UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions Forum

[Dany]

@Emma,

Yea, I figure Id at least do couple hours of work a day, I am going out every night.

This is not what Emma was suggesting.

[Mal Reynolds]

Yikes

For some reason. I thought they were asking about next quarter. You should calm your balls. And if you don't listen to emma on here then you're doing things very wrong.

[Florence Night]

Assess your own fatigue knowing the winter and spring quarters are considerably more intensive. If you think you can work a couple hours a day without really feeling anything, do it. I did and I think it helped. I can't imagine an hour or two per day now is going to hurt anyone three months from now, and it certainly can help you get your fall quarter notes orgained and outlines started. BUT everyone is different. Figure out how you feel and not how everyone says you should feel or will feel. Ignore blanket advice.


Also, for what it's worth, the whole marathon analogy actually suggests working over break. No marathon runner sprints when they have to and stops when they think they can. My opinion: you have a ton of work to do (miles to run) before your next round of finals/throughout the quarter; it's less painful and stressful the more you spread it out. Again, this is how I approached it and it worked for me. Figure out you.

[lawschool2014hopeful]

Assess your own fatigue knowing the winter and spring quarters are considerably more intensive. If you think you can work a couple hours a day without really feeling anything, do it. I did and I think it helped. I can't imagine an hour or two per day now is going to hurt anyone three months from now, and it certainly can help you get your fall quarter notes orgained and outlines started. BUT everyone is different. Figure out how you feel and not how everyone says you should feel or will feel. Ignore blanket advice.


Also, for what it's worth, the whole marathon analogy actually suggests working over break. No marathon runner sprints when they have to and stops when they think they can. My opinion: you have a ton of work to do (miles to run) before your next round of finals/throughout the quarter; it's less painful and stressful the more you spread it out. Again, this is how I approached it and it worked for me. Figure out you.

Great, good to know I am not crazy. I just want to avoid the whole panic at the end of the quarter with the memo and 2 exams.

[beepboopbeep]

Assess your own fatigue knowing the winter and spring quarters are considerably more intensive. If you think you can work a couple hours a day without really feeling anything, do it. I did and I think it helped. I can't imagine an hour or two per day now is going to hurt anyone three months from now, and it certainly can help you get your fall quarter notes orgained and outlines started. BUT everyone is different. Figure out how you feel and not how everyone says you should feel or will feel. Ignore blanket advice.


Also, for what it's worth, the whole marathon analogy actually suggests working over break. No marathon runner sprints when they have to and stops when they think they can. My opinion: you have a ton of work to do (miles to run) before your next round of finals/throughout the quarter; it's less painful and stressful the more you spread it out. Again, this is how I approached it and it worked for me. Figure out you.

Great, good to know I am not crazy. I just want to avoid the whole panic at the end of the quarter with the memo and 2 exams.

The memo will probably be due like a month before the end of the quarter if it's like last year, so it's not really that bad. Spring quarter is a shitshow, though.

Re: working over break, it always comes down to "do what works for you." But, the people I know who did well generally didn't put in a huge amount of work. Most had intentions of outlining over winter break and never followed through, which is totally fine, because relaxing with family is 1) more important and worthwhile than law school in the first place, and 2) helpful for recharging your battery over the remaining 1L slog.

@Beep,

he said the exam is probably going to be short answer/questions, no other clues

@Mal,

So like "plaintiff is the least-cost avoider" here, therefore no liability, etc

Thanks everyone.

That sounds like it'll be like ours. Check out his 2014 exams. You'll understand at least a bit why people hated it.

The latter thing kinda misunderstands Henderson, imo, but I don't want to get too law-school-aspie about it. It starts from knowing the doctrine and applying it to the facts. Once that's out of the way you can think about whether the policy rationale makes sense in whatever situation is at hand. Don't just skip to this phase (though definitely just skip to this phase for Levmore). It's pretty standard law school stuff, he just dresses it up differently.

Also the entire above paragraph is irrelevant if he gives you non-issue-spotter questions again. Then you just bullshit and pray he likes it.

[lawschool2014hopeful]

@Beep, I did, it is very open-ended, and there are no sample answers or memos to it though, so I am not exactly sure what he was looking for.

I can only guess it something similar to the other exams, it looks like X case, but not really, it can be defended by Y doctrine, but countered by X doctrine, so forth, like some sort of endless rambling of issue spewing (thats what the giant issue spotter looks like).

Anyways, thank alot for your help so far.

[Samsing]

Any tips on 1L cover letters? Should I stick to the samples given by OCS and how different should my cover letters be for firms, government, and PI? Thank you in advance!

[DontStopBeliebin]

Any tips on 1L cover letters? Should I stick to the samples given by OCS and how different should my cover letters be for firms, government, and PI? Thank you in advance!

