I am going to go to work for a firm on the east coast after I graduate and pass the bar exam. I am hoping to focus my practice on international arbitration and litigation/general commercial litigation.

To be honest, don't do what I did on the LSAT; I took it on only a couple of weeks' notice because I was going to study abroad and needed to take it in Feb. '06 or take it while overseas. So I just got the 10 real LSATs book and did a couple before I took the real exam, only took it once.

There are some things that people seem to have done that help: Taking a Kaplan/PR/testmasters class to study and prepare, can be helpful for people who need structure in order to study. Otherwise, take practice tests under test conditions (ie, wake up early, drive to the test location (if possible), take the sections under timed conditions, etc. Make it realistic, to calm your nerves.

Good luck! It is an important test. A lot of people get sucked into the allure of making a high salary, but be advised that only the top few percent of students at schools outside of the top 15 or so actually get entry-level jobs making six figures. The vast majority do not have that opportunity. You should go to law school because you are passionate about the law and want to be an attorney; don't go because you expect to make a bunch of money (as your only motivation). It is a very heavy load of debt to take on, so don't do it lightly.

Quick2k

 

I studied using the Princeton Review LSAT book. I went through absolutely everything in there 2 months prior to the test. I had my own notebook to take notes on everything I would have highlighted in the review book. I took 2 practice tests a week until the week before the test. I took one practice test a day starting at 9am each day during that week so test day would've been no different.

I've heard great things about Testmasters from my friends who scored in the 95th percentile. It's $1500, so I don't know if you'll find the class to be worth it if you have the discipline to settle down and make a serious study schedule for yourself. I would also recommend a book like Powerscore to study off of, though it's a lot more expensive than Princeton.

 

Here's part of an email from my niece after taking her LSAT:

"HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT I got a 177 HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT"...

 

Wow - that's an awesome score (177).

 

Yeah, a 177 is a great score.

Sending out an email like that - It's kind of like an email from a guy saying "OMG OMG OMG OMG I have a HUGE THROBBING MORONIC PHRASE TO SAY! OMG OMG OMG OMG."

May be true, and if so, fantastic. It's better to be modest.

She sounds like she would fit right in at Harvard.

When you get to law school, and even moreso, when you begin practice, you find that your LSAT score is only an extremely rough predictor of success. But it will get you in the door at a top school, and that will usually help get you in the door at a large firm.

Quick2k

 

She was excited. She didn't have nearly enough money to pay for school and was hoping to score high enough to get a free ride. I had never seen or heard her get excited about anything before this and I was excited for her. This was last year and she elected not to take what Harvard offered her even though I tried hard to get her to take it.

 

Can't over emphasis this one. Right now firms are cutting summer programs, not giving offers, giving attorneys paralegal work, and laying off tons of attorneys. Hopefully that will ease up, but its real easy to have a false impression of what being an attorney is like. Especially straight out of law school. A lot of attorneys make under 50k a year. Only 5% or so land the 120k jobs out of school. Law school debt is terrible and federal plus loans are at 8.5% interest. Make sure you make an educated decision and consider going to a lower ranked school for the scholarships (though I admit I did not choose that route) and make sure you don't go to law school because its a "versatile degree," because its not really that versatile.

 

Yeah, you go to law school to become a lawyer. In 2007 when law firms were going gangbusters hiring anyone with a pulse, it seemed like nothing could stop it. Salaries for the top firms skyrocketed to 160K for first-years to keep pace with demand.

Today salaries are falling and I know many 3Ls who are graduating without jobs. To give some perspective, Judges received up to five times as many applications for clerkships this year, accounting for three major new groups of applicants: (1) victims of layoffs at firms, (2) deferred graduates from the class of 2009 who never went to start, and whose firms now don't want them back, and (3) graduating 3Ls who did not receive offers from their 2L summer firms. In normal years, a judge might receive 600 applications for 1-3 spots. This year, that's more like 2000 applications for maybe one spot, since the current clerks are clinging to their jobs for dear life - because, again, firms don't want them.

If you want to go to law school to become a politician, you'd better be going to Harvard or Yale, since you're doing it for pedigree, political connections, and patronage - which you won't get at most other schools. If you want to run a business, go to B-School (or better yet, just be talented and charismatic).

I hope I didn't come off as too catty about your niece and her score. I know she must have been very excited, and she deserves to be. You are family, so it's not like she was running around advertising that to strangers. It's just that I am at a top-10 school and it kills me when I hear people talk about their LSAT scores as if it entitles them to a life of luxury and wealth.

Quick2K

 

Doesn't Yale focus more on preparing their students for academia, rather than practicing law? I remember that they do things a little differently there.

 

From a professor's mouth:

"I went to Yale, where I was not taught anything about the actual practice of law. True story: A Yale graduate was at oral argument before a panel of the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. One Judge asked the advocate whether the case was sort of like Erie (an important case on choice-of-law in federal courts, which EVERY law student ought to know, sort of like Palsgraf or Marbury v. Madison). The advocate responded by saying, 'Yes, judge, the case is very spooky.'"