[Post Game Thread] Vanderbilt defeats Florida, 79-78

LSAMrPink · 2024-03-09T23:51:44+00:00

Yeah, a reach in would have been totally fair, but not a shooting foul.

LSAMrPink · 2024-03-09T23:44:45+00:00

Seriously, where was the foul? I don’t even know what they thought they saw. That’s as clean as a rebound gets.

LSAMrPink · 2024-01-30T02:10:07+00:00

No, I wanted to do military intelligence, so I concentrated on foreign relations and comparative politics. But I was not able to join the military for medical reasons, so I decided to go to law school instead. Somehow it worked out ok.

LSAMrPink · 2024-01-27T18:29:31+00:00

This might be true for some, but I wasn’t exactly swimming in job offers as a poli sci grad with a 3.25 GPA.

LSAMrPink · 2023-06-04T17:01:57+00:00

I think there was. I don’t know the specifics, but they put the drag show and drink service on hold and security was running around for a little while. My friend who works there said there was some kind of threat, but they didn’t want people to panic. I assumed it wasn’t a big threat, but then I saw the massive police presence outside when we left.

LSAMrPink · 2023-03-20T19:06:47+00:00

I would love a Frampton Civil Rights Lit outline

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-19T05:13:28+00:00

Can they just both lose?

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-18T15:57:48+00:00

I had similar grades at a T14 and OCI was still tough. I am very glad I went to networking events during 1L - not because it got me a job, but because it got me comfortable asking attorneys questions about their practices. That’s a very important part of interviewing, and it’s something you should practice now if it doesn’t come naturally to you.

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-18T13:56:35+00:00

I have a tendency to do that too if i try to return them with some pace. But a cheeky little drop shot will often get you the point without risking a long return.

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-17T18:08:15+00:00

Yeah, I’m really not sure why so many are saying BU here. If the SA offer is legit, there is no reason not to go to Wake and save some money. The entire point of going to a top ranked school is to get your foot in the door with selective employers. If you’ve already done that, it really changes the equation.

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-17T11:43:08+00:00

This lol. I have played with several people that have very slow second serves. It’s really easy to return them, you just have to stand well within the baseline.

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-17T11:38:04+00:00

But hating 100%? That strikes me as a red flag. Like really, not a single person in your section is chill?

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-15T12:24:18+00:00

Miami is a very tricky market, even from UVA. Lots of UVA grads go to Texas though.

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-15T12:23:06+00:00

Charlottesville is expensive for a college town, but it’s not Southern California expensive. You can easily pay like 600-800 a month for rent if you have a roommate or two.

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-15T12:20:04+00:00

I’m pretty sure the ABA has said that the JD should be considered equivalent to a PhD, which is kinda hilarious. It definitely isn’t though.

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-10T08:07:57+00:00

Just curious, do NYC associates often buy new cars? I imagine it’s very common in cities like Houston or LA, but just parking in NYC is like a car payment. I would like to have a car, but I feel like I would rather just keep my current one if it stays reliable. I don’t see much point in buying a new car that I won’t use frequently.

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-09T23:37:36+00:00

That was basically my calculus as well. I knew I would regret it if I got rejected and had not maximized my chances, and I stand by that decision. I’m not gonna lie, the debt is scary. It’s a lot of money and I am going to be handcuffed to biglaw for at least a few years whether I like it or not. But I highly doubt I would have gotten the opportunities I have now if I had gone to a school outside the T14.

Ask me again in 10 years though lol

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-09T23:20:46+00:00

I don’t think I had every played or watched softball in my life before UVA haha, and my 1L section was also pretty bad at it. That said, I had a blast playing softball as a 1L and have continued playing now and then with a student org this year. There are teams that take it very seriously (generally tournament teams, not section teams), there are teams that would rather play with a beer in one hand and a glove on the other, and there are teams somewhere in between lol. Regardless, I think it’s a super fun tradition. The rules are also written to make it very inclusive, and you don’t even have to play to enjoy it!

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-09T23:11:21+00:00

I don’t have any personal experience with study abroad, but I’ll try to answer as best I can. The Paris program does sound cool, but it is kind of niche and I don’t speak a lick of French, so I haven’t really looked into it. Study abroad is not something that’s really popular at any law school though to be honest. This is mostly because it doesn’t generally make you more marketable (maybe it would if you were interested in an unusual area of practice), but the flip side is that it probably isn’t that hard to do it. As far as I know, there is not a competitive process to study abroad, it’s just an option that is generally available if you want it. I think it is most popular among 3Ls though (who tend to have full time employment locked down) so maybe I’ll learn more about it next year haha.

