Law School Discussion

You're the last liberal arts student in Kansas.

lolz!!

LSAC is the organization. They provide three services: LSAT, LSDAS and CRS. I think LSDAS costs about $230, and CRS is a part of your LSAC account. Law schools use CRS to get the info they use for fee waivers.

I think the law schools get sent CRS even if you haven't signed up for LSDAS, but they may also be able to check whether you have LSDAS, and use that to judge whether they believe that you intend to apply this year.

Regardles, some law schools (probable 2T) may send waivers whether you are signed up for LSDAS anyway. Make sure you have as much info in the CRS lines in the profile section on LSAC.org as you can. The CRS section are marked with a (CRS) button next to the text field. It seems to be a little random but you don't want to lose a fee waiver just because you didn't mention that you were interested in schools in that state!

Finally, read the post that Laura linked if you can. In the past people didn't get most of their waivers until august, and the first waivers last year (Duke and W&M I think) sent waivers 11 days after LSAT scores were released, and then there was nothing for several weeks. From which I predict waivers from the June LSAT won't start showing up until sometime next week at the earliest.

HTH!

As an Ivy econ major, in theory I have other job options.    Like...banking!  And consulting!  And...actually, that's about it. 

My explanation of why I find the law interesting is going to sound pretty weird.  I remember in elementary school, we learned about the Constitution, and the government, and the rule of law.  Every single year, we learned about it, and it seemed handed down from on high - the law of the land was as real, permanent, and ingrained in the fabric of the universe as the laws of gravity and electromagnetism.    And then one day I realized, all at once, that it wasn't - that our government, our entire world system of sovereign states and police and no riding your bike on the sidewalk once you turned 13 - was an invention of human beings, as fragile and artificial as a house of cards.

Well, I found that thought both terrifying and awe-inspiring. The law (which governs in many regards how our society works) is an invention, and a distinctly human one, which means it is flawed and sometimes illogical and immensely complicated.  And it's always changing. 

One of the things they drill into you as an Econ major is the nature of incentives - the ways that the rules of the game (taxation, competitive forces, etc) can drastically affect people's behavior.  The law is the rules of the game for our society, and their scope matters immensely.  Why did the laws come down as they did?  How might things be different - how might people's lives be different - otherwise?  How do the puzzle pieces fit together? 

There's another reason, which is a bit more personal (i.e. egotistical ).  In my experience, I do much better in situations where I have a distinct role - the research person, the computers gal, whatever.  (Being one of 100 spreadsheet jockeys has less appeal for me.)  I like being someone who can contribute something important.  (I suppose that's true of everyone to some degree - everyone wants to make a difference - but the nature of the desire varies.) So even if I don't go into (say) appellate practice, being the lawyer - and hopefully a good lawyer - would allow me to make a substantive contribution to whatever organization I ended up working for. 

That was a really long-winded explanation, sorry.  (It's particularly obnoxious when you consider that, having never been to law school, I'm probably wrong about a lot of this.)  I'm certainly not ignorant of the amount of hard and sometimes boring work that will be involved.  And one can't entirely ignore the other reasons in the poll - for example, I'd be the first to admit that if there were fewer job options after the JD (a la a PhD in English) I'd be a lot more hesitant to dive in headfirst.  But there are other ways to make money, too.  In short: my answer is that I find law interesting. 

That is virtually identical to my reasoning!! Plus I also like it when other people fear your power

Take it from someone who knows a few lawyers personally. 

Here he said he knows "a few lawyers"

Hence the reason quite a few lawyers have jumped off of the Empire State Building.

Here he said "quite a few lawyers"


Which one do you take issue with? The latter seems to be a complete set of people (lawyers who jumped off the Empire state building) compared with another complete set (all lawyers). The former is a limited set from his personal experience, it may be the case that all the disgruntled lawyers in the country are the members of the set that he knows personally, and that all other lawyers are, in fact, very happy with their work.

Increase: +8 (undisclosed raw points?)
Old score(s): 165 (June '06)
New Score: 173 (June '08)
Reasons: I actually studied this time. The first time I lost all my motivation about two weeks before the test and decided to take it anyway because I had already paid for it  . This time around I went through both bibles, read up on things on LSD and other places and I did 30+ real, timed, practice tests.