Law Student

Here is some great news for law students and law school graduates entering public interest law jobs (government, non-profit, etc.).

This includes public defenders, city prosecutors, federal government lawyers, attorneys at non-profit and charity organizations, and a variety of similarly situated law school graduates.

In short, this new law will provide law school loan repayment assistance to students taking public interest jobs.

The following was provided by Philip G. Schrag of the Georgetown University Law Center:

This morning, President Bush signed the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 (H.R. 2669), which includes two provisions that will make it much easier for law students who graduate with high educational debt to have long-term public service careers. The bill includes a section creating an income-based repayment (IBR) plan that enables graduates to make much smaller monthly payments when their incomes are low: the IBR formula caps repayment at 15% of (AGI minus 150% of the federal poverty level). Interest not paid » FULL STORY

Regent University School of Law has a web page listing its law students’ blogs. This was the first time I had seen a law school that published a list of blogs run by its law students.

Does your law school have a blog directory listing law students’ blogs? If so, please leave a comment here with the link for other law students to enjoy.

When Law Student posted How Much are New Lawyers’ Salaries?, the author of the Build A Solo Practice blog pointed out that the chart failed to present salary statistics for solo practitioners (attorneys practicing on their own rather than part of a multi-lawyer firm).

She then linked to this informative post explaining how much solo attorneys earn: What Do Solos REALLY Earn?

After Law Student posted How Much are New Lawyers’ Salaries?, the author of the Build A Solo Practice blog responded with this observation:

What would be an interesting statistic is the ratio of salary to debt service for law school.

She then presents information regarding the ratio of salary to debt here: Increasing law school debt compared to Lawyer Salaries.

Legal Andrew just launched a contest that might be of interest to law students. Through a partnership with Law Study Systems, law students can get free licenses to their Essentials review courses (a $90 value).

There are two ways to enter:

1. write a blog review (you must have a blog) OR
2. post a comment response (anyone can do this)

Every blog review wins a license to all 3 of the courses. A random winner will be drawn from the comment entries.Here is the blog review post: Free Law School Review Courses – Calling 1L Bloggers

Here is the first comment post (3 others coming soon): What 1L Contract Topic Worries You? – FREE Review Course

Wonder how much you can earn when you graduate from law school? NALP surveyed law school graduates from 1992 to 2006 and published what the average attorney was paid.

The numbers are interesting. In 2006, the average starting salary for an attorney at a small firm (2-10 attorneys) was $50,000. The average starting salary for an attorney at a large firm (over 500 attorneys) was $135,000.

It is worth noting that the survey covers a large geographic area, so some adjustment is necessary for your local region. If you are in a small city, rural area, or city overpopulated by law schools, the average salary for your area may be less than the survey average. If you are starting in New York, or some other top paid city, the average salary for your area may be more than the survey average.

I suppose the results could be further criticized for being unscientific in one way or another. However, as a general guide to new associate salaries, the survey results are enlightening.

To see the survey results, visit NALP’s What Do New Lawyers Earn?

11-23-07 Update: This article has been updated. Please read Many Law Graduates Disappointed: Few Jobs, Low Salaries, High Stress. For help finding the law job that is right for you, visit our law jobs section.

A note from a reader:

Law graduates always prefer to attend the traditional educational institutes in a hope to get high salaries in the market than are offered to the graduates holding online degrees. Although a traditional academic experience is matchless but, online learning resources such as 000-253 are a valuable means to enhance one’s skills. Online certifications in a technical area, such as 000-415, not only grant the educational qualifications but also shape one’s career. Some of these certifications like 000-664 even enable the students to work at top notch laboratories to have an on hand experience of the technical details. Once at a competent level, professional can keep up with the latest tools and techniques (000-730) to aid in their progression.

 Here are some more useful resources for first-year law students (1Ls):

• Exams and Other Fun Topics
• General Study Skills Sites
• Courses in the First Year
• Research Tips and Guides
• Study Strategies
• Property—How the Law Student’s Tackle It
• Managing Law School Competition
• New Law School Students’ Most Common Questions
• Recommended Study Aids & Commercial Outlines (or get free law school outlines)
• Law Student Computer Buying Tips: 1. Buy a Laptop
• Law Student Computer Buying Tips: 2. What Size Laptop Should I buy?
• Law Student Computer Buying Tips: 3. Should Law Students Consider a Tablet PC?

