Like I said, absolutely love the blog, and I’m hugely grateful not only for the reply via a unique post, but the genuine content of the post too. Now I’m not saying I’m going to jump right into starting a law firm out of law school but hey, we all need something to dream and hope for. So check out the post. Sadly, he doesn’t seem to have url specific sections for each post, so here’s a snippet from his site. It’s easy enough to find, just scroll down to the February 7th post.

*From How to Start a Law Firm Feb. 7th post (an excerpt)

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2012

Should You Take Starting a Law Firm Classes in Law School?

In undergrad I’ve tried to stick with paper and pen, and its served me well. My fear is the ease with which you can get off track on a laptop. Although I do have one professor who simply moves too fast to use the old school method and I have to use a laptop. However, even then, while I’m on task 95% of the time (it helps to turn off your wireless and maximize the window for your word processor) I’m constantly afraid of getting off track. The biggest disadvantage to using paper and pen is the difficulty of making copies and sharing notes for study groups in a law school setting.

I’ve recently discovered and absolutely love this little app for the iphone. DocScan does an amazing job of scanning in your notes and providing you a great PDF file. Not only does it scan them amazingly well and let you crop and detect where the page is, but it also lets you compile larger PDFs all in one. So you can organize your notes by individual class and have the whole semester in one gradually expanding PDF file. Go ahead and download it. The free version simply limits how many files you can have on your phone at once. When I bought it they only charged $1.99 for unlimited PDFs, well worth the piece of mind that you’ve now got your hand-written notes backed-up for those inevitable coffee spills late at night.

Having now uploaded your handwritten notes, you can easily save them to Google Docs or Dropbox and now you can access your lecture notes anywhere, at any time. Using these methods you could even get around my prior advice of grabbing an external hard-drive. Although I’ll still use one to make yet another redundant copy, this is a fairly inexpensive way to copy and move around notes while costing almost nothing. Plus I just love the thought of having folders on my computer with each having a different class nice and orderly.

I’ve made it to every class for the professor this semester, I’ve done the readings, done well on the quizzes. I’m really not worried. Instead, I study for thirty minutes and then I’m back at it, searching the inter-webs for something about law schools. Sadly, I think I’ve just about exhausted all the main content I can. I just want to be there now. Enough prep, enough thinking about it. All that’s left is for me to go take tours/Accepted Student Weekends at my top choices and make my final decision.

I’m still really excited to be flying to Connecticut in roughly three weeks. I’ve been trying to iron-out a list of apartments to check out while I’m in the area. Thankfully, some people over at top-law-schools who frequent the forums and who were scholarship recipients last year have been messaging me with ideas on where other students live in Hamden. Everyone’s been warning me against anything in the New Haven area. The more research I do into Quinnipiac the more I feel like I”m really not moving to a new area. It sounds remarkably similar to a situation we have here. Quinnipiac seems like it’s Connecticut’s version of UNC-Chapel Hill mixed with Elon in Burlington (Elon’s law school is actually in Greensboro). Factor in that Duke is in Durham and a ten minute drive from UNC, and the similarities are frightening. Both Durham and New Haven have roughly equal populations, both have top-tier universities (Duke & Yale), and both have reputations for being a bit rough.

If I do end up at Qunnipiac, it’ll be a shock to my system. Hamden is a tiny town. New Haven, the biggest city to Quinnipiac, is half the size of the city I live in now. Add in New England winters and it could equal quite an interesting experience. At least they’ve got a top-notch hockey program. Until next time, I’ll try not to let my senioritis affect me too much.

Quinnipiac School of Law

The visit will be a little longer than some of my previous law school visits, as Quinnipiac is so highly ranked on my list and I doubt I’ll be getting to Connecticut against prior to school starting in the fall, there’s a lot to get done. I’m been working on a list of potential places to live in the area and trying to figure out not only the necessity of having a car, but also what type of car. Having lived in the south my whole life, Quinnipiac would be a huge shock to my system. I’m not looking forward to having a complete update of my wardrobe. It’s one of the reason’s I turned down a rather large scholarship to SUNY-Buffalo for undergrad.

