BuffaloWings&Vodka

Tips for Law School Applicants

Waking up this morning I felt another panic rising, and knowing that it couldn’t be the 1L’s and their creepy gunner vibe again, I realized that it was the height of law school app season, and that thousands upon thousands of future con law profs, documentary-worthy prosecutors, and Democratic presidential nominees are out their trying to figure out how to best present their application packages. I know that fall LSAT scores have already come out, and that everyone has spent the last three weeks driving themselves insane looking at the numbers spit out by the LSAC GPA/LSAT/BloodType Calculator. So, I thought I’d help alleviate some of the stress you Zero-L’s must be feeling with a few nuggets of wisdom that I wish someone had shared with me when I was in your shoes.

1. Narrow Your Search

The wonders of the LSDAS, the envy of grad students in all other disciplines, are well known. It is beyond rocktacular that there is one clearinghouse for all of your application needs, and that you can do most of the stuff online, and that you only need each of your recommenders to send in one copy of their letter. It’s great.

But don’t let this go to your head. Just because you can send out 120 applications with relative ease doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea. After looking at the numbers, I’m convinced that, this year, 60 applications should be sufficient. Any self-respecting applicant will want to plaster the top twenty-five, but after that you’ll have some choices to make. This year is bound to be even more competitive than last year, so you have to make them count. I suggest concentrating on schools where you know at least three or four people on the admissions committee, or, at the very least, schools to which you’ve donated at least $50,000 in the last two years. Schools with libraries named after your Dad are also good.

2. Embrace Your Shortcomings

Admissions committees don’t want you to ignore that crappy GPA or that sub-standard list of extracurriculars. They want to see you think like a lawyer, which means working with what you’ve got. Only have one Academic All-American honor to your credit? Who cares. Were named a Truman Scholar but only a semi-finalist for the Rhodes? So what. Only managed a 178 on the LSAT—Big Fucking Deal. To really impress the adcoms, you need to cast these blemishes in the best possible light, make academic lemonade out of academic lemons. Show them that you’re not afraid to own up to your imperfections, and that you know how to take defeat. Lord knows, if all you could manage in undergrad was a 3.92, you’re going to be in for a lot of defeats once you get to law school. It's best that you start learning to deal with that now.

3. Don’t Lie About Your Criminal Record

I’m serious about this one. They are lawyers. They find things out. Even if you were using a fake ID and wearing a sweet Kirk Cameron mask when you mistook the meter maid for a working girl and asked for her “professional opinion,” they will track your ass down. Seriously.

4. But If You Are Going to Lie, Fucking Lie

The bigger the lie, the more people who will believe it for awhile. Until they run your credit history and check in with the FBI and Interpol, you can be anyone you want to on your law school application. So take advantage of this opportunity to walk in someone else’s shoes, and live a little.

Instead of noting that you graduated with honors, go ahead and say that you were the valedictorian. Or instead of just listing that you speak fluent Spanish, you could up the ante and write that you speak fluent Spanish and Mexican. Maybe you worked for Microsoft…well, why not say that you founded Microsoft? Remember: When it comes to false advertising, more is more.

5. Forget the Extras

Though it was exactly correct about everything else having to do with law school, Legally Blonde has wrongly convinced lots and lots of aspiring law students that sending in a videotape of them in a bathing suit is the one magic bullet they need to slay the admissions dragon. But they’re wrong. Admissions committees don’t want videos of you in a bathing suit, nor do they want clippings from your days as a stringer for Teen Set or pictures of you receiving your Lightsaber Construction Merit Badge. All they want is an application package that gives them a real picture of who you are, and how you’ll perform as a law student. That’s all.

(But if you’ve already gone thru the trouble of making the video, I’d hate to see it go to waste, so feel free to FedEx it my way, and I’ll make sure that the Yale folks get it ASAP. We’re totally tight like that.)

Back to the Classroom

In what is just the latest in a long line of dumb ideas motivated by an ill-informed desire to help people and meet undergrad chicks, I started teaching LSAT classes again tonight. Tonight as in "April 21st," as in "two weeks and a day before my first final," as in "what the hell was I thinking?" And it showed.