Best wishes in your 1L year!

Here are some good resources for first-year law students (1Ls):

• Adjusting to Law School Life
• Best Law School Books
• Law School Subject Outlines
• Should I Make My Own Outlines?
• How to Outline a Law School Class
• Best Study Aids for New Law Students – Part 1: Case Summaries
• Best Study Aids for New Law Students – Part 2: Subject Guides
• Best Study Aids for New Law Students – Part 3: Nutshell Subject Reviews
• Dictionaries
• Citation Guides
• Class Preparation
• De-Mystifying the Tools of Legal Research

I’m impressed that you have time to read ways to improve your law school performance considering all the law school case readings you have. Best wishes in your first law school year!

To get good grades, do you have to read the cases? How much should I use law school subject outlines? These are questions that many law students wonder.

Curious about these questions, I did an informal poll » FULL STORY

Welcome to school first-year law students!

You are about to experience a surge of conflicting emotions: excitement, fear, insecurity, intrigue, stress, pride, and ultimately, relief when it is all over. The worst part may be not knowing how to handle every challenge that is thrown at you.

However, the reason law school is like this is probably because the practice of law is like this to some degree. That is, practicing law, at least most areas of the law, requires constant learning. The bad new is, some people do not enjoy life-long learning. The good news is, the longer you work, the more you have learned and the more valuable you become.

But if you don’t like law school, don’t give up hope, because most attorneys agree that law school is much less enjoyable than the practice of law. In fact, law school is down-right painful, especially around the time of law school exams.

As you begin your law school journey, congratulate yourself for having made it this far. To equip you for the ride, here is a large collection of good law school tips and a few law school blogs that might be of interest to new law students. I also recommend these law school books.

Law school tips:

• Things I Wish I’d Understood on Day 1 of Law School
• First-Year Law Students: Resources for 1L’s
• Tips for 1Ls From Around the Blogosphere
• Tips and advice for the newest law students
• Law School Goal Setting
• 1L Question: Do Smart Law Students Sit in the Front Row?
• Free Law School Outlines – 1L, 2L, and 3L
• 1L Advice: Ways a 1L Can Prepare for Law School
• Terms and Phrases New Law Students Must Know
• New Law School Students: Frequently Asked Questions
• Law Students Share Their Tips and Advice
• Tips and advice for the newest law students II: Outside
• Tips for Pre-Law Students Preparing for Law School
• More 1L Law School Tips

Law School Blogs:

• Law Student (The site you are currently reading)
• The Rising Jurist (Be sure to check out this humorous post: The Most Interesting Cases You Will Read as a 1L)
• New at Law
• Mac Law Students Blog
• Old Law Guy
• Legal Andrew (he graduated from law school in 2007)
• The Frugal Law Student
• and check out the other blogs listed in the right column under “Law School Blogs”

In an effort to become more search engine friendly, TopLawStudent.com has been changed to LawStudent.tv.

The new name will increase exposure to people searching for “law student” on Google, which should allow more law students find the site and quickly obtain law school exams, law school outlines, law school exam tips, and advice for improving law school success.

You may ask, “Why the .TV extension?” The answer is simple: all the other extensions were taken for the term “law student.”

The essays of 400 law students taking the New York bar exam were incomplete. reported the New York Law Journal. The problem may be due to a bar exam software glitch.

The NY Board of Law Examiners contracted with Software Secure. Software Secure determined that the software errors occured in response to students toggling between answer tabs during the bar exam. The missing portion of the exams may be recoverable from backups that the software creates on a computer during the exam.

According to the NY Board of Law Examiners, it is still too early to tell if the software problems will cause a delay in grading the July exam, which is scheduled to be completed in November.

Despite these problems, problems taking the bar exam with a computer remain very rare, with most problems eventually being resolved through software reduntancy measures.

Source: New York Law Journal quoted in the Out of the Jungle blog.