July 2009

This week, thousands of law school graduates will sit for the bar exam. The test -- two days in some states, three in others -- is the culmination of the law school experience and one of the final hurdles that you need to clear before you actually get to practice law.

The test itself is a miserable experience. Cramped rooms, students cramming material in the final moments, and mental and emotional exhaustion from months of studying create an atmosphere of stress and anxiety. Going home after the first night knowing that you have to do it all over again the next day (or the next two days if you are in New York, California, or a few other states) makes for a less than restful night of sleep.

A few random bar exams tips:

Tip: Practice and study using ear plugs and then bring a set with you to the exam. It's amazing how loud the sound of a sneaker squeaking on a hardwood floor can be in a room full of a thousand people...

Tip: Avoid the nuts. You will see people in the bar exam using study guides and outlines up to the very last moments before the test begins. Avoid these people like the plague. They will stress you out and ruin your focus.

Tip: Remember that it's not about how high you score -- it's about passing. Your entire law school career (and before that, college and high school...) was focused on not just passing an exam but doing so with perfect scores. You do not need to ace the bar exam, and you need to change that mindset. That's not to say you shouldn't study, but rather than you should resist the natural instinct to panic when you don't know the answer to a question. If you know the answers to most other questions, you're going to pass.

Students often spend thousands of dollars on prep courses and devote 2 months of their lives memorizing obscure legal concepts and mnemonic devices that they will regurgitate on the bar exam. I have relatively fond memories of my time spent preparing for the exam. I remained at law school after graduation and watched the BarBri lectures on video. A number of my friends did so as well. During bar exam prep your life is on a set schedule, so we decided to schedule mental health time by playing golf a few times a week at a fantastic local course. That's one other tip: be sure to schedule mental health time. Just because the bar exam happens in July doesn't mean it should ruin your summer.

With everything going on in your life as you prepare to sit for this test, imagine if you were told -- less than a week before the exam -- that a technical error was going to prevent you from sitting for it?

That's what happened to Sara Granda, a recent graduate of UC Davis School of Law. Sara spent the last couple of months preparing to take the California bar exam. She graduated UC Davis in three years, speaks fluent Spanish, and worked at an immigration law clinic. Fairly typical of a 3rd year law school student -- except Sara Granda is a quadriplegic.

Sara Granda signed up for the California bar exam and her $600 entry fee was paid for by the California Department of Rehabilitation by check. Problem is, the state bar's website requires that payment be made by credit card. Granda apparently did her homework and checked with a representative from the state bar who told her that her application would still be processed.

Unfortunately that never happened, and Granda was notified that because of a bureaucratic snafu, she was not registered for the test. Granda has petitioned the California Supreme Court to allow her to take the test, and even has Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking out for her.

So as you study during this final weekend before the exam, remember that things could be worse. You could be fighting with the mnemonic devices and random Contracts question while also having to fight to take the test.

Questions or comments? We want to hear from you! And good luck on the exam.

 

Gregory Henning is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Virginia Law School. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge R. Lanier Anderson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and then became an Assistant District Attorney in Boston. As part of the Anna Ivey team, Greg works with law school applicants. 

Jon Hodge is the owner of Strictly English TOEFL Tutors.

I ask all our clients when they begin studying for the TOEFL, "what schools are you applying to?" I ask this because we need to know from the start what TOEFL score the student will need. If they want to attend Harvard Business School, they will need a 109, but if they want to attend Suffolk for an MBA, then they will only need an 80. Obviously, this will change the amount of time they need to prepare and the way we customize the student's course of study.

One answer to this question always surprises me. Every once in a while I get a student who says, "I'm not deciding on what schools to apply to until I get my TOEFL results." The applicants then explain that they will apply to the schools that have TOEFL requirements equal to their scores.

Let me make this very clear: This is a very bad way to choose the schools you will apply to.

First of all, a large part of your admissions file is your personal statement or statement of purpose that explains, among other things, why you want to attend the school you're applying to. Schools use this part of the essay to determine if you're serious about their program specifically. If the only reason you've chosen their school is because it matches your TOEFL score, then you will have nothing substantial to say about their program and why you like it better than other programs. Sure, you could invent some reason by looking at their website and finding something to talk about, but admissions offices can always tell when a student doesn't have a genuine passion for the school they are applying to.

Second, keep in mind that you'll want to be working on all of your admissions materials at the same time. You should be studying for the TOEFL while you're also working on your letters and other standardized tests. If you are waiting for your TOEFL results before applying to schools, you will most likely be left with very little time to prepare the rest of your materials. Especially because the students who decide to let their TOEFL score determine the schools they apply to are also the students who keep taking the TOEFL over and over again until the last minute. And this leaves them no time to craft powerful resumes and statements of purpose.