I’m also deathly afraid of heights and while I don’t mind flying on planes at all, I’ll be catching a connecting flight from Philly to New Haven on a turbo-prop plane. After finding out how low they fly to the ground, let’s just say I’m less than excited. I’ll be there for three days though, so I’m really hoping to figure out the small town of Hamden. I’m hoping the fact that Hamden made Forbe’s list of best places to live and was ranked as #33 is a good sign. Considering I’m moving from Raleigh, which consistently ranks as the #1 place in the U.S. to live, I’m a bit nervous about giving up my city.

Of course, what my visit means is there will be yet another law school review and I’ll be sure to upload tons of photos for everyone. One thing for sure, Quinnipiac Law is certainly one of the nicer looking campus’ I’ve seen, and the greater Hamden/New Haven area (home to Yale) looks like the rest of New England decided to model what they’re doing. I’ll try to blog from the hotel, at the least putting up some photos after the first or second day in early March. How about you guys? Getting close to deciding on a school?

1. Association - My first day of college I vowed this is what I would do. In high school I hung out with all kinds of people. A lot of them were people I grew up with and had been friends with for ages. Colleges was a fresh start, and law school will be yet another. Use it to your advantage. There’s a lot of people out there who drag you down and you don’t even think about it. We all have that friend who either only gets up with you when you can help them, or the friend who is just always bringing the group down. Cut them loose. Vowing I’d only be friends with people when it was healthy for both of us in college was probably the single best thing I’ve ever done to move my life into a more productive and worthwhile direction. I don’t mean be mean to people or use them. If someone’s smarter than you, great, learn from them. If someone struggles, try to teach them don’t show them (teaching someone something gives you a great new perspective on things and may allow you to know it better too). Get rid of the negative people and free loaders. Try to find groups where everyone can grow from one another. You’ll never have a time where it’s more easily than when you’re completely starting over like in law school.

2. Work harder, not smarter – We’ve heard it a thousand times. Have you really thought about it though? It’s easy to say, of course, I don’t like doing extra work. Live it for a change. I know I can’t get ANYTHING done in my apartment that’s remotely productive. Ask any of my friends, I go to the library when I have a paper or test. It’s the only way I can make myself work. Find where you can actually get work done. I use a change of location to guilt myself into the work. I don’t want to leave until it’s done. I also use specific locations to my advantage. My library has some areas where cell reception is impossible. I use this to isolate myself from the world. Take that and log yourself out of Facebook/Twitter and you might actually get something done. I like to actually log off, not simply close the tab so I have to type in my login information. I’ve caught myself hundreds of times typing in my username and password only to remember why I logged off the first time. It works, try it.

Also, don’t multitask. Being a generation of the internet we love to brag about how many things we can get done. Turn off the distractions. Some of my favorite software is writing software that fills your whole screen so you can’t just simply click something else or randomly browse the internet. You’ll be amazed how much work you can get done (and how quickly) if you just knock out each thing one at a time and don’t try to do ten things together at the same time.

3. Take action – Stop delaying. This is another reason I like to leave my apartment. Fewer distractions. I don’t decide to wash the dishes, make another meal, do the laundry, I do my work. Start now and it’ll be done quickly. Action and forcing yourself to make a choice helps exponentially.

4. Dress for Success (no, it’s not in the article, jeez) – This is something I heard time and time again in middle school and high school. Well, I finally heeded the advice. Sure, dressing nicely doesn’t do any work for you. However, it does change people’s perceptions of you and sadly, that’s 90% of the battle in social situations. When I first meet people and they discover what I want to do, nine times out of ten I get “you look like a lawyer”. Like I said, it doesn’t do any of the actual grunt work for you, but it’s better to think of you as competent and knowledgable. Let’s face it, if you’re a Supreme Court Justice but you look like you’re homeless or a thug, people will treat you like that. It’s a sad fact in the world we live in, but people treat you largely based upon how you present yourself. Dress for success. It doesn’t hurt and can only help.

