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Tags: advice
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Tomorrow (or today, depending on when you get this) is my 38th birthday. I share this so that the parents of my clients will stop reacting to my pictures on Facebook by saying, “That 25 year old is the person we hired to help you???” (Yes, this has happened, despite the fact that I remain – for now – Botox-free.) Too much sharing on a law school related blog? Let me then get to the point:
I’m at a place in my life where I have wisdom to share, and not just related to how you can get into your dream law school. I find myself giving my clients and blog readers advice about relationships (how to maintain them while in law school), fashion (what to wear when visiting law schools or on job interviews), finances (how much to spend on law school), family (do they plan to work throughout their thirties or take time off to raise a family?) priorities (balancing school, work, family, fashion and relationships), and so many other topics. As I look back on the past 38 years, here is a little sampling of what I’ve learned that I hope interests you more than it bores you.
1. Applying to Law School. For those of you wondering, I did it all wrong. This is NOT where my expertise on law school admissions came from. I decided to take the LSAT one month before the June 1995 test. I had to call LSAC to register on the very last day and was on hold for something like 72 minutes – paying LONG DISTANCE rates. I was so irate when they finally picked up that they agreed to send me a check to cover the cost of the call! (See, I really am ancient). Then, I studied on my own, while working and going to summer school. I wrote a personal statement that included pretty much everything from my resume and had a high school AP history teacher write a letter of recommendation. OY VEY. I chose 3 schools to apply to: University of Miami (where I was attending college) and the two public law schools in Florida (at the time there were only two). I applied October 1st and by October 8th I’d been admitted to UM, so I sent my deposit in and that was that.
2. How I Approached Law School. I decided to go part time because I was intimidated by the people from my undergrad school who would be attending full time. I wanted some distance, and to be quite honest I hoped to get out of their shadows. Plus, I was also pursing a career in advertising at the time and wasn’t ready to commit to law. The good news is that I really hit my academic stride as a law student. It is the first time I felt confident in my academic abilities, to be honest, and the first time I really ”got it.” Choosing what was relevant, writing and thinking quickly – that was all stuff that fell nicely within my cup of tea. I soon quit my job, transferred to the full time program, and did even better each successive year. My regrets from law school are threefold: (1) that I placed too much importance on grades and expected everyone else to place importance on my grades; (2) that I spent too much time trying to be president of everything and not enough time really soul-searching about my career and networking with attorneys; (3) that I took the jobs everyone said I should take instead of the jobs that would’ve been good fits for my personality and strengths.
3. How I Approached My Career. I should never have landed in BigLaw. But I did. So I should have paid attention while I was there. Instead of worrying about why there were no women partners and why female summer associates were paired with female mentors but the male summer associates got to pow-wow with the male partners, I should have been asking someone the secrets of billing. How do I bill an hour? How long should things take me? How does this whole thing work? I did, however, end up finding two very good (non-BigLaw) careers for myself, and then a third. After law school, I took my skills from being president of everything in school and worked in higher education. Other than the endless brainstorming meetings, I rather liked higher education. I particularly loved working in admissions, promoting a law school I believed in, talking with students and prospective students, choosing which students would be risks worth taking and calling students to congratulate them when they were admitted, when they were selected for scholarships – that was all fabulous stuff. I really did love it. So, what happened? I got married and moved to Santa Barbara – therefore there was nowhere to be Director of Admissions.
This was the opportunity I needed to – finally – become a litigator. It was a small, boutique firm and I’ve got to say that I thrived. It was a casual office environment. I worked directly with sophisticated clients, got lots of good (and manic) mentoring, and learned how to make money as a lawyer. I loved taking depos, arguing motions, it was good stuff. So, what happened? I had a baby. I worked until a week before my daughter was born, even from the hospital when I had preterm labor symptoms. I worked from home for 8 days after she was born and then set up baby-central in my office. This worked for four months, and then – coincidentally – all of my cases settled and there was no more work for me. (I won’t go into whether I bought any of that, but that’s what I was told).