But let's stop here for a minute and think harder about the fact that applicants who want their TOEFL score to pick their schools are also the people who keep taking the TOEFL. Why take the TOEFL over and over again if you don't care what school you go to? Repeatedly taking the TOEFL suggests that these people really do have a goal they are trying to achieve, a school they passionately want to attend, but they are afraid to admit it, or they are afraid of failure.

If it were really true that they didn't mind that their TOEFL score would determine the schools they were going to apply to, then they would simply take the test once and, with their results in hand, they would pick their schools. In fact, they would be the first to complete and submit their applications! But this is not the case.

Therefore, I encourage everyone who picks their schools based on their TOEFL scores to question this decision. What might really be behind this presumably "practical" choice? Most likely, you do have a school that you feel passionate about. Don't be afraid to go for it! Work hard to raise your TOEFL results to the score you need for the school you love. You'll need this kind of dedication and perseverance once you're in graduate school anyway, so it's a good thing to begin training yourself now to achieve your goals. With the right support, you can achieve anything, even a high TOEFL score! 

The Dow Jones started really tanking in October of last year along with the rest of the economy, but it felt as if the economic impact on legal careers was delayed. Whispers of cuts at top law firms grew louder in early 2009, but most firms hung on until the bitter end to announce the unthinkable: layoffs of attorneys.

One of the best sources for following these developments, Above the Law, has described its coverage as a "Nationwide Layoff Watch." Not what you want to hear if you're in the market for a job.

But now the economy looks like it may be turning around a bit, the Dow had a great quarter, and interest rates haven't gone through the roof. The housing market is seeing some positive signs. The future looks bright...right?

Not so much. The delayed impact on the legal world continues, and it's starting to hit the summer associate programs for next year. Firms have begun to announce that things will not be any better a year from now, when rising 1Ls will be hoping to land a coveted summer job and (hopefully) permanent employment.

Morgan Lewis, the 12th highest grossing law firm in 2008, has canceled its summer program entirely.  Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe recently announced that it will push back the start of recruiting and delay future start dates. These are two huge firms; one can only guess how many others will follow suit in the coming months.

Some schools are trying to remain optimistic, advising students to adapt to the market by applying to a broad range of employers and "secondary markets." Sure, tough times call for a more flexible approach. But when Harvard career services officials are suggesting that students look at Milwaukee, you know things are getting ugly.

Given the lag between the impact on the US economy and the legal market, don't look for things to change anytime soon. The Class of 2011 is feeling the pressure right now, and chances are the Class of 2012 won't be seeing any real improvement.

Gregory Henning is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Virginia Law School. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge R. Lanier Anderson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and then became an Assistant District Attorney in Boston. As part of the Anna Ivey team, Greg works with law school applicants.  

I have been a career counselor at two law schools with excellent part-time programs, where classes are held in the evenings so students can work full or part-time. For some applicants, the evening division is ideal: they work during the day at jobs they enjoy, earn money to pay for law school now rather than collect debt for later, and make contacts. Other law school applicants are disappointed to receive offers of admission to part-time programs rather than day programs, and hope to transfer to the day divisions at their schools after first year.

This year, US News & World Report changed its methodology to combine admissions data for full- and part-time students when computing the infamous rankings. "In the past, we'd just used full-time," said Bob Morse, the director of data research for the magazine. "But some schools we think were gaming the system. There were some part-time programs that were set up just for US News reporting purposes." (See the WSJ Law Blog here and the Law Librarian Blog here for discussions about this change.) The practice of admitting students with somewhat lower GPA and LSAT scores into evening programs may disappear because of this change, but it's too early to tell.

If you choose a part-time program, work full-time while attending law school, and remain in the evening division for four years (rather than the three years of a full-time program), you will need to make some strategic decisions while you're a student to position yourself for your post-graduate job search. Because of your day job, you may not be able to attend many career service programs, participate in most or all clinics, or take time off for summer legal jobs. Thoughtful planning can help you make the most of your time in law school. Here are some suggestions:

• Select courses that reflect your interests and add a section titled "Relevant Coursework" to your resume
• Highlight transferable skills from your current employment in your cover letters and resume
• Be prepared to articulate your goals for prospective legal employers, so your choice to work and attend law school can be explained as a unmitigated asset
• Get involved with student groups. If a group you wish to join doesn't have opportunities for evening students, create those opportunities and become the group liaison from the evening division
• Compete for Moot Court or journals
• Consider working as a Research Assistant during the semester or summer, for a professor who will allow you to set your own hours and work independently
• Reach out to non-profits and government agencies in your community to see if they accept students as volunteers for discrete short-term projects, evening work, or weekend work. Some law schools will find and promote these opportunities
• Seek law-related projects with your current employer
• Ask your current employer for one (or two, if possible) summer sabbatical(s), when you can seek full-time legal employment

Are you considering or currently enrolled in a part-time program? Share your experience here.

