middle management. 

See, "interesting and unique", to an old guy's way of thinking is more closely aligned with pathetic and mind-numbingly boring to a 20-something law student's way of thinking.  Old guys think, "Well, the fact that I did all this stuff makes me more well-rounded than these kids".  Kids think, "you must have been really shitty at what you did before because you obviously did soooo well that now you're starting an academic program intended for 24 year-olds.  If your life was a video game, the aliens were eating your spleen and you just hit the reset button.  In the quarter of a century since you graduated high school, you got exactly as far in life as I did in the 4 years since I graduated High School."

I will probably be incomprehensibly annoying to all my fellow 1Ls.  I won't, realistically, be able to talk with the male 1Ls about which female 1Ls we are going to try and go out with.  I won't, realistically, be able to talk any of the female 1Ls into going out with me. 

When everybody goes out to have a few drinks, very few will be thinking, "You know what would make Thursday night even better?  If we could find a fat, balding, boring-ass senior citizen to come with us and prattle on and on about a bunch of boring crap that isn't going to be interesting until we're our parents' age."

I will be nearly genetically incapable of not speaking up in class.  The fact that I know no more law than anybody else means that I won't be giving any better answers than anybody else.  So, instead of fellow students thinking, "wow, tough one... glad it wasn't me, dude", they'll probably be thinking something more in line with, "jesus, will you please shut up?"

So, if I don't end up having the grades to be a gunner, that may be a good thing.  Being both gunner and old guy is sorta like combining the streams in Ghostbusters.  It's probably never happened before, there's incredible danger involved and it may spell the end of the world as we know it.

I finished the second chapter of the E&E on Torts.  This chapter dealt with Battery to go with Assault from yesterday.  At the end of each chapter, there are a few hypothetical examples with questions.

Defendant deliberately swings a hammer at the head of plaintiff whose back is turned so that he cannot see the blow coming.  The blow strikes plaintiff in the head.  The direct result of this action is no discernable physical harm, but plaintiff slaps himself vigorously in the face and barks like a dog.  Is this an example of Assault?

Yesterday, out of about 13 questions on assault, I only got about 9 of them right.  The other 4, I missed because I wasn't thinking literally enough.  The key here is to understand the literal definition of the law and apply only the literal definition to the circumstances.

I think I'm getting the hang of it.  Today, out of about 12 questions, I got all 11 right and figured out the 12th after about 3 words in the explanation. 

I'm as annoyed as anybody when I hear things like, "law school teaches you to think like a lawyer", but frankly, based on the E&E, I see how that's a somewhat clumsy, but accurate description of what's going on.  It's not that it's teaching you to think better or worse, or on a different plane.  It's that it's teaching you to limit your answers to what is presented and the literal definition under the law.

So far, my biggest leap forward is when I eliminated any concept of wrong or right.  It's not what's fair or right or just that's being asked.  It's what does the law say and how does it apply?

So far, these E&E chapters are pretty entertaining.  I actually like reading them.  I don't know what my textbooks will look like.  I suspect the E&Es are supposed to be more like summary-level material.  You can answer the questions if you can apply the definitions.  You're not citing cases or anything.

As for my "what the hell am I going to do?" plan, I'm thinking I'll still probably put down the seat deposit.  If I don't get a scholarship for 1L, I can try to get good enough grades that maybe I can earn a partial for the 2nd semester.  They have some scholarships available for the top 10 or 15 students.  So, even if I don't get a scholarship by next week, I could get one next year. 

I am going to retake the LSAT, though.  I wanna see how I can do on it.  Might apply to some other schools that are a bit of a haul, like Wayne State, UDM and Ohio Northern.  Who knows, might be able to get a good scholarship to one of them.  Cooley is about an hour away.  15 minutes longer drive isn't totally out of the question if I can pull down a full-ride somewhere.  I also don't have to go to law school in the fall.  I threw this stuff together on the fly.  I can always wait until Fall 2012, though I'd obviously rather not.

Figuring this out as I go.  I'll have it all figured out probably at the precise moment when it's too late to do me any good at all.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

E & E Arrived, not much else, though...

As of today, no acceptance from CWRU, and no scholarship from UT.  However, I did get my Examples and Explanations:  The Law of Torts, Fourth Edition by Joseph W. Glannon.  This will give me something to do while I wait. 

I also got an application packet from Texas Wesleyan Law.  I have a soft spot in my heart for Wesleyan since I attended there as an undergrad.  I didn't get my degree, but I did get a full-ride, which saved me a small fortune.  Looking back, I should have gone to University of North Texas, where they would have accepted 36 CLEP hours towards my bachelor's.  TWU gave me 3. 

Don't ask me why I thought not-paying UNT's $400 a semester tuition somehow was worth going to school for an entire extra year (which turned out to be 3 extra years... long story).  That's not TWU's fault.  Nor is it their fault I didn't graduate.  I still feel indebted to them.

They mentioned their scholarships and gave me some stats on their entering class.  Their stats looked remarkably similar to University of Toledo's.  If my circumstances were different, I'd love to go there.

The acceptance letter mentioned that they saw my LSAT score.  They congratulated me on having put in a lot of work to get a good score.  Unfortunately, the opposite is really true.  I half-assed my preparation and ended up with a score that's considerably below my potential.

This is re-opening my dilemma of whether to reserve my spot at University of Toledo, or to let the spot expire.  I can take the June LSAT and if I get the score I think I'm capable of, I am pretty sure I can go.  Without a higher LSAT, I'm afraid my chances of a scholarship are basically doomed. 

With even a slightly higher LSAT, I would qualify for a full-ride at Cooley.  I honestly don't think that's such a bad thing, but I've had an attorney friend advise me not to go there at all.  I dunno, if I'm not going to someplace 2nd tier or better, I honestly don't see how where I go really matters at all.  I have heard that Cooley is a brutal law school to attend.  It sounds like they admit pretty much anybody.  However, they sound far more difficult than other schools to finish. 

