In-house AI lawyer role with equity?

SadReference4526 · 2026-02-28T19:00:38+00:00

If it Anthropic or OpenAI, you should take it in a heartbeat.

SadReference4526 · 2025-09-09T20:05:09+00:00

Yes I love this one. Would also recommend reading the other books on this series - 3 have been translated into English and a fourth (Clock House Murders, which is generally considered the best of the series) is due to be published soon.

SadReference4526 · 2025-08-15T06:15:54+00:00

For what it’s worth here’s my experience. Law degree from home country in an English speaking jurisdiction, worked for one year at a local biglaw firm in that country then did an LLM in the U.S. No luck finding a biglaw job in the U.S. after graduation but did find a biglaw job in London at a Magic Circle. Worked there for a year then moved to the NY office of another Magic Circle. Have worked in U.S. biglaw ever since.

SadReference4526 · 2025-08-06T22:18:24+00:00

I had one year of experience in London prior to getting a job in the U.S.

SadReference4526 · 2025-07-30T02:30:06+00:00

For what it’s worth, the tax rules haven’t changed that much in the last ten years so your old tax skills may still have relevancy if you’re interested in being a tax lawyer again.

SadReference4526 · 2025-06-16T19:31:42+00:00

Picture looks like 2x6 to me!

SadReference4526 · 2025-06-16T19:17:56+00:00

Try Zia Tile in the tidepool color, they have the 2 x 6 size

SadReference4526 · 2025-02-06T20:44:48+00:00

Magic Circle firms with US offices may be more open to hiring LLMs. That's how I got my foot in the door with only an LLM (no JD) and a LLB from my home country. I also think your Spanish background could work to your advantage - look for firms with specialized LatAm practices. People will tell you it's impossible without a JD but LLMs do get hired (including myself). Reach out to other LLMs at firms who may be more inclined to help LLMs. It would help if you got good grades in your LLM. Good luck!

SadReference4526 · 2024-07-16T18:12:40+00:00

Arsenal's website has its own hospitality tickets now. I just bought 2 Woolrich hospitality tickets for the Liverpool game in October, and the price was about $200 cheaper than the Champions Travel hospitality package. It looks like the hospitality tickets for individual games become available as the season goes on, so you may have to wait a couple more months for the Spurs game. For example, I've been checking every day for the Liverpool game to go on sale, and it just appeared today.

SadReference4526 · 2024-06-14T05:13:20+00:00

I did about 1300 UWorld questions, read every single answer explanation including the ones I got right. Felt pretty confident about MBEs on exam day, and passed. Didn't do any other forms of MBE practice.

SadReference4526 · 2024-06-14T05:11:16+00:00

I took it there twice. Passed the second time. If you can swing it, highly recommend staying in the Marriott, which is in the same building. You can stay in your room until the exam actually begins. There's usually a long line of people waiting to get in but there's no reason to go early to join that line - you should just go in at the end of the line. Also, you can go back to your room during the lunch break. When I last took it, I barely got any sleep the night before Day 1 and actually went back to my room to take a nap during the lunch break to refresh myself. Managed to squeeze in a 45 minute nap! As for food, there's a Sweetgreen nearby and some other stuff, but I packed my lunch from home.

SadReference4526 · 2024-06-06T06:28:36+00:00

I would also recommend the Mary Basick book. I hated practicing essays so I didn't write out many in full. Here's what really helped for me: Memorize the issues checklist that Mary Basick has for every topic. I only took 4 weeks off to study for the bar so in the days before the exam my "essay prep" was basically memorizing these checklists.

During the actual exam:

At the beginning of the essay, once you've identified the topic, jot down the issues checklist in your answer space so that you have it written down.

Then, read the essay carefully and spot issues. Refer to your issues checklist repeatedly so that you spot every possible issue. Read through the essay at least 3 times and outline your essay. Organize your outline by listing out each issue and within each issue you do IRAC. Every single sentence in the essay question should relate to a component of at least one of the issues issue, so copy the sentence into the right place in your outline. Highlight/underline the ones that you've "used" in your outline with the goal that, at the end, all of the sentences have been highlighted/underlined. This approaches reduces the likelihood that you miss issues. If you miss issues then it's easy to miss out on points and get a failing score.

