Being in law school with a family can be hard. The demands on students are bad enough without having to keep a spouse happy, keep a child feeling loved, and keeping a home rather than an apartment clean and functioning.?

Even if you don’t have children or aren’t married, non-traditional students are much more likely to bring someone with them to law school that isn’t a law student. And this someone is not going to understand the nuances of law school.?Case in point, the wife of a 1L who posted on Law School Discussion about all the time her 1L husband was spending with a younger, more female classmate.?

What I’m having a hard time understanding … how a 36 year old married man with a child instantly becomes best friends with a 24 year old girl, becomes her study buddy, can’t function without spending time with her.?

The piece of good news I’ll give to the wife is that becoming intimately involved with the life of your fellow students is not uncommon in law school. You spend so much time with your classmates that you learn things about them that you would never learn in an undergrad setting.

?Even comparing law school to high school, you learn a lot more than you would have thought. Law school has the same rumor mill as high school with more alcohol and a bigger need for a distraction.?But the fact that this 1L is not just studying all the time with her but also going out to eat, bringing her to family functions, going out drinking with her is a little suspicious.

?I understand why a 36 year-old man with a family and kids ends up drinking and shooting darts until 3am. There were plenty of non-traditional students I went to law school with, both with and without families, who regressed to acting like undergrads because we lived in a college town and the majority of people were fresh out of college.

?Regardless of the reasons, ignoring your family for your social life is inexcusable. If you are studying 24/7 with the hot young thing in your Contracts class, that’s a law school problem. If you’re out painting the town red with him or her, that’s a relationship problem.

?The other sad truth is that this guy is throwing away the biggest advantage that non-traditional students have: the love and support of their partners and family. When finals roll around, a support group within the law school is less reliable no matter how well you groomed it. Having a family at home gives you people who care about you, even if they don’t understand what you’re going through.?

So to the wife above, yes, your husband’s behavior is entirely normal, but also not what you signed up for. I’m not a relationship expert, so I don’t know how to fix this. But step one is getting him to recognize what is and isn’t a necessary part of law school.

This post was written a while ago in anticipation of NaNoWriMo.

A post on Lawyerist about how to minimize the risk of data loss when working with cloud computing got me thinking about how much of your law school work could be pushed to the cloud. Personally, I think the files on the average personal hard drive are more susceptible to loss than the files saved in a web-based app.¹ But when a problem happens, it tends to be catastrophic and very public.

What you should push to the cloud has everything to do with how comfortable you are with the concept. But I think there are a few things you can and a few things you can.²

What Can Go in the Cloud

• Briefs (court variety) and memos. Write in Google Docs and export for final formatting. Especially useful for group projects that require collaboration and multiple editors.
• Presentations. Same concept as above, but also shaves precious seconds off the “log out, log in, download the file” dance when multiple people are presenting in a class.
• Job search materials. You can write resumes and cover letters, edit writing samples, and track applications and responses.

What Can’t Go Into the Cloud

• Class notes. It will never unseat the career service office, but Wi-Fi is solid top five competitor for “Biggest Law School Whipping Boy.” Don’t count on always being able to access your web-based notetaking app.
• Briefs (reading variety). If you have to be online to write briefs or take reading notes, you can only work where there is internet access. Watch how quickly that becomes your primary excuse for procrastinating.
• Outlining. Others may disagree but I have not found an online tool flexible enough for outlining. If you find one that works the same way your brain does, congratulations. Even so, you still have the problem of needing to be online for a studying task.

As a general rule, I would avoid pushing too much day-to-day studying onto a cloud application. One key is to staying on top of your law school work is to stay light and flexible.³ You approach writing a brief or editing your resume with a certain deliberateness. Studying and outlining is often more spontaneous. Don’t throw up unnecessary barriers to getting started.

When November comes around, it means the second act of the three act play of a law school semester is about to start. November might start the final third of the law school semester, but finals deserve their own act.

In the first two months of a semester, the groundwork is laid. Basics are learned, reading is done, early assignments are turned in.

In the final month, the work picks up again. Papers are due, outlining picks up, and those behind on their reading work frantically to catch up.

After laying the foundation for two months, that it simply turns into more work is difficult for many law students to swallow. And that’s where burnout can creep up, when you feel not only like the running wheel never stops or goes anywhere, but that the wheel also gets harder to turn.

Every one of the 12 tips by Jeffery Tang, guest posting on Zen Habits, is useful for law students looking to fight burnout. But #3 is by far my favorite:

3. Work less. Cut down on the amount of energy and time you spend working. If you have sick days or vacation days left, take advantage of them. Or, if you’re self-employed, force yourself to work fewer hours each day – even if that means turning down new projects.