Could be that you have to teach yourself the law there, I dunno.  Hard to put my finger on what, exactly is wrong with them.  Personally, I think if you can get a law degree that doesn't cost you anything, and you can pass the bar and practice law, that's good enough.

Who needs $100,000 in debt if you can avoid it?  I'm trying to see how a Toledo law degree is worth $60,000 more than a Cooley degree, but for the life of me, I can't answer that question.

At this point, I am leaning back towards not reserving my seat at Toledo.  I would then re-take the June LSAT and apply to both Cooley and Toledo when the results come in.  Toledo may not think a 159 LSAT is going to help them, which gives them no incentive to award a scholarship.  However, a 170+ may be a different story.

The ultimately worst-case scenario is that Toledo doesn't give me a scholarship and I miss out on joining the class of 2014 and join the class of 2015, instead.  I feel some urgency about this since my business looks like its dying, but really, waiting a year may be undesireable, but it's not that big of a deal.

Now that I have this E & E to work through, I know my workout routines will become sensationally regular.  Whenever faced with an unpleasant task, I generally try to procrastinate by doing all the slightly less unpleasant tasks I can, first.  So, it'll take me a long time to finish the E&E, but on the bright side, my house will be spotless and I'll have six-pack abs.

Okay, just finished the first chapter of the torts book.  These things aren't bad at all.  The reading is actually interesting.  It's teaching good concepts, but it's not overly specific on memorizing cases or anything like that.  This, I would guess, is the macro-level view. 

There are 29 chapters in the book, so if you did a chapter a day, this would take a month.  It didn't take very long at all.  If you focused solely on it, it wouldn't be unreasonable to knock out the entire book in a weekend.  I see no reason why you couldn't burn through all the E&Es for your semester before the semester began. 

Now, though, I want to know two things: 

1.  How to outline.
2.  How to take exams.

I need the LEEWS course. 

I just ordered a logic section prep book. 

I'm travelling out of town this weekend.  I think I can finish this E & E in airports and on airplanes this weekend.  The logic games book should arrive next week.  I'll order LEEWS and get moving on it.  I also need to register for the June LSAT.  I'll wait until the seat-deposit deadline to make sure I don't get a scholarship, first.  If I do, I may not re-take the LSAT.

So, I'm preparing for my first semester, but at the same time, I'm getting ready to reload, re-test and re-apply.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Scholarship: Part Deux

Thinking about the scholarship is making me crazy.  At this point, I'm just guessing and grasping at straws.  I did stumble onto the scholarship page for the school, and it appears that there are a lot of scholarships available.  It's hard for me to know where I stand in terms of the entering class.  My undergrad GPA is right at the 25th percentile, but my LSAT is maybe up around the 80th.

So, I'm the lake woebegone student:  just slightly above average.  If I felt like I was in the upper quarter or so, I'd feel pretty good about my chances for a scholly.  As is, I know the odds are running against me. 

I really haven't got a clue as to how this will go.  A half scholarship would make a huge dent in the $20,000 a year tuition.  However, data on this is really hard to find. 

Oh well.  Just need to put this out of my mind for a while.  I have no idea when/if the scholarship committee meets.  We'll just have to wait and see.

There's a Method to 0L Madness

Funny, but when I decided to get good at Scrabble, there was already a well-established method for doing so.  It was spelled out by a lot of different sources, but it always worked out about the same.  Memorize the 2 letter words, memorize the 3 letter words, learn strategies for playing more bingoes, etc.

With 0L of Law school, it's about the same.  This really drives home the adage that Law School is a 5 year committment.  You really need to put in about a year's worth of work before you even show up.  I've done part of that already by taking the LSAT and applying to schools.

The rest, though, is that you can improve your grades before you ever set foot in a law school classroom.

I'm slowly reading blog posts by various high-achieving students and a pattern is starting to emerge as to 0L activities.

1.  Get LEEWS or attend the seminar if you can.  The dates don't work for me, so I'll be buying the CD course.  That will work great because I drive and travel a lot.  I can load up my iPod and use my travel time to my advantage.

2.  Buy the E & E books.  These are books that have examples and explanations on the subjects that are taught in 1L year.  I believe there are six of them, total.  They only cost about $30, each.

3.  Hornbooks?  Not as universally recommended as the E & Es, but still recommended.  These are pricier.  So, perhaps getting them from the library might be a good idea.

4.  There's a book called "getting to maybe" that is widely cited for being a good guide on how to write for law school exams. 

Now, I'm hearing recommendations for what to do once you're a 1L, but frankly, it's all pretty commonsense straightforward stuff.  Get to know your prof.  Work their practice exams.  Get in their head to try and answer the exams the way they want people to answer them.  Study like mad starting a month before finals. 

None of that is going to come as a surprise to anybody.

However, the LEEWS and E & E advice?  That's like a secret handshake.  I never heard of those things two months ago.  If I had to guess, at least half the class, and maybe more like 90% of them will show up to the first day of class with no idea what these things are.

This whole thing is like academic bloodsport.  It's reminiscent of that old joke about two guys walking along and they see a bear running at them.  One guy starts running.  The other guy says, "What are you doing?  A bear can run 25 miles an hour!"  The first guy turns around and says, "Yeah, but I don't have to outrun the bear."

So, anything that gives you an edge over fellow students?  Delays the day you get eaten by a bear.

Some schools are worse than others, and I'm going to a school with a reputation for being competitive, but not cutthroat.  Still, the stakes are huge.  The very top grads can probably look forward to really good job offers.  The rest run the risk of becoming law school road kill.

Although I bet everybody will know all about E&Es and LEEWS by the time they're 2Ls, 1/3 of law school will be over by then. 

Besides, once the semester starts, the last thing people will want to do is add to their workload. 

So, will it work?  Will it matter?  Who knows.  Worst-case, I don't see how it could hurt.  I'll blog on it if it works.  If not, I'll e-bay this crap and try to get half my money back.

