Welcome back retard!

Elie, how many hours a day did you study at HLS?

wow. Cardozo is considering a reality TV show, and you're posting surveys on study habits. ZZZZ

7.5 hours a day is a lot of time to waste on the lectures of a bunch TTT profs

4 - what's the title? True Life: I'm Screwed?

Nice... tied with Yale.

On average, I probably studied 1.5 hours a day...

...during my first semester of my 1L year!

After that, I realized it was pointless and cut way down to about 15 minutes of skimming per night.

-UI Law

7.5 hours a day? Yes, it's a lot of hours to study a day. But to say that nova students are either lying or dumb is, in itself, pretty dumb. Option (c): Villanova students just want to do well.

I guess there is little incentive to study when you don't have to worry about grades.

I'd say Yale and Illinois students are the only ones NOT lying here.

Because lets face it, those numbers may be accurate for one L year, but after that, no one really studies more than an hour or two a day. (or however long it takes you to read for your class the next day)

I call BS on all of the students surveyed. (except for Illinois and Yale)

PE,
Do you believe that ageism exists in our country?

8-dumb as Villanova law student with poor time management skills.

MysTTTal wasTTTes 7.5 hours a day studying food menus... what a wasTTTe of time this article is and this site has become.

Yet it's like a car wreck, it strangely keeps pulling you back in...

not hard to believe yale law kids only study 1.5 hours per day...that's what happens in pass/fail schools...ah well its only fair (i mean it totally makes sense to presume the legal intelligence/competence of individuals based on their lsat score alone)

#7, what are your grades like?

13 - I think we learned from yesterday that this site is so much better with Mystal around.

Elie, Please report on the ATL gossip from yesterday. This is a fucking tabloid after all. We want the gossip!!!

during non-finals time, i would say between 3 and 6.6 hours Sun-Thurs is reasonable, depending on if you brief or not.

If you are doing 1.5, you clearly aren't reading - which, if it works for you, go ahead. I applaud you. But you figure minimum 15-25 pages per class (2-3 cases) and two classes per day - no way you can do a decent job in 1.5 hours.

With massive grade inflation and affirmative action, why would ANYONE need to study at the ivy schools?

This comes as no surprise.

If you count reading and prepping for class, plus all the research for legal writing class, the other BS research, and studying for finals, average it out over the enitre semester, my 1L and 2L years averaged 2.7166666666 hours per day. (that's two hours and 43 minutes for those who don't understand math)

No wonder I've been living in Concord NH for 2 months and have only met 1 Franklin Pierce student despite the fact that there's only 1 bar in town.

2.5-3 hrs is reasonable. More than that speaks to the IQ of the person (over)doing it.

After first semester I didn't read at all, until I started outlining/ getting ready for exams. I did read when I was on call.

Graduated summa.

Frances: Talk about pissing your money away. I hope you kids see what a silly waste of resources this was.

Audrey Griswold: He worked really hard, Grandma.

Art: So do washing machines.

18,

You must be somewhat of a slow reader. If I exclude the first couple months of first year (where everyone's still learning to properly read a case), I recall easily getting the daily reading for 2-3 classes done in 1-2 hours a day. My classes usually ended early afternoon, and it was rare i stayed up at the school past four.

On the other hand, I think your "during finals time" estimate is far to low. Maybe a month before finals (mid nov give or take) I'd always start adding maybe 5-6 extra hours a week to start cleaning up my notes and doing outlines. That was usually plenty of studying until it was actually "finals time" and classes were no longer in session. Once there no longer clases I would more often than not be studying 10-12 hours a day if not more.

I know I studied harder than some, but I know there were others that studied a lot harder than I did. I made law review and graduated Cum Laude and with an offer in hand, so I think I did adequately.

12: I believe the proper spelling is "dumb ass" not "dumb as".

What point were you trying to make again?

I'd say the honest answer at most legitimate law schools is 3.5 to 4.5 study hours every week day (about the same amount of time spent in class).

Weekends I'd say the honest answer is 7 to 9 hours for the entire two days.

Most of that time is an utter waste.

This explains a lot about USC Law grads

It was 20 years ago, but my experience was that law students studied a lot more than they were willing to admit. Gunners don't like others to know how hard they are working to do better than the competition.

Elie, for the FN did you mean the hard part to be a rhetorical question? Like

"Also hard? Mastering the Yale...."

The comma just makes it read clunky.

Oh, and welcome back.

4- what'chu talkin 'bout Willis?

Accurate numbers. The shittier the law school you went to, the more you study since you need to be in the top 1% to get a job.

31, the administration and some student leaders attended a meeting today discussing the possibility of filming a documentary style reality show at the school. Don't know for which network or the exact setup, but they're trying to gauge the student body's receptiveness (without telling them)

GO MICHIGAN STATE! WE BE 21st MOST STUDIOUS!

But seriously, I agree with previous posters. Maybe I'd spend 4-6 hours a day during 1L year, but by 2L, when I completely stopped doing anything other than reading, I'd say I study 8-9 hours total during the week.

