Once again, I give a shoutout to my employer and the the non-profit organization that makes this blog possible.

If you're in law school right now, you're surely preparing for exams.

Don't forget about CALI lessons. There are over 700 free, interactive, computer-based tutorials in over 32 areas of law.

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CALI is sending its annual shipment of CALI CD's to law schools by the end of the week. This year we're sending 140,000 CD's...enough for all law students, not just 1L's as in the past!

As an incoming student, or even as a current student, when school starts make sure you ask someone at your school for a free CD if one is not given to you! There should be enough to go around.

Read more about CALI CD's below...

These two articles,"Bridge-and-Tunnel Firms Hike First-Year Pay, Bulk Up on New Hires" and "The Paychecks Aren't Bigger in Texas: Firms Won't Pull Trigger on Raises" (both reprinted by nylawyer.com...may require free username/password)), have some information on the New Jersey and Texas markets for new-hire associates at big firms in those regions.

Law School Academic Support Blog posts some of the myths that law school students harbor regarding exam preparation.

I agree with the list for the most part. I would challenge some of the wording of number 5 as it pertains to open book exams that include open notes (not the part about studying as hard...that's correct).

Here is number 5.

• You do not have to study as hard for an open-book exam. Open-book exams are usually a trap. Students who do not learn the material as they would for a closed-book exam often have to look everything up. Only a general, surface knowledge of the material is often the result of believing this myth. And, we all know that you rarely have spare time in an exam to look much up in your materials.

In my experience the last sentence is wrong if the professor allows open notes for the exam. While I may feel rushed and hurried at first I've only had one exam where I was really rushed. In fact, with a large majority of my exams I have time to go over my exam and spell-check and proofread somewhat. This is one of the huge advantages of using computers for exams.

One thing many professors tell you is to not just dive into writing your answer. Take a few minutes before you start writing to make to organize or make an outline of where you want your answer to go. While agree there is not going to be time to look much up at all in a bulky casebook, if there is time to organize, there is time to look things up in your notes in order to better organize.

And don't get me wrong, it's not that you should spend less time in preparation of on open book/open notes exams in relation to closed, but for me it's a different type of study and preparation.

Open book law school exams are about perfecting an outline for me. Using tabs and a table of contents or index to create an outline of the class in which I can move quickly and find what I need.

And I'm not afraid to go on the longish side on class outline lenghth for open note exams because, while you still need to understand the material, memorization is not as important. You'll find that just the process of making a more detailed outline and structuring it goes a long way to learning the material, itself.

Making an outline like this for open book/open notes exams takes a lot of time in preparation of the exam, but it is a different type of studying than closed book. Closed book is more about making a shorter class outline and (while most law professors hate to admit it) memorizing that outline.

So while I agree that you will have to spend just as much time preparing and studying for closed book exams as for open book with open notes, I think it's wrong to not adjust your preparation approach somewhat for each.

Freakonomics Blog reports that anyone with a .edu email address can now create a free New York Times Select account for free, giving access to all online content at the site.

Ave Maria, founded by Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, is moving from Michigan to Florida. Link

On the heels of the news that a paralegal was caught practicing law successfully for several years without a license, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece by a law school professor which cricized law schools for not preparing students.

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has more details and comments.

A good roundup of the issue at Law.com-Inside Opinions.

Professor Orin Kerr of Volokh conspiracy has a nice post about how to write a law school exam answer. It gives some nice insight into what a professor wants to see on a law school exam.

The examples of good vs. bad answers are rather helpful. You always hear that a good exam answer comes down to writing a good analysis, but this actually demonstrates what is meant by that.

Law School Academic Suport Blog offers five tips for students to stay mentally healthy.

If you need loans you will most certainly be filling out a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) each year of law school.

The Consumerist, a consumer dvocate blog, suggests that you fill out your FAFSA soon. This is smart advice.

A bit of a continuation of my last post. Looks like the big firms here in Chicago are following suit with starting salary increases for their first year associates as well.