As for things I didn't do correctly, here are the biggies, other than waiting until my mid-40s to apply:

1.  I didn't study hard enough for the LSAT.  My only weakness was the logic questions section, but they sell books specifically to prep you for that.  All other sections, I basically wailed on.  Although I did get accepted to my primary school of choice, that's mostly because it's a lower tier school.  With a better LSAT, I could have gotten a scholarship.  I might even allow my acceptance to lapse and re-take the June LSAT and re-apply. 

2.  If my goal was law school, I really, really, really should have chosen an easy major.  If you ask me, a lot of humanities degrees require a lot of work and aren't necessarily easy As.  I'm talking something like communications where the people might not be as academically driven and there are a ton of electives. 

If I were a young person intent on law school and just followed #1 and 2, I'd probably be looking at admission to a top tier school.  As is, I might get accepted to a school or two in the second tier, but that's about it.

With My Shield or On It

I still have a few days until I need to put down my seat deposit, but I'm going to order my first E & E.  I want to be finished with E & Es for all my classes before school starts.  If I have time, I'll look for hornbooks and / or high court case summaries. 

I think part of the reason I approach this with some trepidation is that I don't see this as something that I can do and still have a normal, easy life.  This is the academic equivalent of ranger school.  When the rangers send a guy to ranger school, they tell them "come back with a tab, or on a slab".  Meaning that they can succeed, or they can die.  Either outcome is fine.  Anything in-between is not.

This is a riff on the old Spartan saying of "With Your Shield or On It."  The shields the Spartans used were extremely large.  If you fled the battlefield, you left without trying to carry your heavy shield with you.  If you died on the battlefield, your comrades used your shield as a litter to bear your body home.

This is a "with my shield or on it" point.  I need to get in there and do whatever it takes to do as well as I can at this.  Everything I am doing right now is focused on that goal.

The path isn't entirely clear.  Though I've been accepted, I may not be able to borrow enough money to finish.  My business could continue to crater, in which case, I may have to drop out.  This year's class has a lot more applicants, and one can infer that this means a lot more high quality applicants.  So, class rank will be very hard to make in this cohort. 

The bottom line is that no situation is ever perfect.  You take what advantages you can.  You fight through whatever disadvantages you have to deal with.  Everybody there will have a demon or two to wrestle with.

For the first time, I'm in school for a reason bigger than just myself.  I sincerely am worried about my ability to provide for my son.  This is a way to do something better for him.

So, at this point, it's full steam ahead.  If something trips me up down the road, I'll deal with it then.  I have no illusions.  At the end of this whole thing I may come back on my shield.

The harder I work now, the more likely I'll be with it, not on it.  I'll do my best not to kill myself over things I can't help.  However, everything I can help, I will. 

I have no doubt that this entering law class has some genuine geniuses and people who were born to think in a way that leads to success in law school.  I accept that.  All I can do is try to work smarter, and at all times, to make sure I work harder. 

I may not have had to compete with anybody as formidable as them before.  However, they may not have faced anybody like me, either.

The Plan Takes Shape

Okay, in my usual style of winging it and figuring it out as I go, I didn't know what applying to law school would entail until I was already in the process.  So, yeah, I made some mistakes along the way.

Here on out, the plan has taken form. 

1.  I'm going to wait until the day before deadline to put down my seat deposit.

2.  I am just so sick at the idea that if I had managed this whole thing better I may have a chance for a scholarship.  However, with any luck, the scholarship committee will have a chance to come up with a decision.  I'm not optimistic.  I would have been a longshot for a scholarship to begin with, but apparently the entering class has a lot more applicants and they're being more selective than usual for admission.  I expect that this means the ante is higher for scholarships, too.

3.  I'm going to buy an E&E and get cracking on it, now. 

4.  I am a little worried about the idea that I may not qualify for enough student loans to do this.  The first $8,000 or so is easy to get.  The next $12,000 is problematic.  All I can say about that is, I'll give it a shot and see how it goes.

I suppose if worst comes to worst, I can enroll as a part-time student.  That's not a great way to go, but it could work.  I could move over into the full-time section when/if my circumstances permit.

Like pretty much... oh... everybody else in this thing, I'm going to be gunning for the top spot.  Unlike a lot of my classmates, I have a realistic shot at it.

This may involve getting some help for a mild learning disability I deal with.  However, this could very well be the difference between being in the top 10% and being #1.  We'll see.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Preview Day

Went to the Toledo Law School Preview day.  No particular theme to this post, but a bunch of observations:

1.  Law students sure are short.  Maybe just 4T law students.  Or maybe just Toledo Law students.  Maybe just the ones who showed up today, but they're short.  I notice this because I am essentially of average height.  Maybe an inch or two higher.  It's strange how many groups of people are identifiable by height.  In the Army, I was probably of average height.  In the Navy, I'm one of the taller folks.  I guess short people don't want to be in the Army, or they don't worry so much about bumping their heads if they have to be in a submarine.  In b-school, I was about average height.  Today?  I was pretty much the tallest person there.  It was that noticeable.  So, if the law school ever takes on the b-school in basketball, I'm betting on the b-school.

2.  Holy ****ing cow.  Helicopter parents!!!  I swear to god, 3/4 of the people there today were with their moms and dads.  I don't know if this is just a change since I was in school back before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but I can't imagine ANY parents at any college functions when I was in school.  I didn't even know my classmates had parents.  Maybe these guys were all from out of town, and their parents drove them, but even then, that's sorta WTF.  I really, really don't get it.  The people there with parents FAR outnumbered the people without.

3.  Whenever I get into a large group of people I don't know, my immediate reaction is, "Jesus, look at all these effing hipsters.  How in the world did I end up in a room with THESE people."  My sense of repulsion is almost always replaced by a feeling of, "why do I always have to practice douchebaggery every time I get with a new group of people?" during the first few minutes of actually talking to them.  The folks I got to speak to were uniformly cool and easy to approach and talk to.  I could really enjoy being in school with them.

