Things I wish I'd understood as a rising 1L Forum

[MrPapagiorgio]

I think every poster commenting after OP should be required to state their 1L GPA and/or class rank. Although OP titled this thread "Things I wish I'd understood as a rising 1L," ITT TLSers preach from their respective soapboxes various 1L philosophies without ever authenticating their viewpoints with any stamp of success. As a result, ITT we have an attempted TLS content submission turned clusterfuck, which tens of 0Ls have thought prudent to 'tag' because they can't tell the difference between good advice and utter bullshit.

I pine for the good ol' days when the only people posting content to TLS were Ken and Superstars like G.T.L.Review. Put up or shut up I say.

So I'll shut up now.

Edit: fuck it I don't care enough

[005618502]

This thread made a turn for the worse

[lisjjen]

I think every poster commenting after OP should be required to state their 1L GPA and/or class rank. Although OP titled this thread "Things I wish I'd understood as a rising 1L," ITT TLSers preach from their respective soapboxes various 1L philosophies without ever authenticating their viewpoints with any stamp of success. As a result, ITT we have an attempted TLS content submission turned clusterfuck, which tens of 0Ls have thought prudent to 'tag' because they can't tell the difference between good advice and utter bullshit.

I pine for the good ol' days when the only people posting content to TLS were Ken and Superstars like G.T.L.Review. Put up or shut up I say.

So I'll shut up now.

A succinct crystalization of everything there is to hate about TLS.

[Bronte]

I think every poster commenting after OP should be required to state their 1L GPA and/or class rank. Although OP titled this thread "Things I wish I'd understood as a rising 1L," ITT TLSers preach from their respective soapboxes various 1L philosophies without ever authenticating their viewpoints with any stamp of success. As a result, ITT we have an attempted TLS content submission turned clusterfuck, which tens of 0Ls have thought prudent to 'tag' because they can't tell the difference between good advice and utter bullshit.

I pine for the good ol' days when the only people posting content to TLS were Ken and Superstars like G.T.L.Review. Put up or shut up I say.

So I'll shut up now.

A succinct crystalization of everything there is to hate about TLS.

Would it be better if every post were stamped with credentials?

[Top 5%, LR, T10, V10.]

[MrPapagiorgio]

I think every poster commenting after OP should be required to state their 1L GPA and/or class rank. Although OP titled this thread "Things I wish I'd understood as a rising 1L," ITT TLSers preach from their respective soapboxes various 1L philosophies without ever authenticating their viewpoints with any stamp of success. As a result, ITT we have an attempted TLS content submission turned clusterfuck, which tens of 0Ls have thought prudent to 'tag' because they can't tell the difference between good advice and utter bullshit.

I pine for the good ol' days when the only people posting content to TLS were Ken and Superstars like G.T.L.Review. Put up or shut up I say.

So I'll shut up now.

A succinct crystalization of everything there is to hate about TLS.

Would it be better if every post were stamped with credentials?

[Top 5%, LR, T10, V10.]

Penis size too.

[lisjjen]

I think every poster commenting after OP should be required to state their 1L GPA and/or class rank. Although OP titled this thread "Things I wish I'd understood as a rising 1L," ITT TLSers preach from their respective soapboxes various 1L philosophies without ever authenticating their viewpoints with any stamp of success. As a result, ITT we have an attempted TLS content submission turned clusterfuck, which tens of 0Ls have thought prudent to 'tag' because they can't tell the difference between good advice and utter bullshit.

I pine for the good ol' days when the only people posting content to TLS were Ken and Superstars like G.T.L.Review. Put up or shut up I say.

So I'll shut up now.

A succinct crystalization of everything there is to hate about TLS.

Would it be better if every post were stamped with credentials?

[Top 5%, LR, T10, V10.]

Penis size too.

Length or girth?

[T00L]

tag

[Tanicius]

I think every poster commenting after OP should be required to state their 1L GPA and/or class rank. Although OP titled this thread "Things I wish I'd understood as a rising 1L," ITT TLSers preach from their respective soapboxes various 1L philosophies without ever authenticating their viewpoints with any stamp of success. As a result, ITT we have an attempted TLS content submission turned clusterfuck, which tens of 0Ls have thought prudent to 'tag' because they can't tell the difference between good advice and utter bullshit.

