Top Law Schools

Dear TLS Members,

Happy New Year! I am looking to dramatically improve and expand TLS in 2010 and have hired a TLS member full-time and will be utilizing many TLS members part-time to help develop content and user experience for TLS members. While I have a lot of plans on what I want to do, I would appreciate any feedback on any content or improvements you would like to see done on TLS in the coming year. Thanks for making TLS an even better community.

Best regards,

Ken

Although I'm done with LSAT prep, I'd like to see some sort of marketplace forum for old prep materials.

Also, some of the school profiles are out of date or severely biased, so I think it would be nice to have someone go through and update them.

Thanks for doing this!

expand school profiles

Fix the completely nonfunctional search system

jayzon wrote:A Karma system, e.g. Reddit. Not only would it help filter the best responses, it would also track thread tangents.

We had this for like two days in '09 but then it went away and hasn't been seen since.

I think it would be incredible if TLS could conduct chat sessions w/actual admissions reps from any participating law schools.

I've noticed several schools conduct their own version of this... and i'm sure TLS could reach out to several schools (most likely for a profit) who would love to meet/market to new potential students in this way.

Cheers

I agree. The search system doesn't work well.

Require members to disclose what school they attend if they are current law students (or 0Ls, or practicing lawyers). This can be done at Registration for new members and at Logging on for current members. I would actually prefer members to use their real names to improve discourse (like here where I also contribute under my real name: http://board.crossfit.com/ , but I realize thismay be infeasible for TLS.

Pro-actively identify members who contribute regarding certain schools and ask them to contribute to the school profiles for their schools. Nobody is going to know a school better than a student currently enrolled in that school who has been there for at least a semester (for instance, I contribute to TLS regarding Southwestern and not much else).

Also, a requirement that every member be approved by a mod.

I'm very much in favor of a marketplace not only for old LSAT prep materials, but also for used hornbooks, E&E books, primers, outlines, etc.

rapstar wrote:I agree. The search system doesn't work well.

Searching by thread title and only showing thread titles in the result would be awesome.

More on Search: If I search for something in quotation marks, it completely ignores the quotation marks and just searches for each word individually. This is a huge issue IMO.

Inygma wrote:

rapstar wrote:I agree. The search system doesn't work well.

Searching by thread title and only showing thread titles in the result would be awesome.

Going to jump on this bandwagon for sure.

Thanks for the ideas. Clearly, we need to try to improve our search funcationality since there is so much good information buried in past posts. Please keep the ideas coming, thanks!

Definately updated profiles (especially since this economy has changed a lot).

I really like the new in-depth view of the law schools that have been done on a few schools.

Not sure about this one exactly, but maybe an anonymous post/reply function for the Law School Students forum. This would allow us to learn more information without people having to fear/be paranoid of professors finding out who they are?

LawandOrder wrote:

jayzon wrote:A Karma system, e.g. Reddit. Not only would it help filter the best responses, it would also track thread tangents.

We had this for like two days in '09 but then it went away and hasn't been seen since.

Actually, if there was a way to make it work for individual posts, I might be on board. There could be an up vote and a down vote for each post. An up vote is +1 and a down vote is -1. After a post scores -3, it will be lightened to a gray and after -5, it could be hidden away where a poster would have to click to see it. There could possibly be somewhere on TLS that includes the highest rated posts of all time/this week/today which would probably include posts having really stellar career or LSAT advice.

The previous voting thing was grotesquely convoluted.

bees wrote:

Inygma wrote:

rapstar wrote:I agree. The search system doesn't work well.

Searching by thread title and only showing thread titles in the result would be awesome.

Going to jump on this bandwagon for sure.

You can already search by thread title.

Helmholtz wrote:

bees wrote:

Inygma wrote:

rapstar wrote:I agree. The search system doesn't work well.

Searching by thread title and only showing thread titles in the result would be awesome.

Going to jump on this bandwagon for sure.

You can already search by thread title.

Didn't see that before, but you are correct. Thread title and showing just titles works.

The previous problem about using "quotes" in a search remains true, it does not work.

jayzon wrote:A Karma system, e.g. Reddit. Not only would it help filter the best responses, it would also track thread tangents.

Additionally, we could stop treating Pithypike's epic LSAT prep post as if it were of equal value to the snarky comment I just made in another thread.

Ha I'm the guy who creepily asked on reddit if you posted here.

Helmholtz wrote:

LawandOrder wrote:

jayzon wrote:A Karma system, e.g. Reddit. Not only would it help filter the best responses, it would also track thread tangents.

We had this for like two days in '09 but then it went away and hasn't been seen since.

Actually, if there was a way to make it work for individual posts, I might be on board. There could be an up vote and a down vote for each post. An up vote is +1 and a down vote is -1. After a post scores -3, it will be lightened to a gray and after -5, it could be hidden away where a poster would have to click to see it. There could possibly be somewhere on TLS that includes the highest rated posts of all time/this week/today which would probably include posts having really stellar career or LSAT advice.

The previous voting thing was grotesquely convoluted.

I like this a lot. It's annoying to have to go back and search for your flying bears and giraffe's or dd's explanation of the rigor of the LGBTQ box.

Allow us to list schools outside the T100 on the list of schools to which we've applied.

I'm not sure how I feel about being able to look at users' previous posts. It seems to breed stalkers.

Also, ratings for individual posts which correspond with a simple aggregate user rating would probably be cool.

.

paratactical wrote:

shadowfrost000 wrote:I'm not sure how I feel about being able to look at users' previous posts. It seems to breed stalkers.

Please don't take this away!

This is the easiest way to find out if someone is trolling -- the benefits of not feeding the troll are far outweighed, IMO, by creeper potential.

Point taken. Carry on.

shadowfrost000 wrote:I'm not sure how I feel about being able to look at users' previous posts. It seems to breed stalkers.

It sounds like it would be a good mod-only option to have.

I think incorporating more realistic employment expectations into the school profiles would be useful. I haven't looked at the profiles in a couple months, but when I did they had really rosy views of the legal market. In contrast, we also have the forums. Giving a rundown of employment data over the previous few years could help a lot of people who don't have the patience to constantly check forums. IMO, the TLS forums (sadly) have some of the best information out there on the state of the legal market currently, and I think some of this information could help out more casual users.

I think at some point an idea was thrown around on the forums that TLS should try to pressure schools for better and more honest employment data on the most recent law school class and OCI. Perhaps giving employment data for a few years back in the profiles, and not only on the forums would help increase TLS's influence over the schools?