Here is a post from Balkanization talking about the effect of high associate salaries at elite firms on legal education. A couple of important points...

• "A similar table for non-elite law schools (outside the top 30 or so) would likely show that only 5% to 10% of graduates enter these [top 250 firms...ie, the high-paying firms] firms, and for many schools the percentage is much lower."

I agree with his assessment. And that goes back to the point in my last post. Your chances of finding the $100,000 salary if you don't attend an elite school is dramatically small.

He goes further to note that the high cost of most legal education:

• " forces graduates to take the corporate law firm route, . . . as a means to finance the cost of law school. . . . Many students come into law school with different aspirations, and later decide to go to law firms to pay off their hefty loans."

He also cites students at lower reputational schools as being the losers in this system:

• "Many students at non-elite law schools are not doing well. As indicated earlier, only the top 5% to 10% of graduates from non-elite schools obtain the choice corporate law jobs (with a much lower percentage at many schools). The remaining 95% of graduates will earn substantially less initially (many in the $50,000 to $70,000 range), and over their careers. These lawyers mainly serve individual clients or work in government positions. When adjusted for inflation, their pay has decreased in the last couple of decades (see Heinz, Urban Lawyers 2005), while loan payments have gone up.

I also echo the below sentiments:

• "non-elite graduates pay almost the same amount for a law degree but have significantly lower expected earnings. Law school may still be a sound investment for these graduates, but not necessarily for those who had a solid earning potential before entering law school, and not for older students."

Students who have a miniscule shot at these high salaried jobs are paying as much in tuition as those with a decent shot. But those with little hope of a big paying job may not be aware of that fact coming into law school that they are not likely to land such a job. So those two groups mentioned (older students, those with high earnings potential) should think long and hard about borrowing as much money as it takes to pay for law school in most cases because they could end up in a worse situation after law school than before.

He also mentions the scholarship disparity problem.

• "There is another nasty twist. Many of the top students at non-elite schools—the ones with a decent chance to land corporate law jobs—get substantial scholarships (which schools use to lure highly credentialed students to boost their rankings), while those lower in the class often pay full price. As a result, the students who are likely to earn far less subsidize the education of the students who will earn a great deal more."

Read the whole article though. It's a good comment on how the big law firms' hiring practices could affect you, not to mention the entire legal community.

A bit of a follow-up on my previous post on the National Jurists Article on Law School Rankings...

The National Jurist is a free, light-read magazine aimed at law students. From my understanding, the National Jurist is given away for free on most law school campuses in the US.

Looking through some issues would probably give you some of insight into the world of law school. Doing so is pretty easy to do since they now publish a free digital version (past digital issues here). This seems like a much better option than their $30-$40 paper subscription alternatives.

It has been awhile since there has been a post on the pre-law blog. I took some time off for the finals/holidays/the AALS conference which CALI attends each year. Look for some new posts soon. I hope everyone had a happy holiday season.

With CALI Instapoll, professors ask a question in class and CALI Instapoll (www.cali.org/instapoll) lets them create a poll online in a matter of one click, giving the professor a screen like this:

Students then access cali.org/instapoll on their laptop, put in the poll number, and click on the letter corresponding with their vote: Two clicks.

The professor sees the student's responses in real time on his/her screen as soon as the students vote:

One advantage I can see is this: When my Constitutional Law Professor took a poll of the class's opinion on an issue by hand-raising, it normally came out overwhelmingly in favor of one side (usually the side considered more liberal).

But I knew there were plenty of people who may not have agreed with the majority of my classmates just from talking with some before or after class about the same issue.

Many people are uncomfortable with disclosing their true thoughts to everyone in a class when it comes to topics in classes like ConLaw.

So a professor can use this stripped-down, easy-to-use polling tool to help eliminate that reluctance.

And yes, it's absolutely free. No account or login required.