I pine for the good ol' days when the only people posting content to TLS were Ken and Superstars like G.T.L.Review. Put up or shut up I say.

So I'll shut up now.

A succinct crystalization of everything there is to hate about TLS.

Would it be better if every post were stamped with credentials?

[Top 5%, LR, T10, V10.]

Penis size too.

Whoa now. Let's be more down to Earth and reasonable: include your actual LSAT scores, your LSAC GPA, and the result of every practice LSAT you ever took and the school GPA of every institution you ever attended. Also specify the quality of your personal statement and what it was about, along with your major(s).

Seriously speaking, I'm never going to say my grades on TLS due to the fact that I'm outed to at least a few classmates.

[lisjjen]

Seriously speaking, I'm never going to say my grades on TLS due to the fact that I'm outed to at least a few classmates.

Why give the real reason his idea sucks? We weren't done mocking him.

[tomwatts]

On the OP:

Basically, the advice is to pay attention to the holdings of the cases. (The rule in the case is called the "holding" in technical legalese.) This is a reasonable first-approximation approach, but it can be tricky depending on how the professor sets up the class. A lot of cases are not just illustrations of a well-established rule; they're on the margins of an established rule, and especially in the core common law classes (Contracts, Property, Torts), there are state-by-state differences. A case may be assigned so that you can see one way a rule can play out, and then the professor may tell you (or may assign a second case that illustrates) the other way that rule could play out. In your assigned cases, you might have multiple contradictory rules, or an awkward adaptation of a rule, or any of a number of other things, and the casebook may or may not ever tell you whether the approach given in the case is particularly idiosyncratic.

At some point deep into personal jurisdiction in Civil Procedure (Pennoyer -> International Shoe -> etc.), I finally decided that you just can't tell what proposition a case is going to stand for until you hear the prof talk about it and see how later cases cite it, so I gave up writing down holdings in preparation for class. My briefs consisted of header (name of the case, court, year, page in book), facts, procedure, stuff the court said about the law and how it applied, and the result (the disposition of the case). Instead of writing down the holding right away, I starting writing down the rules that cases stood for about a week or two after class, when it was clear in context what the heck we were doing that day. I kept this up through all of 1L, and I'm not sure if I'm going to change it for 2L. At least for the first semester, nothing made sense to me at first, but it all clicked when I came back to it after having seen the surrounding material.

Also, my Leg Reg class didn't depend on holdings really at all, though admittedly 1) Leg Reg isn't a standard 1L class and 2) I think it was somewhat unusual even as a Legislation/Admin Law class. So this can vary a bit from professor to professor.

I think some time in August I'll type up a big fat post with everything that I wish someone had told me as I was entering first year. Stay tuned.

[patzan221]

8" x 5.5"

[worldtraveler]

Biggest thing I wish 0Ls realized: you really have to come into law school knowing what you want to do or at the very least figure it out during 1L year. There really isn't a lot of "I will figure it out as I go" time, even though it might seem like 3 years is a long time. Why? Because for the majority of us you will be picking the direction of your future career after only a year of law school, before you get to experiment around and figure out what you like. If you spend 2 summers at a firm, realize it sucks and that you really want to be a public defender, too bad. You'll be competing with people who went in knowing that's what they wanted and have a whole resume geared toward that.

Also, do not, under any circumstances think that you can practice international human rights law or any variation of that without experience in the field. It will only end badly for you.

[heeloftar]

Biggest thing I wish 0Ls realized: you really have to come into law school knowing what you want to do or at the very least figure it out during 1L year. There really isn't a lot of "I will figure it out as I go" time, even though it might seem like 3 years is a long time. Why? Because for the majority of us you will be picking the direction of your future career after only a year of law school, before you get to experiment around and figure out what you like. If you spend 2 summers at a firm, realize it sucks and that you really want to be a public defender, too bad. You'll be competing with people who went in knowing that's what they wanted and have a whole resume geared toward that.

Also, do not, under any circumstances think that you can practice international human rights law or any variation of that without experience in the field. It will only end badly for you.

Is that true for specialties other than IP or PI?