Standard format would be something like 4 paragraphs:

Intro: I'm a student at this school, applying to this job, I am interested because buzzwords, let me show you why I think I would fit in with this job and why I would like it and why you would like me. [3-4 lines]

Content 1: Here is some prior (work/volunteer) experience of mine that shows why I am a good employee and why I would be a good person for you to hire. At X job, this thing happened that I needed to fix / help on / take the initiative on / become a leader during, here is how I reacted to it, and this is why it's relevant for your job position. [5-8 lines] [one version of this is to basically write out what an interview answer would be to "tell me about a time when ..."]

Content 2: Here is some (extracurricular/schoolwork/etc) experience I am taking that is relevant for your job and shows why I am interested in your specific job. Part of why I like (thing) is because it fits into what I want to do after law school, and here are some skills or experiences I am getting out of it, and this makes me know I would enjoy a job at your thingy. [4-8 lines] [for many 1L cover letters you can just talk about LRW if you've never had any experience related to law]

Conclusion: Please feel free to call me any day any time to give me a job offer and let me know if you need grades but they don't come out till January please call me back. [1-3 lines]

--

You should change it up between firm/gov't/PI but mainly around what experiences you're highlighting/sharing. You might use a work experience story for a firm job but a volunteering experience story for a PI job etc. It's hard to give specific cover letter suggestions without actually knowing what you've done/what your resume looks like, but the general framework and approach for writing a cover letter is the same as any application to a school or job: you want to show why they should hire you. That's based on what experiences you have, what kind of person/employee you are, whether you'd like or hate the job, etc. You want your cover letter to show all of that, and ideally tell a story about why you're applying, just like law school applications. (e.g. I have a background in business, so I want to do corporate law; I have a volunteering background with immigrants, so I want to work at your PI place, etc).

Feel free to PM me if you want cover letter editing help.

[Manhattan]

.

[WheninLaw]

PAPERS ARE ALWAYS THE WORST IDEA EVER

[Manhattan]

PAPERS ARE ALWAYS THE WORST IDEA EVER

Yeah, I didn't realize my class had a final exam and a paper due until it was too late. Kind of regretting that decision right now.

[Mal Reynolds]

I think all PR classes are set up thay way. At least the one in the spring is too. If not I'll be taking the alternative.

[Manhattan]

.

[Tiny Dancer]

We aren't allowed to take law school classes pass/fail, right?

I feel like I wander onto this board only to ask questions in furtherance of laziness, but whatever.

[WheninLaw]

We aren't allowed to take law school classes pass/fail, right?

I feel like I wander onto this board only to ask questions in furtherance of laziness, but whatever.

Anything but law school classes. Because rigor.

[Tiny Dancer]

We aren't allowed to take law school classes pass/fail, right?

I feel like I wander onto this board only to ask questions in furtherance of laziness, but whatever.

Anything but law school classes. Because rigor.

Thanks for confirming.

[DetectiveStabler]

How tight is the curve at Chicago? I've heard from many people that the majority of the class will get median but I don't know what would be the difference between a normal median grade and a grade that I should be worried about. Is a 175 still considered roughly median or should someone consider that a "bad" grade?

[Mal Reynolds]

177 is median. 176-175 is below median.

We don't know the distribution but I think it's mostly considered to be something like 60% of the class has somewhere around 177.something and above after 1L. Top ten percent is around 180. I could be wrong so hopefully someone else weighs in. A 175 is probably considered a bad grade, especially for 1L.

[2014]

175 is bottom ~20% but isn't like disastrous. Curve definitely skews higher.

[applelover]

Does anyone remember which firms came to Winter OCI last year?

[Rahviveh]

Does anyone remember which firms came to Winter OCI last year?

Latham Chicago and a couple Florida firms. I believe Latham took one person out of 20 or so interviewees. I think there were more firms in the previous years, like Proskauer Chicago.

eta: o yeah, microsoft was there too and they usually take 1-2 people

[applelover]

Thanks!

[Dany]

How tight is the curve at Chicago? I've heard from many people that the majority of the class will get median but I don't know what would be the difference between a normal median grade and a grade that I should be worried about. Is a 175 still considered roughly median or should someone consider that a "bad" grade?

I only had one professor ever give a breakdown. This was for Elements:

[Manhattan]

Does anyone remember which firms came to Winter OCI last year?

Latham Chicago and a couple Florida firms. I believe Latham took one person out of 20 or so interviewees. I think there were more firms in the previous years, like Proskauer Chicago.

eta: o yeah, microsoft was there too and they usually take 1-2 people

Yeah, there were exactly 4 employers last year - Latham Chicago and Microsoft Seattle as you mentioned, and then a couple of smaller firms - Grippo & Elden and (I think) Eimer Stahl.

[eliminatorjr]

It's feasible to do a ten week summer after 1L year, right? It won't interfere with OCI?