I spend much more time prior to finals during outlining time (I outline all at once over the course of several days just before finals).

These "rankings" are completely unreliable, obviously, as they are based on voluntary survey responses.

10 -

Re "no one really studies more than an hour or two a day" after 1L year: 3Ls at Baylor study more than anybody's 1L year due to a ridiculous required practice court program. Plus, they have no problem failing 3Ls there. That always pushes their numbers way up.

- Not a Baylor 3L (but elsewhere in Texas -- no way I would subject myself to that type of 3L year)

NC Central (#11 on the list) grad here (but I was in the evening program). Probably #'s are skewed with 1L's and 1-2LE's. Day program DOES seem to study a lot, I often noticed. Evening students have heavy weekend studying since most work or have other daytime responsibilities during the week.

I probably pulled 6-10 hour days on weekends my first couple years. Years 3 and 4 I focused during the semester on papers for my writing seminars, working at various internships that worked with an evening schedule, or predicting when I was going to get called on in class and reading for that class. Mostly I waited until just before finals before cramming the reading in and getting my outlines prepared for the final. Would take time off of work the week or so before the final and pull 10-14 hour days in at that point.

I was WELL seasoned for the Bar prep, which might be why I passed on the 1st go round.

So...Go EAGLES!

I've got straight As and A-'s at one of the CCN, and I can't imagine studying for more than 2 hours a day on average.

37 --- You are so cool!

LOL for Cornell up in the top 10 with a bunch of TTTs. Just confirms the stereotype of Cornell being filled with gunners.

Q: Why are Nebraska's numbers so low?
A: Because there's only so much law you can learn about corn farming and subsidies.

I treated law school like a job and dedicated 7-8 hours a day (Mon-Thurs)which included class time, reading briefing, etc. Worked for me, graduated in the top ten of the class.

33- thanks. That is absurd.

41: Yes, and you can also demolish a house with an carpet bomb if you so choose. That doesn't mean it's using the appropriate level of force for the job.

Oh...and I graduated with honors too.

- 36

what is this talk about cardozo reality TV?

We're going to Foxwoods baby! I'm going to be up Five Hundy by midnight!

- Yale, 1L

42 - agreed. Reality shows never pan out well for professionals, unless you count the guy that married Jennifer Hudson

Doesn't it seem a little odd that the dropoff goes all the way from Nebraska (3.28) to Yale (1.50)? What, did they poll two kids at Yale, one saying 2 and one saying 1?

24 is right. In law school the harder you work the more diminished your returns. Law school exams test the ability to regurgitate law and distinguish facts. Most everyone admitted to a respectable law school can do that easily. But if you introduce a time limit and throw in a 15 paragraph fact set, it's almost impossible. That's why these exams are an art not a science. Some of us have the ability and some of us don't and there's not much the have-nots can do about it. So relax. Memorize black letter law with an outline or a list, go to class, and don't fret.

37: Want a cookie?

dumb statistics, or dumbest statistics?

After I finished 1L and realized I was not going to get a job, my studying levels really plummeted.

I do have max 3 level h@XorZ achievements on Xbox Live, though.

34- you and I treated it similarly.

I'M FREAKING OUT ABOUT THE NY BAR. WHEN ARE RESULTS COMING OUT? MY JOB OFFER DEPENDS ON MY PASSING! OMG!

- unsecure 2009 grad

36, congratulations on passing the bar on the first try. That is awesome.

This data suggests to me that this data is useless.

It seems odd that N.C. Central ranked dead last in the 2007 and 2008 polls and second to last in the 2009 poll, but somehow jumps to #11 in this year's poll.

Data manipulation? Small sample size? Worthless Survey? Probably all of the above.

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/10/princeton-rev-2.html
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/10/princeton-rev-2.html
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/10/princeton-review-law-school-rankings-which-students-study-the-most-and-least.html

If you follow the link and look at the rankings from the 3 years before this one, you'll find:

1. The top ten are always about the same.
2. Yale is always very near or at the bottom.
3. Everything else shifts too dramatically every year to make any generalizations about the schools (e.g., in one of the past rankings, Loyola-Chicago is in the bottom 25).

49: Agreed. If you're studying more than say 4-5 hours per day, you're going to be a mess (probably anxious, stressed out, and the like) and you're probably wasting a lot of time repeating stuff, studying inefficiently, etc. At most, you maybe need 1-1.5 hours per class, not counting bigger projects like legal writing assignments.

As other posters have pointed out, I think this is why students with families often do better in law school. They can't afford to waste their entire days rereading the same material over and over again. Instead, they've learned to do their reading, study a bit, and be done with it for the day.

Cornell HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

39,

Or the far-more-prevalent stereotype of cornell's being a TTT.

No wonder all the YLS kids become professors. They can't handle the hours of private practice.