Accepted Admissions Almanac points us to an article about the recent LSAT reporting policy change called "LSAT changed likely to aid potential applicants." The article says that 74% of law schools are now evaluating applicants based on high LSAT score as opposed to the 87% who used to evaulate applicants based on average LSAT.

I just do not get how this as benefits students as a whole. To further my point here is a quote from the article:

• "In the law-school admissions process now, taking the LSAT more than once may pose significantly less risk for a student than before this change," said Steven Marietti, Kaplan's director of pre-law programs.Marietti said this may induce more students to take the test multiple times.
• College junior Arushi Sharma, who is considering taking the LSAT, said that she would consider retaking the exam as a result of the new policy shift. "You can only go up from there," she said.
• Among schools who evaluate highest scores, 37 percent said taking the LSAT fewer times would benefit applicants in the admissions process.

So how does the fact that more people will take the test more often with the "you can only go up from here" mentality, and that a majority of the schools will ignore all but the high score benefit students as a whole?

I see how this policy helps the LSAT test prep companies. I see how this policy helps the students with ample time and money to take the test. I even see how it benefits the person who had the "bad day" test.

But I'm not sure that it benefits to the average test taker.

I posted earlier here about how November's election results might affect pre-law students who plan on applying to a Michigan school because of a new state constitutional amendment passed by Michigan voters.

Law Librarian Blog points us to The Chronicle of Higher Education's Article about Wayne State University Law School's new admissions policy made in response to the new constitution. Instead of race/ethnicity as a consideration the school opts for a different approach to create diversity.

• The policy . . . allows admissions officials to give extra consideration to applicants who have experienced discrimination or socioeconomic disadvantage, who are proficient in more than one language, or who have lived abroad or on an American Indian reservation[,] . . . who are the first in their families to attend or graduate from college or graduate school, who attended elementary and secondary schools deemed low-achieving under standards set by the No Child Left Behind Act, or who contribute to geographic diversity among the student body, including residents of Detroit.

Dean Frank Wu of Wayne State University School of Law offers some advice for those thinking about law school on his blog.

I really like Dean Wu because 1) he keeps up a blog which demonstrates an openness to communicate with his current and potential students and 2) he blogs through CALI's blogging system at classcaster.org.

This question on fee waivers was submitted to me:

• ...if I get a fee waiver from [a] school, what are my chances of actually getting in? Obviously they must think I am somewhat qualified, but when I look at the statistics for a particular school, my LSAT/GPA are on the low end (or off) their 25/75 mark.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if your numbers are below a school's 25th percentile then you're probably a bit of a pawn in the admissions game the school is playing in order to look better to the US News law school rankings system.

Here's the scoop, taken from a editorial piece in The Badger Herald (University of Wisconsin's newspaper):

• If you’ve ever received a fee waiver from a law school, the waiver is often times little more than a metaphorical game piece. Fee waivers are another way law schools game the rankings. Take a closer look at the methodology section of the U.S. News rankings. The most weight is given to “selectivity” and “quality assessment.” The selectivity ranking is composed of the school’s median LSAT score, GPA and rejection rate.

In other words, there is some evidence that schools give certain candidates fee waivers to encourage more unqualified applications and increase rejection numbers. This makes the school look better in the category of "selectivity" in the US News ranking.

Kind of harsh, but welcome to the competitive world of law school admissions. Send in your application because its free. Maybe your intangibles will overwhelm admissions. But don't get your hopes up.

More links on law schools gaming the admissions system in order to look better to US news rankings:

Leiter Reports: More Evidence of Top Law Schools "Gaming" the U.S. News Ranking System?

Orin Kerr: Cooking the Books for the U.S. News: Juicy Stories Wanted

PrawfsBlawg: The Economics of Admission

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*I am a law student. That means I don't have all the answers. I may be lacking knowledge in certain areas, namely the real world practice of law. But I have done a lot of research into the law school process as a whole and I am currently living through law school. I am also surrounded by a lot of smart and experienced people with unique insight into the law school world who either work at CALI or with whom CALI have close relationships. I hope that you seek others' opinions and insights in addition to mine in order to make an informed decision.

