Louisville beats nation in latest lawyer jobs report

Graduates of the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law are snagging jobs in greater numbers than their peers at other schools, a new report shows.

The latest numbers from the ABA show that, out of 127 graduates in U of L's Class of 2013, a total of 104 students — 82 percent of them — had secured jobs where bar passage is required or it is an advantage to have a J.D. Only eight of those students were unemployed and still seeking a job. Both figures are pretty much unchanged from the previous year's data on Class of 2012 grads.

The local numbers are better than the nation as a whole. For example, a friend and fellow U of L grad who is now a reporter published this online story showing the following:

"Nationally, 11.2 percent of graduates from the class of 2013 were unemployed and seeking work as of Feb. 15, up from 10.6 percent in 2012. Only 57 percent of graduates were working in long-term, full-time positions where bar admission is required, which is an increase of almost a full percentage point over 2012.

The class of 2013 was the largest ever, according to the ABA, with 46,776 students earning degrees. About 4 percent of employed graduates were working in positions funded by law schools, most in short-term, part-time jobs."

I've written about law school employment issues many times before on this blog. You can slice the statistics any way you want, but the bottom line in my view is that students are better off at schools such as U of L where tuition is relatively low, and there is not a bevy of competing nearby law schools in the area (UK and IU are an hour's drive away, and NKU is closer to 90 minutes). It also goes without saying that you probably shouldn't go to any law school unless you have a solid game plan for what you are going to do with that expensive degree. Congrats to UofL grads who are entering the job market, and good luck!

Sweet, sweet news: Bar Exam results arrive

All my poker chips riding on one number

Life is returning to normal, whatever that means, after a few days of total pandemonium following the release of the July 2012 bar exam results in Kentucky. The good news: I passed. Better news: I don't know of anyone who did not pass. Of course, there are folks who didn't pass the exam. The overall rate of passage in Kentucky was roughly 80 percent for the February exam. First-time exam takers from U of L Law had a 90 percent pass rate last summer, and those with top-notch grades in law school did even better. For a full breakdown of bar passage rates, click here.
I'm just relieved that the process is over. It was  a humbling experience. I'll be sworn in as a lawyer Thursday by Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Lisabeth Hughes Abramson in Louisville. My name will appear on lawsuits as soon as my license is complete, possibly as soon as next week. Then it's on to depositions, discovery, and possibly a trial later this year or early in 2013. Most people don't wake up in the morning and smile when they remember they have to go to work. I honestly can't wait to get to work as a lawyer. Congratulations to all those who passed the Kentucky bar exam.

Five things every new lawyer should know

It's been exactly 13 years since the bar exam in July. OK, maybe not 13 years, but it feels that long. Anyway, the results will be releaseed exactly one week from today in Kentucky. Other states, including Nebraska, Florida, Utah and West Virginia, already have released their scores. But there's no use in lingering over the long wait time. The mountain cannot be moved. Instead, I offer a few modest pointers that I've picked up over the last few months. I'll be adding to this list over the next year, and blogging about my experience and the experience of other young lawyers in the Louisville area.