No, seriously, I agree with the commenter who said there's something fishy about the sudden dropoff. Also, no way a bunch of the people I know study that hard until finals week, so there'd have to be one person studying 14 hours for every 4 studying 2 hrs/day. And why would people at SLS study that much harder than people at YLS? With the small class size and no grades, SLS people don't need to do that well either.

Guys at my high used to only study an hour and a half a day all the time, not be able to pass the bar, and still get pandered to by the highest levels of the power structure here in the US. It was no big deal.

Hmm...no grades, no class rank, and an unearned presumption of being a capable lawyer simply by attending the school...wonder why Yalies study only 1.5 hours a day.

And yet, despite its students' own admitted lack of work ethic, somehow Yale is ranked number 1 in US News and World Distort, and its students are considered among the "best and the brightest." What a crock. At least Harvard has the decency to rank its students to separate the grossly incompetent from the future criminal-enabling yes men.

Of course, the grossly incompetent still miraculously get employed thanks to the incestuous revolving-door BigLaw policies, but no matter. And you wonder why BigLaw is handing out pink slips like Halloween candy these days...

This post is directed towards commenter no. 54:

The fact that you do not already know whether you have passed or not clearly indicates you did not go to a premier/preeminent law school

60-61: Well, you know, there's so much to do in lovely Ithaca, especially during their nine months of winter, that I just can't imagine why Cornell Law students would be studying so much!

I graduated #2 from a T-25.

I studied 10 hours per day, 6 - 7 days per week, every week, every year of law school. I always suspected others were enjoying their lives and not doing this, but I did it anyway.

What did it get me? Unemployment.

I really wish I could go back, treat studying like a job (and not an obsession), and just be satisfied with the occasional A-.

Moral of my story: Don't throw away your mid-20's because you're obsessed with getting "summa" on your diploma. It seems so meaningless after 3 years of hell. Especially now, when employers aren't hiring anyway.

Partner Emeritus,

Would you please kindly permit me to pleasure myself with your mouth and rectum, please?

Shafeef

64: You do realize that Harvard switched to the same ridiculous pass-fail grading system as Yale and Stanford have, right? It was basically Harvard's paranoia that if it was the only one of HYS with grades, it would start losing more students to Y and S (it announced its switch almost immediately after Stanford did).

Guess I should have gone to law school after all. Man, I worked harder in undergrad than you guys did in law school. So much for all you whiners complaining about how you "killed yourselves" for 3 years!

To 67:
If you graduated # 2 from a legit Top 25 and don't have a job, you either haven't tried or only applied at Vault 10 firms in a 5-block radius in Manhattan. Or possibly you didn't do any summer clerkships/ anything at all while in school besides study for class.

Really, what's your whole story - were you fired for slacking off once empolyed? Did you look at non-NYC jobs?

No way a #2 at a Top 25 is unvoluntarily unemployed after graudation and bar.

re Cornell, it's all professor summers' fault

57- I noticed that too, but I can say that the last year NCCU's enrollment doubled in both the day and evening classes. And the school probably pushed for us to complete this survey. If this resulted from the one survey I got last year, I think I was getting an email from the Dean several times a week or maybe even every day, reminding us to complete the survey by a certain date. I think I finally did it to get the emails to stop.

- 36

(Oh and a thanks to the person who said congrats on passing the Bar. I was pretty excited. Now I'm just not employed in the legal sector yet because I want to work in a small firm and no one is hiring. Ugh! )

Did this survey define "studying"? Outside of 1L year, I can't say that I did any "studying;" at least to the extent that the term implies thoroughly reading and digesting the assigned material. In 2L and 3L years, I simply skimmed the material to keep up with class discussion and did a little book-briefing when I was on call. I would hardly call that "studying." Nor would I call the intense cram session that I regularly engaged in two weeks before finals "studying."

67 - I had the exact opposite experience during law school. Granted I worked during law school, but after I figured out the system I almost never studied on a daily basis - perhaps a little skmming before class. Exams consisted of nutshells cover to cover (and I once dropped a class because they did not make a nutshell for that subject). Graduated from my T14 with a 3.28 and am working at a V25.

That's a long way of saying that law school is what you make of it - stressers will study like crazy, lazy people will coast. Just find what works for you and make sure to leave some time for a life. As 67 points out, we work in a very "there but for the grace of God" profession. I could just as easily as 67 be sitting here unemployed, and it would have little to do with the hours I put in during law school.

To 71:

I was no-offered from my summer job (along with half the class).

Do you have *any* idea how bad the job market is now? A firm that recently laid off 20 attorneys is not interested in hiring *anyone* regardless of class rank.

It's not that I bomb interviews -- hell, I haven't even gotten an interview with a firm. I landed some District Court clerkship interviews, but it was the same story each time: "We had over 2000 applicants this year, I am interviewing 15 people for 1 spot." Guess what? I wasn't that one spot . . .

I will admit that I have not sought out small litigation jobs yet -- but I focused my law school career entirely on Corporate, Securities, and Tax, and I never took any trial or litigation-related class whatsoever. My undergrad degree is split between two very technical, very business-related majors. It will be nearly impossible for me to argue that I want to practice litigation.

