Juxtaposed: exploring the similarities, and differences, between law school and kayaking

Wild West: boating in Montana (before law school)

Wednesday is my push day in law school. Up at 6:30 to study, then it's Secured Transactions at 9, then more studying, then Negotiable Instruments at 1, followed directly by Selected Problems in Civil Procedure. So it was a welcome sign when a buddy called between classes yesterday and invited me on a quickie whitewater paddling trip that afternoon on Elkhorn Creek, just outside Frankfort. By 5:30, I was crashing through waves as I navigated the Elkhorn, surrounded by soaring sandstone cliffs and the occasional heron. Whitewater kayaking is sort of like law school, I realized later. The waves keep coming no matter what you do, and the only option is to keep paddling. In fact, surfing a nice river hydraulic is even more like law school: violent whitewater is rushing by your boat, surrounding you on all sides, and if you find just the right balance and steer upstream the right way, there is a beautiful feeling of serenity in the midst of the storm. But most of the time you're just trying to not drown.
The above comparisons notwithstanding, kayaking is actually nothing like law school. However, like many other forms of recreation, it does help to maintain sanity. It is absolutely critical that you take a break every once in awhile. I've written in previous posts about other short trips from Louisville, including the Falls of the Ohio and Red River Gorge. I also did a list of the Top Ten Things to Do on Winter Break, from bourbon tours to museums to local theater. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you remember to breathe. This morning, I'm breathing deep, feeling good, and ready to conquer the law.

Law school videos: hip hop, indy rock & comic relief

Anyone who reads this law school blog knows I am enthralled by amateur law school videos. Hey, it's a weak spot. The latest to cross my desktop is a hip-hop ode to graduating law students. So it hits home. And the production quality is surprisingly solid.



To see other law school videos, check out this one from GWU, or this from UC Berkeley. I also have my own humble offerings, including an in-class reggae interpretation of tax law, and a tour of Louisville with my Con Law book set to an indy rock soundtrack. Come to think of it, the lure of law school videos makes a lot of sense. Law school is already part theater, and the pressure and seriousness of the experience requires a little comic relief if you want to refrain from going crazy. Let the credits roll.

U of L Law by the numbers: a lesson in the past, the present, and maybe the future of legal education

I've been doing some research this fall as part of an independent study project about our law school. The project is far from over, but I've learned a bunch of interesting things about U of L Law. Here's my attempt to distill them into a short list.

0 -- number of articles that new law professors were expected to publish annually as a condition of their employment when Lawrence Knowles started teaching here in 1959.
1/2 -- amount of their time that new professors currently spend researching and writing articles
5 -- number of women in a typical U of L Law class in the late 1960s, when students smoked cigarettes in the hallways and professors addressed classes as "boys" or "gentlemen"
7 -- number of law schools in the South in 1846, when classes here cost $20 each, payable in cash to the instructor
10 -- number of female editors, out of a total of 11, on the school's flagship law review in 1984, when men still accounted for 60 percent of most classes.
14 -- number of students for every faculty member at the law school.
50 -- average number of students in most of the classes I've taken at the law school.
66 -- percentage of students at the law school who are Kentucky residents.
100 -- U of L's current rank among the nation's law schools, according to US News & World Report.
126 -- rank of the University of Louisville Law Review, compared to 315 general interest law reviews worldwide.
156 -- median LSAT score for entering students
174 -- number of total students at the law school in 1962, of whom 88 were part of the school's part-time "night division"
400 -- approximate number of current students at the law school today, of whom none are in the night division because it no longer exists (a small number of students do attend part time)
1138 -- number of friends, including me, that our law school's dean has on Facebook, compared to 23 million people who "like" his former Harvard classmate, Barack Obama, on Facebook. OK, that's not really fair, but it is interesting.
1954 -- year that first African American student graduated from the law school.
1971 -- year that the law school hired its first African American staff member.
1997 -- year that law students gained widespread access to email and the Internet
2008 -- year that Prof. Knowles last taught a law school course at U of L
8,000 -- estimated number of living graduates of our law school
16,536 -- projected cost of one year of tuition for in-state students in 2011-2012.
72,340 -- total projected cost, including transportation, tuition, books, and health insurance, for a married law student at Yale for a single year.
75,000 -- typical debt after three years of law school at Louisville, including undergraduate debt.
320,000 -- number of minutes until I graduate from law school in May.

