Advice

From the Career Files: The Best Online Law Schools (J.D. and LL.M. Programs)

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from the ATL Career Center’s team of expert contributors. Today, Mansfield J. Park advises prospective law students on selecting an online law school.

Which are the very best online law schools?

This is hard question because there isn’t a clear ranking system — U.S. News doesn’t rank online degree programs (neither does Above the Law) — and actual first-hand information is scarce for online law schools. There isn’t much accountability at online law schools.

Let’s take a step back.

No juris doctor program at an online law school, at the moment, is going to give you the kind of career you would have if you attended a national top-tier law school like Harvard, or even a regional powerhouse (like University of Alabama if you live in Alabama).

Indeed, there are not that many online law schools, actually, that permit you to sit for any state’s bar exam. None are, at the moment, ABA-accredited (this is important because if you graduate from a law school with ABA accreditation, you can take the bar exam in any of the 50 states of the U.S.).

There are a lot more programs that offer a masters of law online if you already have a juris doctor.

So, with all of that as a warning, let me pick a couple of the best online law schools if you are dead set on getting an online law degree. Again, below, I consider juris doctor and LL.M. programs separately.

Read more at the ATL Career Center….

How To ‘Win’ Final Exams: A Law Professor’s Advice Irks A Student Who Doesn’t Think It’s A Race

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The night before my first final exam every semester in law school, I’d pop in my Rocky DVD, fast forward to the point where Rocky goes to the arena the night before, and watch through to the end. The movie reinforced my approach to law school exams.

“I can’t beat him.” But if you can go the distance, if you can still be standing by the time the exam is over, then you’ve achieved your own personal victory.

Of course, there are winners and loser every finals period. The damn things are graded on a curve. Today, we’ve got a law professor who took the time to tell his students how to “win” his upcoming evidence exam — just some standard exam tips, plus an explanation of what he particularly looks for.

Sounds nice enough? Well, not for one 3L. This student took the opportunity to post some kind of hippie screed as if law students are supposed to get together and sing kumbaya and reject competition or something.

In other words, this law student thinks law school is a damn show, she doesn’t know it’s a damn fight…

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Work/Life Balance Makes People Cry

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor is not a fan of the “having it all” concept. As she wrote in her recent (and excellent) memoir, My Beloved World (affiliate link), “having it all, career and family, with no sacrifice to either… is the myth we would do well to abandon, together with the pernicious notion that a woman who chooses one or the other is somehow deficient.”

Even though their panel had the phrase “Having It All” in the title, the participants in an interesting discussion on work/life balance at last week’s big NALP conference would probably agree. One theme that ran through the discussion was that sacrifices, on the work front or home front or both, are inevitable — and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Still, the panel’s emphasis on the need for working parents to rid themselves of guilt didn’t stop some people from shedding a few tears during the discussion….

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The Practice: Are Public Relations Firms Still Relevant?

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Yes.

Now you can go back to work, or your Xbox, or continue reading. Whatever makes your precious self happy.

After I was solo for five years, I started Tannebaum Weiss — new office space, business cards, stationery, phone number, all the bells and whistles. I know in today’s world you may wonder, “Why didn’t you just get a new laptop?,” but back then, it was okay for lawyers to operate like professionals and interact with other human beings in office buildings.

I also hired a public relations firm. I wanted to get the word out about our practice and thought this was the best way. We didn’t have Facebook or Twitter, and the media was still interested in reporting about things other than, well, what was on Facebook and Twitter. It was important to be at events where potential relationships could be started, as we couldn’t just hire some kid to tweet all day about how awesome we are. We wanted to establish the firm in the community and couldn’t do it with a Facebook Fan Page.

We retained the PR firm for one year. It was expensive. We couldn’t really afford it, but I thought it was important and that it would somehow pay for itself. Of course, this was also back in the day when investing in your law firm meant more than just finding an outlet at the local Starbucks and hoping it all worked out without having to invest a dime. It was a learning experience — from the initial interviews (we interviewed two firms) to the working relationship….

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Inside Straight: An Objective Formula For Choosing Counsel

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Although I won’t name names here (because my employer is, among other things, the insurance broker to the stars, and I can’t afford to offend clients or potential clients), I just stumbled across an article that indirectly told me how to pick outside counsel.