"It will be nearly impossible for me to argue that I want to practice litigation. "

If that's getting you down, then don't be a litigator.

67/ 76:
71 again. Those are all valid points, and I admire you for sticking to your guns on wanting to do corporate and securities work. Still, I think you have aptly assessed the current demand for newby associates in that field. Just not going to happen for a year or so. I'd encourage you to keep on looking, you never know what might come up.

I'm in a clerkship right now for mildly similar reasons (left my medium sized non-Vault-100 firm to do an LL.M. in corporate work, probably a bad idea, but whatever. Nobody was hiring after graduation in May, but I was lucky to get this clerkship - with a magistrate in a district court. It pays, and hopefully I'll get back to corporate work someday . . . someday.)

67/76: Can't Career Services at your T25 law school help at all? You're literally the #2 grad of a class. You probably have a ridiculous stack of accomplishments and awards: Coif, #2 GPA overall, #1/#2 GPA for 1L, 2L, 3L, Law Review, Law Review E-Board position, Best in X Class, 3.9X GPA, etc. I know the market sucks right now, but with those accomplishments from a relatively solid law school (almost everything in the T25 is pretty good), you'd have to figure someone would bite, even if it's not the caliber of firm you saw yourself at initially.

78:

67, 76 here.

This is quite humorous. Our stories are shockingly similar, but I can't give out anymore information on why because people will know who I am.

Anyway, good luck to you! Thanks for the kind words.

79:

I am not trying to come off as a poor soul here. Career services is doing their best, and I still am interviewing for clerkships (both those are looking less and less likely).

I am sure I will find SOMETHING in the future. I don't even care about "caliber" of firm at this point -- I just do not want to do litigation. I have neither the background nor the personality for it. But if I can't find anything by this Spring, I will polish off my grandstand and set out to be a litigator I guess.

How did NC Central go from #170 in 2008 to #11 in 2009?

I went to Villanova, finished top 10% and studied about 7.5 hours all semester.

67/76:

You might try criminal work. I know doing DUIs and traffic tickets seems pretty low for a top grad, but you've hit the nail on the head of reality here: civil work/job opportunities has mostly dried up. Criminal work is relatively low stress, it pays pretty well (I suggest getting paid up front), and there's always a demand. Putting an ad in your local phonebook and putting up a website is cheap and easy. Hanging around the courthouse and waiting for people to ask if you're a lawyer and can take their case is free and easy. Malpractice insurance for a crim. lawyer is cheap.

The beauty of that path is that you will get ridiculous amounts of courtroom experience; so if corporate doesn't pick up in the next couple of years, you'll be able to legitimately seek litigation jobs.

Villanova students probably do spend a lot of time studying. Really, what they do is sit in their new law library and wonder why they did not go to Temple and save a bundle of $$$$. So, they are studying, but, they are studying why they decided to go to Villanova.

I mean, cmon, their they have an Acting Dean because the last Dean was ended up a material witness in a prostitution ring prosecution.

That makes your decision to go there even more dificult to justify.

My advice-transfer to Temple.

As for Ivy League students studying little, one poster had it right. With grade inflation and simple Pass/Fail or whatever the system is that avoids letter/number grades, why bother? You will get a decent job upon graduation. You may even get to be President or First Lady or something. Cool......

I went to a T15, and what I suspect about most of the "top" law schools is that the students LOVE to pretend that they get decent to amazing grades by barely studying and going out all the time. In reality, they're in the library at 6 am, in between classes, and until 10/11 pm, and went out three times at the beginning of the semester and then weren't heard from again until after finals. It's an image smart people like to project. It makes sense that they have to study just as hard as students at lesser schools (who, let's be honest, are generally dumber) because the people they're competing with are all just as smart.

86: bingo.

85: Mind you, less than half the Ivy League law schools (Yale, Harvard) have pass-fail grading systems -- Columbia, Penn, and Cornell don't.

Cornell's law school is Ivy League? I thought that their law school was dropped from Ivy League status.

Where are the statistics which show the % of students at the school who actually took the survey?

Yale law students have no incentive to study. Grades are pass/fail, and they believe that the gates to the universe are open for them by mere virtue of attending Yale. This cannot be farther from the truth, but judges and law firms continue to perpetuate the myth to some degree. Yale law students are no better or worse than anyone else, but they certainly have no incentive to work hard.

I assume this applies to 1Ls only. If any 3Ls are "studying" more than an hour per day they are in severe need of a cock punch.

89: If I may quote from A Civil Action:

- What? Never been here before, what kind of Harvard man are you?
- The Cornell kind.
- Cornell? I thought you went to Harvard? I'm sure somebody said that you went to Harvard! Cornell!
- Yes.
- Well, listen, Cornell is... is a damn good school. Damn good.

86:

Correct except for the idea that students at "lesser schools" are "generally dumber." Admission into a "top school" hinges on three things: 1) undergrad GPA; 2) LSAT; and (to a lesser extent) 3) connections. None of those require intelligence. I've met far too many dithering idiots from "top schools" to believe any longer that such schools have a higher grade of student.