4.  Applications to the law school are up 90% this year.  Probably due to the fact that nobody has a ****ing job around here.  When they said this, I immediately dropped any plans I had of letting my acceptance lapse.  This was reinforced by talking to another guy who hadn't been accepted, and was, instead, wait-listed.  I really have taken this whole thing for granted.  Yeah, that's me, unappreciative and self-centered.  Small wonder I want to be an attorney. 

My plan at this point is to wait until the 11th hour, then submit my seat deposit.  It's only $150.  So, if I don't go, not a huge deal.  With any luck, I'll have a scholly by then, but with applications spiking like this, I'm probably less competitive for a scholarship than I already thought I was.  The admissions director said this was likely to be a very high-achieving class based on what she saw.  ****ing great.  Will make class rank all the harder to attain.  I should have done this 3 years ago.

5.  I was amazed at how many people at the preview day were not from Toledo.  They actually are leaving their home town and moving here specifically for the purpose of attending UT Law.  I overheard one kid in there whose parents said (yes, his parents were talking, not him) that he took the LSAT 3 times and I believe he was applying to CSU, Akron and Toledo.  All I could think was, "Wow, dude, you want to be an attorney THAT BAD?" 
6.  The part of the day I least wanted to do turned out to be the most enjoyable.  It was like a "sample law school class".  Okay, it really wasn't.  They said it was, but please.  For one thing, the prof was AMAZINGLY energetic, positive, upbeat... a truly, truly gifted and entertaining educator.  If every teacher in there is like that, I'll be more than mildly surprised.  Second, we really just sorta glossed over a few scenarios.  I mean, what could be more like law school than sitting in a class in front of an entertaining teacher, while not digging into the details of things at all? 

Despite being against my better judgement, I spoke up (since the class was supposed to be Socratic method) and the prof politely told me my head was in my ass.  That happens a lot with the law.  A reasonably intelligent, educated person can read a law and think, "Oh, that law means X."  Then, when they talk to their attorney the attorney says, "No... I mean, I know that's what it looks like, but they really aren't talking about X at all.  What they mean is that when you're talking about Y and Z, under conditions W, that you have to consider factors L, M and N."

7.  Overall, I couldn't help but feel that the whole thing was like when a guy on Vegas gives you free tickets to some musical, and all you have to do is sit through a brief sales presentation.  They were there to sell.  We were there as potential buyers.

8.  Not one single question about jobs after graduation.  Not one.  I can't believe these kids.  In b-school, that was all anybody ever thought about.  We had multiple opportunities for Q&A, but not one question on how placement is going.  Maybe they all already know the deal, and don't care, but honestly, I don't think a lot of the kids knew.

9.  University of Toledo campus?  Majorly beautiful.  I totally didn't know how nice it is.  The university trail runs within 3 miles of my house.  If I got a bicycle, it's a nice 10 mile ride to campus.  I may do that. 

10.  Toledo has a reputation as being a bit more collaborative and not at all cutthroat.  Based on what I saw today, I believe it, and I mean that in the most sincerely complimentary and nice way.  I think it's a situation where the class quickly stratifies and the 90% who realize they're not gunning dial it way back. 

The class sizes are smallish, too.  120 or so in the entering 1L class.  Maybe that has something to do with it.  I mean, if you're competing against 300 people you barely know, you'll always feel like you can work just a little harder and catch that nameless faceless bunch of people who just barely outperformed you last semester by getting one letter grade better in one class. 

If you're in a school of 100 classmates, everybody knows everybody.  You know who the brains are.  You know who's barely scraping by.  You might be more likely to just accept your order in things.  The 1L class at UT will be roughly half the size of my High School class.

11.  I was a little alarmed by the lack of diversity.  Given that the school is located in Toledo, I was anticipating a lot larger minority enrollment.  I only saw a couple of prospective african american students.  That was alarming. 
As much as I hate Affirmative Action, every now and then, I see a large room that's almost exclusively full of white people and it sort of shocks me.

Now, on the other hand, Affirmative Action could explain the lack of minority applicants at Toledo.  Qualified URM candidates are pretty fiercely competed after.  So, people who might have gone to Toledo are quite possibly at much more highly regarded schools.  Though I do think this indicates a lack of bench strength.

By that, I mean, URMs have their share of bright people who can compete with anybody, but behind them, the pickings get slimmer.  Whereas, white people have bright folks, but right behind them, there are some less-bright people who still want to go to graduate school.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Personal Statement

Honestly, I didn't submit a personal statement to Toledo.  Though, they said that the scholarship committee usually likes to look at them.  So, I threw together one.  I basically broke all the rules:  put it together hastily and sent it off.  Thing is, I need a scholly determination soon because the deadline to reserve my seat is rapidly approaching.  It's next week.  If I don't have the scholarship, I may not go to school here. 

I did a personal statement for CWRU, but frankly, I may as well have written "yadda, yadda, yadda".  For admissions, I'm sorry, but I believe that 99% of the decision is LSAT and GPA.  The other 1% is whether the guys on the admissions committee got laid last night or are sufferring indegestion from bad italian food they ate at lunch.

I feel like I have the beginnings of a great personal statement, but I just couldn't quite whip it all together at the end.  Tried a few different tacks, but I really need a few more days to get this thing together.  I think I covered 90% of the ground I need to for the scholarship committee, though. 

Now, it's back to waiting.  Even if I could just get a 50% scholarship, that would make a world of difference.

I guess we'll see.

Scholarship

The older I get the more I'm sure that I don't know much.  Truly, my life has been an example of "the more I learn, the less I know." 

When it came to b-school, there were precious few scholarships.  In fact, I can honestly say I've never met a person who went to b-school on scholarship.  I'm sure there are some.  Especially when you're talking about URMs, all bets are off.  I also have known very few people who were in the tippy top strata of ultra brains.  So, I'm sure there's stuff going on up there.  I'm also sure I am not privy to what it is.

In any event, I had no idea how many scholarships are available with law schools.  It's utterly amazing.  Although people want to bash the rankings, the reality is that the rankings have helped in this regard, in my opinion.  Schools want people with good gpa and LSAT.  Without them, they fall in the rankings. 

