Law School Discussion

They should experience anxiety if they are illegal.  If they aren't, but are worried for their friends who are--whose fault is it?  No one made them illegally come into the US.  I am tired of people crying when they finally have to pay the consequences for their actions.  Your choice, your problem. 

Illegal? The land once belonged to them, and but for war, theft and illegal purchases the entire south/southwest (at least) would belong to Mexicans and other Latinos. Yes, we have "laws" that forbid their immigration w/o permission. Based on the history, are those laws just?

You know? Every ranking has some arguability, and each seems as though it could have a useful methodology, though I do not know what Hon. Thomas Brennan (Cooley Law) and Princeton Review are using.

Lawdragon ranking is based strictly on the prestige of practicing lawyers, which is a somewhat useful gage. But, one problem with this methodology, aside from the fact that it ignores crucial factors included in Lieter, USNWR and Princeton Review, is that the acclaim of many of these lawyers can be attributed to many factors besides the schools they attend. Any attempt to infer a causal relationship between the lawyers' stellar performances and their law schools (which they often attended 20 years ago or more) is tenuous because their careers have been positively affected by training/mentoring, additional education, their individual work ethics, and even luck. Can any of those factors be attributed to their schools? Perhaps, but in what measurable way(s)? Moreover, the schools themselves have changed a great deal since these attorneys attended them. Harvard, for one, continues to roll on the steam it gained in the early 1900's and a self-fulfilling prophecy that continually drives great talent to the school. This isn't to say that it isn't deserving of its high ranking, only that it's relative rating/ranking (and that of other so-called "elite" law schools) may be inflated.

USNWR ignores those qualities that, despite what one poster deems an undergraduate-centered approach, are very important considerations in picking a law school. One absolutely should care about career prospects, campus environment, and diversity (i.e., welcoming of older students and minorities), to name a few. Yet, despite offering some useful standards of measurement, some categories (such as the number of volumes in the library) may have little importance. Plus the weights applied to those measurements are arbitrary. How does USN choose these weights, and what makes the mag the arbiter of what's most or least important in determining a law school's "quality"? Surveys from members of "peer" institutions are also problematic for obvious reasons: these peers have built-in self-interested motives for downgrading the competition, and judges and attorneys often wind up grading schools with which they have little familiarity. Therefore, the use of casually administered peer assesments borders on the irresponsible. In addition, the ranking has been proven vulnerable to "gaming" when it comes to the reporting of such factors as per-student expendatures and the GPA's and LSAT's of incoming classes. One increasingly popular method has been the recent trend in use of part-time and transfer admissions, directing arguably lesser-credentialed students into these programs so that their numbers do not count against the USNWR LSAT/GPA grade for "student quality". To counteract the gaming of GPA/LSAT stats, the USNWR should consider redistributing the weights applied to GPA/LSAT and/or include the numbers from p/t students and transfers in its assesments. A school can inflate its library's volume measurement simply by keeping outdated, yet seldom used, materials. For these and other reasons, the USNWR ranking also has great limitations.

Leiter's Educational Quality Rankings are, much like the USNWR rankings, useful but flawed, because of the arbitrary weights applied to certain categories. Are frequently cited professors and journals necessarily indicative of law school quality? Besides that, Leiter ignores useful/important factors the other rankings include.

The elephant in the room is that all of the rankings bring something valuable to the table. The most useful ranking method should incorporate the best aspects of all of the current methods.   

Quote from: Clayton on October 13, 2008, 08:01:25 PM

I'm against AA because of my life experience.

I went to a poor predominantly black (88%) high school. I had smart black friends and equally smart white friends. My black friends, who could not otherwise afford college, received scholarships. My white friends, who could not afford college, received no scholarships. My white friends are now stuck in relatively crappy jobs.



Just to highlight how extreme it was at my school. My friend Mike, who was white, scored a 1200 on the SAT (old score measure) 3.8gpa applied to 4 state schools, he was accepted to all but did not qualify for any scholarships. Mike is the son of single mom school teacher with 5 kids making 35k a year. He did not attend a university, while he hopes to someday too.
My other friend Dave, who was black, scored just over 900 on the SAT with a lower GPA, a low 3, applied to several schools and received a scholarship to most of them. He went to school for 2 years before dropping out.

With state undergrad institutions, I have issue with the awarding of scholarship money based on race. With grad schools, I have issues with basically every aspect. Grad school admittance and scholarship offers should be merit based.

disgusting.
shameful.

First, why are you speaking of your black "friend" in that manner? Dropping out doesn't equate with failure. The last time I checked, students could go back to school, and most students do not finish within the prescribed four-year time frame.

As a URM, I have struggled mightily with the AA issue. I once naively believed that replacing race-based AA with economic/class-based AA would benefit the good of society. But I want to offer this Amicus Brief/Amici Curiae for Grutter v. Bollinger, (created by HYS students) for thought:

http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/News_&_Events/BLSA_Amicus_Brief.pdf

Below is an excerpt from that brief:

ALTERNATIVE RACE-NEUTRAL ADMISSIONS
POLICIES CRITICALLY DIMINISH THE NUMBER
OF BLACK STUDENTS AT ELITE LAW
SCHOOLS AND ARE NOT EFFECTIVE SUBSTITUTES
FOR CURRENT RACE-CONSCIOUS
ADMISSIONS POLICIES

As discussed above, elite law schools fulfill their
public missions by providing racially diverse academic
environments and training attorneys to improve the legal
profession and serve the public. These law schools cannot
continue to realize their missions if they are not able to
consider race as one factor in admissions decisions.

The 21 leading approaches that have been touted as viable race-neutral
alternatives to current law school admissions
policies that take race into account are not in fact
effective, workable or desirable with respect to elite law
schools. Abandoning race-conscious admissions at elite law
schools would lead to a catastrophic reversal of the incremental
progress toward greater racial inclusiveness that
these schools have made. For black students, a shift to a
color-blind or race-neutral admissions system would lead
to admissions results that are tantamount to “the inexorable
zero.”

Cf. Johnson v. Transp. Agency, 480 U.S. 616,
656-57 (1987) (O’Connor, J., concurring) (quoting International
Bhd. of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324,
342 n.23 (1977)) (discussing prima facie evidence of discrimination
under Title VII).

The race-neutral alternatives discussed below are demonstrably
inferior to raceconscious
policies in achieving racial diversity because
they cannot ensure that black students will be represented
in meaningful numbers at most, if not all, of the elite law
schools. Consequently, such alternatives would also
exclude black students from access to gateways to some of
the most prestigious positions in the legal profession.

Accordingly, the benefits gained from employing race-conscious
admissions policies are distinct from, and
greater than, those provided by race-neutral alternatives.11
11 Moreover, even if an effective race-neutral alternative could be
implemented, the mere availability of such an alternative would not
provide a justification for forgoing the use of race-conscious measures.
In fact, race-neutral alternatives cannot fairly be characterized as more
narrowly tailored than carefully crafted race-conscious policies. If race-neutral
alternatives are as effective as the policies they replace, then
these race-neutral policies “trammel” the expectations of third parties...

Anyone do SEO or know anything about it?  I had some questions...

1)How do you get in?
2)How do they place you with a firm?
3)They say the pay range is $650-$1000.  How do they decide how much you're paid?
4)What is the experience like?  Is there a lot fo work?

I heard that the pay goes as high as $1,300/wk. That's much better than $1,000, considering that you'll likely be in NY.

What about Testmasters? Anyone here think it's good?