[ilovesf]

Biggest thing I wish 0Ls realized: you really have to come into law school knowing what you want to do or at the very least figure it out during 1L year. There really isn't a lot of "I will figure it out as I go" time, even though it might seem like 3 years is a long time. Why? Because for the majority of us you will be picking the direction of your future career after only a year of law school, before you get to experiment around and figure out what you like. If you spend 2 summers at a firm, realize it sucks and that you really want to be a public defender, too bad. You'll be competing with people who went in knowing that's what they wanted and have a whole resume geared toward that.

Also, do not, under any circumstances think that you can practice international human rights law or any variation of that without experience in the field. It will only end badly for you.

This is credited and I wish I had realized this before I came to school. fml.

[worldtraveler]

Biggest thing I wish 0Ls realized: you really have to come into law school knowing what you want to do or at the very least figure it out during 1L year. There really isn't a lot of "I will figure it out as I go" time, even though it might seem like 3 years is a long time. Why? Because for the majority of us you will be picking the direction of your future career after only a year of law school, before you get to experiment around and figure out what you like. If you spend 2 summers at a firm, realize it sucks and that you really want to be a public defender, too bad. You'll be competing with people who went in knowing that's what they wanted and have a whole resume geared toward that.

Also, do not, under any circumstances think that you can practice international human rights law or any variation of that without experience in the field. It will only end badly for you.

Is that true for specialties other than IP or PI?

For anyone other than a random person at a T10 just wanting random firm work, yeah. I've seen this screw over people of all kinds because they figured out too late what they want to do and by that point it's hard to gear your resume toward something specific.

[Lawst]

Actually, PI looks favorably upon people with firm experience, and some agencies will hire only those who have a few years of legal experience (as associates not interns) under their belts. I know of several people who put in 2-3 years at biglaw and fled to public interest/crim law pretty easily. It's the other way around that's hard.
I say this as someone who wants PI and I know I'll probably lose an opportunity here or there to someone with firm experience.
The rest is credited, though. You'll start doing interviews in January of Feb. of your 1L year and you need to at least have an idea of what you want to do, even if you change your mind by the end of the summer.

[ilovesf]

Actually, PI looks favorably upon people with firm experience, and some agencies will hire only those who have a few years of legal experience (as associates not interns) under their belts. I know of several people who put in 2-3 years at biglaw and fled to public interest/crim law pretty easily. It's the other way around that's hard.
I say this as someone who wants PI and I know I'll probably lose an opportunity here or there to someone with firm experience.
The rest is credited, though. You'll start doing interviews in January of Feb. of your 1L year and you need to at least have an idea of what you want to do, even if you change your mind by the end of the summer.

Depends on the job for 1L summer. In my interviews with judges I openly said I had no idea what I wanted to do, and that's why I was so excited to work for a judge - to get exposure to different areas of the law. But yeah, I know a couple people who work for the Cal DOJ and they started at firms and switched over after a couple of years. They all had relevant experience though working with white collar criminal defense at firms, then switching to prosecution... so it wasn't really that different of a job knowledge wise.

[worldtraveler]

Actually, PI looks favorably upon people with firm experience, and some agencies will hire only those who have a few years of legal experience (as associates not interns) under their belts. I know of several people who put in 2-3 years at biglaw and fled to public interest/crim law pretty easily. It's the other way around that's hard.
I say this as someone who wants PI and I know I'll probably lose an opportunity here or there to someone with firm experience.
The rest is credited, though. You'll start doing interviews in January of Feb. of your 1L year and you need to at least have an idea of what you want to do, even if you change your mind by the end of the summer.

I'm talking about what people want to do straight out after graduation. Yeah, you can transition with big law experience but to a lot of people (myself included), the idea of spending 2-3 years at a big law firm sounds horrible.

[Bronte]

Is that true for specialties other than IP or PI?

It depends on what you mean by a "specialty." There are realistic specialties and then there are fanciful specialties. Realistic specialties: tax, bankruptcy, intellectual property, real estate, etc. Unrealistic specialties: anything that sounds like it involves helping people in a glamorous way.

[lisjjen]

Is that true for specialties other than IP or PI?

It depends on what you mean by a "specialty." There are realistic specialties and then there are fanciful specialties. Realistic specialties: tax, bankruptcy, intellectual property, real estate, etc. Unrealistic specialties: anything that sounds like it involves helping people in a glamorous way.

Also a popular and realistic specialty for anyone within driving distance of Rick Perry: energy law.

And by energy law, I mean oil.