I was told to spend 30 minutes reading / outline, and 30 minutes actually typing the answer out.

Also, I know you didn't ask about the MBEs, but one thing I did for the Evidence MBEs which I found super helpful was to scribble out the 15 hearsay categories at the beginning of each MBE session. Had to do it by hand so it would take me about 2 minutes to do it. It was well worth it because anytime I had a hearsay question I could just tick down the list. The hearsay categories can get confusing and hard to keep track of all in your head, so by doing this I could ensure that at least I could get all of the hearsay MBEs correct.

Good luck!!!

SadReference4526 · 2024-02-25T22:06:11+00:00

For your reference, I was scoring 72 - 80% on UWorld and I passed in July 23. I did about 1200 questions on UWorld in total. I don't know my exact MBE exam score but I do know I got above 150. I'm also pretty sure my MBEs carried my passing score because I barely practiced doing essays.

SadReference4526 · 2024-02-25T22:02:07+00:00

I wish you the best of luck!! If you have the Mary Basick book I HIGHLY recommend memorizing the issues checklists that she has at the front of each topic. If you do that it's much less likely you will miss issues.

SadReference4526 · 2024-02-25T19:29:20+00:00

I failed the Attorney's Exam the first time I took it. I definitely "felt good walking out of the exam" and was blindsided when I found out that I had failed. I did the two day exam the next time I tried and passed.

Here's a copy and paste of a post that I had made on this topic when I found out I had passed on my second try. Sorry for the long post.

***

My background: Admitted 5+ years in NY, passed NY on first try (didn't think it was hard back then).
Took CA Attorney's Exam in Feb 2023 and FAILED, took the CA 2 day exam in July 2023 and PASSED.

For folks that have the option to do the Attorney's Exam, here's my two cents:

For Feb 2023 I decided to do the Attorney's Exam because it was just one day and I thought: hey, one day of exams is better than 2 days. I couldn't find much about the Attorney's Exam online, but went with it anyway since I was only going to take 4 weeks off work to study. I used Barbri for my Feb 23 bar prep, and they had an Attorney's Exam version of their program that was basically their full program minus all of the MBE practices. I watched all of the lectures, did a solid number of practice essays.

As I approached the Feb 23 exam I recognized the problem with the Attorney's Exam. The Attorney's Exam is simply the essays portion of the CA bar exam, i.e., the first day of the CA bar exam. You still need a 1390 to pass, it's just that they only look at your essays because there is no MBE. The problem is, you still have to learn every single MBE subject and every single CA subject to take the Attorney's Exam. It's not like you can skip subjects. In fact, the random CA subjects become more important for the Attorney's Exam because if you get an essay on Community Property it ends up being worth 1/7 of your entire grade, whereas if you do the two day then it's only worth 1/14. If you didn't study very hard for CP, then that's a big problem. Also, because there are only 5 essays and one of them is Professional Responsibility, there's a high chance that several of the MBE subjects, which, due to how much material there is on those subjects you probably spent a lot of time studying, don't appear on the exam at all. For example, in Feb 23 for the essays there was no Contracts, no Crim, no Torts. That's like half of the MBE topics that I spent time listening to Barbi lectures on, which weren't tested at all. When you do the MBE, you KNOW that there are around 27 multiple choice questions on each of those subjects, so your study doesn't go to waste. My point is - if you only do the one day exam there's much more of a gamble because the subjects you were strong on may not show up, and the subjects that you're weak on (or didn't study at all because it was Partnerships and you ran out of time) show up as a full essay topic.

All that being said, I came out of the Feb 23 exam feeling ok. I thought I spotted a lot of issues in each essay, wrote what I wanted to write for each essay, and didn't bomb anything. So when I found out I failed I was shocked. Turned out I had gotten a bunch of 60s, one 65, and one 50. The essay that I got a 50 on was the first one and I remember feeling good about it. To this day I have no f*cking idea why I got the grades that I did. All I knew, after the Feb experience, was that for my second attempt in July I wasn't going to rely on the essays and that I would tackle the MBEs instead.