Staring at a "lousy" job market: 3Ls at Louisville Law looking at grim employment picture

When I started law school in 2009, I figured my timing was perfect. By the time three years was over, the recession would be a distant memory and I would have my pick of places to begin a shining new career as a lawyer. Today, my prediction is not looking so hot. Popular legal blogs such as Above The Law continue to describe the job market for law graduates as lousy. Heck, even top law review editors at prestigious schools can't find jobs.
Here at U of L, I know of a handful of people with permanent jobs lined up. But there are far more of us who have been turned down by employers, or told that there just isn't room next year, despite the terrific job you did as a clerk. This is hardly surprising, considering how big law firms in town are trimming their ranks by laying off associates, hiring fewer graduates, and down-sizing their summer programs. It's not time to hit the panic button yet, of course. We're still just one month into our final year. In some respects, I think Louisville graduates are in a better position than their peers at higher-ranked schools, where student debt is often in the six figures. In this month's edition of Bar Briefs, for example, LBA president K. Gregory Haynes points out that law school tuition increased 317 percent from 1989 to 2009, making a law degree an increasingly "risky" investment. Haynes also makes good points about the  manipulation of employment numbers by law schools, quoting a recent ABA resolution that discusses the "disconnect between law students' perception of their employment prospects upon completion of their law school education and the reality of what law students will realistically achieve."
Elsewhere in the same publication, our own law school's dean, Jim Chen, makes the case for Louisville Law as a value school where the debt numbers are far more favorable. At the same time, he points out that even at a value school like U of L, many students are leaving school with roughly $75,000 in debt, compared to average starting salaries in the private sector of $69,400. That last figure is not from Chen, but from the school's 2009 employment report, which also indicates that 77 percent of students received job offers before graduation and more than 95 percent were employed within nine months of graduation. Those stats seem overly rosy to me, although I don't believe the school is cooking the numbers. It's simply following the established system. Even so, it's not hard to find critics of law school employment stats. Depending on what you read, law schools "completely misrepresent" the numbers, or there are at least "ongoing questions" about the validity of jobs stats.
One excellent resource, Law School Transparency, puts the median private sector salary for Louisville at $55,000. I actually would be quite happy to find a job at that level, especially considering the low cost of living in Louisville. And while I do not have a job locked down yet, I know that no matter where I land, my long-term prospects will be considerably brighter than they were in my former profession. In journalism, just hanging on to the job you have is a victory.

Blog bonanza arrives at U of L Law

When I started this blog a little more than two years ago at the request of the school's Office of Admissions, there wasn't too much company. In fact, there was no company. That's no longer the case. Sharon Wright, also a former journalist and now a 2L at Louisville Law, writes this terrific (and often very funny) blog about law school. More recently, a bunch of our new 1Ls have launched their own blogs with varying themes. I may be missing a few, but here are the ones I've tripped across recently.

• Tim Chartrand, Eating My Way Through Law School
• Morgan Brooke Hancock, Think Like a Lawyer
• Megan Resch, Confessions of a 1L at UofL
• Cassiopia Restrepo, Coffee and Casebooks
• Colten Biro, Life & Law... & Surviving?

Be sure to check out these blogs if you're thinking about applying to U of L Law. They'll give you a good look at a slice of life here from differing perspectives -- funny, poignant, frustrating, even hungry! If I've left someone out in the above list, please share additional links in the comments field below. Happy blogging... 