I stumbled in hungover, half-shaved, and not having actually read the teaching materials, which, unbeknownst to me, had changed in the six months since I'd last taught an LSAT class. Whereas before I was used to working logic problems on the board that I'd memorized from start to finish, this time I had to actually tackle things anew, which is...you know...hard. I also have a lot of difficulty talking and writing on the board at the same time, which leads to a lot of odd statements about the contraceptives of certain logical propositions. I'm also fairly certain that I misquoted the number and timing of sections on the exam. And I may very well have said that you get extra credit if you show your work. And that it's graded on a curve. Oh well.

None of this really matters, because I'm going to CivPro tommorrow, and then afterwards we're going bowling. Everybody should come.

Annual Rankings of Law School Rankings Released

In an attempt to evaluate the increasing number of law school ranking systems being provided by various publications, professors, and judges, editors at U.S. News and World Report have just released their first annual Rankings of American Law School Rankings, and they expect it to be available on most newsstands by the end of the week.

"We just felt that American students deserved an objectively considered set of objective evaluations that rated, among other objectively chosen factors, the relative objectiveness of the various ranking systems' criteria for objectively determining law school quality," said a USNWR representative. She continued to explain that those criteria included overall popularity, as well as relative success rates in rhyming the ranking institution's name with "Blue Dress Views and Curled Bee Snort."

When asked about the fact that USNWR's popular annual rankings were the only rankings to be assigned to the topmost of the ranking rankings' seven tiers, the representative declined to comment, muttering something under her breath about Professor Brian Leiter's being a "player hater."

As expected, the editors of nearly all the American rankings signed an open letter criticizing the bias and inaccuracy of the USNWR Rankings Rankings:

"The absence of any consideration of [important intangible] factors, combined with the arbitrary weighting of numerical factors, makes ranking system ranking systems an unreliable guide to the differences among ranking systems that should be important to you."

The Ranking the Rankings issue will be available for $3.95, and includes a free CD-ROM from TestPrepPrep, the nation's leading provider of materials that help students prepare to choose a testprep company.

Originally posted last year. I think.

Sam Boyd School of Law: Not Just For Hookers Anymore

After narrowly escaping death at the hands of an icy sidewalk tonight (I wiped out in front of three children and I think they almost expected me to cry, which I did, once safely inside my house, thank you very much), I got a call from my mom, letting me know that I'd been admitted to the University of Nevada Las Vegas's Sam Boyd School of Law, with a full scholarship . Needless to say, I peed myself.

Some might wonder what I was doing applying to a fifth-tier school in the first place, and that would be understandable. I guess it had something to do with me growing up in Vegas, and a little to do with me being afraid that I'd get rejected at all of the real schools, and a lot to do with hoping that a spot on the basketball team would be part of my financial aid package. Whatever the reason, it feels good to get love from my hometown.

And though I don't really see myself going at this point, I have to at least think about the fact that I could go to UNLV, live with my parents, and graduate from law school completely debt-free. I could stare blankly at my contracts reading while playing Scrabble with my grandmother, and maybe even host really swell socials at my house, where my professors would get a chance to talk to my parents about how I was performing in class. Hell, maybe I could even get my mom to drive me to school and pack a lunch and stuff. Man. That would be awesome. I'll have to sleep on it.

Boalt Class of '06 Just Got Way Less Sexy

So, I got my first outright rejection today. I certainly wasn't surprised that Boalt didn't want me, their reputation for actually caring about things like GPA in particular and academic promise in general being well-known. But I'd been clinging to the hope that my college had accidentally misreported my grades and, while they were at it, mistakenly mentioned that I'd been both a Rhodes Scholar and a Vietnam vet. This, it seems, did not happen.

I'm alright though. I know their decision has more to do with how distracting I'd be for the ladies than it does my complete lack of work experience or community service. Besides, Texas has taken me, and even though I'm still holding out for either Chicago or NYU, I calm myself by saying things like "Mike, you don't want to live where there is snow. Snow is frightening." Which is true...except that it's FUCKING SNOWING in Austin right now.

Keep hope alive.