The Shark

whoever said winning isn't everything? also entitled: the real men of law school

[justin gosling]

I don't know how I glossed over it before, but taxprof (via ATL) highlights the best use of your third year in law school, ever.  Forget the practical experience over at Washington and Lee University School of Law or Harvard's attempt to lure 3Ls into the glamorous world of public interest work. No, George Washington has the answer: give students enough free time to make witty law school related videos about stereotypical classmates.

The video below about Intramural Sports Guy is spot on:

If you have some free time I suggest checking out the stash of other hilarious videos from those creative students over at George Washington Law School. A word of warning: most of the videos are PG, but some of them contain adult situations and language that make them even funnier than the PG movies. Just make sure you don't accidentally play the videos extra loud in class, Mr. doesn't-know-how-to-properly-operate-his-laptop-guy.

conspiracy at boalt, everyone weighs in

[abony holmes]

Recently, there has been some drama at Berkeley Law Blog surrounding the elections of the BHSA (student government). For those not in the know, the facts:

• A student (not a BHSA member) sent an e-mail to undisclosed recipients, presumably the leadership of some student groups. The email encouraged the undisclosed recipient to forward information about a “Boalt Hall Student’s Association Information Session” to any 1L and 2L students in their organization who were interested in a BHSA position.
• The sender also asked that the recipients not forward the email to their entire listserv.
• The email explained the function of the BHSA, and said that the "information session is being held exclusively to encourage students of color to run for BHSA positions, as we will provide you with important information regarding the responsibilities, time commitment, and importance of each of the BHSA positions.”
• The information session’s location was the home of several Berkeley students, including the current BHSA president.
• An individual anonymous student photocopied the email, and distributed it to every student by putting it in their lockers with a note on the back that alleged the student government president was hosting a private student government information session.
• The note also called for “A fair and transparent student government for all students.”

And my take:

The anonymous student[s] who distributed the email to student lockers should have confronted the individual who sent the initial email about their concerns before involving the entire student body as a whole. Had they done so, they would have accurate information about the meeting, and would have been able to voice their concerns in a constructive manner. As it stands, the anonymous student[s] have invaded the privacy of all the individuals involved, by photocopying a private email with a student’s home address.

Furthermore, the information session was not a BHSA-sponsored event, nor was the email sanctioned by BHSA, nor was the information session being held by the BHSA president. This email was sent by an individual student who was not a BHSA member. That individual student wanted to encourage minority students to take part in student government.

facebook, facebook, and more facebook. breaking news: "old" people know how to use it.

[brian lauter]

A couple of weeks ago a professor I am friendly with sent me an email to tell me that a quote a friend had on his Facebook profile was inappropriate and should be taken down before “administration gets wind of it.” The quote was something another professor had said during lecture, taken humorously out of context. I told my friend and he took it down, but it was something of a wake-up call. Old people know about Facebook.

Then came the news that Ryerson University might expel a student who created a Facebook group to share study tips. I realized I should probably check my Facebook account to make sure there was nothing incriminating there. Instead, I got distracted and spent an hour looking at various law school related Facebook groups. I’ve compiled a list for your viewing (or joining) pleasure:

Top 10 Law School Related Facebook Groups

1. Dear Law School:  High School Called, They Want Their Drama Back
2. I’ve Thought About Dropping Out of Law School At Least Ten Times Today
3. 1Ls Against Gunners (Or the more crude, but maybe more appropriate:  Keep Your F—king Hand Down In Lecture and Shut the F—k Up. No One Cares.)
4. You Might Be In Law School If...
5. If You Come Back Here and Let Me Love and Pet You, I Will Fix Your Clock
6. Law School Is Making Me More Stupider
7. Chuck Norris Lays Down The Law...School
8. If Law School Was Easy, We’d Call It Your Mom
9. I Remember A Time When I Was Happy, Before Law School
10. Dear Law School – Thanks For The Drinking Problem

Having to watch what I say and do on Facebook may completely ruin the experience for me. So what is the solution? Hope old people accidentally get their accounts disabled? Start using Facebook only as a way to make money? Maybe I’ll just declare Facebook Bankruptcy and wait for the next big thing (Web 3.0?) to come along. 

keeping up with harvard

[abony holmes]

Harvard Law School has announced that it will pay 3L tuition for all future students who commit to work in public service for five years.  Over at Nuts and Boalts, bloggers are wondering what effect this announcement will have on Berkeley Law’s ability to recruit and retain public interest students. Since tuition at Berkeley is rising substantially, this announcement may mean it will be cheaper for Harvard law students to go into public interest than for Berkeley Law students. Of course, this argument assumes that Berkeley Law public interest students make the choice between Harvard and Berkeley.

My thoughts: with the imminent expansion of Berkeley’s Loan Repayment Assistance Program, and the increase in tuition, Dean Edley will find ways to keep Berkeley’s public interest edge among the top law schools in the country. Either way, I’m hoping more law schools follow this public interest trend. It will only benefit students and the legal profession to have law schools competing to find ways to finance the education of future public interest attorneys.

law review: still worth the work?

[justin gosling]

How important is Law Review on your resume? The standard thinking is that you need either Law Review or Moot Court on your resume to prove that you actually did something in law school. Apparently, just running the gauntlet isn't enough. Well, The Fox just posted several reasons why you don't need to worry about participating in Law Review in order to get a job. Or, at least that Law Review alone isn't determinative.

