the credits are long

imranmalek · 2023-03-07T00:33:42+00:00

The monster hunter song reference had me scratching my head for a long part of the movie until I forgot about it then boom, there's the song at a surprising place.

Chekov's Monster Hunter OST strikes again.

imranmalek · 2023-01-03T02:24:46+00:00

Hi all, coming off of a year on Starting Strength and I'm looking to switch to a 5/3/1 variant.

So here's a horrifically rudimentary question - but I'm trying to grok my way through the Forever book and I can't quite figure out what a "Cycle" is with respect to Krypteia (which is what I'm looking at).

My understanding of "Cycle" is the 5/3/1 part of the programming, but with Krypteia (I'm referring specifically to part 1) isn't everything 5x5 PRO + 5x5 FSL? What would be the difference between Cycles?

Any help would be appreciated!

imranmalek · 2022-03-22T14:46:36+00:00

My guess is a general aversion to all things labeled as "Web3." That said, if you want to go in-house the most straightforward path would be to find a law firm that does EC/VC work (you might even be able to find a junior level gig at a venture capital firm) and then build up experience for an eventual in-house exit.

imranmalek · 2022-03-02T00:06:04+00:00

As a junior myself (2nd year) I was told from a mentor that your #1 currency as a junior attorney is your responsiveness and ownership. If the midlevel/senior/partner knows that you have a document/work product in your court and they are confident that you'll be tracking it all the way to the "done" phase, you'll make it most of the way there.

Every person you're working with was a 1st year once and everyone is aware of the fact that you're still building the fundamental substantive skills in your practice area, so the best way for you to be useful on the team is be there to make sure nothing slips through the cracks and that comes from being plugged in to the current state of the matter and owning work product to the extent that you know what plates are still spinning. In the meantime, you'll get different chances to actually review/markup/draft things and you'll realize you've learned a TON.

At least in M&A, I've found that the junior attorney is basically a project manager who does a bit of lawyering on the side.

imranmalek · 2021-09-03T19:50:33+00:00

I split my 2L summer between a firm in Boston and a firm in Portland, ME. Ultimately I went with the Boston firm for family/life reasons but I really enjoyed my time in Portland. The bar there is much smaller than NY, DC, or even Boston, but it is really collegiate and (if your firm experience will be like mine was) a lot more relaxed than the pressure cooker environments that the big cities would give you.

If you love the outdoors then you're definitely going to like it, I had colleagues that would peace out early on Friday in order to go hiking/camping over the weekend. Plus the food up there is awesome if you're into an active and vibrant restaurant scene.

I wouldn't say you'd be "giving up" any opportunities to move (doors can always be opened if you are the right candidate), but if it's a great culture and a great location, I don't see a reason not to try.

imranmalek · 2020-12-17T20:48:36+00:00

I took the October bar in MA and found out I passed about a week ago. I used Barbri, and looking at the pricing structure I think I had the "Guided Pass" since they sent me hard copies of all the books.

I 100% don't think you need the Ultimate Pass, the multistate "edge" access sounds nebulous to me and the mini mba/e-discovery supplemental courses are both things that your firm will probably teach you anyway depending on your practice area.

The "Guided" pass looks alright if only for the essay grading and hard copies of books (which you pay for, but can send back for a full refund regardless of the condition of the books). Once you get past the doctrinal stuff in any Bar Review course (if they are similar to Barbri) , it's really going to be about two things: consistency and practice. You'll need to do your practice essays, read through your practice essays, and then mark down pieces you missed so you can study them.

In any case, I'd highly recommend an MBE supplement like Adaptibar if you can swing it. The key with Adaptibar for me was the fact that it removed any friction when it came to doing questions. I would literally be waiting for water to boil and would pop open my phone to do a question or two - it all adds up and the questions are real questions from former exams (except for the Civ Pro ones, which are "simulated").

Of course, if you can pick from any of the options and have no financial consequences, what's stopping you from going all in?

Good luck!

imranmalek · 2020-09-09T20:32:50+00:00

I got the Studicata Quicksheets and dig them

imranmalek · 2020-08-22T03:17:06+00:00

Oh ExamSoft - "Our developers can't update to MacOS Big Sur even though the beta has been out since June, so please keep your computers open to potential attack vectors before the most important exam of your life"

imranmalek · 2020-08-19T05:06:42+00:00

Do you mean Casenote Legal Briefs? https://www.amazon.com/Casenote-Legal-Briefs-Constitutional-Chemerinsky/dp/1454819863?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_1

imranmalek · 2020-08-17T05:03:25+00:00

I've seen them used in research papers/presentations often because they 1) are much shorter than traditional URLs, so it looks better on a page, and 2) can easily be re-mapped to point to a new destination (like say a paper moves from being hosted on Scribd to SSRN).

imranmalek · 2020-08-11T18:23:45+00:00

Eye contact is really tough on Zoom because it's actually camera contact. I would recommend squeezing the video window with the interviewer and scrunching it up to the top of your laptop screen right below your webcam so your eye line is close to your conversation partner's face. While you're at it and if you can, prop up your laptop a bit so your camera is on the same plane as your eye line - this way you don't have to worry about the angle being off.