Hidden Attic at U of L Law Revealed

A view of the law school library's mysterious attic

As I plow through my third year of law school here at U of L, there are plenty of days when I just want to be finished. Today is not one of them. I had two very good classes today, in which I learned some pretty useful things from excellent professors. For example, I've always thought that it is best to sign one's complete name in legible cursive on the back of checks. Not true. You can use a stamp, a squiggly mark, a circle, even a smiley face as long as that is your customary method of signing. You can even have someone else sign for you (agency law). I also recently learned that I enjoy no Fourth Amendment protections if a police officer comes to my house dressed as a gas meter reader and convinces me to allow him inside. These are good things to know.
But nothing can top the visit I made this afternoon to the law library's dusty attic. I knew we had a basement, and even a sub-basement, in our library. But if you ask the reference librarian at the front desk to see the attic, she'll gladly wave you in to a separate little elevator behind the desk, which will take you to a tiled-floor room filled with thousands of books that look older than dirt. Some of them even are older than dirt. In the attic, you can peruse thick tomes about aviation law from the 1960s, or Supreme Court decisions from World War I. You can even find cracked and faded compendiums of Kentucky statutes from the 1860s and earlier (intent of the drafters, anyone?).  I realize that things of this nature may not be interesting to everyone. But if you agree with me that hidden attics are great and mysterious places, good for you. I also understand Professor Metzmeier has recently written a column about the same attic in the LBA's Bar Briefs publication. Check it out.

Photo of the Week: law school's new front lawn

There's a new front lawn at U of L Law, apparently paid for with a federal grant. According to the university, the lawn is part of a bunch of improvements aimed at making the oval a "beautiful front door" for the school. Unfortunately, the lawn has not helped me answer any of the problems that I must finish before today's Negotiable Instruments class with Professor Leibson. If anyone knows of a federal grant for that, please advise.

Quiz: how to face "free pizza season" in law school

Let me guess: the admissions office didn't tell you about Free Pizza Season when you applied to law school. No, it was not wedged in next to median LSAT scores and judicial externships on that glossy brochure. Nonetheless, Free Pizza Season (FPS) has officially arrived at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. FPS is the time of year when student groups and various commercial ventures attempt to capitalize on your three-year vow of poverty in order to capture a slice of your precious time. It's the law school equivalent of the free-vacation-in-Florida-to-sell-you-a-condo-time-share. This week alone, for example, there are three days in a row of lunch meetings sponsored by student groups. For the uninitiated, I offer the following true/false quiz on FPS.

1. I should go to as many FPS events as possible because I'm broke and free pizza sounds great.
Answer: FALSE. It's a good idea to become familiar with a few of the student organizations at the law school that cater to your own personal interests, but you'll be blowing valuable study time if you go to all of them.

2. I should at least go to all of the FPS events that offer something better than pizza, such as catered box lunches or Qdoba.
Answer: TRUE. Notwithstanding the above, you should always get free Qdoba and box lunches. They just don't come around very often. Furthermore, FPS typically winds down by early October.

3. I need to join a student organization if I eat their free pizza.
Answer: FALSE, although you can "join" most student groups at U of L Law by simply putting your email address on a list. And you won't be invited to do much of anything until your 2L year.

4.  It will help my resume if I join a few student groups.
Answer: FALSE. OK, maybe that's a bit harsh. But in most cases, employers will not look closely at membership in student organizations. They already know your resume is thin. They usually care about three things: grades, grades, and grades. However, joining one or (at most) two student groups is a nice way to meet other people, lay the foundation for joining a study group, or maybe do some volunteering in the community.

5. I thought this quiz was about pizza. It seems like we're getting off topic.
Answer: TRUE.

6. FPS events sponsored by groups such as Westlaw, Lexis, Barbri, and Kaplan are not as valuable, even though they typically have better free stuff.
Answer: TRUE. At least in my opinion, you should choose wisely when it comes to burning an hour of your time with one of these groups. I'm not saying that the intriguing info session on how to search state statutes using truncators isn't worthwhile. Just be careful with your time.

7. I can take the free pizza, stay for five minutes, and then go study somewhere else.
Answer: TRUE. You could, but it's tacky. Don't do it.

8. I should also be careful about the FPS events hosted by the law school to discuss job interviews, professionalism, studying abroad and other stuff.
Answer: FALSE. At least in my opinion, the events hosted by the school itself, especially those focused on OCI and job interviews, are worth attending.

