First Weekend of Fun

I am going to save the work-related entry for a bit later. What I will tell you now is that I am working on a rape case of a convicted man. He was convicted of a double rape which carries with it a minimum life sentence. I did a bunch of research and reporting and it looks like we are going to appeal. The appeal process is tomorrow so I will just write about my experience with the whole case after that.

As for the fun stuff, we went on our first adventure this weekend. Ande picked out an area from the Lonely Planet called the Oribi Gorge. It is about 2 hours away, west of here. Ande rented a van, which is in itself a story, I picked out a hostel, which turned into its own story, and we did a bunch of activities at the Gorge, which were fantastic. All and all I thought it was a successful weekend.

Ande picked up the van on Friday after work. She had explained to the rental people that there were 9 of us, and apparently that is a bad number for renting cars. Now I haven’t explained kombis to you yet, so this is as good of a time as any. We take kombis to work. There are these large van-type things that can fit around 17 people. They go in one direction or the other (either to city center or out to an area like North Beach, which is where we live). There is a driver and a doorman. The doorman whistles and yells out the window trying to solicit passengers, whether they look like they want a ride or not. They have certain hand signals that say where they are going and the just constantly stick their heads and hands out the window. Last night was the first experience I had of a doorman trying to get us to come into another kombi and being scolded by the doorman of the one we were getting into- apparently these guys should not mess with each other. In the kombi you are piled atop one another, the outside likely has some ridiculous name and slogan (our particular favorite name is “Solja” and slogan, “A good name is better than riches”). They blast music, sometimes to an offensive level, usually hiphop. One even had a music video running on their DVD player, although that was the fanciest one we have seen. Some are really clean and new, some have the character of an old school bus I used to ride in 2nd grade. They are one of my favorite parts of the character of this city and a ride anywhere costs R35 which is less than $.50.

So anyway, Ande comes back with the car and it is a kombi. HUGE! It seats 15. We all have a laugh about how far away the person in the back seat is from the driver. We hear the story about how Ande scraped the top in a parking garage, and we revel in the thought of picking up passengers to pay off the rental. But we are off.

Should you supplement CA BarBri with PMBR

So, the first thing I want to point out is that this is not a paid advertisement and I don't have a relationship of any sort with Kaplan PMBR.

Congratulations to all graduates.  I think most around the country will graduate some time over the next three weeks or so (sorry, Chicago!).  If you are like I was, you may be looking to the not-so-distant future and wondering if you have the right plan to tackle studying for the bar exam.  Hopefully, this advice isn't too late, but if you haven't signed up for a course that will supplement BarBri's MBE program, I think you should, at least if you are taking the CA exam.

Did you know that the best indicator of whether somebody will pass the CA bar exam is their LSAT score?  Why, likely because 1/3 of the test is multiple choice and such a test requires a skill set that translates from one multiple choice test to the next.  Also, it is likely because the essays are so subjective that many get through them without doing all that great objectively.  California test takers have one of the top average MBE scores in the country.  I also believe in the idea that practicing can help improve your multiple choice test performance.

I think that, if you have the time and the money, you should take the 6 day PMBR to kick-start your summer of studying.  Personally, I took my last semester kind of easy.  I took the minimum number of credits required and took sort-of soft, theoretical-type classes instead of black letter law type courses.  I found the five days that I spent in PMBR before BarBri started to be a great way to kick-start my black-letter-law brain and get going on the summer.

However, the biggest reason why I think you should take the course is for the practice questions.

Number 63 and Abandoned: A Rant From the Forgotten Eighty Percent

I’m not in the top twenty of my class. I’m not even in the top twenty percent of my class. In fact, by definition, the majority of my law school class is not in the top twenty percent of my class. Yet, we keep being forgotten by our professors, our deans, and perhaps most noticeably, our career services offices.

Chat online with the man behind the US News & World Report law school rankings

You may have seen this posted on other blogs, so here's just a quick reminder: this Friday from 3-4pm EST, the ABA Journal is hosting a live chat with the man behind U.S. News & World Report's law school rankings. Think the rankings should do more tracking of diversity (women, men, minorities, parent-students, etc.) or give more weight to schools with stellar support for student life? Tell Robert Morse, the USN&WR rankings czar.

1Ls: Finals Are Over, Time to Find a Summer Job

For those of you finishing up your first semester this week: Congratualtions! Next step: summer job. 1L summer jobs can be found in firms, non-profits, government agencies, judges' chambers, and law school. Each has distinct benefits and its own application timetable. It's time to think about all of them now, because winter break may be your chance to get a foot in the door.

Decisions, Decisions: Choosing a Clerkship (or a Firm Job)

I find myself comparing the search for a clerkship to the callback process one suffers through as a 2L. Sitting in the airport, again, listening to my fellow classmates talking about how many offers they received from various firms, I find my mind wandering to those 3Ls who are applying to hundreds of clerkships with the hope that one might work out. In both interviewing with law firms and applying to clerkships, it seems as though each process lacks a discretion that we normally use in our lives. Our future employment is an incredibly important decision. We are deciding on a lifestyle choice, where we will set up residency, the type of work we will receive, how we will be treated. And yet, it seems to me that students, especially those who have eight, nine, ten offers of employment, don't think about these future matters which bear so greatly on their lives but instead go to sources like the vault.com, "the American Lawyer Review," and other such lists that rank law firms by prestige.

What the experts say about interview etiquette

2Ls are in the final stages of callback interviews, 1Ls are getting ready to contact law firms for summer jobs, and a second wave of job interviews are underway for recent grads who now have a bar admission under their belts. Ms.

Ms. JD and My Big Firm Job Search

I did a bunch of applications before OCIP (during summer break), and I chose which firms to apply to in this pre-OCIP round based on their presence on the Ms. JD site as sponsors. I figured if they had given money to help start Ms. JD, they at least had women's issues on their radar. I wanted a place where I wouldn't have to explain why support for women at the firm was important to me- but where it was already a priority. So I sent my resume and cover letters to a few firms on the corporate sponsor list.

Shifting Expectations: Women Less Inclined to Pursue Legal Careers

Leigh Jones has an article entitled Fewer Women Are Seeking Law Degrees in the National Law Journal this week. She cites statistics that since 2002 the percentage of women attending law school has declined every year from 49% in 2002 to 46.9% this year.

... and they all look just the same.

A few weeks ago I attended the Vault Diversity Job Fair in New York City. This job fair was unique because it offered attendance to both minorities and to women. A large amount of law students were in attendance, and I had the opportunity to make observations about the crowd that had turned out for the event. One thing that I could not help but notice was how few individuals seemed to fit into both categories of students that were invited to the event. I couldn’t help but notice the lack of minority women at the event.