94: sure, undergrad GPA and LSAT don't "require" intelligence, but you can be damn sure the two are positively correlated.

I have pretty severe ADD, because I would only be able to deal with reading about 1 case in a sitting, then I would have to take a break, go on facebook, goof around, etc. Then back at it. As a result, I probably spent about 8 hours a day at the library, but only 4 were productive. It sucked. Now that I am practicing, I am doing very well, mostly because researching for real clients keeps me interested.

85 - Temple must have an excellent legal writing program. Perhaps the extra $$$ at Villanova may have been worth it in your case.

85,
Your grammar reeks of in-state tuition.
-VLS

69--

Thank you for the update--I was not aware of that. This only serves to further bolster my characterization of Harvard as an anti-meritocratic cesspool of aristocratic FTT hacks. Of course, BigLaw and the federal judiciary will never see through this joke of a system, because they're also full of FTT secret-handshaking blue bloods.

I also point out that the "grading systems" of the other FTTs are closet pass/fail systems. For example, NYU's median grade is over a 3.4--well over a B+. If you don't believe me, read the grade distribution on the transcript. So, basically everyone who graduates from there has at least a B/B+ average, and over a third have over an A- average. It would be more honest to simply pass everyone than utilize this shallow, FTT Lake-Wobegon-where-every-kid-is-above-average BS.

That Cornell hours number is utter horseshit. A very small minority of the school studies that much.

95:

Or in my case, there's a stronger correlation between beer and undergrad GPA than there is between intelligence and undergrad GPA. I nailed the LSAT (pure luck) and finished at the top end of my class at a "lesser school," (the only time I've ever exerted any effort in school) and I'm sitting on an offer from a "top firm" (albeit, with my fingers crossed). I can't imagine I'm the only one. Nor can I imagine that I'm the only one who doesn't buy the facade of "elite law schools." They're mostly all the same, as are all of the students that go to them. Sure, there's a big difference between Cooley and Yale students, but there's not a significant difference between Iowa and Yale or Baylor and Columbia. If you don't see that, then you're deluding yourself - I see examples of law school parity almost every day.

- 94

No one of any distinction has graduated from Cornell.

86,

Maybe the summa students, but if you think that's most of the student body at at T14 you're sadly mistaken.

There's always those couple at the top of the class that put in hours like that, but most don't, at any school.

I made the observation my first couple weeks in law school that there's now way I'm competing for the 3 A's they give out to 90 people, because I refuse to spend all my waking hours studying. So instead I went and got a job during the day in the field I intended to end up in. Now, when I interview, they don't even ask for my transcript because of 3 years of experience, while the summa cum on your faces are clawing all over each other for the 5 openings at big law.

Mystal--Its you thats "really dumb".

99- You are way off. If you look at that same transcript addendum you'll see that before the curve change, only ~4.5% had an A- average or above. The new curve will slightly up that but no way it gets above 10%, and certainly nowhere near 33%.

103,

I'm going to have to disagree with you. At least at the school I went to the vast majority of my friends/acquaintances fit that mold. I never understood why people were ashamed to admit that they worked hard to get where they were. I also never understood why they thought they were fooling anyone.

Apropos of nothing in particular, after attending 3 crim law classes taught by a "feminist" who (no shit) objected to the noun "man-hole-cover" as sexist, I skipped all remaining classes, studied zero hours per day for crim law, spent 15 hours before the exam with an over-the-counter crim law outline, and was one of only two in the class to ace the exam. (No doubt because I was uncontaminated by the professor’s drivel.)

BTW, the professor's surname was Wildman, and she was widely referred to as Ms. ‘Wildperson’.

NYU is the Skajjafragis Jankiosis of T1 law schools.

91, you're WRONG re: "Yale law students are no better or worse than anyone else..."

They are much, much worse: Half are legacy students, so their cognitive abilities are irrelevant to their admission, and the other half are affirmative action appointees... so their cognitive abilities are also irrelevant to their admission.

Perhaps the dozen or so students who got in on merit are the exception.

For perhaps the first time, Elie is right about something. We did bang Yale undergrads and go to Foxwoods to pass the time. Well played.

YLS grad, and I can confirm that I did almost no studying to speak of. Nor, so far as I could tell, did most anybody else.

Crack open a Gilbert's two days before the final, and you are gtg.

107,

Then you attended law school with an entire class of gunners, which I still find difficult to believe, (unless it happens to be Cornell.)

I went to a T10 school and I feel pretty safe saying no one habitually worked the 18 hours a day you're claiming. That's not respectable hard work, that's obsessiveness.