9. Student groups that host an FPS event with no pizza are definite skippers.
Answer: FALSE. Some of the best student organizations at U of L Law do not offer free food because they are small, have meager budgets, or simply choose not to spend money on free food. In many cases, it will be easier to get involved with these groups because there are fewer students in their membership, and they need volunteers.

10. FPS is a good representation of how Louisville does pizza.
Answer: absolutely, positively FALSE. Most student groups, at least the ones I'm familiar with, buy the cheapest pizza for FPS events. That means Domino's, Papa John's (actually a local company), Pizza Hut and the like. If you want to try "real" local pizza in Louisville, check out Wick's, Spinelli's, Papalinos, or one of the other shops that appear on this list.

Photo of the Week: first day of law school at U of L

Some of my fellow 3Ls are posting comments on Facebook about today being their last first day of school ever. That's hard to believe, but I'll take it. A year ago, I published a photo of myself wearing a new pair of shoes, along with a post about the mixed feelings I had about the start of the 2L year. There are no mixed emotions this time around. My mantra heading into 3L: get 'er done. But not everyone is in the same boat. To the new 1Ls, I offer you a hearty welcome to U of L Law, personified by the "welcome" sign drawn in chalk in the above photo. To the 2Ls, I offer a reminder that things could be worse, i.e. you could be pushing a broom on a construction site. Actually, for all I know, this guy is probably happier than 90 percent of law students. Either way, keep working, you'll get there.

Contrarian law school tip #37: make a reading list

The start of the fall semester at U of L Law is now less than a week away. The first-year lambs are picking up their case books, browsing student organization tables at orientation, and doing other various activities that will eventually lead them to slaughter. Just kidding. Louisville Law does a great job of making sure that 1Ls and upper-class students don't lose their heads during what can be the most stressful years of one's life. I am volunteering at a panel next week to talk about balancing law school and family. The best advice I've heard from anyone about starting law school came from Kathleen Bean, the school's dean of student life. Her words to us two years ago: don't let them mess with your head. The pronoun "them" was a  general reference to students, faculty, exams, jobs, and perhaps most of all the pressure that law students put on themselves to succeed.

There are plenty of ways to not let law school mess with your head, and I'm not going to try to list them all in this post. One of my favorite is to keep a personal book list. That's right: read for pleasure. Even with all of the dense legal tomes that overwhelm our lives for hours each day, I look forward to spending the last twenty or thirty minutes of each night with a good book. Before my 1L year, I read A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr, along with Getting to Maybe, One L by Scott Turow, and quite a few John Grisham novels. Below are three of my favorite books from this summer. I am betting they will stick with me at least as well as my fall reading material on negotiable instruments and secured transactions.

• How to Start & Build a Law Practice, by Jay Foonberg. This class how-to book shows how to open your first office, where to buy your stationary, how to avoid sketchy clients, and how to minimize your chances of total and absolute failure. You can buy it for $80 in hardcover, or check it out from the law library for free. 
• The Testament, by John Grisham. I just can't make it through a summer without reading one Grisham novel. Classic literature they are not, but I love 'em just the same. 
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. An airplane stewardess saw me reading this and gave me a strange look. Why would you want to read that again, she asked, referring to the obvious fact that every American high school or college student was forced to read this classic. To me, the answer is just as obvious: because I am no longer being forced to do so, because it's a wonderful love story, and because it offers terrific insights into the practice of law and life in general in the South. It also contains amazing descriptive language, like this passage about summer heat and humidity: "Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."

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.

Good-bye 2L, Hello 3L

It's that time of year. The changing of the guard. For me, one last law school exam stands in the way of becoming a 3L. In a few minutes, I'll sit down at a desk and spend the next three and a half hours writing about the finer points of procedural due process, equal protection, freedom of the press, religion, and other constitutional issues. Then it's on to Kentucky Derby festivities, including a party at our house (see photo of stocked fridge full of beer, at right) after tomorrow's Pegasus Parade. 