1. Get a criminal lawyer in your Rolodex. Over the last six weeks, I've been approached by friends and neighbors for help with two different traffic tickets, and a dicey immigration-related matter. Even if I did practice criminal law, I couldn't do anything for these folks because I'm still waiting on my license and bar results. But I probably would still refer them to a friend who focuses on criminal law because they would be better served by someone with experience in that area. So, it pays to have a few criminal defense lawyers on speed dial. And you never know when you might need them for yourself!
2. Find a focus. I'm stubborn, and I'm still learning this one the hard way. My main practice areas are in mass tort litigation and personal injury law. Check out our firm's blog here for details. So when I tried to file a quit claim deed the other day as part of a mortgage application for my house, I had to do it three times before getting the process right. Sometimes, it pays to hire someone who knows exactly what they're doing. 
3. Treat everyone you meet with the same level of respect and courtesy. This one should be a no brainer, but it's been burned into my skull even more over the last two months as I take phone calls and meet with new clients. At least in the world of plaintiff work, it is absolutely impossible to tell at the outset what will turn into a monster case, and what will turn into a non-starter. 
4. Don't forget your law school buddies. I'm trying to meet at least one law school friend for lunch or dinner each week. I'm learning about their experiences, asking advice, and reminding them about the areas where I practice in case they stumble across a whopper client who needs help in my practice area. With a crazy schedule and loads of work, lunch away from my desk once a week is harder than you might think.
5. Stay busy. Especially over the next seven days, I'm packing my schedule with as many client visits, deadlines, and other tasks as I can create. My aim is to forget all about the results of that little test, and the fact that all 130 or so members of our class will be furiously clicking refresh on a certain Web site next Friday afternoon to see if their number pops up. In fact, I am sure that I'll be so busy the results won't even surface in my mind during the 48 hours before they are released. Yeah, good luck with that.

Bar exam in 12 days: scary photos, scarier practice tests, and a final push to the end

It's ten o'clock at night and I'm still buckled down in the living room, poring over special venue provisions for civil actions against Kentucky tobacco growers. Earlier today, it was reams of multiple choice questions for a sample MBE test. In twelve more days, I'll sit down with several hundred other students and take the bar. I'm actually starting to feel OK about it. Over the last few weeks, however, I've been through intellectual boot camp: eight to ten hours a day of studying, thousands of pages of facts and rules, seventeen different outlines, countless essays, etc. As one fellow student put it recently,

Agency, Civil Procedure, Commercial Paper, Secured Transactions, Torts, Wills, Trusts, Administrative Law, Conflict of Law, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Domestic Relations, Evidence, Income Tax, Personal Property, Real Property. Anyone feeling overwhelmed?

After law school, at left, and before the bar, at right

You can get a sense of the pressure and stress from the photo at right, depicting me at graduation from law school (confident, happy, full of wisdom) and then just a few days ago when bar prep was in full swing (haggard, frightened, mentally drained). I'm kidding, of course. Sort of. Maybe. From what I gather, most other recent law grads are going through exactly the same process, straddling the line between burnout and freakout. One of the brighter spots is that I've gotten a lot of great advice from friends, law professors, and practicing attorneys. Some of what they've said:

• Accept the fact that this summer will be the worst summer you have experienced in a long time, and perhaps the worst ever. However, the worse your summer, the better the bar exam. If the summer is going really well, the bar probably will not.
• The bar is a rite of passage, and you'll most likely get through it. It doesn't have a lot to do with actually practicing law, and you can perform below average on the bar and still pass. 
• Bar prep tests are designed to scare the hell out of you (this much is certainly true), so that you'll study harder, and do fine on the real deal. 
• Most law students from Louisville pass the Kentucky bar with no problem (our pass rate is typically around 90 percent). The few who fail either didn't study hard, had a major panic attack during the exam, or had major personal problems strike in the days or weeks before the test. 

This will be my last blog post before the bar. I'm already feeling guilty about my tobacco growers and their venue provisions (please, for everyone's sake, sue them in the county where their warehouse is located, or where the grower resides). I have a feeling that the bar exam will turn out fine, but I'm not leaving anything up to chance. Don't cross your fingers for me. I don't want luck. Pushing hard until the end seems to be the only way to do it.