Nicole Vikan is a graduate of NYU Law School. She spent her first law school summer at a large law firm, and her second summer in the Homicide Investigation Unit at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. She returned to the District Attorney's Office after graduation and spent five years as a criminal prosecutor, handling cases such as robbery and assault. Nicole then joined Fordham Law School's Career Planning Center, where she advised students seeking employment in the private and public sectors. She is currently a career counselor at Georgetown Law Center's Office of Public Interest and Community Service. As part of the Anna Ivey team, Nicole works with law school applicants and people exploring legal careers.   

Ms. Ivey:

I don't know if you've ever had this question before, because my "dropping out" is a bit different from others' experiences.  I'm taking a class and doing an internship now.  The class ends in a week.  But I am very depressed.  I am at a Tier 2 with slightly below median grades, no Moot Court or journal.  For me, my disappointment isn't only about jobs.  I seem to have some trouble making good friends here, and Moot Court or journal would have been a good way for me to make a fresh start.  (I did make the second round of Moot Court; my grades were a bit low to have a good shot at a journal.)  Almost everyone I know seems to have high grades, Law Review, etc.  So I'm faced with the prospect of two years of depression because I will be reminded every day that I was one of the losers of 1L.  I can't take it.  And then...of course, there is the very precarious job situation, more so for me. 

I went to a top undergrad, I'm very bright but not always the best student, and I'm pretty much ashamed of my situation.  I have no motivation for the next two years.  And I don't have that much hope either.  It really seems like if you weren't one of the "winners" after 1L, you have NO SHOT of ever being one.

Weird thing is, I find some of law interesting.  But I don't know if I want to be a second-class citizen for the next two years.  Advice?

One thing I know for certain: you are not the only 1L who feels this way, and anyone who has been out of law school for a while still remembers the anxiety of that first year. (More advice for unhappy 1Ls at My International Summer Internship Was a Bust, 1L Blues, and More 1L Blues.)

I figured that crowd-sourcing a reply would be more helpful than offering just one person's thoughts (mine), so I ran your email past some trusted law school graduates to see what advice they would share. Here's what they said:

• This is one of the reasons it's so essential that law schools *knock it off* with the pretense of not being professional schools.  [See here and here. - Anna] What this student needs is a very careful assessment of what the next 15 years look like professionally if he slogs through and graduates, and then he needs to decide if that's a life to embrace. Seems like for somebody like this, it boils down to whether he enjoys the mechanics of law practice -- the reading, writing, contract review, depositions, etc., regardless of the underlying subject matter.  Some do, God bless 'em.  But if he can't get straight on that question, then dropping out is a far better option.
• This reminds me of many interactions with clients... they talk about what they perceive as the immediate problem, but they gloss over the ultimate goal.  There's nothing in his message about what he actually wants to do with his life other than saying, "I find some of law interesting".  Before he decides what to do, he needs to get a grasp of why he is in law school at all... what he wants to do with his life. Is there a particular career path that requires a law degree, or did he go to law school by default or some other reason?  You can't give guidance without knowing more about what he wants to accomplish.
• He needs to figure out what kind of lawyer he wants to be, and work backwards from there to see how it's possible.
• Strikes me as someone who would be unhappy in this profession, and dropping out may be the best thing he ever does.  He has a soul, God bless him.
• There were a number of folks in our class who did not have stellar numbers as 1Ls, but tailored the remainder of their law school classes and activities to achieving certain goals. (I specifically recall one classmate who chose his 2L and 3L classes based solely on the ease of grading - he's a partner at Cravath now.) So it's doable, with the right motivation.
• I'd really stress the "figure out what you want to do with your law degree" part. However, er, varied my career has been, when I have been working on stuff that had some intrinsic interest to me -- environmental / resource stuff -- I've done a lot better as a lawyer than otherwise. Secondly, he ought to be reminded that if "everyone" he knows has great grades -- and I assume grades aren't actually posted on the wall somewhere -- some of the everyone he knows are liars.
• Does he want to be a lawyer? If so, learn the virtue of enduring a temporary difficulty in order to achieve the good end you desire. The question is, is he going to endure the difficulty of law school just so he can endure a career he doesn't really want?
• Anna, have you ever read this: http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Johnny-Bunko-Career-Guide/dp/1594482918. Good advice, the lot of it.
• He needs to separate out his various problems. Self-worth shouldn't be about having top grades - there are many other ways to distinguish yourself in law school. Making friends has nothing to do with having good grades. If he thinks he can't make friends because he has bad grades, he needs to take a step back and separate the two. Assuming this guy ends up doing all the thinking he needs to do and deciding to stay in law school, then he needs to join some extracurriculars that will help him build a social network and support group so he doesn't feel so isolated. I wouldn't have survived my 1L year without my activities and the friends that I made there. Heaven knows my best friends weren't from my section.
  