Now, lots of things have changed since I last applied to a school.  For one thing, it appears that we've discovered how to make fire and harvest wolly mammoth hides in order to fashion clothing to protect us from the cold.

The other thing is that instead of gathering up all your crap and shooting it off to schools and paying an application fee to each one, you send all your stuff to a credentials assembling service (the LSAC) and they basically gather all the info and provide it to whatever school you want.

A LOT of schools don't have an application fee.  So, literally you can apply to dozens and dozens of schools with minimal effort and expense. 

What this also means is that schools looking for students can take a peek at your stuff.  (I can't remember if you had to allow this to happen or whether that's just the default.  I think I had to select it as an option.) 

Almost daily, I'm getting e-mails from law schools around the country offerring me scholarships.  Now, you have to be careful, here.  Some of these schools cost $40,000 a year and getting a $15,000 a year scholarship, if you ask me, isn't that big of a deal.

However, most of these scholarships have been substantial.  Basically lowering my cost of tuition far below what it will likely be at UT.

So, if I had known all this going in, I would have done a couple of things differently.

First, although I was somewhat prepared for the LSAT, I really just figured I needed to do well enough to get into UT.  So, I studied for a couple days, but that was it.  I ended up with a 159, when a score of about 170 was probably more in line with how I've done on the ACT, SAT and GMAT. 

Second, Toledo didn't require a personal statement.  (Case did, so I sent them one.)

Had I known that Toledo had scholarships, I would have knocked down a much higher LSAT and turned in a personal statement.

Now, I'm sorta hosed.  I have not gotten a scholarship offer, but I have traded some e-mails and to put a finer point on it, I haven't been denied a scholarship, either.  I'm probably in that gray area where they would much rather give the scholly to somebody with better credentials, but I'm not so bad they're dismissing me out of hand.

They asked me to send a personal statement to help the scholarship committee evaluate me and I'm going to shoot one off, today.

My other option, frankly, is to pass on admission this year, then re-take the LSAT and apply next year.  I've never taken one of those prep class dealies, but it might be worth it in this case.  With the right preparation, I have no doubt I can pull down an LSAT somewhere in the neighborhood of 170.  (For some perspective, a 170 is right in line with schools like NYU and Michigan.  Basically, schools in the top 10.  Of course, my UGPA is nowhere near what's required, and that's the problem, here.)

The 170 would make me a much stronger candidate for Toledo.  They're a smallish law-school.  Maybe they admit 120 to their 1L class.  So, the 170 helps them pull up their average LSAT score.

Also, the next LSAT is in June.  Toledo has rolling admissions and their final deadline isn't until August.  I could, potentially, withdraw my current application, then submit another one in July.  Trouble is, at that point I only get in if they still have seats (I bet they will) and the odds are that even fewer scholarships will be available since they will have already used most (if not all) of the available money to attract students.

Law school is expensive, too.  Toledo is a state school and on the less-expensive side of the equation as far as this goes, but it's still 20 grand a year.  I'm looking at a $60,000 debt burden if I do this.  It doesn't take a mathematical genius to know that a burden half that size would be a lot more manageable.  It's the difference between paying off an Escalade or an Accord.  Given that the degree is the same either way, I'd rather pay off the Accord.

Okay, time to get busy on the personal statement.  I'm going to preview day tomorrow.  If I accept, I need to send them money a week from today.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

A Quick Rant About Undegrad GPA

As I consider enrolling in graduate school yet again, my horrific undergrad GPA is an issue.  There are reasons for it.  I took all my exams 2 weeks early one year to go home because my grandfather was dying.  I got straight Cs that semester. 

However, one of the other reasons is that I bopped around in some majors that just weren't that easy.  I started off as a pure Computer Science major.  I ended up majoring in Information Systems. 

This is a strange distinction that most people would probably think is splitting hairs, but Computer Science generally means studying in the math department.  Information Systems is a similar program, but you study in the College of Business.  Between the two, Information Systems is, hands down, the easier. 

To put a finer point on it:  the Information Systems guys are learning how to program in programming languages.  The Computer Engineering guys are the ones figuring out how to make the hardware and software interact.  The Computer Science guys are the ones who are contemplating the theoretical, abstract principles behind the concept of electronic computation.

Now, even though Information Systems (or more commonly called Information Technology, today) was easier than either Computer Engineering or Computer Science, it was, hands-down, the hardest business discipline.  It would be possible for Finance to be harder, but it isn't, at least not the way it's taught at most undergraduate programs.  Perhaps at elite schools, it is, but not for anything outside, say, the Nation's top 10 or 20 schools.

Okay, all that whining to say what?  To say that if I had this to do all over again, with Law as my goal, I'd go major in communications and leave school with a 3.85 gpa. 

Medicine doesn't care what you majored in, but it does require you to take a core set of classes and the classes are generally not anybody's idea of a blow off.  For instance, you usually have to take 2 semesters of calculus based physics.  4 semesters of Chemistry.  You get the idea, here.  So, yeah, you can fluff off your other classes and get a degree in whatever, but you can't escape having to take some really hard classes.

Business school?  The first tier takes your work experience into consideration for admission.  So, it'd be hard to have a basket-weaving degree and get into the very best b-schools.  Though, you could almost certainly get into a school in the 2nd tier with a high enough GPA and a good GMAT.

By majoring in something relatively difficult and demanding, I really hosed myself for graduate admissions, later.

So, this is a long ways around saying that all those humanities guys who graduated with completely unemployable degrees?  If they knew all along they were going to law school, they probably played this just about right.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

What Can I Do?

Today, yet another attorney gave me advice that was akin to, "if you can do anything else at all, don't go into law."

Funny, but I even briefly considered trying to nail down my pre-med preqs.  Yeah, then I surveyed the undergrad GPAs for medical school.  Seems like you can pull down something in the range of about a 3.7, or you can just forget it. 