Bar exam: pressure mounting, five weeks to go

This morning I'm sitting in a second-floor classroom at the U of L law school, doing what I do pretty much every morning: preparing for a marathon lecture about the bar exam. For the next three and a half hours, a curly-haired professor from UNC is going to talk about the ins and outs of constitutional law, from privileges and immunities to interstate commerce and the First Amendment. Earlier this week it was a guy from Yale talking about real property. Before that we marched through the laws of evidence, agency, tax, torts, corporations, and contracts. The material for the bar exam is vast, and the preparation seems endless.
The crazy thing is that we haven't even really started. A lawyer friend who lives in my neighborhood says it doesn't really begin until the "twenties" of June. One of the partners at the firm where I work says the go date is July 1, when I'm supposed to go full time on bar prep. So far, preparing for the bar has been not too different from working as a law clerk. Both require the ability to focus on countless mundane details for hours at a time, and then be able to analyze and remember those details weeks later. This weekend we're going to take a practice run at the MBE, a 200-question multiple choice monster that spans six core topics. The other half of the bar consists of 12 essays, each lasting 30 minutes. So far the summer hasn't been too bad. I've been busy at work, handling helping clients in personal injury and mass tort cases, answering discovery, filing lawsuits, and getting ready to start practicing in earnest this fall. But as we get deeper into studying and the real date of the bar exam draws closer, I can feel the pressure mounting. Full-time bar prep for me starts in less than 10 days, and then it's a month-long slog to the finish line. In times like these, I am grateful that there are other things that fill my life --- kids, wife, a house to worry about, lawns to mow, Monday night soccer, cleaning the swimming pool, etc. Diversions keep me sane, even if time for diversions soon will be precious.

Shift from law school to law job is humbling, hard

Ever heard of the 10,000-hour rule? The idea is that, in order to master a specific skill, you must put in the equivalent of 10,000 hours of practice, or roughly five years of full-time work. The rule is staring me in the face as I begin the steep climb to competence as a rookie lawyer. The members of the Class of 2012  at U of L, myself included, spent the last year as 3Ls, the top dogs in law school. Now we're starting all over at the bottom. Louisville did a great job teaching me the law, but the field is so vast and there are so many things to learn. What's the difference between filling out a summons in state court compared to federal court?  How do you write a claim for loss of consortium? How does Medicare subrogation work?

Bar exam: that's me in eight weeks

Part of me wishes that I could push the fast-forward button and get to the point where I feel at least semi-confident about the areas where I will be practicing. For now, however, practice is not even my biggest worry. Bar prep started a week ago, and the exam itself is looming less than two months away. Listening to the Barbri lectures is like taking a mental stroll back through the first two years of law school. It's mildly interesting to remember all the cases that we read in order to learn tidbits of Contract law and Negotiable Instruments, but for the most part it's a painful process -- four hours a day of lectures so we can remember who gets priority in a fight between two creditors over a secured transaction (the perfected interest, of course), or whether a defendant's rights are violated when police conduct a stop and frisk search without probable cause (no, so long as there is reasonable suspicion of criminal activity). In addition to the lectures, we're supposed to be spending another four or five hours a day reviewing and outlining our subjects. Then there's the four or five hours a day I'm working at the firm that was generous enough to give me a job. How many hours are there in a day again?
Lots of people have given me advice about studying for the bar this summer. They've told me not to worry too much. They've told me to worry a lot. They've told me it's a marathon, and not to get burned out early in the summer. All in all, I've heard way more horror stories than pleasant memories. At least it's comforting to know that Louisville has a high pass rate, especially for students who did well academically in law school. It's also good to know that you only need a score of 75 out of 100 on each essay in order to pass the Kentucky portion of the exam. Then again, there are 12 essays, and only 30 minutes for each. Screw up just one, or fall behind on your timing, and you are in serious trouble. In the end, I imagine that bar prep, and work as a first-year lawyer, will be much like law school: a long and grinding path, with plenty of frustrations along the way but rewards at the end for those who persevere. Final note: I've updated the title of this blog because I am technically no longer a law student, and I've changed my profile accordingly. However, if you are interested in law school at U of L, or in the legal market in Louisville, you can still contact me with questions or thoughts. My email: alex@jonesward.com.

