Vetted whether the Press Sec passed the bar? And or lied about being a lawyer? Feel like this would take 1 hour. My impression was if you get hired to be a high level Fed employee, they will vet you extensively?

So basically, I only had one midterm which was torts, I didn’t think it was that bad, but I ended up with a 51%, and then my professor wrote down that my grade would have been a 1.5 WITH the curve.

I feel like I’m gonna lose my mind and I’m not sure what to do. My guess is that I’m one of the worst students in the class right now and that if I don’t change like Mr. Scrooge, I’m going to fail out of law school.

I’m looking for anyone interested in sharing a good cover letter or cover letter template that either landed you multiple job opportunities or was acknowledged for their better than average CL. thanks

I just got the results for my Contracts Multiple choice midterm back, and I got 12/20! The worst part is that I felt really good about that exam and thats what worries me the most. I wanted to see if anyone here has had bad midterm grades but still got an A for a course? Im just stressed specially because I am trying to do big law and I know grades can be huge.

Struck out for big law. Currently have nothing lined up for 2L summer.

At this point, if the goal is to lateral into big law someday, is a mid sized or regional firm better than a brand name state or federal agency or Article III judicial internship?

In some sense, I feel like a gov’t role could have more cachet than a lesser firm. But then it’s like… a firm would be direct private practice experience.

What do we think?

At my school (and I’m sure plenty of others) we have a set amount of required 1L tip and advice sections we are required to attend. They hold them throughout the week and they are meant to cover various things throughout law school that they think might be hard for some to grasp. They’re typically helpful in the sense they provide a class for some of the less talked about areas of law school like time management and IRAC writing, but holy hell do they make it seem difficult. Yesterday during the IRAC writing section, the lady leading it went on for a good 20-30 minutes about how important it is to manage our time and even went as far as saying we should do our best to not use the bathroom or get water bc “even taking 5 minutes make it so there’s 5 wasted minutes we will never get back”. She also made a number of mentions throughout to the fact that on her torts final the essay question took 2 hours to write and I could visibly see the fear this created in some peoples faces. Now obviously I am a 1L and don’t know THAT much. But I feel as though I know enough to see the obvious scare tactics being used. While yes law school has been different than any schooling I’ve ever done and definitely took some adjustment, I just don’t think it’s nearly as complicated as so many try to make it seem. It just bothers me that since week 1 it’s felt like half of the stress and scariness of it all has come directly from the staff of the school hyping things up way more then they seemingly need to be. Rant over

Just recently, a 1L from an out of state law school with absolutely no connections added me on LinkedIn. I looked at their "About me" profile which gave me a chuckle:

1L in law school focusing on 1. Civil procedure, 2. Contract law, 3. Lawyering skills, 4. Legal ethics, and 5. Legal research skill using LexisNexis and WestLaw.

So....you just listed your mandated 1L classes that everyone else in your year is taking and say you're "focusing" on those subjects? It's like those people who highlight everything in their casebooks.

Anyway, wanted to share and see what other funny/unhinged things they've seen on LinkedIn.

AHHHHHHHHHH

I am writing a conlaw paper about flock cameras. But I have to pretend previous case law predicts what a SCOTUS ruling would be. But realistically the Court will rule pretextually, probably in favor of allowing flock to be used in aggregate. Even though Carpenter and Chatrie both say that's dumb :(.

It's so funny having to research doctrine and pretend I'm doing legal scholarship when that's not at all predictive of how the Court will rule on anything

What are y’all’s favorite antitrust exam prep books? I’m looking for something with practice problems and answers or, if it’s an E&E, something relatively short.

Who in their right mind tries an article that's 1/8 above the line text and 7/8 footnotes? 90 cites to go and 7 to 8 sources per cite LMAO why the fuck did i want this

Just got my first and only graded mid term back and got less than half correct. Feeling like trash because I felt so confident taking it, considering it was multiple choice only.

Don’t know class average or median as it wasn’t provided. Guess I don’t know the material as well as I thought 😕

Even did a bunch of practice MC questions and was getting them all correct.

Time to lock in.

I graduated undergrad in 2023 and have since worked in admissions at a local community college. I love my boss and the job is fairly easy. It pays well (~60k) and has amazing insurance / benefits. I grew up in extreme poverty, so this is the first time in my life I’ve experienced any sort of stability. I am aiming to apply for law school this cycle, but as it gets closer, I am so nervous and anxious to quit this job. Right now does not seem like the time to leave a stable job. Any advice / encouragement from anyone who has been through something similar would be much appreciated.

