Rough out there... Forum

[utlaw2007]

It's not hard to believe that a couple Yale grads strike out every year, I just want to know why they all congregated at the same random shit law firm in Florida

This is very true.

[sublime]

..

[Richie Tenenbaum]

It's not hard to believe that a couple Yale grads strike out every year, I just want to know why they all congregated at the same random shit law firm in Florida

Yeah, that's fair.

[Cobretti]

It's not hard to believe that a couple Yale grads strike out every year, I just want to know why they all congregated at the same random shit law firm in Florida

Yeah, that's fair.

That's what I was trying to get at when I said

I don't believe this either, there's simply no way 5 yls grads would be applying for fl shitlaw

[worldtraveler]

Someone should do some sort of study on this. Like, what if big firms blocked out the names of the law schools of their applicants? I wonder if there would actually be a change in who gets hired.

The thing that's interesting about this is that as I understand it, big firms tend to hire primarily for grades, whereas a non-profit/public interest employer generally tends to look for related experiences/dedicated commitment/passion for the cause, so I would think the results could differ by what the employer gives more weight to. (I'm not going to argue that top schools don't provide better opportunities for students. I mean, worldtraveler, you're in international public interest stuff, right? No, there aren't opportunities to get a lot of experience for that at my law school.)

I think the big difference doesn't come during school, but in what people did before. Like another poster said, lots of T10 or T14 students have backgrounds with prestigious internships and jobs, language experience, and usually can show a pretty rigorous academic background. On average, students at lower ranked schools just don't have the same kind of backgrounds. I think there is a point to be made that a lot of the difference is also economic. A lot of students at elite schools come from wealthy backgrounds and can afford to do unpaid UN internships as an undergrad, to attend an elite school, and have the connections to get a great job straight out of undergrad. I have always been very bothered that in international human rights, it's 99% very wealthy people who do it because in order to get the internships and opportunities you need as a law student, you have to have already spent a lot of time abroad doing study abroads, internships, language study, etc. Most of my former intern colleagues were extremely wealthy for those reasons.

[LetsGoRangers]

The quality of professors at FSU might be just fine compared to a T14 but the caliber of student attending is, by and large, not the same. These are people who got bad grades and bad LSAT scores. Sure, a few are probably undiscovered legal geniuses who could out-reason Learned Hand, but a lot of them are just mediocre students with mediocre minds who are going to be mediocre at whatever they do for the rest of their lives, no matter how many of their professors went to Yale.

Oh what a scholar you are! Do you enjoy the smell of your own farts at dinner parties after you tell everyone about your degrees and then laugh at the FSU alums serving you!

[bearjew]

The quality of professors at FSU might be just fine compared to a T14 but the caliber of student attending is, by and large, not the same. These are people who got bad grades and bad LSAT scores. Sure, a few are probably undiscovered legal geniuses who could out-reason Learned Hand, but a lot of them are just mediocre students with mediocre minds who are going to be mediocre at whatever they do for the rest of their lives, no matter how many of their professors went to Yale.

Oh what a scholar you are! Do you enjoy the smell of your own farts at dinner parties after you tell everyone about your degrees and then laugh at the FSU alums serving you!

This is the one of the silliest threads I've read on here.

This is a great quote from Fight Club.

“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.” You're not the fucking law school you go to.

If you think the Law School you attend will define you as a person, your worth as an individual and what you do in life then you are a very, very sad person.

[sublime]

..

[LetsGoRangers]

At the same time, it is mildly hilarious how personally some people are taking this discussion.


(I won't be attending a T14 either, btw)

OH what mediocrity!

[Micdiddy]

The quality of professors at FSU might be just fine compared to a T14 but the caliber of student attending is, by and large, not the same. These are people who got bad grades and bad LSAT scores. Sure, a few are probably undiscovered legal geniuses who could out-reason Learned Hand, but a lot of them are just mediocre students with mediocre minds who are going to be mediocre at whatever they do for the rest of their lives, no matter how many of their professors went to Yale.