I took my severance and started Law School Expert. I write (two books to date). I help people make their strongest arguments for who they are and where they are going in life. I advise clients going through a stressful time in their lives. I assure them and reassure them. Steer them. I get to know them, I get to help them, I get to follow their careers and feel like I am part of their success and future accomplishments. I got a great card in the mail from a current 2L who wished me a happy birthday and told me how much I’ve meant to her. So I have to say, I’m supremely happy with how things have worked out for my career. I think the point is that there will be bumps in the road. You won’t get the job offer you thought you wanted/needed and you may get a pink slip from a job that you think defines you. And you will be able to pick yourself up – if you decide to do so – and create a life and career for yourself that is greater, more meaningful, and enriched by your past mistakes.
4. Revisiting my Attitude. For the person who reviewed my book and hung it up based on my ‘optimistic’ attitude, let me assure you that I know what it is to be a cynic. I had a turning point in law school where I walked into a professor’s office bitching about my clinical work and walked out seeing the sunshine. Why? Because he told me it was my choice. I could see the negative, I could nag at home, I could complain about what I didn’t have the opportunity to do, I could feel slighted and demoralized by not getting BigLaw jobs. Or, I could see that the sun is shining. (After all, I did go to law school in Miami. Why the hell didn’t I ever go to the beach????) I needed to have fun, to be happy, to be nice. And this realization changed my life. I changed my personal life significantly and drastically. I decided to be different from myself. And I was. And I still am. But I feel more like myself as a result.
5. Choosing Friends. This is important. Surround yourself with people who are supportive. Before law school, during law school, and after law school. Find those people who tell you what you need to hear while acknowledging what you want to hear. Who don’t make you feel “less than.” Who don’t expect you to be perfect. Who give you great ideas. Who stick by you, even when it’s inconvenient. Eliminate people from your life who bring you down without good reason. Unsubscribe from their feeds, texts, calls, and stop taking lunch with them. Walk away. And when you find someone who appreciates you without the fancy credentials and when you still drive a crappy car, that’s a good person to keep my your side. Unless the person has a thing against people with nice cars, because then he won’t be a true friend ten years down the road when you pull up in your BMW.
So, how will I spend my birthday? I’m getting dressed up and meeting friends for breakfast. Then I’m hoping for a little walk on the beach alone, but of course I might choose to shop instead. Then I’ll be with my daughters for the afternoon. For dinner, I’ll probably pick up Mexican food and then be forced to politely pick at the gluten-laden, buttercream frosted cake my mother in law will bring over even through I haven’t eaten gluten or dairy in over a year.
If anyone from ATL reads this post, I’m sure it will become viral drivel. But I believe in this stuff. I’d love to hear if you also believe that we can learn from ourselves and from our elders, and -as of tomorrow- I’m one of the later.
Categories: Advice, Career, Hiring a Law School Admission Consultant, Law Careers, Law School Admission Trends, LSAT, Uncategorized
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I’m going to be posting some excerpts from my new book, The Law School Decision Game: A Playbook for Prospective Lawyers, now available. It just came out last week and is under $12 on Amazon. I look forward to your comments and questions about the book.
I surveyed more than 250 attorneys from across the country to provide you with information that will help you decide (1) whether to go to law school, (2) where to go to law school, (3) what you can expect from a law degree, and (4) how to make yourself employable as a lawyer. Today, I want to share the results of the following question -
What do ATTORNEYS say are the 5 Most Important Factors in Choosing a Law School?
#1: Location near job and internship opportunities. (74% of lawyers listed this among the Top 5)
#2: Bar passage rate (72%)
#3: Supportiveness of faculty and administration (69%)
#4: U.S. News rankings (67%)
#5: Cost of attendance; and area of specialization (tied at 55%)
(see page 206 of The Law School Decision Game for more about this data and other conclusions about choosing a law school).
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: applying to law school, choosing a law school, cost of law school, law school admission books on kindle, law school and the economy, Law School Books, law school debt, law school financial aid, Law School Rankings
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The Law School Decision Game: A Playbook for Prospective Lawyers includes essential advice
from 300+ attorneys for anyone considering law school or beginning a career in law.
Ann Levine, the trusted expert in law school admission, is releasing a new book aimed at those trying to make a decision about law school in these uncertain times. With lower numbers of graduate school applicants being reported in the news and recent graduates sharing their tales of unemployment and crushing debt, people are asking hard questions about whether to pursue their dreams of attending law school. These future lawyers need a good place to get answers and The Law School Decision Game: A Playbook for Prospective Lawyers delivers. Ann Levine surveyed and interviewed more than three hundred lawyers in order to pass on their advice to prospective law students, current law students and new lawyers already planning their careers. Their real life stories make this book the ultimate tool for making the best decision about law school and building a career in law.