A few probably habitually put in 60+ hour weeks. Of the few I know did this, most ended up Summa graduates. I graduated cum laude, almost magna, and didn't do 60 hour weeks by a long shot. Counting class time I maybe did 40 a work week + 4-5 hours on Sunday afternoons.

so...Cornell was the only T14 in the study-happy 10. That's probably because there is nothing else to do in Ithaca, NY. But the real significance of this revelation is that students at Cornell (who are at least somewhat comparable to the students at Yale, having missed maybe a paltry 5-10 more questions on the LSAT than they) are studying 4 hours a day more than their Yale counterparts. Which one would you rather hire? Me, I would hire a Stanford grad.

--SLS 2L (rejected from Yale ;)

Students at top law schools really aren't much smarter than other law students. Think about it. Easily the most crucial factor is doing well on the LSAT:

There's a circular picnic table with twelve seats. Tommy sits directly across from Sally, who sits next to Johnny, who sits two seats away from Shaniqua with a bag of potato chips. Where does Jimmy sit, and is he eating pretzels or ginger snaps? (Hurry, time is ticking!)

If you did really well on this nonsense, congrats. You're now at Yale. But just realize it has very little to do with intelligence or the practice of law.

You guys forget that Villanova students have strong work ethics and are have high standards or morality a la Mark Sargent.

You guys forget that Villanova students have strong work ethics and are have high standards of morality a la Mark Sargent.

Advice for T25:
(1) Do enough to get a B+
(2) Be social (get involved in student groups/clinics/go out for beers)
(4) Start working connections for a job WAY before OCI (2 weeks after 1L year ends)
(5) Profit!!!

The key is not to get caught up in the rat race. This may work for some, but it wasn't how I worked. I had no interest chasing those people doing 10 hours a day/6 days I week. You need to be pragmatic (especially now) to stand out. Get in with profs on a friendly basis, keep in touch with old job contacts, make friends, study hard. Make it hard for people to say no to you (don't be pushy). This is how I got my job - everything just came together. I feel bad for the kids who put in all the time for studying, followed the deadlines like lemmings for OCI, are on law review and have no job.

First the Mark Sargent scandal and now this? seriously Elie, why the grudge against Villanova? Perhaps because they wait-listed your application and then denied your admission?

Villanova actually is in a good place right now.....brand new, impressive law school building, with the chance to appoint a brand new dean.

115,

Jimmy sits on your face and sharts while eating boston baked beans.

--178 LSAT

121: posting the "178" reeks of douchebaggery.

115's comment is on point.

112 here ... also y'all should come to terms with the fact that YLS students aren't just sitting on a lucky LSAT score. They're soundly thumping the bell curve on undergrad GPA, accomplishments, professor recs, etc. It's a multi-front beating, punctuated by some AA nods.

LSAT = your value as a human being. 115 you suck.

Smart people don't have to study that much. There was this one girl at my law school who studied the entire day from the moment the library opened, until the moment it closed. I was not impressed by her dedication, I was impressed by how dumb she must be to need such dedication.

NC Central made it up on the list because it probably had a higher response rate this year. Especially if this is the survey the Dean was emailing us about for weeks on end. Increased enrollment this year + more "encouragement" from the school to complete the survey + no idea how to make the emails stop without completing the survey = higher response rate (and likely more students reporting who study a lot).

I love it how the high scoring LSAT people hate to hear how the LSAT score is really, honeslty, just a number. It was a test with silly games and silly reading passages. Really. That's all it was. Honestly. But it's fun watching them scream over it.

97-98:

That is the best defense you can muster for endorsing Villanova? 85's grammar? Jokes about state school pedigrees?

You are in a dream world if you think VU Law is on an upswing. It continues to slide in the rankings. It is the stilted little school that tried but could not make it into the next tier.

And didn't Temple have a higher pass rate on the July 2009 bar than Villanova?

Finally, let us know when that search for the new Dean is complete. Try to pick one that does not frequent prostitutes and waits to own up to it until after it hits the newspapers.

Villanova is the Rosemont College of law schools. No one else reading this blog gets that comparison, but, I know that 97 and 98 will.

97, 85 here. My response is that VLS must have wonderful typing and proofreading classes. Yes, I neglected to edit my post. But, we all know what I said is true- bad editing and all.

By the way, typing and proofreading are the duties performed by our secretarial staff. seems as though you are very proficient in those areas as well-good for you! we are always looking for good secretarial help.

Glad to se that VLS focuses on form over substance. That will really win you cases in the future.

Don't be such a snob. Those kids in state schools will clean your clock in a courtroom. But, then again, Jim Beasely did not go to VLS.

I suspect you will do well handling Estate work at a nice liitle firm in Norristown. You can apply all of your proofreading skills on someone's will.

Good luck!