High GPA = passing score on bar exam (maybe)

Just walked out of an hour-long primer on the Kentucky bar exam, which most 3L students will take in July at this local hotel. Among the tidbits offered to aspiring exam takers were these stats on the correlation between law school grade-point average and success on the Big Bad Bar:

• For students with at least a 3.0 GPA at U of L Law (usually the top one-third of the class), 100 percent passed the exam last July on their first attempt. The same students in previous years have passed the exam at a roughly 98 percent clip. 
• Students with a 2.6 GPA or lower had a 74 percent pass rate on the same exam. 
• Overall, the school had a roughly 90 percent pass rate last year, compared to an 86 percent statewide pass rate. The 90 percent rate was down a bit from the previous year, but in line with the last five years overall. 

There are, of course, exceptions to the above rules. Bonnie Kittinger, general counsel and director of the Kentucky Office of Bar Admissions, told us it is not uncommon for otherwise high-achieving students to study lightly for the test and then assume they can hang loose for the rest of the summer. Some still pass. Others do not. We also discussed dozens of other details, including the grading process, filing deadlines, even the definition of a law school application. Perhaps the best advice came from Eric Ison, one of the state's seven bar examiners, who asked us to take the bar seriously, but also to remember to breathe. "Don't be consumed by the bar," he said. I will try to keep this in mind over the next seven months. I imagine it will be easier said than done.

Law school class photo day: time for a moustache?

Today is class photo day for graduating law students here at U of L.  It's an occasion that doesn't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but then again maybe it does. Large framed class photos line the hallways of the law school on its first and second floors, stretching back to the late 1800s. Gazing at the bygone fashions of eager young attorneys is a fascinating way to waste 15 minutes of your life when you really ought to be studying. The class portraits also become a source of attention when a lawyer does something particularly embarrassing, or especially impressive.

The magnificent (and short lived) moustache

For me, photos have always been yet another opportunity to do something eccentric. For example, I have a photo of myself in high school with my eyebrows shaved off. In another, taken in my mid-20s, I'm hanging upside down inside a ski gondola. Which is why, last week, I figured it would be a great idea to take my law school photo with a giant moustache. At home, our family is obsessed with the moustache. The kids wear fake ones, my wife decorates moustache mirrors, and we take notice of moustaches in public. I even went so far as growing a 'stache (see photo, above right) in honor of this under-appreciated form of facial hair. But after careful consideration, I've decided to sport a clean shave, a starched dress shirt and tie, and a dark suit coat for the class photo.
My decision reflects two things that I've learned in law school. First, I've learned to seek advice from those around me before making rash decisions. I am at least two or three times as likely to consult other people for advice today compared to before law school. In this case, everyone I talked to about the moustache class photo told me it was a terrible idea. Second, I've found a new level of appreciation for the art of discretion. It's taken almost three years to drill this concept into my head, but I now hold my tongue way more frequently than at any other time in my life. I still enjoy a good joke, and don't shy away from controversy, but I am keenly aware that reputation is everything in this industry, and if you're going to clown around, you'd better think about the implications carefully. So long moustache.

Welcome to 2012: Resolutions of an almost-finished law student at the University of Louisville

The law school is dead quiet today, and I'm getting tons of work done. Here are a few snippets, resolutions, and random thoughts to start off the new year.

1. Since I now have a job lined up as a lawyer after graduation, I solemnly swear that I will not join the class-action mess involving more than a dozen law schools that allegedly fudge their employment statistics. I'm also grateful that Louisville is not a defendant, and hope it stays that way.

My bar exam application (just kidding)

2. Almost finished with my 25-page Kentucky bar exam application. Got my traffic history, my criminal record, my five character references, and even figured out the day I was married. Most intriguing question on the application so far: "have you ever been known by another name other than a nickname?

3. Really looking forward to my last semester of law school. Part of this is because, well, it's the last one, but it's also shaping up to be filled with great hands-on experiences. I'm working 12 hours a week at the Louisville Public Defender's office, taking a seminar on Obamacare, and doing my second trial practice class - where you practice mock cases and present opening and closing arguments, etc. I'm also looking forward to Negotiation, which will hopefully improve my skill at sending the kids to bed on time, and Criminal Law - Judicial Procedure, which I will hopefully never need for myself.