  I also think this guy could benefit from a long talk with someone in his OCS office, and possibly with a therapist. He sounds like he might actually be clinically depressed - the hopelessness and self-flagellation here, as well as the sense that he thinks there's no way for things to get better lead me to believe that he needs some professional help. If he'd come to me when I was an OCS counselor saying these things I would have sent him to student counseling right quick.
  
  I'm sure we all have stories of people who didn't do well 1L year who did much better once they started taking classes they enjoyed more and writing papers. I also know lots of people who didn't do very well grade-wise who ended up with great careers because of tenacity, flexibility, or a variety of other traits. I'm fond of telling students about a contemporary of mine who had a C average and ended up with a federal district clerkship because of a willingness to go to a geographic location no one else wanted to go to. 1L year is not the only thing that determines the rest of your life, unless you let it drag you down.
• This person isn't having career selection problems, he's having general depression problems, and frankly, sounds like he could use some professional help.
• He's not the only one out there with this sort of problem. Depression in graduate school students is very common and on the rise.
• [From a JD/MD:] I do not think there is enough information about his circumstances to determine whether he is clinically depressed or not. He may be situationally depressed, and possibly appropriately so. I also wonder whether he is simply immature, even though he is a college graduate. He does not discuss the reasons for his poorer-than-expected performance as a 1L.
  
  The last thing one should do is stay in a position in which there is no passion. As professionals, we know that the work can be hard and not always rewarding, the distractions and nuisances are ongoing, and the responsibilities can be great. Without passion for one's profession, such a situation would be untenable.
• I agree he needs to figure out what to do with his life and get some perspective.  He seems too tied up in the "rat race" mentality that is forged at many law schools, where the standards, goals, and sense of worth are all defined by other equally immature young people who don't know what life is like after graduation.
  
  That said, the self-absorption, self-pity, sadness, and sense of hopelessness suggest serious depression to me that should be treated in ways that go beyond career and educational counseling.
• It this guy's perspective qualifies as anything vaguely clinical then half my law school class, including yours truly, missed out on some psych treatment.

Lots of great advice there, also for prospective law school students. It does sound as if this person is stuck in spiraling mode, and that's a tough (and counter-productive) place to be. I hope hearing from all these people who have been there makes it easier to become unstuck. Figuring out the right questions to ask oneself is important, too.

Note also how important it is to have a sense of what you hope to get out of law school, ideally before you go. Hoping to figure that out once you're there is not the most realistic plan. (On that subject, see the links I included in the first bullet point.)

I also invite you to read Cary Tennis's most recent advice column over at Salon.com ("Do I really want to go to law school?"). I'm a big fan of Cary's (I have praised him on my blog before), but I find myself wondering whether his advice in this instance is a bit too optimistic. The comments to the column are very interesting and worth reading too (at Salon comments are called "letters," so look for the "letters" section).

If any readers have advice to share, please leave a comment! We'd also love to hear from current law students, and readers from other disciplines.

Part of the value of the process of blogging my way through the LSAT's is to make myself more aware of which explanation strategies are working for me and which ones aren't.  I am midway through my explanations for LSAT 25, the second test I am attempting, and I am finding myself running into two mutually exclusive ideas about how to deal with the argument questions that I keep getting wrong.  So, to resolve the conflict between these two ideas, I thought I'd post a little bit of an aside column about the LSAT's "Argument" section design and some differing ways of approaching that design.  One approach is covered in this column, and the other will be covered in the next column.

To start off, I think the best way to understand something is to first define it.  In this case, if I were asked the question, "What is the LSAT Arguments section about?" I would be tempted to make some sort of pithy but ultimately worthless statement about "reasoning" or "logic" or "deduction."  However, any definition along this front would only invite questions about defining any of those three words, which would take lots of time and would probably rely on more vague words that would need to be similarly defined.  So to escape this morass of empty definitions, I would instead say:  The LSAT Argument section is concerned with arbitrary categories and the connections and distinctions between them.  Of course, it is the reasoning process that allows us to make those connections and distinctions, but now the focus is on the categories themselves, which allows us to anchor our discussion of reasoning.

