Any Attorneys Here with Tips for the LSAT

I've been studying with the Kaplan book and I'm registered for the September 27th test. Any tips?

It's been a very long time. In my day, the emphasis was on reading comprehension. Read a long, information-packed paragraph and then answer questions about what you just read. Many, many questions. So many that nobody had time to either answer them all or re-read the paragraph. There were also sections to test reasoning ability, including some algebra. Probably different now. I don't know anything about the book, but presumably it will tell you how to spend your preparation time. Good luck.

If anybody responds with a joke I think is funny, I promise to admit it.

As with any standardized test, it is more a test of test taking ability and reasoning than anything else. And for most people, you either get it or you dont. I really dont think that you can study for such a test. Being a quick reader and study could help but generally, having a strategy on how to handle the questions that you dont know how to answer is just as important. As I recall, in my day, you needed a combined score of 1200(?) to be competitive in law school admissions so if your GPA is over 3.5(x2), you knew what you needed to score on LSAT. I have no idea what is competitive now but you do know that there are too many attorneys in the marketplace????

How does an attorney sleep? First he lies on one side, and then he lies on the other.

How many lawyer jokes are there? Only three. The rest are true stories.

What do you call a lawyer gone bad? 'Senator.'

How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? How many can you afford?

What do you get if you cross a crooked lawyer with a crooked politician? Chelsea Clinton

A man walking along the beach found a bottle. When he rubbed it, lo and behold, a genie appeared.

"I will grant you three wishes," announced the genie. "But there is one condition. I am a lawyer's genie. That means that for every wish you make, every lawyer in the world gets the wish as well -- only double."

The man thought about this for a while. "For my first wish, I would like ten million dollars," he announced.

Instantly the genie gave him a Swiss bank account number and assured the man that $10,000,000 had been deposited. "But every lawyer in the world has just recieved $20,000,000," the genie said.

"I've always wanted a Ferrari," the man said. "That's my second wish."

Instantly a Ferrari appeared. "But every lawyer in the world has just received two Ferraris," the genie said. "And what is your last wish?"

"Well," said the man, "I've always wanted to donate a kidney...

I could have sworn that was going to end, "I want you to beat me half to death.". :)

I forgot to mention the joke also has to be one I haven't heard in the last 40 years. There's always a loophole.

whenry wrote: you do know that there are too many attorneys in the marketplace????

The peak of the over-production was about two years ago. Because of that and very high student debt rates for attorneys, the number of enrollees is actually on the decline. The starting salary just isn't enough for a new attorney to cover their student loans and make ends meet. Luckily for me, I will not have any debt as I will be using my full GI Bill to cover the cost of school. I will be taking a slight initial pay cut (possibly), but the opportunities for advancement and salary-increase over the long term are much better.

The LSAT is the first step. Luckily for me, I've always been a good test-taker. Mostly, I've just been brushing up on my logic and reasoning. I've been working for the US Government for the last six years, so those skills haven't been put to much use...

DustoffDave wrote:

whenry wrote: you do know that there are too many attorneys in the marketplace????

The peak of the over-production was about two years ago. Because of that and very high student debt rates for attorneys, the number of enrollees is actually on the decline. The starting salary just isn't enough for a new attorney to cover their student loans and make ends meet. Luckily for me, I will not have any debt as I will be using my full GI Bill to cover the cost of school. I will be taking a slight initial pay cut (possibly), but the opportunities for advancement and salary-increase over the long term are much better. The LSAT is the first step. Luckily for me, I've always been a good test-taker. Mostly, I've just been brushing up on my logic and reasoning. I've been working for the US Government for the last six years, so those skills haven't been put to much use...

It's peaked, but the overproduction is continuing. If you can do it without debt and understand that you are going into a field where salaries are still dropping and more and more graduates are willing to work for peanuts, then more power to you. Being able to do it without debt is a huge leg up, and if you are a veteran you will have a preference for most government jobs.

The one thing I would advise you to do now before you invest three frustrating years is to go shadow some attorneys in different practice areas. Most attorneys will tell you that the nuts and bolts of the job were not what they expected them to be.

As for the LSAT, I can't give you any tips. I took it cold on a whim, more or less, and did pretty well. If you have good logical thinking and reading comprehension skills, you'll do fine.

