Law School Discussion

Most lawyers don't have jobs at large law firms. Those jobs are prestigious and can pay very well, especially for partners of the firm. They do require you to put in a tremendous number of hours per week.

Personally, I practice criminal law and am working at the district attorney's office. Pay at DA offices in my state ranges from 50K - 100K for new DA's. Most attorneys in the office really enjoy what they do, which is why they are here.

There are a vast number of careers in the law. Perhaps you could shadow some local lawyers to get a sense of what they do. Go to your local court to watch some proceedings in action. Though, in some legal fields, it is extremely rare to see the inside of the courtroom.

There are some big complexes pretty close to school. The Linda Vista area isn't that nice though. I would get to San Diego a little early and scout out the neighborhoods. You could live on the beach, University Heights, North Park, Claremont, or whatever area you felt comfortable in. Also, you can do better than $800-1200 per month. I rented someone's nice condo and paid $1150, which was a little dumb because I could have saved a lot of money by having out with a roommate. $600-$700 a month with a roommate will get you a nice place.

One legal aid person told me that they didn't care about grades, and instead wanted people with a proven commitment to nonprofit/public work. And this was for an internship. I thought that was stupid because they seemed to be prefering this over competence. Also, it excludes people interested in this type of work that could potentially be interested in a long-term public service career.

I focused mostly on the Conviser mini-review and the lecture handouts. It's funny, I knew some of the material pretty well, as far as what was in those books. But in numerous cases while I was studying, questions popped up in my mind as to gaps in the material, or areas where it seemed ambiguous. And it turned out that that's a lot of what was tested on the MBE. It certainly seemed like the MBE question creators were aware of the Barbri material and wrote questions that were just beyond the scope of that material. So I'd advise future bar exam takers to actually contact the professors if you have a question!

For example, there was a criminal law question (I may not remember it 100% correctly) that concerned what crimes a Defendant could be found guilty of. After obtaining equipment for the purpose of committing the crime, Defendant changed his mind and attempted to talk his co-conspirators out of the crime. However, the other participants committed the crime anyway, using the equipment he procured.

Of course he's guilty of conspiracy, and I'm not sure whether that was relevant in the answer choices. But was his attempt to talk the other particpants out of committing the crime enough to prevent culpability for the committed offense? Was he required to do more, such as go to the police and actually prevent the crime?

I'm sure everyone thinks that was the easiest question on the exam, but to me it's an example of a lack of clarity in the Barbri materials.

As an aside, what was up with the question where there was a purchase-money mortgage by a third-party bank and the seller's loan made to finance the purchase of the property that was secured by a note but no mortgage. Which has priority after foreclosure?

"truly worth it"?

To me being a member of law review wasn't that big of a deal. It was 1) a small commitment every other week doing some citechecking, which wasn't fun but helped me learn the bluebook, and 2) writing a comment on a subject of my choosing (that satisfied my paper requirement).

In interviews, employers seem to like law review membership more than they like my membership in the table tennis club.

You can always write a separate comment and submit it to other journals for publication, whether or not you are a member of your school's law review. If you have a few hours each week you don't mind sacrificing, I'd say go for it. That goes for the table tennis club as well.