Oh what a scholar you are! Do you enjoy the smell of your own farts at dinner parties after you tell everyone about your degrees and then laugh at the FSU alums serving you!

This is the one of the silliest threads I've read on here.

This is a great quote from Fight Club.

“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.” You're not the fucking law school you go to.

If you think the Law School you attend will define you as a person, your worth as an individual and what you do in life then you are a very, very sad person.

At the same time, it is mildly hilarious how personally some people are taking this discussion.


(I won't be attending a T14 either, btw)

Definitely hilarious.
Not to mention how many people took the LSAT, yet still create a million straw men just to make themselves feel good when they effortlessly tear them down. I still find it amazing people have the audacity to do this on a forum with posters who overwhelmingly are better than the average person at finding such flaws.

[LetsGoRangers]

Definitely hilarious.
Not to mention how many people took the LSAT, yet still create a million straw men just to make themselves feel good when they effortlessly tear them down. I still find it amazing people have the audacity to do this on a forum with posters who overwhelmingly are better than the average person at finding such flaws.

shutup bro, with your logic and reasoning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxuwXczWQC0

[A. Nony Mouse]

At the same time, it is mildly hilarious how personally some people are taking this discussion.


(I won't be attending a T14 either, btw)

Hey, I'm fine with all the discussion of how it's a crap idea to attend my school, but I draw the line at being told I'll be mediocre at everything I do for the rest of my life.

I think the big difference doesn't come during school, but in what people did before. Like another poster said, lots of T10 or T14 students have backgrounds with prestigious internships and jobs, language experience, and usually can show a pretty rigorous academic background. On average, students at lower ranked schools just don't have the same kind of backgrounds. I think there is a point to be made that a lot of the difference is also economic. A lot of students at elite schools come from wealthy backgrounds and can afford to do unpaid UN internships as an undergrad, to attend an elite school, and have the connections to get a great job straight out of undergrad. I have always been very bothered that in international human rights, it's 99% very wealthy people who do it because in order to get the internships and opportunities you need as a law student, you have to have already spent a lot of time abroad doing study abroads, internships, language study, etc. Most of my former intern colleagues were extremely wealthy for those reasons.

That makes lots of sense. To be clear, I've never said that T14 students aren't better candidates for jobs than lower T1 folk, precisely because of the kind of opportunities you address here. Sometime in the last few years I got something from my (very wealthy, very elite) undergrad informing alums about the latest batch of students who'd won [insert prestigious fellowship here]. Their brief bios were ridiculously accomplished. If you're from a poor background and can get into my undergrad, the school will do a lot of the heavy lifting to get you the kinds of opportunities that help get you into T14s/prep you to do international human rights (or the like). But then, getting into the school in the first place is a lot easier from a wealthy background (or at least a background where your family/high school recognize the kind of opportunities such a school provides and are willing/able to help you get there...), so it's a pernicious cycle.

(This isn't to say there aren't wealthy students at my law school, but you can be wealthy and think going to the local state school is perfectly fine, and not be interested in other opportunities. So it can kind of be an economic/class intersection thing, too.)

[M458]

Meh, a lot of people at T14s are there because 1) they realized how important the LSAT was, and 2) they realized the LSAT was a very learnable test, so they didn't settle for a lower score.

When I first started studying for the LSAT, I got a 155 on my diagnostic and decided that a score in the low 160s seemed like a reasonable goal. That seems to be a pretty typical experience (I taught the LSAT and a lot of students seemed to initially think they should shoot for a small increase over their diagnostic). If I hadn't taken a powerscore class with other students scoring in the 170s (which made me think that maybe I shoot higher) and found TLS (which confirmed that I should try to shoot for a much higher score), I would have stopped after taking the LSAT once and scoring a 163. Instead, I put in a lot more effort and finally ended up with a 174. Teaching the LSAT, I managed to push a decent amount of students into the high 160s and low 170s, when they were initially happy with small improvements over their diagnostic.