Available now on Amazon, BUY TODAY to help make it a best seller!
Categories: Advice, LSAT, LSAT Prep, Uncategorized
Tags: Last minute LSAT tips, October LSAT
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Ten Days Until the LSAT: Everything You Need to Know
I feel like I’m giving a lot of LSAT advice right now, being asked:
- Am I ready?
- What do I do for the next 10 days?
- How do I calm down?
- Is December too late?
- Should I withdraw?
- How will I know whether to cancel my score?
I know the advice I always give in response to these questions. For example, just this week a client asked me:
“I’m still having trouble finishing on time, any tips on that? I read somewhere that on the day of the exam, the adrenaline rush takes over and people usually finish earlier than their prep tests?” I responded, “Just do the best you can on each question, knowing you might be sacrificing other questions for timing. Check through each section quickly and see which ones you think will be hardest to answer. But practice this strategy so you don’t get freaked out on test day.”
I always like to know what advice other people would give since I’m the Law School Expert, not the LSAT expert : ) So I consulted someone who I consider to be an LSAT expert, my friend Noah Teitelbaum of Manhattan LSAT. And after his great advice, below, I’ve included tips from some of my Facebook friends who responded to a call for last minute LSAT advice. Also, if you haven’t heard it before, you MUST spend 45 minutes in the next few days listening to my Blog Talk Radio show/podcast on last minute LSAT tips, featuring Noah on the panel of experts.
Without further ado, here is Noah:
It’s about 10 days until the October LSAT – 240 hours, 14,400 minutes, or 864,000 seconds – but let’s not spend our time counting! If you’re freaking out, here are some ideas to help keep you chugging along smoothly into a great LSAT score:
Now:
1. Focus on the main event. Right about now we see on our LSAT forums lots of questions about unimportant topics and students freaking out about the hardest LSAT questions in written history. Rare question and game types are rare! If you find them tough, that’s not a big deal. What is important is that you are able to get the easy and common ones correct without wasting too much time, leaving you enough time for the rare question or game. And, games are generally more consistent today than in days of yore, so don’t freak out if you think CD game or the Zephyr airlines game is hard – they were! Focus on capitalizing on your strengths, not trying to do an emergency patch-up of a minor weakness.
2. Clean up your act. Time to switch to O’Doul’s for the next 10 days, and start exercising (exercise has been linked to neural growth). And, create a schedule for yourself. Most people should be doing just 2-3 more practice LSATs in the last 10 days, though there are some strange people who do better doing an LSAT every day until test day. Think about what generally makes you stay on the top of your mental game, write out a schedule, and execute. For most people, this means a steady diet of 2 section practice sets, deep review, replay of tough questions, and a full, 5-section practice LSAT sprinkled in here or there.
3. Go mental. Before an Olympic diver takes a dive, she imagines the whole process, from start to finish. That way, the dive is simply an execution of a plan, not something that’s being invented at that moment. Same thing for you. Consider how you’ll take this test – what you’ll do when you face a tough question, what you’ll do if the proctor screws up. Practice envisioning this before each practice test. Then, do the same thing on test day morning.
On test day:
4. Keep it real. There’s something magically disastrous that happens on test day for many people. Let’s say two people are both getting 160-164 on their practice LSATs. When Mr. Proctor says begin, Mr. 164 now is possessed with the idea that he might be able to get a 180. This is a problem. The truth is that Mr. and Ms. 164 will NOT GET A 180. Ms. 164 does a better job of controlling her passions: she aims for a 164, knowing she can get about 18 questions wrong. When she comes across a ridiculously tough question, she makes an educated guess and moves on, saving time for other questions that are tough, but doable with a bit more time. Mr. 164 instead spends 2.5 minutes on the first impossible question he faces, still gets it wrong, and is now trying to catch up. In short, go in there and know how many you want to get wrong, and get them wrong.
5. Admit it, it is hard. Unless you’re scoring well-below the national median, chances are that if you think a question is hard, most everyone else in the nation does too. There are always some geeks out there who won’t, but if we stick to thinking about the mortal population, let’s keep a cool head. It’s a tough question, lots of people will get it wrong, the question is whether you’ll get it wrong and waste a lot of time on it. Notice that this is the same advice as #1?