In a typical question, the speaker introduces some arbitrary set of categories.  These categories either group themselves into some sort of complete argument, a partial argument, or just a semi-related collection of statements.  This argument can either be correct or incorrect as presented in the question stem (the block of text before the actual question is asked.)

All the information in the previous paragraph might tell you about the question, but it certainly doesn't really tell you anything about how to digest what you have read.  This is where the two different opinions on how to approach the test crop up.  The first approach is something I call the deductive approach.  It is the approach that seems to be advocated by many of the major test prep books I have read (The PowerScore Arguments Bible, as well as the Kaplan and Princeton Review books), and it generally consists of categorizing each argument into one of several categories, which is usually done by question type.  If you've ever thought about dividing the arguments section into categories like "strengthen" questions, "weaken" questions, and "parallel-the-flaw" questions, then you are implicitly thinking along these lines.

The deductive approach assumes that every question type has a certain analytical framework for figuring out the answer.  That is, that every single "parallel-the-flaw" question gets solved a similar way.  The tutorial approach using the deductive method is to train someone to recognize the categories, then practice a lot of problems within those categories.  When a test taker sees a question, he or she has to "deduce" which category the question is in, and then apply whatever framework is suggested by that category.  By the time the test taker has completed a bunch of those types of problems, the reasoning goes, he or she should be ready to encounter it on the actual test.

This approach has a lot to recommend it.  It is simple, straightforward, and everyone appears to be recommending some sort of variation on it.

Nevertheless, I still can't get it out of my head that this approach might be wrong.

When I first began tutoring the SAT's 8 years ago, I would have classified myself as a deductive approach guy.  Show a student some circle problems, some triangle problems, some systems of equations problems, and soon enough, boom, you've got the SAT math covered.  A similar process existed for the verbal section, and when it was added, the writing section.

The more time I spent tutoring, the more I realized two disturbing trends:  one, there were all of these problems that didn't fit cleanly into one category, and two, that simply providing a category of a question's content doesn't provide any sort of way to separate an easy problem from a hard problem.  If the whole point of tutoring is to help someone figure out tough problems, then a category system that doesn't distinguish easy from hard is pretty useless.

These two realizations started me down a long path of thinking about standardized tests outside of their content.  It also urged me to start constructing my own approach to standardized testing, which I'll outline in the next column.

Thoughts? Please share.

 

For the past eight years, Charles Williamson hasn’t met a standardized test he didn’t like, helping hundreds of students in everything from the SAT and ACT to the SSAT to the GMAT to AP Calculus. A longtime student of the thought process that defines performance on standardized tests, Charles got off to a good start, receiving a perfect score on his SATs in high school. He then graduated from Brown University, earning bachelor's degrees in computer science and history.  He has long been fascinated by the intersection of education and technology, and when not writing about standardized tests and educational policy, he will be happy to speculate rampantly about how the Internet will affect the ways that we learn.  Charles blogs for the Ivey Files about test preparation.  

In my last post, I wrote about my plan to work my way through LSAT problems and try to discern best practices to solve them.

For this post, I tackled LSAT test number 24. The test went surprisingly well for me; much better than I would have expected.  I completed it while I was in sort of a strange mood.  I did parts of it on the subway, parts of it in a quiet office, and parts of it on a commuter rail train.  I didn't care about time.  I didn't make any mistakes on the games, but I would not have finished the section if it were timed.  (I'll tackle the games at a later point, and might circle back around and address some of them here.)

Of the four questions I got wrong overall, three were in the Logical Reasoning (arguments) section, and two of them involved formal logic.  By the way, this number wrong is abnormally low.  I usually get about 10 wrong or so.

One last note:  I'm actually not approaching this test completely cold; I have read some LSAT prep books and taken one course.  Thus, it may seem like some of my early answers assume a prior knowledge that I do not explicitly show.  Once I get a critical mass of questions, my plan is to start using the evidence to help determine whether the method I'm using is appropriate or not.

If you'd like to purchase a copy of the exam, you can do so here. 

Question 21, Section 2:

I found this one to be a tricky question, because it seemed to start out with a rather informal set of information, then the question proved to involve a significant amount of formal logic with lots of negation.  I was able to isolate the following items:  that "the laws are impossible to enforce" is an argument that leads to the main argument.  So we know that if there is a law against gambling, then it is impossible to enforce.  "When a law fails to be effective, I should not be a law" is an argument, and the conclusion is that there should be no laws against gambling.  So it's pretty clear that we need some sort of connective from the word "enforce" to the word "effective."  This means that answers A and B are particularly attractive.  When I see the similar wording of the answers, especially with the amount of ‘not's' around (as well as words like ‘All' and ‘No'), I start going back to formalize the relationships.

