Whilst poking around Facebook today, I came across a closed group called the UC Irvine School of Law Founding Class, which currently lists 26 members.
I’ve written previously on UC Irvine and how folks have speculated about their admissions, and the number seems pretty close to what has been discussed. Check it out for yourself!
By the way, I hate my mailbox. And chances are about 2,400 people who applied to UC Irvine are also learning to hate their mailboxes while waiting to hear back from California’s newest public law school.
Photo: Joe Gratz / Flickr
So you’ve gotten into the law school of your (or your parents’) dreams, and you’ve already done the dance of joy to The Killers’ ‘Human’ (or, like in my law school admittance fantasy, to Justin Timberlake’s ‘Sexy Back‘). If you’re not currently in work or in school, you’ve got four months to kill before they lock you in and throw away the key. What do you do?
In the tons of the articles I’ve read regarding the summer before your 1L semester, law school students and administrators have pretty much the same advice: relax homeslice. So, I will. But I am also of the mind that these next four months will be the stuff of fantasy (like chocolate cake that subtracts calories as you eat it … mmm) six months from now. As a result, I’ve compiled something of a 0L Bucket List: a list of things that I or other 0Ls may want to do before we take the plunge.
- Learn a new language. You may not achieve full proficiency (or even be able to ask for the women’s loo) before the end of the summer, but it may be fun to take a language class at your local community college. Or you can take a gander at the BBC’s Languages page, which has some snazzy interactive videos to help you learn French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Portugese, Chinese and snippets of other tongues.
- Go on a trip. If the price tag for college hasn’t already sent you looking for pennies underneath your sofa cushions, and you can bring yourself to part with several C-notes, you may want to consider taking a trip. And since you’re going to law school with the hope of changing the world someday (yes, I read your personal statement), it might be fun for you to go on a volunteer vacation. There are several programs out there that recruit people for one to three week stints for projects stateside and abroad. Through GlobeAware, which offers programs to 15 countries, you can take a one week trip to Brazil for about $1400. Or you can volunteer in the good ol’ U.S. of A with the Sierra Club, which lists dozens of volunteer trips on its Web site.
- Read a book. If you’re a bibliophile like me, you may want to knock out a couple of those quick reads. Judging from Boyfriend’s account of law school, most of your reading in the fall is going to be dense and done either at home or in the law library, so why not take that book tote outside to the local arboretum or park? You may also want to read some law school related books, like Scott Turow’s ’1L: The Turbulent Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School.’
- Spend time with the people that matter to you. Time is to law school as fabric is to a hirsute, male, thong-wearing beach goer in Brazil: There is never enough of it, and you hope it stretches out enough to cover all the, ahem, ‘material’. Which is why it is all the more important to bank as much good will as you can by scheduling outings with your friends, family and significant other, or even going on a summer trip with them before the time leech that is law school sucks all the time away.
- Start a blawg. You’re going to be writing a lot in law school, so why not brush up on subjects, verbs and dangling thingamajigs by starting your very own blog. It’ll get you into a daily habit of reading and writing something, and could turn into a fun little hobby when the fall rolls around. This blawg is powered by WordPress and hosted by a hosting company, but you can get a WordPress-hosted, out-of-the-box blog at WordPress.com, or at Blogger.com, for free.
Watch for future blog posts on the 0L Bucket List!
Photo: I Can Has Cheezburger
Maybe, maybe not. But a technology blog reported that Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick dangled the threat of prosecution in front of boys who had been swapping photos of their classmates via text messaging, or ‘sexting’, the practice of trading risque text messages that may even include nekkid photos. Dood. Kids in my day traded Yu-Gi-Oh cards or pogs.
Julian Sanchez of the Ars Technica blog writes:
“In a letter sent to parents in February, Skumanick declared that both the boys caught swapping the photos and the girls who’d been photographed would have to submit to a reeducation program or risk being charged with a felony.”
Rather than take that risk, parents agreed to the program, but some other parents, after seeing the photos, didn’t think the images of their daughters clad in white bras were really all that pornographic. The ACLU agreed and, you guessed it, lawsuit!
“In a lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of the mothers of the three girls, the civil liberties group argues that photos merely showing minors in their underwear or topless so clearly fall outside the statutory definition of “pornography” that Skumanick could not possibly have any “reasonable expectation of obtaining a conviction.” Rather, the mothers charge that Skumanick is using a frivolous threat of prosecution to bully parents into accepting his childrearing “assistance.” The plaintiffs are asking a federal district court to issue declaratory ruling that the photos are protected speech, not obscenity, and to enjoin Skumanick’s threats as a violation of their parental rights.”
