Monday, January 31, 2011

Contemplating the Bar Exam

I spent my weekend taking a grueling thirteen-hour class on how to apply for and prepare for the bar exam, so I'm good and scared now. The bar exam tests a dozen subjects, three or four of which I didn't study at all in school. I'll have about two months after graduation to learn those subjects and relearn the ones I studied two years ago. In Arkansas, about 75% of bar takers pass.
As part of the class we watched the documentary A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar . . ., which I can recommend as entertaining whether you're going to sit for the bar or not (pro tip: you can watch it instantly on Netflix!).

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The Tyranny of the Billable Hour

Ever since I started school I have been hearing about what a pain it is to keep up with billable hours, but I have not had to do it myself until this semester. I'm in the office seven and a half hours a day, and if I stay busy all day I usually wind up with about five billable hours.
On the one hand, I feel like I need to pack on more billable hours to justify my employment, so I have a powerful incentive to keep the meter running no matter what.
On the other hand, I know my time is being billed to the client at an extravagant rate, so I feel guilty if I bill even one minute spent chatting with my office mates, staring out the window or whatnot.
Billing is ethical dilemma number one in the legal profession.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Fall Grades

Fall grades are in. Mine were respectable. About six months ago I settled on a target GPA that I wanted to graduate with. I'm on a pace to beat that target, but I could still blow it with a poor showing in the spring. This is no time to slack off!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Swimming with the Sharks

My spring clerkship is underway. This is my first exposure to a big law firm ("big" is relative--the largest firms in Little Rock would be considered "medium-sized" in a place like New York or Chicago). I haven't done much actual work yet, so I don't know what that's going to be like, but I can tell you that the offices are almost a parody of big law firms. Seriously, you can't turn around in that place without bumping into some burled wood or tufted leather.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Employed, But Not Working

Now this just isn't fair. Even when I find paying work, somehow the universe finds a way to prevent me from benefiting from it. I have been idle for weeks, just waiting for the first day of my spring clerkship. Today is that day, but Little Rock got five inches of snow last night and the whole city is shut down. So here I sit in my living room, getting poorer by the minute.

Fortunately, the research project I undertook a few weeks ago went well. I put in a total of around fifty hours, which went a long way toward funding my spring tuition. The supervising attorney didn't give me much feedback, but he did say I can use him as a reference, so I must have done a decent job.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Paid Up

I just wrote what should be my last tuition check. The Bowen school sells one of the least expensive legal educations in the country, but considering tuition, books, and most of all the cost of being unemployed for three years, I am still out well over $100K. It's going to take a long time to make that back at the $0 per year I have arranged to earn upon graduation. I have excelled at academic life, but I'll look like a real dummy if I don't find a job pretty soon.