Working less doesn’t mean you have to slack off or get less done. It does mean that you:

• Eliminate unnecessary tasks.
• Take strategic breaks.
• Stop multi-tasking.
• Seek help from other people.

Go read all 12. You may not be a self-employed entrepreneur whose burnout is totally due to your own decisions, but you can take ownership of the flood of things you need to do and keep from drowning in it.

If you have not felt the sheer terror in one of your classes that you’ve been sitting there for a couple months and have no idea what’s going on, then it’s just a matter of time. At some point, in at least one class, the whole house of cards will fall apart.

But that’s OK. Because it’s the beginning of November. And finals, for most folks, aren’t until the middle of December. And maybe for that class, you’re like Huma was for property:

I realized that in Property, I was one of those people for whom nothing made sense until right before the final, and then I owned that sucker. Got my highest grade in that class, and came out of the exam thrilled even though I wrote for literally four hours straight. I knew I’d killed it, and I didn’t even need to see my grades a month later to know I was right.¹

It’s all fine and dandy to study really hard, work feverishly on the test, fret about it for a month or so, and then get an A. There’s joy, but it’s mostly an overwhelming sense of relief. Those A’s tend to feel less like great victories and more like wiggle room for a class you might not do so hot in.

But the real goal is to get the feeling described above. Where you walk out of an exam absolutely sure that you crushed it. Where the exam was a bully that picked the wrong kid to mess with and you took it back behind the jungle gym and beat the shit out of it.

Because when that A comes, it’s not joy or relief you get so much as it affirms everything you’ve been doing in law school.

So don’t worry if you’re not getting the material so far, or you’re not the one saying the genius remarks in class. All that matters is the final, and you have the whole semester to get ready for the final.

This post was written a while ago in anticipation of NaNoWriMo.

Over at The Corner In The Middle, the author (a Midwestern 2L) has deleted his Twitter account and has cut back on his Facebook and MySpace time. The reasons? He wasn’t getting value out of Twitter, and was using Facebook for the types of things Twitter is best at. The Facebook and MySpace usage fell off because he wasn’t getting any new information about anyone he knew:

I know what [my friends] are doing: studying, poking fun at fellow students, working, eating, napping, writing papers, watching the Office, and everything else we do; they are my friends, we are friends because we do the same things.

Being a little overwhelmed, frustrated, or mystified by social networking isn’t just a problem for law students. But it can especially be an issue for law students who think they might miss out on something but end up procrastinating or wasting time on social networking sites more than they get value out of them.

As a law student, don’t waste your time with something you don’t see the value in. What social networking is teaching us is that there are many different avenues to getting what you want, even if they aren’t necessarily social media.

Recognize that you might be giving something up. But if Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, or even all of these sites are wasting time more than helping you, ditch them.

It isn’t as big of news as Belmont University trying to launch a brand new law school. But it is significant that Southern New England School of Law is trying to offer itself up to the University of Massachusetts to become Massachusetts first public law school.

Sounds great right? Massachusetts would get a law school that already exists in an area that doesn’t already have a law school. One problem: the trustees of UMass aren’t all on board. The issue? SNESL is something of a fixer-upper.

This is not the first time the law school has sought to drape itself in the cloak of UMass. In 2005, a similar plan was rejected by the Board of Higher Education on the grounds that the proposed financing would not be enough to “achieve ABA accreditation within the next five years.’’

That quote also doesn’t mention SNESL’s 6% bar passage rate on a recent administration of an exam nicknamed “Passachusetts.”

It makes little or no sense for a state university to operate an unaccredited law school. It makes even less sense for a university to sink millions into a law school to bring it to an acceptable level.

But it borders on sinful to operate a law school that can barely produce a competent lawyer and has been looking for a savior for four years. If someone wants to help Southern New England School of Law, don’t build it up. Take it out back and put it out of its misery.

(In)Sanity Souffle:

As miserable as I can get about law school, the truth is that what I do or don’t do is the result of my own choices. I choose to cook, and the result is that sometimes I don’t do other things. Those other things may be homework; they may be hanging out with friends; they may be sleeping an extra hour; sometimes, it’s bathing. (Yes, I’m putting that out there.) The reality is that there are only 24 hours in a day, and I make choices about how to spend them.

I am tired of participating in the ritual complaining. And I’m tired of feeling guilty in the moments where I make the choice to do something nurturing instead of reveling in self-pity at my own “overwork.”

With all apologies to Patrick Rhone: What we believe in.

If you get at least one professor who is a student/fan of law and economics during your legal education, you’ll hear about how regulation has costs. Accreditation is one type of regulation, and with it comes costs.

Back in 2007, a bill was introduced by Senators John Kyl and Orrin Hatch that would have required the Government Accountability Office to study whether accreditation was responsible for hefty tuition increases. The reasoning?