Read the more about the fun legal stuff in the article here!
UPDATE (3/31): A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order that prevents the prosecutor from charging the students as child pornographers. Read the article by Ars Technica’s Julian Sanchez here.
One of the local rags, The Orange County Register, recently published an article about a local incident of sexting. In this case, a middle-schooler sexted nekkid photos of herself to at least one friend, and somehow that photo made its way to, like, 10 people. Never in a million years could I have predicted that would happen.
According to the Register’s Jaimee Lynn Fletcher, the group of students who circulated the photos were punished with in-house suspensions, where they attended school but could not go to classes.
Here’s a rule of thumb, people. Never ever send, post, Twitter, etc. a photo of yourself that you would not want shown on national television, to a future spouse, or to a future boss. Somebody somewhere is going to find it and your goodies will be out there one way or the other for all the world to see.
According to a note by Dean Erwin Chemerinsky published March 9, the school received 2,500 applications from applicants vying for 60 spots in the the UC Irvine School of Law’s inaugural class. In a “Visions of Change” note, which can be found on the law school’s Web site, Chemerinsky states:
“The admissions process for the founding class continues. We have received more than 2,500 applications for the 60 slots in the first-year class. This is the best ratio of applications to slots, an obvious measure of selectivity, of any law school in the country. We have admitted a number of students, received acceptances from some, and are continuing to process a large number of applications. By every measure, the applicants are tremendously impressive and we will succeed in our goal of having an outstanding entering class of students.”
I discuss some of the glawsip regarding how many of those slots may be open here.
Chemerinsky also discusses the hiring of two new professors: Christopher Leslie, a tenured professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law who specializes in contract law and antitrust law, and Tony Reese, a chaired professor at the University of Texas Law School who specializes in intellectual property law.
Thumbnail: Okinawa Soba / Flickr
I’m not one to put too much weight on things found on message boards, but, according to students posting in a forum at the Top Law Schools Web site, the UC Irvine School of Law has admitted about 83 students and is waiting to see who turns in their intent to register by the April 15 deadline before they send out another wave of admits. User lifelesslived stated, “FWIW, at least 83 have been accepted,” in a message dated March 3.
It looks like that estimate was derived from a mailing list sent out to admitted students regarding a meet and greet held in Bison Bay Cafe in Newport Beach at the beginning of March.
Post luncheon (which looks like it took place March 8), user scantronix said (on the DL, because he/she doesn’t know if it’s confidential information. We won’t tell!) that 21 students have accepted the law school’s offer:
“I went to the UC Irvine luncheon today in Newport Beach. I heard 31 admits had submitted their intent to register. Edit: someone just told me that I’m wrong about the number and it is actually lower (21), sorry about that. person also mentioned that this might be confidential information? I’m not sure why they would confirm this but not other questions that were asked. Hope I didn’t say something I’m not supposed to!”
This is all just glawsip (law gossip, get it?), but the news is a little disheartening for me. I sent in my application in a little later because I was working on the extra “Why UC Irvine?” essay the school required in addition to the standard personal statement. Now it seems, despite the March first deadline, that an ideal class may have already been assembled from the super-early applicant pool. Crap.
This could probably explain why there has been no decision activity since Feb. 2 for UC Irvine at Law School Numbers, which lists about 173 registered users who applied to the school.
So, what does this all mean? Maybe nothing. But Top Law School users have hypothesized the numbers mean relatively few admits after the April 15 intent to register deadline. Boo.
Photos: Joe Gratz / Flickr (thumbnail) TCB (screengrab)
According to the American Bar Association Journal, law school applications in general are up 2 percent this year, but the increase at some schools is as high as 8 percent states the Wall Street Journal. The ABA article, citing the WSJ, states that top tier schools like Yale Law School, the University of Texas School of Law and Cornell University Law School have all increased their applicant pool despite these trying times.
Read the article here.
Here’s another article from the National Law Journal that discusses the recent increase, with a focus on the UC Irvine School of Law.
Photo: Joe Gratz / Flickr
When I first started (seriously) looking into law school, I felt like one of those little white mice trapped in a maze that it had never been in before: wall, wall, wall, ooh, opening! wall, wall, ooh, something shiny! I had no point of reference, and with no point of reference I was easily distracted by the Internets.
I mean, I had seen Boyfriend go through the whole LSAT prep course, applications and waiting period, but when it came to the minutiae of applications – the best time to submit, what to expect, etc. – I was clueless. So I did one of my favorite things there is to do in the world: research! (seriously. I’m a total nerd) And while poking around and burrowing into the little caves that make up the Interwebz, I found some interesting sites that made me feel better and a lot more comfortable about the whole process.