I'm not trying to argue that all the FSU students would be at NU if they had just taken the LSAT more seriously and studied more, but I do think there are a significant amount of people at lower ranked schools who didn't try to maximize their LSAT score when they could have. Shit, this is a TLS routine by now--trying to convince people not to settle for a lower LSAT score so they can go to a school with significantly better employment statistics.

I started at a 157 and ended up with a score in the mid-170s; I wonder how many people at T-14s had a similar experience as I did.

If I didn't have friends in law school emphasizing the importance of the LSAT, I might've not studied for almost 4 months and ended up applying with a 164. Am I a HYS-caliber "legal mind" or am I a T-1 "mediocre mind" masquerading as a T-14-worthy student?

I wish we had data from every LSAT test-taker regarding a) how long they studied for the test, b) how they studied for the test, and c) how much they spent studying for the test.

[Cobretti]

Meh, a lot of people at T14s are there because 1) they realized how important the LSAT was, and 2) they realized the LSAT was a very learnable test, so they didn't settle for a lower score.

When I first started studying for the LSAT, I got a 155 on my diagnostic and decided that a score in the low 160s seemed like a reasonable goal. That seems to be a pretty typical experience (I taught the LSAT and a lot of students seemed to initially think they should shoot for a small increase over their diagnostic). If I hadn't taken a powerscore class with other students scoring in the 170s (which made me think that maybe I shoot higher) and found TLS (which confirmed that I should try to shoot for a much higher score), I would have stopped after taking the LSAT once and scoring a 163. Instead, I put in a lot more effort and finally ended up with a 174. Teaching the LSAT, I managed to push a decent amount of students into the high 160s and low 170s, when they were initially happy with small improvements over their diagnostic.

I'm not trying to argue that all the FSU students would be at NU if they had just taken the LSAT more seriously and studied more, but I do think there are a significant amount of people at lower ranked schools who didn't try to maximize their LSAT score when they could have. Shit, this is a TLS routine by now--trying to convince people not to settle for a lower LSAT score so they can go to a school with significantly better employment statistics.

I started at a 157 and ended up with a score in the mid-170s; I wonder how many people at T-14s had a similar experience as I did.

If I didn't have friends in law school emphasizing the importance of the LSAT, I might've not studied for almost 4 months and ended up applying with a 164. Am I a HYS-caliber "legal mind" or am I a T-1 "mediocre mind" masquerading as a T-14-worthy student?

I wish we had data from every LSAT test-taker regarding a) how long they studied for the test, b) how they studied for the test, and c) how much they spent studying for the test.

knowing the TTT you're going to, clearly a "mediocre mind"

[sid.bahl]

The quality of professors at FSU might be just fine compared to a T14 but the caliber of student attending is, by and large, not the same. These are people who got bad grades and bad LSAT scores. Sure, a few are probably undiscovered legal geniuses who could out-reason Learned Hand, but a lot of them are just mediocre students with mediocre minds who are going to be mediocre at whatever they do for the rest of their lives, no matter how many of their professors went to Yale.[/quote]



I'd love to fly out to Chicago, take you out for a drink, throw it in your face, and then fly back.

[CupOfTea]

Jeez, so much hate for FSU. Just a personal anecdote so someone who comes across this forum doesn't think FSU is a TTT, a few years ago I took the LSAT and was all set to enroll at FSU. But one of my professors suggested I take some time off and try to do better on the LSAT. I studied, scored a 174, and just turned down a Ruby at Chicago for Harvard. But I'm the same person with the same brain and I know a lot of incredibly smart and intelligent people currently attending FSU that I would be genuinely fearful to face in a courtroom. There are also k-jds I met at Harvard ASW that had done nothing exciting with life except get awesome grades and work in pastry shops during the summer. Was the average person at Harvard more impressive- undoubtedly. But the average person there also had much more opportunity for it.

Basically, I would be careful when making the generalization that FSU grads are mediocre forever. They're not and I hope anyone who.believes that will have the pleasure of meeting the FSU grads I know who can certainly take them down a peg or two.