It wasn't always that high.  Heck, 20 years ago, it was probably more like 3.3 or 3.4.  Now, on the one hand, I feel pretty good that newly minted doctors are a pretty smart bunch of people.  On the other hand, if one of the problems in this country is that we don't have enough primary care physicians, why in the world are we not opening up more medical schools?

The demand is there.  Clearly, there are applicants who would like to go, but can't.  I mean, yeah, that might mean that guys with a mere 3.6 will get the chance to become doctors. 

It just cracks me up that every single liberal arts college in the known universe is adding an MBA program.  A new law school probably gets accredited every 3 or 4 years, but an area where there's a clear societal need for more schools and graduates, and a huge supply of applicants who want to do it and there just aren't enough medical schools to give us our primary care physicians.

Lord help us when the baby boomers start retiring, too.  Oh well.

An acquaintance from college who is maybe a year or two younger than me is going back to school to get his PharmD.  Good move.

Law?  I guess it's as brutal now as ever.  Big supply.  Not much demand. 

I'm interested in it.  Have been for most of my life.  I think I'd be good at it.  Is that enough, though?  I'd like to think so, but I'm watching as one calculated risk blows up in my face (my small business).  I really can't take any more broadside hits at my age.  Soon, I'll be at the "too old to ever recover" phase and have to retire to costa rica because its the only place I can live on my social security check.

Funny, but my original concept was to use the law as a compliment to owning a small business.  Now, it may soon have to be a substitute. 

It's just not much fun to be navigating the waters in this recession.  Everything is crappy and there are no jobs.

Cooley is in play...

Although scholarship determinations are made on a rolling basis, I don't think I'll be getting a scholly to UT.  I really like the internet age when it comes to applying for schools.  Basically, all the law schools go by the same credential assembling service.  So, they can evaluate me for scholarships, etc., without me ever officially applying.

I have scholarship offers to three schools.  Ave Maria is one, in Florida.  Oddly, they used to be in Ann Arbor.  The other is Phoenix College of Law, which is in Arizona.  Love to go there, but I can't.  The third is from Cooley.  I already qualify for a 75% scholarship at Cooley based on my LSAT score. 

However, I am almost certain I can re-take the LSAT and get a better score that would qualify me for a 100% scholarship.

The idea is actually growing on me quite a bit.  UT is affordable for a law school, but it's still $20 grand a year.  With the scholarship, even at 75%, Cooley is less than half that price.

That's the pros of Cooley.  The cons are that it's perceived as a really bad law school and that it's farther away.  Figure University of Toledo Law is about 15 minutes away.  Cooley is more like 50.

As for being perceived as a bad law school, though, the rankings just came out and Toledo placed in the 4th tier.  (That's the worst schools in the country.)  So, yeah, Cooley isn't considered to be very good, but Toledo isn't either.

I was sort of resigned to just taking out the loans and going to Toledo, but now, I'm not so sure.  $60,000 is a heck of a lot of money, especially considering that I don't think I'll be offerred a job after all this.  (Hiring market is just awful and the best jobs don't want a guy who's almost 50).

I mean, yeah, MBAs aren't quite the quants that engineers are, but even my meagre business math courses give me the ability to see that "free" is preferrable to $60,000.

Now, Cooley has some advantages that actually probably contribute to it's bad rankings.  For one, they cater to a largely nontraditional student base, meaning they have a lot more flexible schedules, etc.  The caliber of students isn't considered to be very selective at all.  That, of course, probably means an easier curve to try and climb.

Now, to make this happen and get free tuition, I would need to re-take the LSAT.  I know exactly what happened last time.  Other than the logic portion, I beat the living piss out of those sections.  The logic portion, I had poor time management and got flustered by a tough question.  Based on my performance, I guessed that I got a 160, and when the results came in, I got a 159.  So, I think I have a firm grasp on what I did and how I did it.

I should spend some time practicing for the logic section.  I basically went into the last one cold, after having just gone over one sample exam.  I think I can bring the score up to something in the ballpark of a 166, maybe a tad higher.  That would get me a full ride at Cooley.

Now, I have no illusions about landing a job after Cooley.  That will pretty much seal my fate as far as that's concerned.  However, it will allow me to sit for the bar and it will allow me to practice.

Ultimately, if I just hate Cooley and feel like I made a mistake, I can always transfer to UT Law and finish out, there.

The only thing I could ever see being a drawback to Cooley is that if I wanted to transfer, it might be a little easier from Toledo, but based on their fourth tier ranking, I think that is probably not that big of a factor.  Plus that only matters if I transfer.  Because of my geography, I doubt I'll be transferring anywhere.

I have a lot of time to think about this.  Toledo wants me to reserve my seat on April 1st with a deposit, but I'm going to let that deadline come and go.  I may shoot them a note explaining that although I'd love to attend, the lack of a scholarship means that I'm evaluating my other acceptances.

As for passing the bar, I think the best quote about that is, "Law School isn't supposed to be a 3 year barbri course".  A lot of the better schools actually have lower bar passage rates than their less prestigious counterparts.  So, I think if I study and take barbri, I'll do just fine.

The other thing is, with a full-tuition scholly and flexible class schedules, Cooley may actually work better if my life takes a turn for the worse (financially), like it shows every indication of doing.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Why Am I Not More Excited About This?

I really can't shake the feeling that I'm not at all excited about the prospect of being a full time student again.  Yuck.  I should be more pumped than this, and I just am not.  I can't quite put my finger on it.

One obvious factor is that when I finish law school, I have pretty much accepted the fact that there will not be a job waiting for me.  At least with my MBA, I held out the delusional idea that upon graduation I would get a bigger paycheck.

Now, that doesn't matter so much, personally.  In the best of all possible worlds, I'd hang out my shingle and start a practice. 

However, graduation is a LOOONG ways away.  Unlike a Freshman entering college, I have no delusion that this will be fun, or the best years of my life, or any similar nonsense.

I'm anticipating 3 years of a major grind.  I also have some fears that although I know I can start this journey, if my business craps the bed, I may not be able to finish it

On the other hand, if my business craps the bed, I need to do this all the more.