What do you have if half the lawyers in the world dropped over dead?

A good start.

What's the different between a lawyer and a catfish?

One is a scum sucking bottom feeder, the other is a fish.

psteav wrote: The one thing I would advise you to do now before you invest three frustrating years is to go shadow some attorneys in different practice areas. Most attorneys will tell you that the nuts and bolts of the job were not what they expected them to be.

This is an excellent idea. I've spoken with a few attorney friends (14-yr private practice, 10-yr private practice, class of '12 graduate in private practice, and 10-yr federal prosecutor) and have gotten some very good information from them. But, actually doing some shadowing would certainly be good.

This afternoon, my wife and I visited the school I'm looking to attend (Gonzaga). We got a tour, got to sit in on a class, and did the usual administration rounds (admissions, financial aid, etc.). It was a very positive experience.

When #2 son took the North Carolina LSAT 5 years ago, he drove up to the exam site several days in advance. He was able to measure the drive there (2 hours), scope out the exam room (huge), and hang out for a couple hours. He said he was much more relaxed just by knowing in advance what the environment would be like. He said there were a number of people who showed up lost & scared. He did well enough to get accepted into a number of law schools, settled on UNC-Chapel Hill.

I did the gmat years ago with a 96 percentile rating. I did practice exams over and over, just to have your mind in the right frame. best of luck with your test.

If it's any help, I found the MCAT study guides to be useless. And, what's the difference between a dead snake and a dead lawyer on the side of the road? The snake has the skid marks.

The lawyer is standing at the gate to Heaven and St. Peter is listing his sins:

Defending a large corporation in a pollution suit where he knew they were guilty. Defending an obviously guilty murderer because the fee was high. Overcharging fees to many clients. Prosecuting an innocent woman because a scapegoat was needed in a controversial case. And the list goes on for quite awhile.... The lawyer objects and begins to argue his case. He admits all these things, but argues, "Wait, I've done some charity in my life also." St. Peter looks in his book and says,"Yes, I see. Once you gave a dime to a panhandler and once you gave an extra nickel to the shoeshine boy, correct?" The lawyer gets a smug look on his face and replies, "Yes." St. Peter turns to the angel next to him and says, "Give this guy 15 cents and tell him to go to hell."

A grade school teacher was asking students what their parents did for a living. "Tim, you be first," she said. "What does your mother do all day?" Tim stood up and proudly said, "She's a doctor.""That's wonderful. How about you, Amie?" Amie shyly stood up, scuffed her feet and said, "My father is a mailman." "Thank you, Amie," said the teacher. "What about your father, Billy?" Billy proudly stood up and announced, "My daddy plays piano in a whorehouse." The teacher was aghast and promptly changed the subject to geography. Later that day she went to Billy's house and rang the bell. Billy's father answered the door. The teacher explained what his son had said and demanded an explanation. Billy's father said, "I'm actually an attorney. How can I explain a thing like that to a seven-year-old?"

I love these attorney jokes. I took the LSAT twice, once in '96 and again in 2000. My score (pretty good) increased by 1 point but they may have changed the scoring system between those years. Both times I prepped with the Kaplan book, focusing for the most part on logic games and taking many timed practice tests and reviewing the results.

I've been practicing for 10 years doing a variety of things. For the first few years I worried I made a huge mistake, now I have a hard time imagining doing anything else. There are a lot of lawyers out there but there are many who don't stay in the profession, and there are also many who do not take it seriously as a learned profession and really learn areas of the law; its like they just roam around courtroom to depo to phone conference and just act like butts. Lawyers don't care much for lawyers like that any more than non-attorneys who tell good jokes. The law is complex and can be nuanced and developing some degree of mastery brings great satisfaction but takes time and some devotion.

Best of luck to you. Sounds like you are making a mature decision. Law school is by and large unpleasant, but it was the first time I ever sat in a room surrounded by people who knew as much, if not more, about Star Trek and AD&D than I did and I made lifetime friends. We still say "There are four lights" and "Chaka when the walls fell". We played pen and paper AD&D during the third year as well.

Its been about 18 years since I took mine. As far as studying goes, the only thing that really helped was practicing the logic problems (if the LSAT still includes those). The rest is basically reading comprehension.