It should be noted that the comments after the post add the caveat that these reasons apply only to UCLA Law Review, but I suspect the observations apply to Law Reviews more generally. The most interesting point (to me at least) is that the purpose of Law Review is no longer as relevant as before the advent of the internet. While Law Reviews once had a monopoly on scholarly work, now professors can post their ruminations on the internet and bypass Law Review altogether. Technology certainly has changed the Law Review game. Although, from the professor's perspective, it's hard to pass up a room full of chumps combing over your work for silly mistakes and citation errors. If professors continue to supply law students with resume-padding opportunities, then Law Review probably isn't going anywhere.

Another point that caught my eye is that good grades always trump mediocre grades and Law Review. Sounds about right to me. Still, while Law Review may not be necessary if you have stellar grades, not everyone does. So what do us schmucks with average (or even below average) grades do? I don't know about everyone else, but I'm not confident enough in my grades to skip the Law Review write on process.

tour of duty: talking to applicants

[justin gosling]

Remember when you were applying to law school and the whole law school experience sounded like a good idea? I envisioned reading a few cases and then fending off job offers (complete with access to the company car made of solid gold). Prior to settling on a school I was more concerned with quality of life while enrolled rather than life after graduation. Things like job prospects in my particular field or evaluating the relative size of various job markets were not on my radar. Whoops.

Well, this weekend I have the opportunity to enlighten some future 1Ls while I give a campus tour on admitted student day. Naturally I'll provide the same gritty view into law school reality that we showcase here on The Shark, but I will try my best to make these future students step back, rearrange their priorities, and think long and hard about one of the most important decisions of their lives. Hopefully I can bring a little reality to their $180,000.00 decision.

As a current law student, what would you have liked to know about law school prior to enrolling?

facebook continues to terrorize, or students continue to terrorize using facebook. either one.

[abony holmes]

I’ve been wary of my Facebook account for the last few months, and I’ve made sure my photos and interests are “career-friendly” (i.e. nothing that I wouldn’t  want my mother to see). I’m not alone among the law student crowd — lots of us have done a preliminary Google search and not liked what we saw, and in an effort to change that we've created career-friendly LinkedIn and Facebook profiles to move to the top of the list.

Now there appears to be another social networking worry. An engineering student at Ryerson University is facing expulsion for creating a Facebook group to share study tips. The group, comprised of 147 students, was used to share “tips on homework questions that counted for 10 per cent of their mark.”

Is this a case of an administration being behind the times and misunderstanding the dynamics of social networking sites, or did these students go above and beyond the limitations of traditional study groups? According to the school’s academic misconduct policy, if the group perpetuated “any deliberate activity to gain academic advantage, including actions that have a negative effect on the integrity of the learning environment" it would have crossed the line.

While the size of the group makes the entire enterprise a little fishy, the group’s administrator (and the student facing expulsion) claims the students only shared study tips, and no one ever posted answers to specific questions. However, in a group as large as 147, dishonest activity could easily go unnoticed. What’s worse, the invitation to the Facebook group encouraged members to “use the forms to discuss/post solutions to the chemistry assignments. Please input your solutions if they are not already posted.”

linx: balance your way out of depression, california still channeling mccarthy

[cynthia foster]

• Is Lawyer Malaise Moving from the Firm to the Campus? (WSJ's Law Blog)
• “Transforming the Practice of Law”: Innovative Ideas for Work/Life Balance (Lewis & Clark University podcast)
• Boalt Combines Social Awareness, CLE Credit (Legal Pad)
• Loyalty Oaths and Un-Americanism (The Faculty Blog - The University of Chicago, The Law School)

soon, guns in preschools.

[brian lauter]

Ed Note: Everyone say hello to our guest poster: Brian, a 2L from Davis.

Last week’s bomb scare at U.C. Davis, along with the recent school shootings at Northern Illinois and Virginia Tech, inspired a lengthy argument with a friend about a group called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC).

SCCC is a student group organized in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting. It advocates allowing students to carry concealed weapons on campuses. While this is a questionable idea on its face, it gets worse when applied to law school. The copious amount of stress law students grapple with is legendary, and law students are also at higher risk for depression. As Above the Law points out, “Guns + law school stress seems like a terrible idea.” Somewhat ironically, the last person I would want with a gun in their hands is a gunner. In addition, as The Faculty Lounge notes, some striking changes in classroom dynamics and teaching techniques might result if law students were allowed to pack heat.

The argument for gun-toting students sounds a lot like the argument to arm airplane pilots. Proponents  of that idea correctly note that pilots undergo extensive training before they are armed. In the case of packing pupils, however, some envision a posse of largely untrained students adding to the damage by opening fire in a situation they are not trained to manage.  With all due respect to my classmates, I don’t think seeing strapped law students walking through the halls during finals would make me feel any safer.  I hope their holsters remain empty.

washington and lee university gets practical

[abony holmes]

The Washington and Lee University School of Law is changing their curriculum drastically by making the third year of law school completely “experiential in nature.” The new curriculum will replace classroom instruction with “practice simulations, real-client interactions and the development of law practice skills” and will be implemented over the next 3-4 years.

This sounds almost like the written and oral advocacy (WOA) and legal research and writing (LRW) classes taken by most 1Ls, though real-client interactions is a nice added touch. I’ve been told by many 2 and 3Ls that WOA and LRW are the most important 1L courses because they are essential for most summer jobs, and they teach the skills attorneys need to practice. Now some law students will have the good fortune to receive practical training at both the beginning and the end of their legal education. It’s about dang time. I’m only left wondering when Boalt will follow suit.