The other thing, and I know how shitty this sounds, is that I'm not that pumped about the school.  God bless them for accepting my slacker ass.  I gave them a shitty GPA and an underwhelming LSAT and they admitted me to a fully accredited law school that will give me a chance to sit for the bar. 

Frankly, this is the school I should be in.  Also, for my goal of establishing my own practice, this school is pretty much as good as any other.

As for geographical proximity, this is the best school for me to choose.

I know it makes me sound like an unredeemable dick, but after having gone to grad school at a place that was much farther up the food chain, going to a lesser institution just feels like I'm stepping down in the world.

The one bright spot about all this is that not only was my GPA pretty bad, but I really blew it on the LSAT.  Yet, my LSAT score is one of the better ones in the entering class. So, this means that on measures of pure intellect, I should be well-poised to be towards the top of the class.

If I can just get my slacker ass to crack a book, I should be able to do well in class rank.

Contrast to, say, Michigan where I'd probably be one of the dumb ones and be looking to try and graduate "thank you lawdy".  (Of course, yes, I know, Michigan wouldn't accept me, anyway, specifically because I'd be one of the dumb ones.)

Maybe some of this is just anxiety, too.  Who knows.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

JDs, MBAs and JD/MBAs

Perhaps the funniest thing I ever heard regarding JD/MBAs was from the Barely Legal Blog, which called them "dumb and dumber".

I have an MBA that I got a long time ago.  I spent a lot of time getting it and in the end, I have to admit, I wasn't that satisfied with what it did for me.

There are MBA programs that are true career-changers.  They vault your career to a place you just couldn't get it to without the MBA.  However, these programs are truly the cream of the crop.  Maybe the top 20.  Maybe not even that many.  In law circles, the top 14 are regarded as being in a different strata, and that's probably analogous to how many B-schools are really that good, and will open doors that wouldn't be available, otherwise.

Now, I will say that an MBA from a fully AACSB (American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business) accredited school is generally a pretty hard thing to get.  You have to do a lot of work.  The classes aren't that easy.  It's not impossible to do, but for the most part, like an ABA accredited law school, the AACSB accreditation proves that you got something that took some effort.

However, one of the first differences between the MBA and the JD is that not all schools are AACSB accredited.  It's as though every state is like California's law school situation.  If you can get accredited, great.  If not, who gives a rat's ass, just open up a law school anyway... or in this case, a business school. 

This could be debated back and forth, endlessly, but the non-AACSB MBA programs are, to put it mildly, not up to the same standards as the AACSB programs.  I've known quite a few people who got non-accredited degrees and looking at the quality of the academic work they were required to do, I'd put what they were doing a notch below what most undergraduate business programs make you do. 

So, that's problem #1.  There's a lot of folks running around who can say, with absolute certainty, that they have an MBA.  Without the prospect of the equivalent of a bar exam waiting at graduation, basically, if you have the cash, you're going to get an MBA. 

Saying you have an MBA carries exactly zero, zip, nada weight with anybody.  I never mention mine without also mentioning where I got it from.  I doubt it helps much.  Most people have never heard of the school I got mine from.  However, I'm trying desperately (and probably not that succesfully) to make it clear that I didn't attend one of those downright bad schools.

For the most part, I had a lot of respect for my classmates.  I thought they were a cut above.  But even my school admitted some clunkers.  One of them was a woman from my workplace who I thought was mentally retarded.  She was admitted as a provisional student, took one class, then dropped out.  She did get a passing grade in the class, though.  If she had wanted, she probably could have stayed.

Perhaps the most annoying was a rich housewife with no work experience.  Work experience was required, just as it is in most of the better b-schools.  I can't blame the school so much for this one, though.  She probably told them that she was the chairman of the board of directors and CEO of a nonprofit.  That was actually true.  What she probably didn't tell them was that she was the only person in the nonprofit and that it got all its operating capital from her husband.

Honestly, though, those were the only two that come to mind that weren't pretty sharp people, in my opinion.  Trouble is, you go further down the food chain and the mentally retarded co-worker becomes the rule instead of the exception at the crappier schools.  In fact, the mentally retarded co-worker got her undergrad from one of the more ridiculous MBA diploma mills in the area.

Problem #2 is that there's this thing called an executive MBA.  The basic point of an executive MBA is that you pay a lot more money, but you don't have to do all that pesky academic stuff.  Yeah, they make you take some classes and turn in a paper or two, but the executive MBA programs are an even more naked attempt to put an MBA in the hands of anybody who can pay for them. 

Now, say what you will about most law school graduates, but at least outside of California, they all attended fully accredited schools and before they could practice law, they had to pass a rather rigorous standard exam, the bar exam.

MBA?  None of those quality controls at all.  If you can fill out a FAFSA, you can get an MBA. 

Generally, none of that really matters, because for those outside a few elite schools, the MBA doesn't establish your career.  It enhances a career you had already.  What it will do for you is when you go for that VP level job and they want to see an MBA, you'll have it.  At that point, they're judging you on the decade or decades of work experience you have, not where your sheepskin is from.  So, you can rise to the position of CEO with an unremarkable MBA.  You just have to have one from somewhere.

Every now and then, you'll see a comment by somebody who says something like, "I took 20 years out of the work world to raise my kids and I got an MBA so I wouldn't have to take an entry level job.  But I can't get anything but entry-level job offers.  I'm so mad at my MBA."

Or, "I got a sociology degree and was working retail, and I got my MBA, but the only thing that did for me was get me into the retail management program at my current employer."

MBA employment statistics, after graduation, are through the roof.  So are salaries.  Why?  Well... figure a lot of the guys who got MBAs were already making good money before they started their MBA program.

Unlike the JD, the typical person getting an MBA is an engineer (you see this a lot, especially at certain schools... fully 50% of my class was engineers), IT guy, accountant, marketing person, human resources person, etc.  You get the idea.  The people who tend to get MBAs are already working in a business discipline. 

However, if your pre-MBA experience is not really that impressive, the MBA won't do that much for you.  Yeah, going to a better school might help more than going to a lesser school, but the MBA can only do so much.