*I am not saying wear a suit everyday or be ridiculous. I wear jeans probably half the time I’m doing anything. A few collared shirts and wearing something other than jeans once or twice throughout the week will really change how people perceive you.

I haven’t included everything in the article, and put my own spin on a lot of it. Having tried a few of the things in general, a tweak here or there can really have an impact in your life. Coming to college I promised myself I wouldn’t pay for cable at all for undergrad. It was difficult to do at first, but I’m so happy I’ve stuck to it. I don’t waste 20+ hours randomly in front of the television and I say the extra $50+ a month too. Now if I could only bring myself to get rid of Netflix for law school…

The report was supposedly leaked from a password protected e-mail, or some such non-sense. It’s worth the read, but I don’t think it’ll change much job prospect-wise, it just means you could have potentially snuck up a few ranks in how highly up the totem pole you were accepted, if you pay attention to US New & World Report…

ABA Journal

Above the Law’s Take (If you’ve never read ATL, it’s not for the faint of heart)

It constantly shocks me that so many schools have accepted student days during the week. I’m not talking about state schools, who have a bulk of their students coming from within their state (although this is debatable in the law school world). I’m talking about private law schools that have accepted student days during the week. In some cases toward the middle of the week, not even aiming for the convenience of a Friday. If a student is going to fly somewhere, and have to miss undergrad classes to do it, it only makes sense to make it as easily accessible to students as possible. Having a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday accepted student day doesn’t accomplish this at all.

For instance, I’m considering a bulk of schools that are in the northeast. It’s safe to say I’m probably only going to get one shot at flying up there before deposits are due April 15th. Maybe, I’ll make it back up prior to moving in, maybe not. So when I go up there for an accepted student day, I’m hoping to not only see the school, ask questions, and get a general feel for the place, I’m also hoping to create a list of potential apartment complexes and maybe even meet some classmates who could be potential roommates. Again, having a mid-week accepted student day doesn’t help. I just wanted to tip my hat to those law schools who do indeed put in a few extra hours on a Saturday or Sunday to make it that much easier for prospective students. It’s greatly appreciated, and you’re really doing your law school a service, as you’re actually trying to recruit students, not simply admit them.

A few examples of what some schools do to try and pull in admitted students.

*It is possible to get scholarship money off wait-lists. It’s a big numbers game, and if you’re a splitter, just hope they want your type of split and not the reverse!

Firstly, make sure they keep seeing your name. It’s hard for an admission’s committee to pull you from the list when there’s plenty of other people there. Get your name out to them. Show interest in the school, maybe visit for a tour, e-mail them asking where you are in “line” to get in off the wait-list. Some wait-lists last through June/July, be sure to ask the school you’re wait-listed at what their policy is.

Many schools expect another letter of recommendation, or two, if you’re on the wait-list as a way to show that you’re committed to nudging out those other students. If you can get one, great, send it in. It’s even better if it’s a LoR that’s geared specifically to that school, but anything is better than nothing. If you can’t get a letter of recommendation, at least send in an update of your transcript from fall semester. This can be done by just having your school send your transcript to LSAC and they’ll forward it on for you. This serves two purposes, it shows them that your grades have improved (hopefully), and gets your name in front of them again.

Wait-lists can be tough, and even with improved grades and another letter of recommendation there’s no guarantee that you’ll get into the school. For anyone in that boat I recommend making some hard choices. You can forgo acceptance at another school, but just know, after that April 15th deadline, most schools are a no go, so if you don’t accept an offer by then you need to be prepared to wait out another year to repeat your chances.

Regardless, good luck! Hopefully this post isn’t too relevant to all of you. As you’ve seen in my short-list post, I’ve got my mind torn between two, but I felt some of you may need a little nudge.