In a relatively high-profile situation, a government entity recently had to retain an outside law firm. The government naturally retained an outside adviser to help the government make its choice. (How else could one possibly pick counsel?)

The outside adviser — I think you’d call the outfit a management consultant, although the website left me a little confused — has lots of MBAs on staff, but there’s not a lawyer to be seen. No matter: The MBAs created a questionnaire for the law firms to fill out, and the law firm that accumulated the most points won the business.

This is great! It’s time (once again) for me to stop thinking and start copying! We’ll revamp our whole system for choosing counsel! In the future, we’ll give the law firms who want our business a form to complete. We’ll add up the points — even I can do that. And then we’ll choose the law firm with the most points, thus retaining the best firm in the world to handle our matter through an objectively defensible selection process, in case anyone ever wants to second-guess our choice of counsel.

Shoot! If only I’d gone to business school, I could have been this smart! Let’s take a look at the questionnaire, so I’ll know the form that I’m copying to choose counsel for my next case . . . .

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Inside Straight: Caring About Questions

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Sometimes, we care about questions. Sometimes, we care about answers. Sometimes, we care about both.

When you’re reporting on a situation, remember that.

I see many, many interview reports that unnecessarily include questions when the reader cares only about answers. If you’re interviewing a witness, and the witness lived the facts (and you personally know bupkis), then we really don’t care about your questions; we care only about the witness’ answers.

So, when you’re reporting on your interview of the witness, do not assign an abbreviation to your name (Mark Herrmann, hereinafter MH), an abbreviation to the witness’s name (The Witness, hereinafter TW), and then report on your questions as though they mattered:

“MH asked . . . . TW responded . . . . MH followed up by asking . . . .”

We care only about the facts — which the witness knows, and you do not — so report only the facts:

“According to the witness . . . .” Your name should appear no more than once in the entire report, so we know who conducted the interview.

That’s a situation where we care only about answers. But there are other situations where we care only about questions . . . .

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From the Career Files: Law School Scholarships & Grants — How to Finance Your Legal Education

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from the ATL Career Center’s team of expert contributors. Today, Mansfield J. Park gives some practical advice to prospective law students on how to finance their education.

Law school scholarships are the most important way you can fund your painfully expensive legal education. Law school grants are more rare and not much different than scholarships.

Otherwise, you will — as with most law students — fall back on law school loans to fund your education. Be very, very, very careful with this route. Let me say this in all caps and bold so you can hear me:

DO NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL WITHOUT A CLEAR PLAN TO FUND YOUR EDUCATION!!!

Sorry for shouting.

Read more at the ATL Career Center…

The Decision: Tempted By The ‘T14′

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Today, April 15, is Tax Day. But it’s an important day for another reason as well: it happens to be the day that some law schools want to hear back from applicants — and collect their deposit checks, of course.

Let’s close out our series of posts soliciting advice on picking a law school with three fact patterns. All of them involve at least two members of the so-called “T14,” the nation’s 14 leading law schools according to the U.S. News rankings….

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The Decision: Should I Go To Law School At All? Plus George Washington v. William & Mary

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In our last story asking you to advise a law school applicant, the 0L in question was choosing between UVA, Northwestern, and Minnesota, which offered him scholarships of different sizes. You voted in favor of Northwestern, which offered him a generous scholarship, and he took your advice.

Today we bring you a doubleheader. Our first candidate wants to know whether she should go to law school at all, given the options she faces. Our second candidate is choosing between two excellent law schools, but with different price points….

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From the Career Files: Dealing With the Press

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from the ATL Career Center’s team of expert contributors. Today, Joshua Stein gives some practical advice to lawyers on how to manage their relationship with the press.

Reporters can embarrass you. But they can also help you and your clients get your message and name out into the world, if that’s what you want.

When a reporter calls, any lawyer’s first instinct is to say “No comment.” That’s a really good first instinct, particularly for anyone except the most senior member of a legal team representing a client. For that senior lawyer, though, “no comment” might not always be the right answer at the end of the day.

Lawyers aren’t supposed to be founts of information, particularly about their client’s affairs — unless that’s what the client wants. All of that is a matter of legal ethics and client relations, and represents the first and most important element of any lawyer’s strategy in dealing with the press. It’s outside the scope of this article.

Once you get past that “gating issue,” you will sometimes want or need to talk with the press. Here are a few suggestions for how to do that….

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