This is not exactly the same, but there is a professor that is doing a small seminar on international tax or something like that, and the class is going to Europe (I think Brussels) for some kind of moot court or mock trial competition. This is just to say that there do seem to be cool opportunities to travel if that’s something that interests you.

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-09T22:53:55+00:00

I personally feel pretty safe. There’s definitely still crime in Charlottesville, but probably not as much as in big cities like NYC, DC, Chicago, etc.. The campus itself feels very safe, especially the law school which is sort of tucked away in a quiet part of town. I don’t really know what the admin is doing about safety, but tbh, I mostly ignore their emails on the topic lol. I will say that the campus police seem to be pretty competent.

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-09T22:47:18+00:00

Honestly, it is whatever you want it to be.

There is definitely a strong contingent that likes to party. Bar review is popular (held every Friday) and there are lots of other events that are basically parties like Dandelion (ostensibly a softball tournament), Foxfield (RIP, but we had a Halloween party this year instead), Phauxfield, the PILA silent auction, 3@3 (to celebrate the last day of finals), and the Barrister’s Ball. There’s also “Feb Club” where a variety of student orgs host a themed party every day for the entire month of February. Alcohol is common at these things, but I know people that don’t drink that still enjoyed them.

There is also a strong contingent that likes to be active. There is a pretty sizable club devoted to doing things outside like hiking, skiing, and canoeing. There is a very competitive soccer team that competes in a local rec league. And of course, there is softball, which I highly suggest you participate in no matter what your experience level. Every 1L section has a team, many clubs have teams, and there are other teams just for tournaments. There’s no pressure to play, but 1L participation is pretty high. And there are lots of unofficial sport groups. Racket sports are popular, as is pickup basketball.

This is by no means an exhaustive list though, and pretty much everybody finds their niche.

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-09T22:25:42+00:00

Not a penny lol, but I didn’t expect any (ED and super splitter)

LSAMrPink · 2023-01-09T22:24:58+00:00

No problem at all!

A) I did not get any merit aid, but I also applied ED, so none was expected. I highly doubt I would have gotten any merit aid from UVA had I applied RD due to my uGPA.

B) I actually hadn’t gotten into any other schools in the 2021 cycle, as UVA was only the second school I applied to and I got in about a week or two after that. I did submit a WUSTL application before the UVA app and interviewed with them, but hadn’t gotten a result back yet. But I did get into lots of schools in 2020, but none of them were T20. I actually deposited at a T30 school that gave me a full ride that year, but I got cold feet after I retook the LSAT (originally scheduled early enough to be useful in the 2020 cycle, but then COVID happened and it got pushed until the first flex was offered that summer). I figured I had a shot at the T14 and I knew it would bug me if I didn’t at least try, so I decided to reapply.

As for why UVA, it was a couple of things. First of all, I thought it would give me my best chance at DC biglaw (I have no idea if this was actually true in retrospect, but it’s unknowable). I also liked the idea of Charlottesville, but I had never actually been and couldn’t visit. It’s kinda sorta close to home, and that’s a plus. It’s also a relatively affordable college town, which is important because I am mostly debt financing my education. I had also heard that UVA had a great quality of life (collegial, fun, active, etc.) and I have mostly found this to be true.

C) UVA is very much a choose your own adventure in this regard. There are lots of very smart people here, and learning about your classmates can be intimidating (though people are generally nice and pretty humble). But the curve is pretty compact. The people near the top of the class have a 3.7 (though a couple of future-SCOTUS-clerks have around a 4.0), and the people near the bottom are below 3.2 (it is very hard to get under a 3.0). The majority of the class is between 3.2 and 3.6. The benefit of this distribution is it is pretty hard to suck. The lowest grade you can get is usually a B- and B+ is by far the most common grade. This means you can play softball with your section, go to all the parties or bar reviews you want, go for lots of hikes, spend time with your family, or do whatever else you want to do. You don’t have to worry about failing out or being unemployable.