“[A]ccreditation standards effectively raise faculty salaries; limit faculty teaching loads; require high numbers of full-time faculty rather than cheaper part-time adjuncts; and require expensive physical facilities and library collections,”

A reasonable enough theory. The study was released today, but the results are very different.

“[T]he move to a more hands-on, resource-intensive approach to legal education and competition among schools for higher rankings appear to be the main factors driving law school cost, while ABA accreditation requirements appear to play a minor role. Additionally, recent decreases in state funding are seen as a contributor to rising tuition at public schools.”

Translation: Law schools are in an arms race. It’s an arms race for prestigious faculty, extensive libraries, talented students, and bigger buildings. Tuition doesn’t rise because schools are trying to keep up with the ABA standards. Tuition rises because law schools are trying to keep up with each other.

The ABA falls under the government’s control due to a federal regulation from the Department of Education. Not to mention that the ABA is subject to antitrust liability if it gets out of line. But as long as rankings continue to be as important as they are, US News and World Report is going to be determining tuition, not the ABA.

Supply and demand is a simple enough concept that even lawyers and law professors—sometimes not well-versed in economics—can figure it out. If people want less of something, then the amount that should be supplied and the price should go down.

But it seems that hasn’t happened with law school. Rick Bales, a professor at Northern Kentucky writes:

As law firms this year have shed lawyers like a dog sheds hair in summer, law schools continue to admit the same – or more – students into their programs.

It’s a real conundrum with law school.¹ Law schools will attract more students at precisely the time that law schools are least suited to help those students as graduating undergrads and laid-off workers seek shelter in professional and graduate programs.

I think that Bales misses the point though when he points out that law firm hiring is cyclical and that the Class of 2012 will “almost certainly” have better luck in the job market than the Classes of 2009 and 2010. That ignores the rather radically changes to the legal industry, particularly in Biglaw. It’s entirely possible that whole sectors of the legal industry will be closed to new graduates by 2012.

As long as Bales’ attitude about the legal services industry is the dominant one, then there will be a certain fear similar to the one stated by the WSJ Law Blog:

On the one hand, we hear what Bales is saying. It’s been a complaint of managing partners nearly since the dawn of time: young law grads come out of law school totally ill-equipped to practice. At the same time, we’re not sure that market-driven changes to the curriculum are the way to go. (How would a school know, for instance, when the time is right to scotch the bankruptcy clinic in favor of a real-estate transactions clinic?)

Certainly I think we can all agree that we don’t want an education that follows the market that closely. The point of a clinic is not to have hands on experience with real estate transactions, the point is to have hands on experience with something resembling legal work.

The same goes for the number of students. Temporary restrictions on supply aren’t helpful. What is needed is a permanent restriction on supply. That means fewer law schools.

A university or government should not be creating a law school as a cash cow, particularly right now when paying law school tuition sounds a lot like a mob extortion scheme. For just $35,000 per year, you can have the piece of mind of knowing you have something to do for three years.

Hopefully the ABA is out ahead of this with the proposed accreditation ideas. Shutter law schools that line the pockets of universities but can’t place their students in meaningful employment would go a long way toward regaining the balance of scarcity and plenty.

My philosophy on class skipping was drilled into me during orientation before my freshman year of college. Sitting in the auditorium, a professor addressed the subject to a few hundred incoming students who were already dreaming of sleeping until noon every day.

The professor said he didn’t take attendance, because he didn’t think it was necessary. A student who skipped class was simply telling the professor that that they thought they could pass the professor’s class without the professor’s instruction. The professor’s attitude was somewhere between “if you can, more power to you,” and “I’d like to see you try.”

Jansen nails the added pressure in law school to attend class:

My professors fall into two camps: those who don’t care whether we show up and those who claim that attendance is “essential” to foster discussion. I disagree.

Lots of law school professors will try to play the Socratic Method card as the reason you should attend class. “You learn as much from your fellow students as from your professors.”

That’s absolute bullshit.

By and large, law professors are geniuses. Some might seem boring, others might seem like their time has come and gone. But even the most incompetent professor is way ahead of the smartest law student, especially the smartest 1L.

I rarely skipped class during college or law school for three reasons: what that professor said, to get my money’s worth, and because an hour of class usually was worth two hours of studying.¹ And I stand by my advice in my comment to Dennis’ post. If deadlines are the problem and cold-calling is rare, go to class and get some work done there.

But don’t let anyone tell you that you’re going to learn more from being stuck in a room with a bunch of law students rather than someone paid six figures to study, advance, and teach the law. Lots of law students put professors on too high of a pedestal, but at least give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re smarter than your classmates.