Kaplan

Even If You Told Prospective Law Students the Truth, Would They Care?

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At some point, even a lemming needs to take care of itself.

We’ve devoted a lot of coverage around here to efforts at forcing law schools to be more transparent about the true employment opportunities for law graduates. We’ve screamed at the ABA, at NALP, and at law school deans themselves. We’ve begged them to just tell the truth about jobs to would-be law students.

Maybe it’s been a colossal waste of breath. Maybe, at the end of the day, prospective law students just don’t care whether or not they’ll ever be able to get a job. Maybe trying to get them to think about their own futures before they leap into law school is as effective as trying to convince a lemming not to follow his brothers off of the cliff. Maybe they just don’t want to learn.

A new study from Kaplan asked students what factors they considered before choosing a law school. Getting a job barely made the list. I say again, getting a job barely made the list of things people consider when choosing a professional school. You simply cannot help people who won’t help themselves….

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Recent Bar Exam Results: Open Thread
AZ, CT, MI, PA, VA, WA — any others?

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Nice torso -- no wonder he gets lucky.

Almost a month has passed since our last open thread devoted to bar exam results. So we have some catching up to do.

It’s not yet November, so California and New York test takers still have some time left to wait. But if you took the Massachusetts bar exam, release of the results is imminent, according to Stuff To Do During BarBri.

(Random aside: BAR/BRI isn’t the only provider of bar exam preparation services. For a comparison of BAR/BRI, Kaplan PMBR, and BarMax, see here — including the comments.)

Stuff To Do During BarBri attributes the Massachusetts mailing, said to be taking place tomorrow, to “the grape vine allegedly originating in the Massachusetts Superior Court.” So at this point it’s still rumor.

But we do have confirmed news of bar exam outcomes from other states….

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AZ, CT, MI, PA, VA, WA — any others?“

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Admissions Officers Expect Even More Law School Applicants

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Kaplan, the prominent test prep company, conducts an annual survey of law school admissions officers. This year, those admissions people expect to be swamped by even more people clamoring to get into law school. Here’s the stat from Kaplan’s press release:

Law School Applications Continue to Climb: 56% predict an increase in applications this year, while only 6% predict a decrease – 25% predict application numbers to remain flat, while 13% were not sure.

Last year saw record or near-record numbers of applicants to law schools. So this year is going to see even more applicants? This is getting ridiculous…

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In-House Counsel v. ‘Outhouse’ Attorneys

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If the professional world were a zoo, Biglaw attorneys and in-house counsel would be kept in separate cages. They live in distinct environments and, according to a group of general counsel at the InsideCounsel SuperConference, have very different characteristics.

GCs from Kaplan Higher Education, Navistar, and Johnson Controls got together for a panel about building great in-house teams. It started with some general advice: Ask for writing samples from applicants, don’t hire applicants who use “I” during their interviews, and help to develop your workforce.

“Attorneys don’t tend to be precise and concise when they talk,” said Janice Block of Kaplan Higher Education. She has training sessions to help new hires improve their communication skills, so they can explain what they do for the company if they get stuck in the elevator with the CEO, for example.

Not surprisingly, companies are getting tons of applications for in-house positions these days. “In a market like now, we have lots and lots of people interested in joining the company,” said Jerry Okarma of Johnson Controls, a technology company based in Wisconsin. Attention, diverse candidates: “We have a hard time finding African–Americans in Milwaukee,” said Okarma.

People at the conference told me they’re seeing some amazing résumés cross their desks. People with 20 years of experience are applying for the lowest-level in-house jobs, said one in-houser.

But note well, law firm types: your experience might be a strike against you. The GCs in this session said they look at candidates with in-house experience first, and then to those with law-firm experience. One GC referred to law firms as the “outhouse.” The session included a fair amount of harping about how the animals are trained in the Biglaw outhouse…

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Which Bar Exam Prep Course is the Best?

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Graduation marks the end of grueling law school exams… and the beginning of preparing for the worst exam of your life.

Most recent grads are heading straight from law school classes into bar exam prep classes, and so 3Ls have been bombarded for the last nine months with spam informational emails from bar prep companies touting their costs, features and success rates.

A new entrant into the bar prep field this year is BarMax, an iPhone-based course that’s significantly cheaper than BAR/BRI and Kaplan. In better times, when graduates could count on new employers to foot the bill for prep courses, they likely wouldn’t have considered a tele-course, but the high numbers of grads without firm jobs may bode well for the app.

How will having a cheap choice affect the market? And how does one decide between the options?

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