- Law School Admission Council. This was one of my first stops during my law school application journey. Here you can register for the LSAT, register for law school forums (basically, where you can meet representatives from different schools), find out about funding for law school, etc. Be sure to take a look at the ABA-approved Guide to Law Schools. Though the schools listed are unranked, the guide is helpful in that it discusses the strengths of particular schools and also allows you to see how your LSAT and GPA fit in with applicants from previous years. The site’s handy dandy UGPA (undergraduate GPA) and LSAT calculator also allows you to see what your admission chances to individual law schools are.
- U.S. News and World Report. On recommendation from Boyfriend, I registered for online access to America’s Best Graduate Schools. The registration allows you to see the rankings of individual schools, and narrow down choices based on LSAT percentiles, GPA, state, and the like. A great feature is the ability to save schools you are particularly interested in so you can compare them later. Note: Some have challenged the validity of the law school rankings found on the site. You can read about that here and here.
- Brian Leiter’s Law School Rankings. The site, by Brian Leiter, John P. Wilson Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values at the University of Chicago, independently compiles lists of rankings according to specific areas of interest. These include ranking schools according to faculty scholarly impact and where current law professors went to law school.
- Law School Numbers (LSN). This networking site aggregates user-submitted LSAT, GPA and school application information into easy-to-read databases and graphs. You can search for people with “numbers” (LSAT/GPA) similar to yours and can see how well they’re doing at specific schools. You can see if applicants listed themselves as URMs (underrepresented minorities) or Ns (nontraditional students). You can look at individual schools and see exactly who they are admitting based on numbers. Sometimes applicants even list their “softs”, factors apart from numbers that are also listed on their application. If the users are diligent, you can see the progress of their applications from sent, complete (when their package is ready for review at the law school), and when a decision was made. The admitted, waitlisted, and rejected users can then be plotted on a scatter plot graph. I don’t like this graph. It’s scary, but it could be useful for some people.
- www.hourumd.com. You can input your LSAT score and GPA into this site, and your probabilty of admittance into individual schools is calculated based on information gathered from the LSN database. I’ve been reading that LSN statistics tend to be on the higher end, so I’m uncertain of how much weight you should put in this probability thingy. I say, if you feel good about submitting your application to a particular school, just send it in. It won’t hurt and you won’t be asking “what if?” later on. Also, if you find out what “hourumd” stands for, let me know.
- Chiashu. This site is similar in concept to LSN, but may have a different set of users. It’s not as pretty as LSN, but it does have a function that allows you to see decision and rejection numbers, and how many of each there were per month, plotted on a line graph.
- Law School Discussion. If you have questions for current law school students, or other prospective applicants, this is a great resource. There are individual forums for law school applications and preparing for the LSAT. Once you’re admitted (yey!), there are also individual boards for admitted students in general and for specific schools.
- Top Law Schools. I haven’t used this site much, but it also has a list of law schools and a message board for prospective students.
Photo: Vito / Flickr
From cobalt123's Flickr photostream
The Fire John Yoo! Web site is a project of a group of rebels who are against the hiring of John Yoo as a Fletcher Jones Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the Chapman University School of Law. Yoo served in the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under former President George W. Bush, and those calling for his dismissal believe his memos played an integral part in the Bush administration’s stance on torture. A Newsweek article published this week discusses the Obama administration’s plans to declassify and release publicly Yoo’s memos.
Fire John Yoo! (which, interestingly, is an anagram for ‘heroin of joy!’) is affiliated with the No To Torture – John Yoo Must Go! coalition at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, where he also faced opposition and where he could be facing disciplinary action. The site also has links to the anti-war, anti-torture, etc. group The World Can’t Wait.
Chapman University is set to host a discussion with Yoo at 11:30 a.m. Weds., April 15 titled “Presidential Power and Success in Times of Crisis”. The discussion will take place in Kennedy Hall, Room 237. For more information, Chapman’s Web site says to contact Barbara Babcock at 714-628-2502 or bbabcock@chapman.edu.
Here’s what the local media had to say about Yoo’s appointment
LA Times: Bush policymaker escapes Berkeley’s wrath.
OC Register: Ex-Bush lawyer talks about torture memos.
Not a single student has sat in a single chair at the University of California Irvine School of Law, but the fledgling law school – the first public California law school in 40 years – is already sitting pretty in the top 10 rankings of schools for their faculty’s scholarly impact.