I symbolized the first statement as LaG → ¬Enforce.
I symbolized the second statement as ¬Effective → ¬Law.

(The ¬ symbolizes the phrase "not", so you would read the last statement as "not-Effective implies not-Law")

Since we know that we're trying to get to ¬LaG, then we know we have to get from Effective to Enforce, because by the contrapositive of the first statement, we know that Enforce → ¬LaG.
Answer choice A requires some manipulation, but if we take the answer and literally convert it, we get ‘No Effective is ¬Enforce.'  Formal logic says that statements of the form "No A is B" become "A → ¬B".  Our statement then becomes Effective → ‘Not' ¬Enforce, which taking the double negation becomes Effective → Enforce.  This is exactly what we're looking for, so it's the correct answer.

I originally picked B, which converts to Enforce → Effective.  Since this is the converse of what we're looking for, it isn't necessarily true.  I should have known this.  Actually, I felt pressed for time and didn't want to go through the hassle of converting A, and this seemed ‘good enough' to get to what I was looking for.  Blech.

STATUS:  RESOLVED VIA FORMAL LOGIC.

Question 19, Section 3:

We see from the words "every" and "some" that we are again in formal logic territory.  Because of the similarity of the wording of the answers, it again feels to me like I need to use some sort of symbolic notation to keep track of exactly what we should be doing here.  The first statement, "Every student who walks to school goes home for lunch" becomes Walk → Home.  The second sentence becomes Part-time → ¬Walk.  I know that the question makes specific use of the words "every" and "some," but I'm going to stay away from that kind of logic for now.

Now, in order to answer this question, we need to make an assumption that binds the two implications together.  Since one deals with Walk and the other deals with ¬Walk, we might need to take the contrapositive of one of the statements.  (Again, I'm assuming a level of knowledge that some of you might not have.  I'm sorry for this; I just didn't want to get bogged down with too much introductory stuff.  I'll cover it later.)  If we take the contrapositive of the first statement, we get ¬Home → ¬Walk.  If we can get ¬Home to Part-time, then we are set.  Is there such an answer?  Yes, it's D.  I had originally picked A, which translates to ¬Part-time → Home.  If I had taken the contrapositive of the second, I would have gotten Walk → ¬Part-time, which when joined with my answer would have given me Walk → Home as well.  Hmm...It looks like the categorical logic does come into play here.

It's pretty clear that in order to do at least some of these questions on the test, we would be aided by formal logic as well as categorical logic (i.e. logic dealing with all, some, etc.)  So let's put a callout here.

Need (1):  Some sort of understanding of formal logic.
Need (2):  Some sort of understanding of categorical logic.

As always, I'd love to get a critical mass of questions that I could go back and reanalyze them after having learned about some formal logic.

STATUS:  UNRESOLVED PENDING CATEGORICAL LOGIC.

Question 18, Section 2:

From the first sentence of this question stem, we can already discern an issue here.  Government funding for the preservation of wetlands has increased by a lot, but the area of wetlands needing protection has only increased by a little.  The next sentence rules out one source of an explanation, which is inflation, and then concludes that the level of funding is still short of what's necessary.

This seems like a great time to bring up mental models.  Whenever I read questions like this, I keep a mental model in my head of what's going on, and I adjust it as each new piece of data comes in.  In fact, I am going to discuss a lot of these answers using mental models.  Here's what I mean:

Let's call this the funding model.  The funding model is very simple:  You have something that you're trying to do, and it costs a certain amount of money to help you do it.  The more money you have, the more you can do; the less money you have, the less you can do.  Sounds pretty straightforward, right?  Well, in this case the funding model seems out of kilter:  We have lots more money, but we've only got a little bit more of stuff to do.  Why do we still need more money?  Well, they rule out the possibility that the cost of doing the same thing has gone up because of inflation, so that knocks out one thing.  They remind us that the amount of stuff to be done was already large, so that knocks out the possibility of us making a claim about the original level of preservation.  So we've got to find an answer that reconciles these two areas.

Here's where my SAT bias kicks in.  Most of the SAT questions can be predicted by being an active reader and thinking actively about the question before one encounters the specific answers.  There are some theories out there about entering the answers with a blank mind and so not being biased, but I have been helped out by my active thinking more often than I've been hurt by it.

So it's time for a hypothesis.  Hypothesis (1):  active thinking, i.e. trying to predict where the question is heading, is bound to help find the right answer in the long run.  It is not guaranteed to find the right answer, and in some cases might lead you astray, but nevertheless is a good thing.  Mental models provide a good way to aid active thinking.