Post-exam supplies

After this week, I'll be blogging only infrequently as I turn my attention to a summer clerkship. If you have specific questions about law school at the University of Louisville, or about procedural due process, or about how to find a killer apartment here in the River City, please don't hesitate to send me an email at acdavi07@louisville.edu. I hope you've enjoyed reading 2L at U of L. I am pleased to be faced with the problem of finding a new name for the blog next year. 

Photo of the Week: Unicorn sighted at U of L Law

The harpy's as real as you are, and just as immortal. 

After days and days and days of rain, which have caused widespread flooding throughout Louisville, a fantastic rainbow arched over the city yesterday around dinner time. Most law students were studying, so they didn't catch this even rarer sight: a live unicorn prancing majestically across the lawn in front of the law school's main entrance. That's right, you heard it here: a live unicorn, created by the fine folks in our IT department. The parts about the rainbow and the flooding are true, however. Either way, as I barrel toward my last final exam next week, I can't think of a more deserving image to be this blog's Photo of the Week. Have a great weekend.

Exam post-mortem: Random musings about finals

My first written final exam of the semester is over. Taxalicious. For many law students, there is a feeling toward the end of the semester, as you synthesize all of the rules and holdings for a particular course, that you finally understand the material. You see the forest for the trees. For me, I didn't get that feeling until about two days before Monday's final, which is dangerously close (especially because I try to take at least half a day off before exams to relax and charge up my mental batteries). In this final, I can honestly say that my fellow classmates saved my bacon. I usually don't spend much time in study groups, but I was feeling so uneasy about this class that I spent six hours with two different groups of people over the weekend figuring out answers and comparing notes. It was surprisingly effective. It was also surprisingly scary to find out how many tiny errors I had made in my own outline. One of the nice things about Louisville Law is that students are pretty open with each other when it comes to sharing notes, hornbooks, outlines, etc.
The downside of discussing courses with other students is that you (or at least me) inevitably fall into post-exam conversations about what went right and wrong. And then, what felt so right just an hour or two ago, suddenly feels horrible and wrong. You pick apart your answers, and realize the tiny nuances that you missed on that long essay suddenly look like gaping black holes. It's pretty difficult to fail a law school exam, but these nuances also illustrate why it's so difficult to score an A. Most grades fall into a tight range between C minus and A minus. If you're able to notch a 3.0 GPA overall, you're in the top one third of your class. Above a 3.2 and you're close to the top 15 percent. It's actually possible to figure out, with reasonable certainty, where your grades will fall in a particular class using sites like this one. I try not to look in the rear view mirror too much after each final is over. We'll all find out how we did in a few weeks, and then we'll move on. With that in mind, I leave you with yet another goofy music video, this time about Basic Income Tax, made by students at Queen's University.

Final exam mayhem: strategies, prayers, insanity

We're in the midst of "reading week," which to the average person might sound like a pleasant opportunity to casually flip the pages of one's favorite books while reclining on a sofa with a glass of iced tea in one hand. For law students, however, reading week is the mad dash toward final exams, the last mile of the marathon that will make or break you for the semester. Outlines must be condensed. Hornbooks consumed. Professors harangued for those last tidbits of knowledge before the big day.

My exam treat: mowing a lawn

I said goodbye to my wife and kids this afternoon. They're leaving Louisville to visit family for the Easter weekend, while I explore the finer points of federal income taxation, constitutional law, and estate planning. In the last week, for example, I've spent close to a dozen hours cramming 42 pages of notes from one of my courses onto a single sheet of paper -- in 6 point, Abadi MT Condensed Light font -- to use during the exam. That is a completely unreasonable thing to do. Such are the vagaries of law school. Today, for a treat, I allowed myself to mow the lawn of the apartment building that my wife and I own just south of campus (see photo, at right). Tomorrow, if I feel good about my studies, I'll let myself re-install a toilet in our downstairs bathroom as part of a renovation project. Oh, if I am only so lucky. Final exam preparation is not for the weak of heart. It's like wearing a horse hair sweater for days on end, like the self-flagellation of Martin Luther to atone for his sins. In short, life feels obsessive. In a few weeks, it'll all be over. For now, however, the grind is here. Burn, baby, burn.