4. Entering law students at U of L are now looking at a schedule with fewer classroom commitments in their first semester under a new plan approved by the school. Looks like they're ditching Property for the fall, and starting Civ Pro a bit later. Details:

Fall Semester:

Basic Legal Skills

Legal Research

Torts I

Contracts I

Criminal Law

Civil Procedure (starting approximately September 24th)

Spring Semester:

Basic Legal Skills

Torts II

Contracts II

Property

Civil Procedure II

5. Getting back to resolutions, I am going to start 2012 with a cheesy pledge to be a nicer guy (Alex, you catch more flies with honey, an associate at work recently told me), to help someone else at least once a day, to not dwell on past mistakes (including that wretched Negotiable Instruments exam), and to stop eating four times as much food as I should at every meal. Good luck to everyone this semester. If you are applying to U of L Law this year and have questions or concerns about anything, email me at acdavi07@louisville.edu and you'll allow me to knock out one of my daily resolutions!

Fortune strikes: I have my first job as a lawyer

Over the last two and a half years, I've used this blog to write about some of the more difficult aspects of law school. For example, I've written about the difficulty of first-year exams, the dreariness of the 2L funk, and the lousy job market for 3Ls. I could add to the negative streak by discussing the disappointment I felt upon seeing my fall semester grades, which fell below my expectations. But that's not going to happen. Not today. In fact, I'm going to break the traditional law student code of being self-effacing and modest among one's colleagues. The reason: I have a job. That's right, I'm going to be paid to be a lawyer when I graduate next year. I'm going to be a practicing attorney, with an office, business cards, actual clients, and terrifying and stressful court appearances. I couldn't be happier.
I'll be a rookie associate with Jones Ward PLC, the firm where I've been a law clerk for the last year. Even better, I believe deeply in the firm's mission. We sue big companies that hurt people, in mass tort cases that involve everything from defective medical devices and prescription drugs to the BP Oil Spill and the Toyota crash cases. We also represent people injured in everyday car crashes, slip and falls and other injuries. I'll be thrown into the fire in July right after the bar exam, and I'm so excited I want to scream about it from the rooftops, or at least in a blog post. The point, however, is this: law school can be an incredibly humbling and difficult experience, but the end result, at least for me, has been the best career decision of my life. To be sure, there have been struggles, and the journey is far from over. But with perseverance, lots of networking, and a small amount of good fortune, it seems to be paying off. I'm hoping to write more in the coming months about the employment prospects of our graduating class, which seems to be a topic of, well, great interest. If you have your own story to share (positive or otherwise), feel free to message me at acdavi07@louisville.edu. Have a great holiday.

One year ago: Rambling in Con Law, Prepping for Finals, and Winter Break Diversions

A year ago this month, I was spending my days doing many of the same things I'm doing this year: preparing outlines, writing study questions, and visiting with professors to answer a few final questions before exams. But that's not all. I also was posting a video of myself being subjected to the Socratic method in one of my classes, and posting a list of the Top 10 Things to Do in Louisville on Winter Break. I also wrote one of the most popular posts of the last three years on this blog: a 25-question quiz about Constitutional Law.
Two years ago, I was writing about the stress of final exams as a 1L, and bragging about how my then 7-year-old son might be a Torts genius.
Next year, who knows what I will be doing in the legal world. Hopefully, I'll be practicing law after passing the bar. A necessary (but unfortunately not sufficient) condition to doing both is finishing the current semester, which means I need to get crack-a-lackin' on three final exams on my horizon in the next two weeks. Consequently, blogging may be light. As one of my favorite professors often tells me when I miss class, "We will try to stumble through without you."

My Daily Docket: Snippets of News at U of L Law

A gigantic gelcap of generic DayQuil is the only thing keeping me vertical this morning, so I'm going to try a stream of consciousness blog post with a few items that are floating around in my congested 3L head.