Hypothesis(2):  The funding model is an appropriate way to describe questions when there involves a logical relation between an activity and the money it costs to fund that activity.

Going along with that hypothesis, my first instinct is to come up with an explanation for the issue, no matter how off base, to get my mind working in the right direction.

So my first guess is to say that the reason that funding is inadequate was that there was hardly any funding to begin with.  If there was originally, let's say, 1 unit of funding available for the project but the project needed 100 units of funding, then clearly the recent increase wouldn't be enough.  Now that I'm armed with a reasonable answer, let's see how it plays out:

Answer A could be an answer, although it does not paint things in a very nice light.  When I read it, I was tempted to leave it in until I reread the conclusion of the argument:  "the funding is inadequate and should be augmented."  If the money was there but was just mismanaged, then the level of funding was, in fact, adequate.  At the very least, it raises more issues than it answers, so it cannot be the correct answer.

Answer B was originally the answer I picked.  I think I was desperate for an answer, and picked one that sounded reasonable rather than thinking it through.  This answer says, essentially, that costs of doing the work have gone up.  However, in retrospect, I didn't pay close enough attention to the wording in the problem about inflation.  If the problem says that the increase in funding was at least three times what it was, even factoring in inflation, it makes it pretty hard to justify the necessity of more funding solely on the fact that scientist's salaries have risen.  They would need to have risen by a factor of 3, and more to the point would need to keep rising in order to require more funding.  This is unlikely, or at least allows for an ambiguous outcome (i.e. the salaries might have risen, but not by so much as to explain the entire reason for the funding increase.)

Answer C was another choice I was down to.  In retrospect, the distinction between "wetlands in need of preservation" and "wetlands at serious risk of destruction," was never made explicit in the passage.  Since the government's mission is only the "preservation of wetlands," which is pretty vaguely worded, both of these areas could fall under that description, but they also could not.  This is the danger of thinking too far outside the construct of the prompt and the weird little world the test makers create.

Answer D makes no sense.  There is no distinction made in the passage between scientists and non-scientists.

Answer E is exactly what I was looking for.  Why didn't I see this?  I feel silly.  A possible explanation is the misdirection play contained in this question.  I think this might be important, so I'll put it up for later.

Definition(1):  Misdirection:  The LSAT's process of putting a straightforward answer after several more intricate and complicated answers.  The reason this answer is harder to spot has little to do with the actual validity of the answer itself, but more because the test-taker is still harboring thoughts about the previous complicated answers and therefore doesn't read the straightforward answer correctly.

This provides one vote in favor of my mental-modeling, but I'll have to explain how one goes about formulating mental models later.  

STATUS:  RESOLVED VIA HYPOTHESIS(2){mental model, funding}.

Have a question you'd like to see explained? Have any feedback on what you've read? Please post a comment and let me know.

 

For the past eight years, Charles Williamson hasn’t met a standardized test he didn’t like, helping hundreds of students in everything from the SAT and ACT to the SSAT to the GMAT to AP Calculus. A longtime student of the thought process that defines performance on standardized tests, Charles got off to a good start, receiving a perfect score on his SATs in high school. He then graduated from Brown University, earning bachelor's degrees in computer science and history.  He has long been fascinated by the intersection of education and technology, and when not writing about standardized tests and educational policy, he will be happy to speculate rampantly about how the Internet will affect the ways that we learn.  Charles blogs for the Ivey Files about test preparation. 

Are law schools churning out too many lawyers? That's the question asked in today's Chronicle of Higher Education. The article is subscription-only, so for those of you who have an account, here's the link. For those of you who don't, here are some excerpts for you to mull over:

• At least 10 new law schools are on the drawing board around the country, in addition to the 200 already accredited by the American Bar Association. At the same time, the demand for legal services has dropped during the economic recession, prompting hundreds of firms to lay off lawyers, cut salaries, and delay the start dates of new associates. As law schools continue to churn out graduates, the resulting bottleneck could make the competition for jobs even more fierce. And some legal experts predict that even when they do resume hiring, many big firms won't be able to continue paying new associates the salaries of $120,000 or more that students had counted on to whittle down their debt.
• But that sobering news hasn't stopped students from flocking to law schools, which saw the number of applicants rise 4.3 percent for this fall, according to the ABA. 
• “The reality hasn’t filtered down to students that this isn’t like Boston Legal where you get a law degree and walk into a great, high-paying job,” [Indianan Law School professor William] Henderson says. “We’re taking their money and putting people $100,000 in debt,” he says, while their job prospects are at best uncertain. 
• Such talk hasn’t scared off James E. Woodham III, a sophomore at the University of Alabama who plans to attend law school on his way to becoming a politician. Mr. Woodham would most likely have to take out loans but says he and his fellow officers in the university’s pre-law association “know that we might not graduate from law school and immediately go to work for a prestigious firm and make a big salary. But we can also use our law degrees to make a difference through nonprofits or government.”

