Law School Discussion

If you disclose your school and a few other tidbits, it would be pretty easy for anyone at your school to figure out who you are.  Also, as to others who don't go to your school, many people on the internet will browse through your past posts to find something personal to insult.  If rank is somehow relevant to the conversation, disclosing a range is usually sufficiently specific.

I find it much more obnoxious when people disclose the rank of their school in contexts where it is irrelevant.  "I go to a T14 school, and I was parking my car the other day when I spilled my coffee.."  Give me a break, if you are that desperate to gloat you are obviously a very insecure person.

I'm a Cooley 2L and as I was driving my Maserati Quattroporte Sport GTS to my summer associate job at WLRK, I spotted a fellow community college graduate. We had lunch and discussed the current political climate, eventually shifting the focus of our discussion to the recently rising cost of rice. Back in the day, you used to be able to buy rice for 6 dollar for 20 pounds. Nowadays, 20 pounds of basmati rice can run you over 13 dollars! I really like my basmati rice  but I'm not sure if I can afford to pay 13 dollars for 20 pounds of rice without cutting corners on the maintenance of my Maserati Quattroporte Sport GTS that I drive to my summer associate job at WLRK. This is devastating.

Please, good god, do not do this.  Buying the supplements is ok, they'll probably be helpful.  E&E should be fine, you got them for all of your classes?  You shouldn't need anything else unless you really don't understand it and E&E doesn't help.  And then you can always go to your prof's office hours.

But I'd recommend that you not read ahead.  A lot of law school is seeing the material from the professor's perspective, and if you come into it already having gone through the material, you'll have a harder time picking up that perspective.  Plus, what do you mean by "briefing books"?  If you're talking about canned briefs, I'd avoid them unless (again) there's something you don't understand.  If you start briefing yourself, you'll get much better at picking apart the cases and seeing what's important. Eventually you probably won't have to brief at all if you don't want to(probably by the end of the first semester), but going through the initial learning curve is pretty crucial.

If you're really trying to do well, I don't think there's a better way than keeping up with class and making sure you understand everything that happened in class and in the book (note cases included).  The overwhelming majority of your peers won't do this, no matter where you are.  But reading a couple commercial outlines over the summer won't do you much good.

My advice: do your reading before class, try to brief on your own, then go back over what you don't have down after class and use your outlines to fill in the blanks.

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I got E&E for my classes, and I'm gonna pick up the Legal Research book you mentioned. You don't think canned briefs and hornbooks are going to be necessary? I'm no expert on these myself, though I did find that sort of stuff helpful in my undergrad law classes (my undergrad school had a law prof teaching 2 semesters of Con Law). I guess I'll pass on them for now and see if I have a need for them in the semester then!

I start school in 2 weeks so I just wanted to glance over the E&Es to get an idea of what my classes are going to be like, nothing seriously in depth. What about outlines -- should I get commercial outlines to complement the casebooks or nah?

Question--if I'm still on the waitlist at american, what are my chances of getting in?  I have a 154, took it again and went up to 159, and have a 3.6 at an ivy.  Do they tend to let people in this late, or is it unlikely?  I'm also a psych major if that matters, have pretty good recs, and worked in psych rsrch and at a law firm.

159 should give you a decent shot, but since you're on a waitlist, it might take a while before (and if) you even hear back from them. I hope you placed a seat deposit at your alternative school already.

waitlisted at UNLV.

Oh hello. NICE NICKNAME!

Evan,

I think you'll be able to find a lot more answers to these questions on the marineocs.com boards. I'm an applicant myself, though it looks like I might not get OCS due to being unable to get a waiver for something that happened about 7 years ago.