This does not appear to be the most scientific study. Yale students appear to have studied 2 hours less in 2009 (1.50) than in 2008 (3.50) I'm also surprised NYC based students aren't at the bottom, given their location and number of bars/clubs/etc in close proximity, but not surprised by UCLA/USC's position given their location and weather. Also, Harvard's position near the bottom seems surprising.

http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv3/groups/Public/@nyu_law_website__students__student_affairs/documents/Documents/ECM_DLV_010203.pdf

To further demonstrate my claims of anti-meritocracy, at NYU (beginning Fall 2008), the target in any given class is 31% A+/A/A-. If you include B+, the target becomes 57%. I find it highly unlikely that an A- average is only 4.7% of the class given this distribution, unless the students are so inconsistent that the exams are more or less based upon luck. I haven't even seen a 5% A- average in schools that cap A/A- grades at 25%, let alone over 30%. But if NYU is special in that it's students are more inconsistent than a politician, I rest my case that the NYU diploma isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

The change was instituted because, according to the admin, allegedly NYU students were at a disadvantage relative to other schools. Let me put that in real world language: "Our grade inflation isn't high enough, so we're going to make it REALLY inflated to match everyone else's."

NYU=FTT. Prosecution rests.

I'm at Illinois in my 1L year. I study way more than 1.5 hours per day. I'd multiply it by a factor of 3?

131 looks right. 1Ls at NYU cannot get anything lower than B-.

Study during law school? I was too busy playing WoW.

As a student at VLS, let me just say that there's no way people are studying 7.5 hours a day around here. The library is empty on the weekends and in the evenings, except for during finals.

Also after seeing the above posts, I wish I went to NYU -- we could use some grade inflation over here at VLS where the curve is not so helpful.

I study about as much as the Villanova students claim to. I don't think its infeasible.

My 1L year, first semester, I probably studied 2-3 hours a day (maybe a solid hour if you subtract time spent on facebook, espn, nytimes, gchat) and my first semester grades reflected it.

Second semester, I studied much more, and my grades improved consequently. Now, in my 2L year, I am studying more than virtually all of my friends.

Things are dire out there; I go to a solid law school, where a great amount of big firm and government lawyers in the region went, and barely anyone I know got summer associate gigs for the summer. Of the 3L's, almost none of them have offers for next year.

I feel like the only advantage of this downturn is that its going to be a 3 year game for those of us who aren't in the T14 schools. I know that I can do well, and I can do poorly based on how much time I put in, so I may as well work my ass off.

If if doesn't work out, and I end up $70k in debt and jobless (which is quite likely), then I'll have wasted some time and effort, but at least I won't be kicking myself that I could've done more.

Plus, I live walking distance to about 20 bars, so its not a problem to meet up with my friends at 11, instead of calling it a day at 7 like I used to.

I definitely studied about 7 hours a day during 1L. When you're not at a school where they hand out jobs like we eat cheesesteaks, that's what you're forced to do. I'm sure the only people who actually answered the questioner were 1Ls.... let's be real people.

Seriously though Elie, why do you hate on Villanova so much? Have you ever even visited the main line (or Philadelphia for that matter)? Yeah, we study too much and had a dean who liked hookers and to hit "reply all"... but what's wrong with comic relief. Did a Villanova grad stoop your mom or somethin?

Work ethic goes a long way once the silver spoon is taken away...

Nova 2L

I have an idea. Let's eliminate law school altogether. People can take the LSAT, and if they score above 170, they are automatically given a job in BigLaw (where you really don't need to know any actual law anyway). Everyone who doesn't score 170 can just get on with their lives and do something else. No debt, no regrets.

I went to one of the so-called "bottom 5" schools some years ago. Study 1.5 or even 3 hours a day? Yeah, right. Maybe an hour a day tops except for some cram periods before finals as a 1L. After that? Zero studying 2L or 3L.

Why? The moment you figure out that what you learn in law school (a) has nothing to do with what is tested on the bar exam (thus, bar review) and (b) has even less to do with the actual practice of law, you find better things to do, which is virtually anything. I figured thhis out after my first semester.

So...if at Yale, get out of New Haven. UIUC? Get the hell out of Urbana and thank your clout for getting you in to UI Law. Nebraska? Ditto sans clout. UT? Have fun in Austin, hit the lakes, party, etc. USC? Ditto plus beaches, ski slopes and generally hanging out in LA for three years. The "bottom-dwellers" got it right.

Hell, I had a classmate who finished top 25% and landed a BigLaw gig and passed the bar without even showing up once for all of 2L and 3L. In retrospect, that was my "smartest" classmate.

135: I went to VLS. You are right about their grading. It does nothing to help you compete with students from other schools. They still fail to realize that their curve places all of their students at a major disadvantage.

What then happens is their graduates can't land as many decent jobs right out of law school. They end up at a place where they learn nothing and soon they end up leaving the field out of frustration.

It happened to a number of my friends. I lucked out with a clerkship even though my grades were only top third.

That's why their alumni contributions are lousy. Just not enough alumni making money in law.

My advice is if your grades are not great, do not despair but see if you can land a clerkship with a federal agency if not judge. That may lead to a permanent position which, in this economy, is a safe bet. When you get experience, you can move on to a private sector position if you want to make money.

As for VLS, a great prophet once said, "Forgive them father, they know not what they do."

That about sums up VLS in my mind.