I've mentioned podcasting in the classroom by professors as a means of helping make legal education better (here and here). To me podcasting lectures is such an easy way for professors to use technology in order to better their students' learning experience.

Most students of the professors participating in CALI's Legal Education Podcasting Project agree (see some of the comments John posted on his blog). Also, John's most recent post describes how podcasting is actually a benefit to professors.

For more info on professor podcasting, check out the cover article in the November issue of the ABA's Student Lawyer Magazine. Here is the article.

CALI has created a pretty fun and easy-to-play game to help you learn the names and a little bit about the voting tendencies of the Supreme Court Justices.

There are actually two types of games within the game. In one match the Justices' names with the Justices' likenesses. In the other choose from a list of thee cases the one for which a given Justice wrote the opinion.

Link:
Supreme Court Justices Game

Elmer, CALI's Director of Internet Development, just created a great google-powered search engine of law schools' official sites on learnthelaw.org. All 188 ABA law schools' sites, and only those sites, are included in the search results.

This could be really helpful if you only want search results from schools' official websites. Especially for pre-law students looking to compare a number of law schools in some way. For example, if you wish to compare the clinical offerings of various law schools and do not want a bunch of irrelevent links that a normal Google search would likely give, using this search would be a great place to start. Give it a try!

Learnthelaw.org previously offered only one subscription option for incoming law students who wished to gain early access to CALI lessons: a year long, $50 subscription.

We are pleased to announce that learnthelaw.org now offers a new subscription option: $10 for unlimited access to CALI lessons through learnthelaw.org for 30 days!

You can sign up through learnthelaw.org here.

For more on CALI lessons as law school preparation click here.

There is a new CALI lesson that of freely available at learnthelaw.org. Incoming law students should especially be aware of this lesson.

Professor Diane Murley of Southern Illinois University School of Law and Law Dawg Blawg has generously created for CALI a lesson called "Where Does Law Come From?".

The material in this lesson is basic, but the law school you attend may expect you to intrinsically pick up these concepts along the way if you don't already know them coming into law school.

Every future law student should run through this lesson at some point before law school in order to brush up on these concepts.

To run this lesson click here.

A listing of other CALI lessons can be found here.

John has a great post on podcasting law school class lectures here.

There is no doubt that digitally recording professor lectures and posting them for the entire class has numerous advantages for the students in that class (ability to review a lecture from earlier in the year, supplement notes with things you missed, listen after emergency situations that caused you to miss class).

He alsom mentions a student who decided to take the podcasting into his own hands:

• We had a student (link to interview with the law student) volunteer to record and post all of his instructor's lectures and we provided him with a digital recorder to do so (after he got permission from the instructors, of course) and I have blogged on the idea that students would probably be more than willing to handle the small amount of work necessary to create and post the podcasts. With CALI providing the blog, disk space and bandwidth via Classcaster, there is almost no cost to law faculty who want to make their classroom lectures available to their students and others.

I think this is a great idea because some professors are too busy/just don't want to deal with the hassle of learning how to post a digital recording to a blog.

In fact, I tried to get the professors teaching my two traditional classes this semester to participate. I asked them if I could record and podcast their lectures by setting up a classcaster blog for them (I got one to agree but I ended up dropping the class so another student took over the reigns).

So if any of the more technologically inclined law students at CALI member law schools with digital recording devices think that being able to go back and listen to a lecture at will is a good idea, approach your professor and let him/her know that you are willing to do the work for them using our classcaster blogging system.

Professors who happen to be reading this who wish to participate but don't want to deal with the posting and recording part will likely easily get a volunteer to do the work by simply asking the class for one.

Setting up a blog on classcaster is free, simple, and a service to your fellow students. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Note: Do not record classes and especially do not post them publicly without the professor's admission! They may have to go through other steps in order to conform with your school's policy on recording (for example, asking everyone in the class for permission to record).