• Bar exam news: some of last year's graduates from U of L Law attended a swearing in ceremony on Friday, following their successful results from the July exam. According to unofficial sources, Louisville posted another year of excellent pass rates. Roughly 91 percent of first-time takers cleared the bar. 
• Student loans: Obama's proposed "pay as you earn" program for educational loans should be front-page news for any current or prospective law student. My debt from U of L will be around $60,000 even after a scholarship and a discount for in-state tuition. That's a lot of coin. But even without Obama's proposal, I am grateful I stayed here instead of going to Indiana or Washington & Lee, two other schools where I was accepted. Both would have meant student loans at least twice as large. 
• Howard Fineman: the well-known political writer for the Huffington Post is visiting campus this week, partly due to his status as a U of L Law grad. He worked several years as a reporter at The Courier-Journal, my former employer, and I'm mulling over questions that I might ask him when I pick him up at the airport this afternoon. The obvious one: with so many journalists fleeing newspapers to pursue law degrees, are you glad you went the other direction?
• The annual Decedents' Ball (see promotional poster from previous year's event, above right) for law students is this Friday. Also, Lawlapalooza (featured in last week's post, below) is tomorrow. 
• I'm working at a will clinic for low-income residents on Thursday, hoping to finish out my required thirty hours of volunteer service before I graduate. Every single hour has been worth it. 
• There are only six class sessions remaining in the semester for most of my courses, and it's incredibly difficult to focus on them when 1) graduation is that much closer, 2) you are fixated on providing legal services to actual clients at an actual law firm with hundreds of thousands of actual dollars on the line, and 3) your head is still full of generic DayQuil. But focus I must. Until next time... 

Top Signs that Summer of Law is Almost Over

Last spring's graduates finished their grueling two-day bar exam yesterday, and my inbox is filled with messages about volunteering at orientation for the 1Ls who are starting law school in a few weeks. These are but a few of the signs that summer is giving way to fall, and my third (and final) year at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. I am pleased to announce that the school is sponsoring this blog for another year. Accordingly, the title has changed to "3L at U of L." Please also check out my colleague Sharon Wright who writes her own blog about U of L Law at this link.
In all honesty this summer has been one of the best in recent memory. Granted, a lot of this is due to our family's decision to drop $400 at Wal-Mart on an above-ground swimming for our backyard (see video below). However, my summer clerkship at the law offices of Jones Ward PLC deserves almost as much credit as the pool. I've learned an incredible amount of stuff in a few short months, from how to litigate a garden-variety personal injury car wreck case to the intricacies of multi-district litigation for defective medical devices. I've written motions and briefs for federal court cases, visited dozens of clients all over Kentucky, and crafted multi-media demand letters to insurance companies. In fact, as I gear up for my third year of law school, I'm already starting to realize the wisdom of the aphorism that 3L is the most boring year of school. It's not that this year is going to be boring, it's that the first year after graduation is going to be exciting as we prepare to move into full-time practice. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Over the next few months, I'll be writing about how to succeed in law school, with a particular focus on upper-level courses, the law review, student loans, and working as a clerk during school. Got a question or a topic of your own that you want covered? Send me an email at acdavi07@louisville.edu.

Schedule of a 2L: classes I am taking in 2011

When I decided to go to law school at the University of Louisville two years ago, I filled my head with fanciful visions of elective courses that focused on esoteric subjects such as water rights and international legal history. Halfway into my three-year tour of duty, I can say that my course lineup is interesting, but my goal is much more single-minded. I need to pass the bar. There are no majors in law school, and while it's OK to focus on a favorite area, it's also important (more important, in my view) to select classes that will help you pass the bar when you graduate. With that in mind, here is my schedule for the spring.