6. Warm-up with a warm-up, not section 1. Your brain is a muscle, and it probably isn’t used to working on Saturday morning, so bring a tough game that you’ve mastered, maybe an LR question or RC passage, read it outside the LSAT center as you sip your usual morning beverage (don’t over caffeinate!) and then crumble it up as you walk in and toss it triumphantly. Better that than using the first section as your warm-up…
7. Even if you’re going to cancel, take the test like you won’t. Keep on trucking through that LSAT. It’s always good to get the practice, and perhaps that section you bombed was an experimental one. . . And what if everyone in the nation thought that the third RC passage was completely baffling – maybe your feeble performance was better than most people’s. Give yourself the time to think things through after the LSAT – you have several days to cancel.
After test day:
8. Remember your application. Ann knows a lot more about this topic, but is everything else ready to roll? Better to focus on that then hitting refresh on Gmail, waiting for your score report.
9. Geek out. We’ll review this LSAT on Wed. October 26th – so if you’d like to use the LSAT as an opportunity to learn something for the December LSAT. Join us <http://www.manhattanlsat.com/EventShow.cfm?EID=3&eventID=634> .
THANKS SO MUCH, Noah!!!! I always love to share your tips with my readers. Below is advice from some of my Facebook friends, who have been where you are and are now very LSAT-wise:
Cat Don’t drink 9 million cups of coffee – it will only wind you up. know that there will be someone doing something annoying in your test – practice so it doesn’t phase you. breathe – in about a year you likely wont remember your score anyway.
Nick A great way to train for taking a test in a slightly noisy environment (there is always SOME sort of mumbling, fidgeting, etc. going on) when you are at home is to do practice tests with talk radio quietly on in the background. You learn/get used to tuning out background sounds.
Eva I actually completely agree with the coffee comment. If you’re the type of person who gets excessively nervous, I would actually not drink coffee at all. It makes your heart rate go up and that makes you feel more nervous than you already are. Also remember that a bad LSAT score is not the end of the world – it’s just a test.
Rebecca Play upbeat music that you like to sing along with on the way to the test. If you’re singing then you aren’t obsessing about the test or winding yourself up.
Jeff 1) take two days off of studying before the test. you don’t want to burn yourself out. 2) only study for maybe 4 or 5 hours a day MAX. after that you’ll start to lose focus… which leads to you feeling like you don’t get it… which leads to a decline in attitude… which leads to a worse score. 3) the day before the test be SURE not to sleep in. you need to be sure that you’ll be able to fall asleep the night before the test (that was my mistake the first time…) 4) read the newspaper the morning before the test to a) take your mind off the test and b) get your brain into reading mode.
Eli Remember this important thing: It’s not even close to as bad as the CA bar exam. Just keep telling yourself “hey, I can do this, at least it’s not something crazy like the bar” and then when you actually get to that time, you are allowed to freak out… just a bit.
Categories: Uncategorized
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Ok, now I need YOUR help.
I wrote a new book. I interviewed 300 lawyers (and added my own pithy insights) to share with you everything you should know before deciding to go to law school. The book covers:
- where to go to law school
- what to do during law school in order to have a job when you get out
- what different areas of law really are all about and how to decide the right path for you
- how much money lawyers make
- how hard they work.
This book has EVERYTHING you need to know before deciding that law school and a career in law are the right path for you, and to help you make smart career decisions. It’s only missing one thing: a title.
PLEASE HELP. I am offering a prize for best title. It’s a really good prize, I just haven’t decided what it is yet. But the better the idea, the better the reward because I need something brilliant.
My first book is called, “The Law School Admission Game: Play Like an Expert.” A client came up with it and I loved it. She got full credit in the book in addition to a fabulous prize.
GIVE ME YOUR BEST SHOT!!! Please send me title suggestions under the comment section of this website. And I’m on a deadline. Today is Monday, July 18 and I want all ideas by THIS FRIDAY, July 22nd.
BRING IT!
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I’m working on my next book, one that I hope will help you decide whether and where to attend law school and offering perspectives about what to expect from a career with a JD.
To make the book’s advice meaningful, I need your help. Please take 5 minutes to fill out this online survey. Your responses will help shape the direction of the book! Thank you so much!
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Ann K. Levine, Esq., former director of law school admissions for two ABA approved law schools, is a law school admission consultant and owner of Law School Expert,