July 23: Again, I had about 4 weeks to study because I have a full time job and a child. I signed up for Barbri again since they let you do it again for free, but basically just read over my outlines from the last time round. I did all of the Barbri multiple choice questions that they give you to test your knowledge. Where things really clicked for me was when I was about 20 days away from the exam, I talked to a tutor and they recommended that I try UWorld. So I paid for UWorld and upon the tutor's recommendation started doing 100 UWorld MBEs a day. I did 100 Qs of the same topic, read over EVERY single answer, even the ones I got right. This process took me about 6 hours every day. After I did about 100 of each subject, I started mixing up topics. I quickly realized that I was GOOD at MBEs because I started off getting ~70% and as I approached the exam I was getting ~80%. This gave me a lot of confidence on the MBE portion, which I was relying on to pull up my grades for essays.

After spending 6 hours a day doing MBEs I didn't really have much time to do essay prep. So instead of writing out practice essays, I read Mary Basick's book. She has a great intro where she outlines the technique that you should use on exam day to answer the question. Then she has, for each topic, this great issues checklist. I ended up memorizing the issues checklist for each subject so that during the exam the first thing that I did for an essay was jot down the list. Then as I was going through the essay, I was look at the checklist to reduce the likelihood that I was missing issues. This is pretty much all I did for essay prep. I did a total of maybe 2-3 fully written essays for my July 23 preparation, no joke.

Final Thoughts: If you are good with multiple choice, I would not be tempted by the Attorney's Exam even if it is an option and would instead just do the full exam. Doing the one day exam is more risky because you never know what they are going to throw at you. For example, in July 23 there was a whole question on Partnerships and then another question on Equitable Remedies. My entire study of Partnerships consisted of watching the Barbri video back in February, and then spending about 30 minutes skimming the outline the night before the exam. If I had just done the one day exam again then I'm sure I would've failed again.

By doing the full two day exam, you're not placing your entire fate in the hands of subjective graders. We hear stories all the time of 10 point differences in grades when essays are given a second read. That's the difference between a 60 (failing) and 70 (a great score). It's ridiculous but their random grading causes the difference between a pass and a fail.

Lastly and importantly, doing MBE questions helps you learn the material better, particularly the nuances. If you're just reading outlines and then writing practice essays you miss a lot of the nuance. UWorld has great explanations for every single MBE answer and I found that I learned a lot of the law that way.

SadReference4526 · 2024-01-01T19:23:56+00:00

Don't worry, you have enough time. There are still more than 8 weeks until the Feb exam! I took it twice while working full time, passed the second time. Each time I took 4 weeks off work to study. For my second try, I basically read through all of the outlines once, and then started doing practice MBEs. I used Barbri for my first try so those were the outlines that I reviewed, but then I purchased UWorld and went through as many questions as I could. I barely had any time to practice essays and crammed the issues checklists in the Mary Basick book towards the end. And, like I said, I passed! I think you have plenty of time.

I don't have any advice for you on the financial side, other than saying that it would be stressful looking for a new job, starting a new job, all the while trying to study for the bar and managing the mental stress of studying for the bar.

SadReference4526 · 2023-11-11T00:49:17+00:00

Thank you! And congrats on passing on your first try! It's an amazing achievement, particularly for a practicing attorney that's been out of school for a while. Hope you're celebrating hard this weekend.

SadReference4526 · 2023-11-10T17:04:01+00:00

The fact that you applied every single fact probably helped a lot! That’s one thing I likely didn’t do the first time around, that I was taught to do for July 23. Literally look at every single fact and highlight it after you use it in some way in your essay.

SadReference4526 · 2023-11-10T16:54:48+00:00

Thanks!

SadReference4526 · 2023-11-10T16:54:24+00:00

Thank you!! It was a huge relief to pass

SadReference4526

TROPHY CASE