Novalawcity

Stop the Hate: Join LAMBDA United Rock Out Loud on April 6

Despite the fact that homosexuality is becoming more and more accepted in television and print media (see e.g. Kurt and Blaine’s kiss on Glee last week), culturally and socially homosexuality is far from accepted in certain communities.

Last October, during a string of suicides and hate crimes due to homosexuality, two gay teenagers and a 30-year-old gay male were beaten tortured by nine friends who called themselves the Latin King Goonies. The group beat and sodomized one teenager to force him to admit to having the 30-year-old as his lover and then went and picked up the second teenager who they not only beat and sodomized, but forced to assist in torturing the 30-year-old. The 30-year-old was also forced to consume the 10 cans of Four Loko (the equivalent of roughly 50 cans of beer) that he had brought with him, thinking he had been invited to a party, over the course of the torture. At the time, the formula of Four Loko also contained an energy drink and caffeine, leading to the drink subsequently being banned in several states for being a “blackout in a can.”

Fortunately, none of the men involved in this incident died, though others did earlier that year because of their sexuality. However, this heinous act is proof of the extent to which people will go to abuse homosexuals. The public needs to be educated on the abuses that homosexuals are enduring so that the abuse and hate can end.

LAMBDA United, a student-run organization in the law school, is taking a stand against hate crimes such as this. We are dedicated to educating the public about hate crimes and raising awareness about the harms that are still occurring. On April 6, 2011 from 11:00 AM-1:00PM LAMBDA United will be hosting its annual Rock Out Loud that raises awareness about hate crimes.

This year activist-singer Es Oh (follow her on Facebook) will perform and candidate for Oakland Park City Commissioner John Adornato is scheduled to be the guest speaker. The funds raised from this event will go toward a non-profit organization, Fight Out Loud which is a national organization that aims at educating the public to fight discrimination and hate.

(guest post by Martavis T. Clarke, LAMBDA United VP)

Law School Exam Tips: A Followup

As a follow-up to my post about exam tips, a quotation from an article about law school education I had intended to use to introduce my previous blog post:

"Studies have shown that the best way to learn is to have frequent exams on small amounts of material and to receive lots of feedback from the teacher. Consequently, law school does none of this."

 -- James D. Gordon III, cited in Lynn C. Herndon, Help You, Help Me: Why Law Students Need Peer Teaching, 78 UMKC L. Rev. 809 (2010).

Law School Exam Tips

Two 1Ls here at NSU asked me the other day for tips for dealing with exams. I felt like I didn’t have a lot of insight. Law school was a long time ago for me, and I didn’t deal with exams too well myself.

So I consulted my awesome colleague Becka Rich, the NSU law library’s new Reference/Faculty Services Librarian. She provided some links and some advice, which I am passing on here.

First, some blog links to blog posts about exams.  Most of the posts (the first post is a collection of links) are very short, so don’t stress over reading them:

CALI’s Law School Exam Advice Post -- CALI gives a list of links to essays and podcasts on how to do well on both essay and multiple choice law school exams.  There’s also a lot of great advice from good sources linked to.

A Common Law School Exam Mistake -- The Volokh Conspiracy blog is helmed by a number of very down-to-earth law professors.  This post talks about how to organize your exam answers and how not to organize them.  If you’re only going to read one link, Becka suggests this one.

Law Career Blog’s Exam-Taking Advice:  Law Career Blog provides a list of their own best advice and a couple of other links. Very short, but helpful.

Lawyerist’s Tried and True Advice for Law School Exams: This is a round-up of their best posts on taking different types of law school exams.

Jurist’s Law School Exams page: The Jurist has a round-up of advice from law professors while noting that the best advice on your exam will come from your professor.

Beyond IRAC: Law School Exam Taking Tips (Law Profession Blog):  Advice from a law professor grading exams on how to write law school exams.  

University of Washington Law Library Law School Exam Page: Includes a bibliography of exam prep sources.

Law Crossing: Grade A Advice on Acing Law School Exams:  A recent grad shares law school exam tips.

Becka also said that candy and toys (which she and Carol Yecies, library associate director, both have) are useful if you need to sit and play for a minute. “But in all seriousness.... Tell them to take a deep breath, if they’ve been paying attention all semester it’s not that bad.  Eating and sleeping and showering are as important, if not more so than studying.  Get some exercise.  I meant it about the sleep.“

So, break a leg on your exams--and don’t stress or obsess!

Your Law School's Ranking? Not as Important as You Think!

Law school success, as measured by grades, is more important for lawyers’ career success and satisfaction than the ranking of the law school they attended, according to a recent study reported by the ABA Journal’s blog.

The study was encouraging news for lower-tier law schools and their students. The ABA article said:

[T]he salary boost for achieving high grades more than makes up for the salary depreciation associated with attending a lower-ranked school. The study also found that lawyers who left law school with the lowest grades felt the least secure about their jobs.

The authors of the study, “The Secret of My Success: How Status, Prestige and School Performance Shape Legal Careers,” summarize how its findings contradict “conventional wisdom”:

The consistent theme we find throughout this analysis is that performance in law school--as measured by law school grades--is the most important predictor of career success. It is decisively more important than law school "eliteness." Socioeconomic factors play a critical role in shaping the pool from which law students are drawn, but little or no discernible role in shaping post-graduate careers. Since the dominant conventional wisdom says that law school prestige is all-important, and since students who "trade-up" in school prestige generally take a hit to their school performance, we think prospective students are getting the wrong message. (p. 2)

Those of you who chose law schools to be closer to home, or because you wanted more practical preparation for practice (a demonstrated strength of NSU's), feel good about your choice! You're likely to be more satisfied with your law school, and over a lifetime, you may well do better.

The yet-to-be-published study is by Richard Sander (UCLA Law) and Jane Yakowitz (Brooklyn Law). It looked at beliefs about the effects of the ranking of the students’ law school, grades in law school, and societal position. It then reviewed the literature and statistics on the effects of these three variables on lawyer career success. It also compared the effects of the factors using a regression model.

A Uniform Bar Exam For Missouri

Via Betsy McKenzie at Out of the Jungle: A recent report in stltoday.com indicates that Missouri has become the first state to adopt a plan to create a single bar exam for lawyers who want to practice anywhere in the United States. Lex Universal also has a write-up of the story. Missouri plans to have the exam ready for those sitting for the bar in February 2011.

Both the American Bar Association and the National Conference of Bar Examiners have signed off on the idea. The test might be universal, but passing the new exam will not mean automatic admission to every state bar in the U.S. First, states have to affirmatively sign on to participate. Then, each participating state will be able to set its own passing grade, as well as other state-specific bar admission policies. According to the stltoday article, several states are considering adopting the uniform bar exam. Lex Universal, citing USAToday, names Arizona, Colorado, North Dakota, and Washington, D.C. as potential adopters.

Article on the value of LLM in tax

Paul Caron writes on the characteritics and misconceptions of LLM programs in tax in this recent article.

iPhone apps for Law Students

Law Dictionaries, court rules, & the US Code now have apps for smart phones. See the RIPS Librarian Blog

Lawyer Who Inflated Grades Gets Recommended 18-Month Suspension

From the ABA journal: the law student inflated grades and exaggerated achievements, landed a job, and then was discovered. ABA

National Jurist's Newest LLM Guide online

With 223 LLM programs a good online guide is a must. LLM

FAMU Law after full Accreditation

The article "Optimism rules at FAMU law school since accreditation" looks at the law school and a sense of renewed progress. Story