The average student at Yale reads three pages a minute with full comprehension and retention. With this speed, that are not only able to do their assignments in an hour and a half but read full copies of the opinions as well as all the underlying precedent and all the cases and articles mentioned in the notes. The remainder of the day is spent mastering Bubble Spinner.

141: you're a crackhead if you really believe that. I've met a few Yale law students and quickly thought to myself: "Wow, he was lucky to get into that school." Not once did I think: "Wow, he is really smart." It's all a crapshoot. Some people win the lottery, others lose. That's life.

138--

Your proposal is actually more or less what BigLaw currently does. BigLaw hires predominantly from FTTs, which predominantly accept people with 170+ LSATs. Amazingly enough, BigLaws are full of hacks who can't reason their way out of a cardboard box, especially at upper-level management. Coincidence?

If you truly believe that law school performance has some bearing on the ability to practice law (which I do, though I think grades are limited in their predictive ability), then you should be the last person to advocate for the LSAT being a sole determiner. On good years, it has a 30% correlation coefficient for law school performance--for those of you who enjoy theoretical statistics, that means 91% of variation in data is unaccounted for in regression analysis. The LSAT is one of the most grossly under- and over-inclusive tests in existence--almost as bad as the old SAT, which set the gold standard for arbitrary tests.

I went to Cornell with a 170 LSAT - got accepted elsewhere, but my mom and dad both went and met there so had a sense of obligation. I will say that 5.5 hours a day is more common your 1L year and gets less in your 2L and 3L year. It's rigorous and there are some old school really socratic professors like summers, so you are sort of scared sh*tless into making sure you know everything before class. GO BIG RED!!!!!!!

I went to Cornell with a 170 LSAT - got accepted elsewhere, but my mom and dad both went and met there so had a sense of obligation. I will say that 5.5 hours a day is more common your 1L year and gets less in your 2L and 3L year. It's rigorous and there are some old school really socratic professors like summers, so you are sort of scared sh*tless into making sure you know everything before class. GO BIG RED!!!!!!!

Why the hell would you study for if you don't get grades? that's why Yale is at the bottom and suggests that Yale students are not intellectually curious but only does it for the grade - I wouldn't hire them...

170-171: So basically, your parents suffered there, so you had to as well, even though you could have went to a better, more laid-back school? Unless they were footing the law school bill, not a good call whatsoever. If your parents went to and met at Podunk State, would you be going there for law school too?

And, scaring students shitless is what they have to do at TTTs to ensure their school doesn't get saddled with a 20% bar passage rate or something embarrassing like that which might threaten accreditation. You can tell me what that says about Cornell having to do the same.

Whoops, should be 145-146, not 170-171.

#128 - You say VLS "continues to slide in the rankings."
I don't mean to question your research skills, but VLS moved up 7 places in the rankings this past year. It's now ranked higher than the other similarly positioned schools in the area, Temple and Rutgers. Villanova is 61, Temple is 65, and Rutgers is 77.

I'm not saying that these differences are really substantial, but since VLS moved from 68 to 61 in one year, it's clear that they're moving up in the rankings, not sliding.

comments on NYU's grading is incorrect. First of all, there are 2 systems: the grades pre fall 2008 and 2008 and onward. they upped it slightly fall 2008, but not much.

currently 57% of the class can get a B+ or better. no more than 20% gets A- or better. B+es therefore run from 43 percentile through 81 percentile. thus the *average* B+ is around 62 percentile, in other words, almost top third. So a B+ average or 3.33 is better than the midpoint. all the stuff from above anti NYU people is just wrong.

see
http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv3/groups/Public/@nyu_law_website__students__student_affairs/documents/Documents/ECM_DLV_010203.pdf

note also, that pre fall 2008, the person right around the midpoint got a B (or perhaps the lowest B+ in the class, somewhat depending on the prof). Therefore the person exactly in the middle of the class would have about half B and half B+, GPA around 3.18

again, wrong info on NYUs grading system

All the time most of you chumps spend on ATL is the time that VLS students spend studying...I don't think it's that hard to figure out Elie. Is a 10-11 hour day of work really that outrageous in law school? No wonder you gave up biglaw to write a blog.

I graduated from Yale Law School - no way do people there study only 1.5 hours a day. They study constantly, schmooze constantly, work constantly. Two of my classmates worked themselves into the hospital with exhaustion.

But it is important at Yale to PRETEND that you are not working. It is important to pretend that you are able to accomplish a lot with very little effort. But that is a lie - those are the hardest working people I've ever met.

Contrast where I went to college, where bragging about how hard and long you were working was very important. Probably the same amount of work - just a different approach.

I graduated from Yale Law School - no way do people there study only 1.5 hours a day. They study constantly, schmooze constantly, work constantly. Two of my classmates worked themselves into the hospital with exhaustion.

But it is important at Yale to PRETEND that you are not working. It is important to pretend that you are able to accomplish a lot with very little effort. But that is a lie - those are the hardest working people I've ever met.

Contrast where I went to college, where bragging about how hard and long you were working was very important. Probably the same amount of work - just a different approach.

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