• Constitutional Law (the second half of a year-long course)
• Decedents' Estates (the study of what to do with grandma's piano when she dies, i.e., wills, estates, fiduciary administration, etc. I see this as a class that every law student should take; at the very least, I want to be able to prepare a simple will for a friend or family member) 
• Basic Income Tax (the bane of law school for most students, and not a topic that I want to try to learn while cramming for the bar)
• Trial Practice (my most anticipated class so far; offers actual experience in preparing for and presenting all phases of civil and criminal litigation, from voir dire -- the fancy name for questioning the jury pool -- to examining witnesses and handling opening and closing statements) 
• Law Review (second half of a year-long commitment; worth one credit hour; great way to take care of the writing requirement for graduation)

Prospective law students should keep in mind that, at U of L and at most law schools, you can't pick your classes until your second year. After that, you can swing for the fences, as long as you cover your core subject areas, fulfill the writing requirement, and take at least one "perspective" class. Want to see what other courses are available for upper-level law students at Louisville? You can click here to check out the full schedule.

Legal ethics test looms big for U of L law students

the law library

A friend who attended medical school at U of L once told me that he liked to study at the law school's library for two reasons: there were lots of interesting books on the shelves, and it was quiet because law students rarely used the place. In some respects, my friend's reasoning makes sense. The demands of law school come in waves, separated by long periods of time when the only real obligation is to show up for class. It is possible, at least in theory, to abandon reading for the entire semester, surf the Internet during class, and then ace your courses by using commercial outlines to study like crazy just before finals. I don't know too many students who take this approach and still succeed. However, at least compared to last year, many 2Ls have shifted their priorities. In a way it's hard to blame them. The educational model for most American law schools places little emphasis on class participation or on regular writing assignments outside of final exams. This is maddening. But it's also a trap. I try to pay close attention to the habits of the most successful students, and almost without exception they keep their noses to the grindstone, read every assigned page, and take exhaustive notes. Most of them also use outside study aids, but only as a supplement. 

At this point, you may be wondering if this train of thought has a caboose. Here it is: a large number of upper-level students, myself included, will take take their final exam in Professional Responsibility this afternoon. We've been cramming for a week or longer, and many of us are now mumbling about legal ethics rules at traffic lights, in the restroom, and in our sleep. If you ask us whether a lawyer must disclose his client's confidential plans to kill the mayor, we could tell you that the answer is probably no (the rule for disclosure is permissive, not mandatory). If you want to know about legal advertising, we could tell you that direct mail is generally OK, but that in-person solicitation is not (except if the client is a lawyer or family member). And tomorrow, less than 24 hours after the class final, we'll get a second dose of ethics when we take the Multi-State Professional Responsibility Exam, or MPRE. A passing score is required in order to practice law, and a test on ethics is not the kind of thing you want to take twice. In summary, the wave is about to hit the beach. If you are a medical student, you might stay away from the library. 

Oct. 1: day of symmetry for U of L Law

The latest Photo of the Week is a shot that I took a few days ago of the front of the law school. I picked this image because the columns seem to reflect the startling symmetry of Oct. 1, 2010 -- the first day that applications are being accepted for the 2011 entering class, and also the day that last year's graduates received their scores from the Kentucky Bar Exam.


For the first group, there is a long road ahead simply to get here. The current 1L class of 143 students (out of 1,769 applicants) posted LSAT scores of 155 and 160 at the 25th and 75th percentiles, respectively. That's pretty good for a very difficult test, and slightly ahead of recent years.

And if you were part of the second group, today was arguably one of the most important days of your life. I talked to a close friend who took the bar in July -- a guy who was always calm under pressure, a veritable Cool Hand Luke of law school -- and he said the anxiety was almost indescribable. "Way worse than checking on exam scores," he told me, adding that his hands were shaking as he scrolled down the screen to find his number on the pass list. It was there. And before long he was at O'Shea's with his buddies, hoisting cold ones on a crisp fall afternoon with the future spread out before him like a carpet of leaves. They all deserve it.