In the coming months, CALI will be putting considerable time and effort into a project called eLangdell. The link below will explain it better, but very basically, eLangdell will be an online collection of cases, articles, and more which will give law professors the ability to systematically build digital course materials. This project has great potential benefits for law students, one being the reduction in the extremely high price of law school casebooks and other course materials.

Check out John's presentation on eLangdell as given at the 2006 Conference for Law School Computing.

PreLaw Magazine is hosting a podcast designed for pre-laws called J.D. Confidential. It's full of interviews, news, advice, and attempted humor. They only have one podcast so far, but you really should check it out. I hope they keep them coming.

The previous post reminded me of my experience with scholarships offered directly from the law school.

When a person is accepted to law school, the offer to attend that school most likely includes a scholarship offer from that school. The scholarship offer usually says something to the effect of "stay in the top xx% (usually 20%-25%) and you can renew that scholarship in subsequent years." I thought when I received something similar to this from schools to which I was accepted that the schools thought that I would easily rank in that top xx% or so of their incoming students and that the school were setting me up to succeed in keeping this scholarship.

But through speaking with some of my law school friends, I can say that it seems like every single person in my 1L class had a scholarship like this contingent on rankings. At my school, just based on the evidence I have, at it's lowest there had to be 50% of incoming 1L's receive a similar scholarship in varying dollar amounts (see Kent's official policy here).

So what does this mean for an incoming law student?
I do not know how scholarships are done at other schools, but I assume it is similar to my school. If 50% receive a scholarship contingent on making the top 25%, that does not bode well for keeping that scholarship (I guess depending if you're a half empty or half full sort of person) as half of the 1L's with this type of scholarship will inevitably lose it.

My main point is this: do not count on any scholarship money based on gpa or rank offered from your school to last past the first year when weighing the economics of law school and deciding what school to attend. Consider that any scholarship you were offered has a pretty good chance of being lost by your second year just based on the numbers. Remember all of those students who got scholarships are smart, motivated, and gunning for that top 25%. There is just no way to predict whether you will end up in that top 25% for sure so you have to at least consider the chance of not having the scholarship you were offered past 1L.

Some talk on Law.com Blog Network of how student loan debt relates to students' decision to either work in the public sector or private sector. You probably know the general characterization of the differences between the two: public sector leaves more time and energy for things outside of work for less pay, private sector means longer work hours for more pay (edit: I originally typed the opposite of what I meant...corrected).

It is especially important to contemplate these career alternatives before deciding where to attend law school. If you are like me when I was deciding to go to law school, you will hear and read a lot of advice that suggests attending the highest ranked law school to which you are accepted regardless of scholarship offers and tuition costs. Of course, this advice is not always right. But it is especially wrong in the case of a person who wants to go into the public sector.

Because of the likely lower salary, the lower ranked and/or less expensive school must garner even more consideration if you decide you want to work in the public sector. I can imagine it is a bad situation where a person has his/her heart set on public work coming into law school and then, because of the "psychic cost" discussed in the link above, that person feels forced into the private sector based on the tremendous amount of debt acquired law school.

This brings up another topic I have been meaning to touch on...scholarships in law school.

As if economists taking all the ladies wasn't enough (see Freakonomics author, Steven Levitt's Blog). Now we find out that a study by Professors R. Kim Craft and Joe G. Baker at Southern Utah suggests that people who graduate from law school who majored in economics in undergrad make the most money when they enter the working world after law school. Not only that, economics was the ONLY undergraduate major that had a significant correlation with higher earnings.

Now, a correlation between an economics major/higher earnings as opposed to an economics major actually causing the higher earnings are two different things. To me the interesting question is (assuming the study is correct): why are economics majors making more money after law school? Professors Craft and Baker have some theories for that in their article, I'll let you read those on your own. The article can be found here (skip to the Discussion to avoid the deep mathematical modeling stuff.)

What does this mean for pre-laws?
I took more economics throughout my business undergraduate/graduate degrees than most non-economics majors. Probably enough for an undergraduate economics minor. That doesn't mean I remember much of the deeper aspects of the classes I took, but I can say that the basic principles of economics have been an important foundation for law school that have come up for me in several subjects.

The title of this post is obviously not meant to be taken seriously. But if you are an undecided college student who is planning on eventually attending law school, economics is a major to think about because it will come in handy. Don't put too much credence into the possible potential for higher earnings that are associated with economics in this study though because there are so many other factors that go into why a person makes the salary he/she does that I would guess have a much higher correlation (school, grades, etc.). Really I just suggest taking a couple of the beginning courses in economics as an undergraduate. If nothing else, it's a proven fact that knowing economics increases your chances of scoring a date (see above link to Freakonomics blog).

Links:
Law.Com Blog Network

Adam Smith, Esq.

Top Law Student Blog has this advice:

"...This is one of the best, little-known tips to getting an advantage in law school that I’ve seen: Listen to lectures for all your classes this summer, and when you enter class this fall, you will already have a general understanding of major concepts, terms, and policies..."

-- Link

I think this is a great idea. As a law student who did little (no) preparation coming into law school, I suggest you prepare in some way for law school. Law school was just such a different environment and experience than I could have imagined, and some kind of background would have been extremely helpful. And this is how our Podcasting Project can help pre-laws.

In the project's initial semester (Spring 06), we had 40+ professors at different schools podcast their classes, either in lecture form or in review of lecture format. The professor blogs which host each professor's podcasts can be found here. Nothing is really organized yet, but there are several professors who podcasted their first year courses if one wants to sort through them.

Top Law Student Blog suggests a couple of commercial lecture series which look to cost about $50 per subject. As CALI's podcasting project progresses into future and as more professors jump on board with a wider variety of classes, these podcasts could become a great free alternative to these commercial lecture series for students looking to prepare for law school by listening to lectures.