Edit: Also see this post by a professor on the topic of recording classroom lectures. Also a good discussion in the comments section.

Do you have questions about law school? Fill out, anonymously if you like, and submit the form below.

I'll answer honestly and the best I can from a current law student's point of view. If I can't answer it, I'll try to find someone who can...hey, we have connections here at CALI. Click here to see previous reader submitted posts.

Thanks!

Here a few more examples of the huge library of CALI lessons that CALI offers to all member school students and subscribers to learnthelaw.org:

Punctuation Basics and Grammar for Law Students
How to Brief a Case
Evaluating Websites

We chose some basic lessons that incoming law students might be interested in.

Don't forget, those of you not yet in law school can access CALI Lessons through a subscription learnthelaw.org.

New law students at CALI member schools need to get in touch with the CALI contact on campus to get an authorization code to gain access to CALI Lessons.

New law students at schools without CALI (not a lot of you), contact your adminstration and suggest they become members of CALI.

The boss-man at CALI announces on his blog CALI's two newest member law schools: University of Virginia School of Law and Drexel University College of Law.

That makes 201 law schools as members of CALI. That means that if you're attending one of these schools you have free access to CALI Lessons because your school is a member (ask your CALI contact about getting online access).

If you're headed to one of the less than half dozen of schools that are not CALI member schools, you're missing out! Contact your administration and let them know you'd like for your school to become a CALI member too.

Make sure that if your school doesn't give you your free CALI CD during orientation that you seek one out. Your school's CALI contact or someone in your library should be able to help.

If you are going to one of the few non-CALI member schools, write emails to your administration and tell them that you would like to see your school become member of CALI and have your friends do the same.

What is the CALI CD?
The CALI CD contains all of CALI's 600+ lessons in 32 subjects of law. It is not a demo CD, it is a complete collection of all CALI lessons. CALI Lessons are interactive, computer-based tutorials written by law professors. All CALI Lessons are listed here. Generally, the lessons are broken into different components of the different subjects. ADDED 7/38/2006: See what other students said about CALI Lessons and how the lessons helped them in this post.

Note that all CALI Lessons are available on the web with a password as well as from the CD. I suggest using the online lessons as they are gauranteed the most up to date. You should probably only use the CD when you don't have an internet connection. In order to get online access to CALI Lessons, also free to CALI member school students, get the authorization code from your school's CALI contact. Again, someone at your library should be able to help you with this as well.

Suggestions of how to use your CALI CD and CALI Lessons.
This is important because when I got a CALI CD during 1L orientation and before working for CALI, the CD was given to me with little explanation. I think a lot of students end up with this CALI CD as one of the many things they are given during orientation and have no idea what purpose it serves and, because of this, never try it or just forget about it.

Some pointers for how to use the CALI CD:

1. Don't throw it away when you get it during orientation!
2. Use the online lessons when you can and save the CD for times you don't have an internet connection, as mentioned above.
3. Run through the CALI lesson on a given topic before class discussion on that topic.
4. Alternatively or in addition to 3, run through the lessons on a given subject after that topic was discussed in class as reinforcement.
5. Use CALI lessons as a refresher during the weeks before exams.

How to access CALI Lessons before law school starts.
If you're not attending law school this fall or just want a head start on using CALI lessons, you can buy a subscription to CALI Lessons at learnthelaw.org.

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.

CALI is always trying to come up with innovative ways to integrate technology into the classroom. One of our recent projects, Legal Education Podcasting Project, just finished its first semester. This project involved 40+ professors podcasting using our classcaster system. The reaction by students has been pretty positive and I will likely post more about podcasting in the near future. Professors' reactions are being chronicled in interviews with CALI's Executive Director, John Mayer (no not this John Mayer, this John Mayer).

One can find these interviews at John's blog, CALIopolis.

Top Law Student Blog is a great advice blog written by another current law student. The advice is aimed at first year students but most of the advice is pertinent to students who plan on entering law school in the future.(His/her endorsements of CALI here and here get this blogger extra points with us!)