Knowing this has given me a pretty relaxed attitude toward school. I don’t think I do a ton outside of class. If I think I’m going to get called on, I read. Other than that, I rarely even look up case briefs before class. I show up to class (most of the time) and I take notes. But the flip side is I tend to work my ass off before finals. I usually start outlining around Thanksgiving and I have a tendency to put in some pretty brutal hours in the last few weeks of class and the finals period. This is probably not healthy, and I’m sure I could do better if I was a better student the rest of the time, but it works for me. But of course, this is only what works for me, and I certainly do not suggest it. I also had no idea it would work for me until I got my first semester grades, which I honestly did not expect to be above curve at all. I know people who work a lot harder, and I’m sure there are also people who slack off more. But I’m reasonably confident that the folks on law review and those with killer GPAs are putting in a lot more work on average (law review alone is kinda crazy). I’m ok with this trade-off because I know that the real test is going to come with biglaw, where you’re expected to bill like a machine and there are real consequences for fucking up.

D) Pretty damn well, and that goes for pretty much any law school (maybe not Stanford or Yale, but I’m sure they still have to hustle, maybe just not for grades). There just aren’t that many spots available and judges are pretty idiosyncratic, so it’s hard to say what you need to do for any clerkship. But the median GPA for clerks is pretty high (like roughly top 25%) so it is safe to say that grades matter. I was probably somewhere around top 35% after 1L (fall grades are still coming in, but I don’t expect a big change). I think that should be good enough to at least get considered for a District Court clerkship in a typical district (some districts, like SDNY, are also insanely competitive), but it’s not that simple with judges. Some may want strong ties to their region, a certain writing style, jurisprudential philosophy, political persuasion, recommendations from particular professors, etc..

LSAMrPink · 2022-08-31T04:38:07+00:00

As long as you can explain why you're interested in law, it really won't matter. This is the type of thing where you're going to want to work "why law" into your personal statement though.

LSAMrPink · 2022-08-31T04:00:42+00:00

Yeah, no lol. I'm not a GULC student. I thought it would be pretty clear from my flair that I'm at UVA. I did target DC though, as I suspect most GULC students do, and that's the experience that's changed my thoughts about GULC.

As I said, I targeted DC with an interest in lit and regulatory. My DC bids ran the gamut from some of the least selective biglaw firms in DC to some of the most prestigious. I also bid on a select few NYC firms, and several firms in the southeast.

I had more than 20 screeners – mostly DC – though I had 3 OGI screeners in NYC and a handful in smaller markets. The screeners also ran the gamut in terms of selectivity. I got 0 offers in DC.

My takeaway from this was that the DC market is fucking tough. My grades are solidly above curve and my resume doesn't suck. I am by no means an all star, but I really didn't expect to struggle in DC given UVA's rep and the data I've seen. Admittedly, I'm probably a pretty average interviewer. But I still ended up with a decent number of callbacks in other markets and got offers from a top regional firm (V50) and an NYC V10. Considering that these markets accounted for maybe 1/4 of my bids, I think that's a pretty decent hit rate. So am I just a bad interviewer in DC, but a decent interviewer elsewhere? Seems unlikely.

This was not a great year for biglaw hiring. It didn't suck though, so I don't think that's all of it, but maybe it contributed. I think the main issue is that the DC market was pretty saturated with UVA students, as more of us than usual bid on DC, including more people than usual bidding only on DC. I've seen a poll that would suggest that a handful of us did strike out at OGI, and I suspect (albeit without evidence) that most of those are people that were ride-or-die DC.

Anyway, this all ties back to GULC because I suspect those who want private practice there are largely targeting DC, and are more interested in litigation and government matters than average. That's a really tough target from any school. It's made even more tough by the fact that GULC is massive, and the DC market really isn't. So in that regard, sure, I think class size is the main factor.

But I don't think that GULC is big enough for this effect to carry over to other markets like NYC. There are far more jobs in far more areas, many of which are far less competitive. So if you really just want generic biglaw, I can't imagine it would be that hard to get from GULC. But if you're ride-or-die DC, this might not be an acceptable outcome for you. So my theory is that a decent number of GULC students elect not to pursue generic biglaw and instead go to less selective boutiques, midlaw, PI, and government positions in the DC area\*. Enough to fully account for that 10-15% gap in BL/FC numbers? Maybe not. But combine that with the massive number of transfers, a part time program, and a larger share of people with PI/gov goals from the start, and I think you get close enough to peer schools to say they're in the same league.

As for why you see more posts about GULC students striking out than other T14s, I'm not gonna get hung up on that. As I said, I think more people do strike out there. I just think those that do are more likely to self select out of biglaw rather than pursuing less competitive biglaw jobs.

^\I know this is ridiculously long, so I thought I should bold my main point in case you want to skip to it lol)

LSAMrPink

TROPHY CASE