Ranked No. 10 by Brian Leiter’s Law School Rankings for 2005 through 2008, Irvine beat out the law schools at Northwestern University and the University of California, Los Angeles for a spot in the rankings, which are based on a study that was conducted in February.
The study weighed the school’s “scholarly impact”, which was measured by citations of the faculty members during the past four years. For the purposes of the study, Leiter assumes that UC Irvine will hire professors who are as prolific as the founding faculty. He also excludes Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean at the law school.
“Given Dean Chemerinsky’s very high citation count … to simply add his cite count to the currently small number of faculty would produce highly misleading results.”
Read the study here.
Thumbnail photo: Okinawa Soba / Flickr. It’s an Asian woman reading a newspaper. It makes sense to me: an Asian girl who likes her some news.
People going into their first year of law school know that law school is going to be difficult. It may even be the toughest thing that they have ever had to face. Like ever. They prepare mentally. They read books, blogs and blawgs on the topic. They speak to people who have had experience in the area. They drop enjoyable but unproductive hobbies in favor of said research on law school. By the time first-year orientation rolls around, they are fired up and ready to go.
But in all their preparations for their big first day, they may have forgotten to consider that they are not the only ones going to law school, that they are only half of the equation. Because when they go, they take all the relationships they have - and all the obligations they have to the people they are in those relationships with – with them. Romantic relationships included.
Being someone who is going into law school, but who has been on the other side as well, I would like to share some insight into what your significant other(s) (hereafter referred to as “SO”) might be feeling and might share with you, and what YOU can do to support them. Because, let’s face it, going to law school is a selfish thing, and being a grad student forces you to be selfish with your time. But when you’re through being scary-evil-time-hoarding hermit, you’re going to want the person you care about to still be around three years later.
- “I won’t be able to see you in, like, forever.” If you plan on being a good student, and definitely if you want to make law review, you’re probably definitely going to spend a lot of time hitting the books and preparing for class.
What you can do: Help your SO understand why you’re going to law school and why your law school grades are important. Then, take out a calendar, write out your law school schedule, and make sure you schedule a day when the both of you can just hang out and do whatever it is you do as a couple. Make sure that day is a priority, and that SO knows it’s a priority.
Also, it’s healthy to make friends in law school, but it might not be a good idea to frequently substitute “going out” with SO and law buddies as that one day a week you spend together. He/she still needs to feel like they are an important part of your life, even though law school clearly is your No. 1 priority.
- “You won’t have time for our relationship.” Yeah, this kinda relates to you hitting the books again.
What you can do: Don’t forget that there are other ways to connect with SO during the week. If you can’t see them, maybe schedule a certain time in the evening, every other day, whatever works for you, when you can give them a call and maybe catch up and share things about your day. If calling is too much (Really? If it is then I wouldn’t want you to be my boyfriend), then you can send an email, or get a Twitter account and touch base that way.
- “We won’t be able to go out like we normally do.” You’re taking out huge student loans and have little or no income. You probably won’t be able to go to a fancy frou frou French restaurant, or even the not-so-fancy Red Lobster, like you did in your pre-law school days.
What you can do: Instead of going to the movies, rent a movie. Instead of going out to eat, maybe cook a meal at home. Maybe take a walk at the park, or go for a run by the beach or on some trails. The point is, when you’re out with SO, you have so little time that the venue or the activity sometimes isn’t very important. The reconnecting with each other and the enjoyment of each other’s company is.
- “All you talk about is law school.” Stop it. No, really. Get a hobby or something.
What you can do: Yes, law school is tough and all-consuming. But you don’t have to talk about it to SO every single time, and at the expense of talking about more important things. Like feelings. Seriously though, the reason why it’s good to have someone you can speak with intimately is because they can help you get away from the stress that is law school sometimes. Why bring that burden onto an already time-burdened relationship.
- “You’re really annoying to argue with.” Yes, you are.
What you can do: Don’t be an ass. Remember that some arguments are not meant to be won and that you have to LISTEN to what SO is saying. Sometimes they bring up a point not to convince or persuade you, but to share a point of interest. Don’t use lawyer speak. Communicate with SO, don’t preach or talk at them.
This list can go on forever, believe me. But as someone who has lived on the other half, there’s just one thing I hope all future 1Ls, 2Ls and 3Ls understand. Those of us on the other half just want to know that we still matter, that you respect our relationship and the sacrifices we have to make as well. If you do, we are more likely to take our half and meet your half somewhere in the middle. (Not meant to sound dirty, but if that’s how you take it I can do nothing to sanitize your dirty, dirty mind. Well, maybe, except this)
Photo: Ayumina / Flickr
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