Also, the better the school, the more unlikely you'll get in without having demonstrated some solid work experience before you even apply. 

So, an MBA is substantially different than a JD.  Most MBAs are a way to further your career, not a way to start it. 

Now, I have heard two interesting things regarding JDs in the business world.

The first is:  some people still believe that a JD is a good general business degree and can get your business career started.  Well... yeah, but there are a lot of undergraduate degrees that will allow you to do much better.  I think the JD was a bona-fide entry degree for business back in the 70s and prior.  It was probably considered about the same as an MBA.

Since then, though, JDs practice law.  If you don't want to practice law, and instead would like to work in business, you'd be infinitely better off to spend a year getting a master's in what you'd like to do than to get a JD.

In fact, if you can add and subtract, a degree in accounting is infinitely better for getting you into the business world than a JD would be.  In fact, I'd say a bachelor's in pretty much any business discipline is going to open more business doors than a JD would.  Perhaps the one exception here is that if you went to work for a company in the area of human resources, I, personally, would think a JD would be a great degree to have.  Probably the perfect degree.  I couldn't say one way or the other as to whether the hiring function in a company feels the same way.  Given that the hiring function is usually HR people who don't have JDs, I doubt they would be that eager to say, "Hey, this is totally superior to MY degree.  Let's get you in here so we can compete for my next promotion". 

Frankly, I knew a few JDs working outside the law in companies, and having the JD helped them exactly zero.  My impression is that it makes you look wierd and people think you're flighty.  Like somebody so ADHD that they can't decide what they want to do.

Now, the business world is filled with people who can't decide what they want to do.  The fact that a JD makes you seem exceptional in this regard should tell you something.

My advice:  if you want to work in business, and not in the law, don't get a JD.  It's a pointless move.

The other thing I've heard people say is that JDs should not get an MBA jointly.  Instead, they should hold off and use the MBA to re-start their career later if they decide they don't like the law.

I actually sort of agree with this, and in a way, this is what I'm doing in reverse (more on that later). 

Getting the joint JD/MBA is only useful if you want to work for a law firm that prefers or requires one.  I have heard of firms that offer a bonus to JD/MBAs, so for whatever reason, they must like them. 

For the most part, though, if you're getting a JD, you should only be doing it to practice law.  Getting the MBA really isn't going to open many (if any) doors that a JD wouldn't have opened by itself.  I recommend using the time you would have used to get an MBA and devoting it to your JD studies.  We all know by now that class rank and the strength of your school are what will (or won't) get you a job.  Pretty much anything else is meaningless.

Also, the hiring process is different in business.  I have hired dozens of people in my life, and one thing you try to guage is their fit.  Personality is part of the equation.  I get the impression that in law, it's class rank and school, and unless your personality is just incomprehensibly and obviously too obnoxious for anybody to be around you, the hiring decision isn't going to be made on personality.

The point being:  hiring decisions are a little more multidimensional in business.  It's not just the degree, school and GPA.  You can show up to a lot of businesses, say that you graduated first in your MBA class, and frankly, a lot of them will react by saying, "So, what?" 

The business world is full of A students who work for C students.  Academic credentials mean a lot in some disciplines, but they aren't the whole picture the way it is with hiring in the law.

The way you get ahead in business is to be good with people and to be a good manager.  A lot of those types of people didn't have stellar grades in school.  Some of them have chips on their shoulders about high-falutin' brainiacs with their fancy degrees and straight A report cards.

Academics, alone, is seldom enough to get you the job.  So, if all you have is a brand-new MBA with a good GPA, that carries some weight, but not enough to get you hired if that's all you've got.

Still, I agree with the sentiment that you shouldn't get a joint JD/MBA, generally speaking.

Now, can you work in the law for a few years, decide you don't like it, then reload by getting an MBA and getting into business?

If you get into a top MBA program, yes.  By that, I mean, really top program.  Top 25, at least, maybe higher.

Otherwise, it's going to be tough.

There are a few jobs out there that require general business degrees, but for the most part, when companies hire, they are trying to hire people with specific skills.

They're trying to hire an accountant, or an IT person, or an HR person. 

Which means, to get that job, they expect either education or experience or both, in that specific area.

An MBA is actually a generalist degree.  You may chose to major (or get a concentration, or whatever your school calls it), but we're talking about taking maybe 4 or 5 classes. 

The general gist of an MBA is that it is a credential for jobs in management.

However, if you have no previous experience in a discipline, they're not going to hire you in as a manager.

(Keep in mind that I'm speaking in generalities, here.  I'm sure there are exceptions, but they've very, very few and I wouldn't build a career plan around the exceptions.)

Figure if a company is hiring from the outside to bring in a manager, they want either somebody with previous management experience within that discipline, or a person who was maybe a step or two away from management within that discipline.

They're not going to hire somebody with zero management experience and / or zero experience within that discipline just because a person has an MBA.

So, personally, if I were an attorney looking to get out of the law and into something else, I'd probably get, say, a Master's in Marketing, or a Masters of Accountantcy, or a Masters in Information Technology.

Trying to just show up with a garden variety MBA really doesn't prepare you for much.  An MBA isn't really an entry-level credential.  It doesn't generally qualify you for entry-level jobs.  Even MBA consulting jobs are frequently going to be based on your non-MBA education and experience.

Now, on the other hand, going the other way, I think it does work.  A JD is an entry-level credential and can get you entry-level jobs.  I can only guess at this since it's what I'm trying to do, now, but the general idea is that if you have a JD and pass the bar, you can practice law.  You can also compete for jobs in the law (scarce though they may be.)

So, if you're a business type and want to change careers to the law, yeah, you do it by getting a JD. 

I do realize that the bottom line in all this is that most MBAs do precious little for you.  Unfortunately, I think that's probably true.  It'll help you enhance a career that's already going well.  However, it won't turn around a career that's going badly.  It also won't let you start in the busines world 5 rungs up on the ladder ahead of people who have already been working in it.