[Simplicity]

lol. LSAT logic fail right there. "A lot" is entirely subjective and could be anything greater than zero, depending on the context. "not everyone" could be everyone except one person. It's perfectly possible for "not everyone" to be way, way more than "a lot."

This, plus the fact that Rink clearly said that not everyone at a mediocre school has a mediocre mind, but you treated it like (s)he did.

Rink is a she, yes.

I shamefully assumed so because of the pony, but I didn't want to project that publicly and reinforce gender stereotypes. Damn our language and its lack of a genderless pronoun!

It

[M458]

I started at a 157 and ended up with a score in the mid-170s; I wonder how many people at T-14s had a similar experience as I did.

If I didn't have friends in law school emphasizing the importance of the LSAT, I might've not studied for almost 4 months and ended up applying with a 164. Am I a HYS-caliber "legal mind" or am I a T-1 "mediocre mind" masquerading as a T-14-worthy student?

I wish we had data from every LSAT test-taker regarding a) how long they studied for the test, b) how they studied for the test, and c) how much they spent studying for the test.

knowing the TTT you're going to, clearly a "mediocre mind"

Haha, well-played. You're welcome to join my mediocre minds study group once classes start!

[bearjew]

I started at a 157 and ended up with a score in the mid-170s; I wonder how many people at T-14s had a similar experience as I did.

If I didn't have friends in law school emphasizing the importance of the LSAT, I might've not studied for almost 4 months and ended up applying with a 164. Am I a HYS-caliber "legal mind" or am I a T-1 "mediocre mind" masquerading as a T-14-worthy student?

I wish we had data from every LSAT test-taker regarding a) how long they studied for the test, b) how they studied for the test, and c) how much they spent studying for the test.

knowing the TTT you're going to, clearly a "mediocre mind"

Haha, well-played. You're welcome to join my mediocre minds study group once classes start!

I would be wary of study groups in general, so much room for dark timelines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=889TxAYXu9k

[Cobretti]

I started at a 157 and ended up with a score in the mid-170s; I wonder how many people at T-14s had a similar experience as I did.

If I didn't have friends in law school emphasizing the importance of the LSAT, I might've not studied for almost 4 months and ended up applying with a 164. Am I a HYS-caliber "legal mind" or am I a T-1 "mediocre mind" masquerading as a T-14-worthy student?

I wish we had data from every LSAT test-taker regarding a) how long they studied for the test, b) how they studied for the test, and c) how much they spent studying for the test.

knowing the TTT you're going to, clearly a "mediocre mind"

Haha, well-played. You're welcome to join my mediocre minds study group once classes start!

I would be wary of study groups in general, so much room for dark timelines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=889TxAYXu9k

at work and can't click what i'm sure is an amazing community clip, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

eta: i clicked it, why would you set up a community reference for an office vid?

[bearjew]

at work and can't click what i'm sure is an amazing community clip, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It's actually a Michael Scott clip. He's just reflecting that Lebron, Kobe and Tracy McGrady didn't go to business school and they're doing fine.

But here's a Community clip. RIP Starburns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuGeWA-5pVs

[untar614]

I would be wary of study groups in general, so much room for dark timelines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=889TxAYXu9k

at work and can't click what i'm sure is an amazing community clip, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

what the...? The Office? This was screaming Community. (btw, if you haven't seen this season's finale yet, go watch it now! it's awesome)

[LetsGoRangers]

at work and can't click what i'm sure is an amazing community clip, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It's actually a Michael Scott clip. He's just reflecting that Lebron, Kobe and Tracy McGrady didn't go to business school and they're doing fine.

But here's a Community clip. RIP Starburns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuGeWA-5pVs

His name was Alex, RIP Alex

[bearjew]

eta: i clicked it, why would you set up a community reference for an office vid?

Mediocre mind, blame it on my mediocre mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnPlHvXIJPs

[Cobretti]

eta: i clicked it, why would you set up a community reference for an office vid?

Mediocre mind, blame it on my mediocre mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnPlHvXIJPs

well played sir

also @untar: it got picked up for season 5!