Amir Efrati, the Wall Street Journal writer who authored this piece on the poor legal job market especially for those at non-elite schools, writes another must read article for incoming law students about choosing a law school and increasing your chances of landing a big law job. Here's the link.

To summarize, outside of the top 20-30 schools, you can basically ignore US news rankings and pay more attention to things like debt, location, employment data, and on-campus recruiting.

Here is a link to the fancy graphs that accompany the article. I added them simply because I'd like to see some color in this post. Click more to see the rest:

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The National Law Journal reports. The network of ten schools supposedly will try to change law school curricula so that law school is, among other things, more practical.

"Lisa Kloppenberg, dean of University of Dayton School of Law in Dayton, Ohio, which is among the participating schools, said, 'I hope that this will give momentum to real change in law schools.'"

Participating schools will be

• University of Dayton
• Georgetown University
• Harvard University
• Stanford University
• New York University
• City University of New York
• Indiana University
• The University of New Mexico
• Southwestern University
• Vanderbilt University
  

Here's a nice article from law.com on the topic of midsize firms, often overlooked in all of the big firm salary hype.

Not only is it free (and the digital version is pretty slick), but it really seems to offer some credible information, advice, current news, and opinions about law school aimed at pre-law students.

I enjoyed the editor-in-chief's note at the beginning and think it conveys the right philosophy about attending law school. There are also some features online (like audio and video interviews) that you cannot get through a print magazine.

You can subscribe to get the digital version of preLaw magazine delivered to your inbox for free here. I highly recommend it.

UPDATE: Well, it looks like the Law Critic blog has died almost as quickly as it started. It must have been the avalanche of traffic sent by the Pre-Law Blog readers. My apologies to the author.

The other day, I stumbled upon a new blog that is written by a future law school applicant who will be taking the LSAT within the next year. It is called Law Critic.

The blog is billed as "a website for people trying to decide if law school is the next step" but focus as of now looks to be the LSAT with posts like "Why does the LSAT carry so much weight?" It is certainly interesting for me to see an applicant's perspective on the test before he's taken it leading up to test day. Some of you future law students in his position might want to keep up with the blog.

Good luck and welcome to the world of blogging.

Update: Abovethelaw has some more coverage of this with some potential disadvantages, as well as a list of a few other firms that offer this. Also interesting there is overwhelming positive support amongst ATL readers for the two-tier track (like, 80/20 support as good for firms, 70/30 support good for associates) in the polls they are conducting last I checked. It's obvious there is a demand for less hours for less pay.

The ABA Journal reports that the Chicago firm of Chapman and Cutler is giving associates the choice of working more hours for more money or working less hours for less money. Kind of makes sense on both ends.

I have to think there are a lot of quality law students who may want to work in a firm, but don't want the hours that go along with it. So this strategy might give this firm a competitive advantage over other firms in recruiting.

And though I don't know the salaries, I would guess that working less hours for a lower salary at a big firm would still net more in salary than a lot of governmental, small firm, or public interest opportunities with similar hours, less hours being one of the draws of such jobs. It will be interesting to see if this works out and catches on at other firms.

TaxProf Blog posted some more good stuff based on the Princeton Review data.

This time Prof. Caron offers up the schools where students study the least and where students study the most. Click below to read more analysis. (More)

Paul Caron at TaxProf Blog points us toward Princeton Review's Best 170 Law Schools with a few interesting lists such as Most Competitive Students, Most Friendly to Older Students, Best Quality of Life, and a few more.

Some of you, in law school or still in undergrad, may be interested in the deal that Microsoft is offering for the complete suite of Microsoft Office products.

It's a promotion called The Ultimate Steal...only $59.95 (wow, MS Office Ultimate is normally something ridiculous like $600+!) for the entire MS Office 2007 suite.

But the deal is only available to students (people with .edu email addresses taking more than .5 course load). Click below to read more and see the link.

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The Prelaw Advisor Blog has a good post about the importance of the LSAT.

He makes a good point about the counterintuitiveness of the LSAT's importance, especially to applicants and parents.

Click below to read more.

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Looks like it will have some affect on law students if it is passed. Here's the link from Inside Higher Education.

Accepted Admissions Almanac has the details and the link to the law.com article.