You've heard me say a lot on this subject, but I think it's worth continuing the conversation. Bill Henderson in particular is doing a great job publicizing these issues (here, here, and here).

See more of our postings on the subject:

• We Should Be Ashamed Of Ourselves
• Feast or Famine for Law School Grads
• Interview with the LSAT Blog
• Law Firm Brain Drain (Part II)
• Too Much Student Debt = Not Fit to Join the Bar?
• What's a Master's Degree Worth?

Thoughts? Please share.

Continuing my Q&A with colleague Marlena (see also Parts I and II):

Anna: We hope this series is helping you get ready for Round One. But how do you decide where to send your applications?

I just received the following email from a law student:

"I've got a couple of informational interviews coming up and I've never really had an informational interview before. Is there a protocol for what to wear or discuss?  Should I bring a resume or cover letter?  How does the tone for this sort of (what I perceive to be) informal interview differ from a job interview, if at all?"

This student is making a smart investment in his future by taking time to schedule informational interviews. What is an informational interview? It's an interview where the goal is not for you to market yourself for a specific job or school; instead, your purpose is to learn what someone does in a particular job or field, or about an individual's experience at a school, and to make a networking contact. It's an opportunity for you to ask the questions.      

Think about whom you want to talk to and learn from: A student at your dream school? An attorney at the non-profit organization or law firm at which you hope to work someday? A successful associate at a business you follow and respect? I suggest you contact alumni from your high school, college, or graduate program, since they are often very receptive to current students and fellow alums. However, you may also request informational interviews with people to whom you are not connected.

Request a meeting in a polite and deferential manner via email, so you won't put your contact on the spot and she can review her calendar before responding. Explain that you are not requesting a place in the incoming class or a job interview, just an opportunity to discuss her career path and experiences. (I know that you may be hoping secretly for a job or that the contact will put in a good word for you with the admissions office, but focus on learning about the person and making a good impression -- the potential rewards may follow down the road.) Tell the contact a bit about yourself -- where you go to school or work and why you are interested in meeting with him or her. If the person doesn't respond within a week you can follow up once, but if they neglect to respond to a second email, move onto another potential contact.

So what happens when you hear "Yes, let's meet"? Despite the fact that you're not applying for anything during an informational interview, you want to make a great impression, so take it seriously, prepare thoroughly, and follow up with your contact.

Research the individual with whom you are meeting and his or her school or employer. Use the organization's website and google, and check the local newspaper's search engine. Your search might generate questions about some of the following issues:

• The organization: What can your contact tell you about the company's work or the school's atmosphere, its day-to-day structure, and its short and long term goals? What does your contact like most about the organization? What does she like least? What has surprised her?
• The day-to-day experience: What does he do each day? What skills does he utilize in his work? What is most interesting and challenging about his work?
• Following in her footsteps: How did your contact get her current job? What steps did she take to get there? What skills are important before applying or working there? How can you position yourself to be admitted to the school or get a job at the business?

This type of first meeting, even though solely informational, does create a lasting impact, and you can impress the contact with your questions and professionalism. Wear a suit to show that you are respectful of that person's time and role. Bring your resume to your interviewers, because it's an efficient way to convey your background and experience to them, and they can refer to your resume in case they think of amazing internships or jobs for you in the future. Ultimately, the information you learn can be used effectively to help you consider your options, write better cover letters or personal statements, and articulate your interest and applicable skills on interviews. 

After meeting with an individual for an informational interview, send a thank-you note via email or snail mail within 24 hours. In most cases you should plan on maintaining contact with this person on a regular basis via email: he may provide advice as your career unfolds and he may learn of job openings in the future that are good fits for you. Maintaining contact with networking resources on a regular basis is one important aspect of career exploration that many people ignore. Do not make this mistake!

Nicole Vikan is a graduate of NYU Law School. She spent her first law school summer at a large law firm, and her second summer in the Homicide Investigation Unit at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. She returned to the District Attorney's Office after graduation and spent five years as a criminal prosecutor, handling cases such as robbery and assault. Nicole then joined Fordham Law School's Career Planning Center, where she advised students seeking employment in the private and public sectors. She is currently a career counselor at Georgetown Law Center's Office of Public Interest and Community Service. As part of the Anna Ivey team, Nicole works with law school applicants and people exploring legal careers. 

Questions or success stories about informational interviewing? Post here!