As for getting ready law school, pick up a copy of Scott Turow's book "One L". Read it and assume, no matter how impossibly stupid you think people act in the book (basically Turow's journal of his first year at Harvard Law) you will actually encounter people acting that crazy, irrational and stupid at some point during your law school education. I'd also suggest that SWMBO and close family members read it so they have some idea what's going on once you start school.

The LSAT, like law school itself, is a game. You are either good at it, or you aren't. If you do well on the LSAT and you learn to play the game, you'll probably do pretty well in law school as well. Its not for everyone. I went to school with some really smart people who simply weren't good at the game. With hard work, even someone who isn't "a natural" can get through, but often with a GPA that doesn't offer a whole lot in the way of employment opportunities. If it doesn't "click" for you, I'd highly recommend switching to something like an MBA. Honestly, I think for most people, the payoff is better.

P.S. A doctor, a dentist and a lawyer are out on a fishing boat when the boat starts leaking and sinks. A pair of sharks come along. The first eats the dentist, the second eats the doctor. The second shark is about eat the lawyer when the first stops him. "We don't eat lawyers", says the first shark. "Why not?", asks the second. "Professional courtesy."

What's the definition of a tragedy? A bus load of lawyers going off a cliff with an empty seat.

What's the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer? A bad lawyer can make your case drag on for years. A good lawyer makes it last even longer.

I'll be here all week.

No advice on the test. With the huge number of unemployed lawyers out there already, unless I had some sort of strange passion to practice law, there is no way I'd even consider dropping the coin (or especially going into debt) to get a law degree in this day and age. Seems like a lot of recent grads are lucky to get minimum wage jobs and struggle under the burden of the debt incurred for the 'education'.

If you really want to do, I wish you well. Hope you do well on the test.

Dr. Hess wrote: A grade school teacher was asking students what their parents did for a living. "Tim, you be first," she said. "What does your mother do all day?" Tim stood up and proudly said, "She's a doctor.""That's wonderful. How about you, Amie?" Amie shyly stood up, scuffed her feet and said, "My father is a mailman." "Thank you, Amie," said the teacher. "What about your father, Billy?" Billy proudly stood up and announced, "My daddy plays piano in a whorehouse." The teacher was aghast and promptly changed the subject to geography. Later that day she went to Billy's house and rang the bell. Billy's father answered the door. The teacher explained what his son had said and demanded an explanation. Billy's father said, "I'm actually an attorney. How can I explain a thing like that to a seven-year-old?"

All right. You got me. One I've never heard before that's actually kinda funny.

DustoffDave wrote:

psteav wrote: The one thing I would advise you to do now before you invest three frustrating years is to go shadow some attorneys in different practice areas. Most attorneys will tell you that the nuts and bolts of the job were not what they expected them to be.

This is an excellent idea. I've spoken with a few attorney friends (14-yr private practice, 10-yr private practice, class of '12 graduate in private practice, and 10-yr federal prosecutor) and have gotten some very good information from them. But, actually doing some shadowing would certainly be good. This afternoon, my wife and I visited the school I'm looking to attend (Gonzaga). We got a tour, got to sit in on a class, and did the usual administration rounds (admissions, financial aid, etc.). It was a very positive experience.

I've been practicing for about five years now, and I can say that it's not quite what I expected, and I'm not in a practice area I expected to be in, but I do like the work and I generally make enough to get by.

DON'T believe any numbers you see coming from a law school about employment rates or median salary for their graduates. They are horseE36 M3. When I graduated in 2009, the law school sent out a press release six months later saying that in the depths of the recession, 75% of my graduating class were employed as lawyers, making an average of $61k a year. I put out a survey amongst my classmates on facebook and figured out that not only was it more like 45% at an average of $50k, but almost no one had actually been contacted by the law school to fill out their supposed survey. The employment picture has gotten a little better over the last few years, and you're right that the number of admissions is finally tapering off.

so an engineer died and went to hell, where he promptly rigged up an air conditioning system. God noticed there weren't so many souls trying to get out of hell anymore and went to investigate. when he found out what happened, he realized that the engineer wasn't supposed to go to hell, so he threatened to sue Satan if he didn't send the engineer to heaven at once. satan said, "Sue me? where you gonna get a lawyer?"