For a little context, the professor we have allows you to use no more than 2 "free passes" to not be cold called during the semester, but you have to inform the professor before class starts for it to have any effect.

We got into the portion of the coursework that covers sexual crimes, obviously a very sensitive topic. A female student raised her hand at the start of class and requested two things: first, she wanted to use one of her "passes" for the day, and second that only the female students be called on to discuss the cases.

Professor handled it well, in telling her that everyone was going to learn the same material and we all needed to know it, but it still struck me as kinda weird to demand that.

First day of Contracts, our professor announced that everyone gets one free pass on a cold call per semester.

No explanation required. No grade penalty. If she calls on you and you're not prepared, you can just say "I'm using my pass" and she'll move on.

We all thought this was incredibly generous.

It's October now and I don't think a single person in our section has used theirs.

Instead, we've apparently turned the pass into some kind of emergency savings account.

Last week a classmate told me she'd been up until 3 am finishing a legal writing assignment and hadn't gotten to the Contracts reading. I asked why she didn't just use her pass.

"Because what if I need it more later?"

Fair enough. Except I said almost the exact same thing two days later when I was exhausted and had barely read the assigned cases.

I stayed up another hour preparing because I didn't want to waste my pass in October.

WASTE IT.

The thing specifically designed to let us skip preparing once without consequences.

Our professor actually reminded us yesterday that the passes exist to be used and that nobody gets extra credit for saving them.

Didn't help.

Someone behind me whispered, "Yeah, but we still have six weeks."

I'm convinced we'll reach the last day of class with 60 unused passes and a room full of people who sacrificed perfectly good sleep to preserve them.

I understand being cautious about grades and participation. But there's something genuinely funny about being handed a no-strings-attached way to reduce stress and immediately developing anxiety about using it incorrectly.

Has anyone else had a professor offer something like this? Did people actually use their passes, or did your section also treat them like rare healing potions you save until the game is already over?

I'm a 1L and I made a post yesterday about how I've been putting essentially no effort into the readings and putting all my time towards outlining. I got a bunch of comments asking me how I'm supposed to know what goes in the outline and telling me that there's no way to know whats gonna be on the midterm if I don't do the readings. All of this implies that the readings are the main source of information I should be focusing on in a course, or at least a very substantial part, and people could not possibly imagine there is any other worthwhile source of information. This pretty much directly contradicts everything I've been told until now, which is that the main thing to take away is whatever the professor says. Since they're the ones making the exams, you should focus on what they think is important and emphasize in class. My outlines have contained my notes from class, their slides, and any other materials they've supplemented or endorsed. I've only been doing this lazy skimming method for the past two weeks, and before that I was actually doing the readings, but even still I was mainly focusing my notes on what the main takeaways were in class according to the professor and that was pretty much it. I wouldn't take any notes on the actual reading itself beyond a brief containing what is needed to pass a cold call or keep up in class. I guess all this conflicting advice is making me confused about what I should actually be spending my time on and taking notes on: class/professor highlights or reading notes?

(Before someone inevitably suggests focus on both, 1. please understand that I am trying to be efficient and not waste my time or devote my entire life to law school and 2. just because I say focus on one doesn't mean I'm going to entirely neglect the other)

I’m a 1L and just received a summer 2027 externship offer at a government agency. The work is interesting, the hours are good, and it’s in the type of practice I want to do. The externship is also located close to my school in a good legal market.

Even so, I have two main concerns:
1. It’s unpaid (and I’d actually have to pay for the academic credit, which would be 5-7 credits worth so probably upwards of $10k)
2. More importantly, it’s not in the region where I ultimately want to practice. I’ve been virtually networking in that other region, and my Career Office told me that it’s better to try a new market during 1L summer than 2L summer. I had been hoping to land something in the other market for summer 2027, but applied to the externship because it was interesting and had a super short application.

I've been networking with attorney's in the other city, but I haven’t applied to other positions yet because most of the jobs posted require a longer writing sample, which I don't have yet (I will soon).

I’m torn on what to do. I don’t want to turn down a solid offer for the chance that something better comes up in my preferred city. I know these things are competitive and I don’t want to be stuck without a job. At the same time, I don’t want to lock myself in so early and lose the opportunity to try the other market this year.

Someone suggested that I accept the externship and keep applying elsewhere, then withdraw if I get a paid position or one in my preferred city. I understand the logic behind this, but I’m worried that backing out could damage my reputation and come across as unprofessional.

Has anyone been in this situation before? I appreciate any advice you might have, thanks!