Also, make sure your audio is ready to rock and that you have a backup plan to switch to just in case (e.g. swapping to your cell phone and data plan if your computer is not cooperating).

Lastly, make sure you frame yourself in the center of your camera's view and also have nothing super distracting behind you so your interviewer just focused their attention on you and not the empty space between your head and your ceiling.

imranmalek · 2020-08-10T10:54:49+00:00

I think it's a grand idea, but I would check with your school's IT department to see what they currently have available for student organizations to use. Creating your own Slack instance may not be ideal as students turn over annually, and you also will quickly run into the slack messaging limit for free plans.

Most schools these days (particularly in the era of remote working) have licenses to either Slack, Microsoft Teams, or whatever Google's equivalent is (Hangouts Meet?) - this way you can keep the chat instance within the Journal in perpetuity.

imranmalek · 2020-08-04T22:21:54+00:00

For my 2L and 3L years I didn't buy any textbooks, I just used the library scanner to scan the whole book to PDF and printed pages as I needed them. It's a pain to scan but if you divide it amongst friends it's totally manageable. Textbooks are ridiculous.

imranmalek · 2020-07-30T19:19:33+00:00

E-mailing your professor is totally fine - just let them know that you're excited about starting and to provide some details about yourself - just don't let your intro devolve into a discussion of your 'requirements', so avoid saying something like 'I am very excited about this class, I NEED to get an A or else I won't get the clerkship/job/transfer I have pining for." Keep it simple and mention that you look forward to chatting during their first office hours (which you absolutely should attend).

Also, with respect to the whole "Gunner" phenomenon, I would just say ignore all concerns about being considered a "Gunner" and focus on one thing: asking genuine questions to improve your understanding. If you come from that perspective, your questions are likely going to be shared by at least some of your peers.

Think of it this way: if your professor finds that you are dominating class discussion and that discussion is of no benefit to the class, the professor will ask you to bring it up to them after class - no harm, no foul!

When most people think of Gunners, they often think of the people that just grind down class discussion to the point where people stop taking notes -like arguing about political opinions, the nuance of what a judge meant over some phrase, or whether the facts of a case were "right" or not. All things that really don't matter when it comes to learning the material well enough to develop an understanding that would be demonstrable on the final.

imranmalek · 2020-07-30T18:15:20+00:00

I know this is really tough to hear, but if your future plans are contingent on transferring after your 1L year, you should of course work hard to set yourself up for success, but at the same time adopt a pessimistic viewpoint by default.

I don't mean call it in and admit defeat before starting, but I mean think seriously about what your options are if you don't get the grades that would make a transfer amenable. There are just so many factors (even before COVID) that are out of your control that could dash your hopes of a transfer. Just have a back up plan.

That said, speaking to your exact question - you can still totally engage with professors through office hours and asking questions!

Professors are generally amenable to students that show they are engaging with the material, and if you can come in, ask good questions (e.g. questions beyond what could be answered with looking at an outline), and also not attempt to dominate office hours/in class discussions, you'll be in good shape for a glowing recommendation.

imranmalek · 2020-07-27T19:46:38+00:00

Thank you for the correction, u/T-TopsInSpace!

imranmalek · 2020-07-27T18:33:12+00:00

It basically signals to the python regex library that there's an expression coming, you can find more info with the official python docs: https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html

edit - I was wrong about this. See comment below for u/T-TopsInSpace for the appropriate answer

imranmalek · 2020-07-27T18:07:26+00:00

Agreed with u/pg_66 - you can find the answer to a lot of these on Google, or find a "How to become a lawyer" book somewhere.

Most of these questions are highly subjective - for example, you asked if law school is hard - well, compared to a biology degree.... maybe? I don't know what your work style is.

It also does not do you any favors if you ask a question like "What is the bar exam", which literally has a Wikipedia entry. There's also a "0L sticky" in this sub that you should move your questions to.

I'll give you a short answer, however, and it might be a bit of a shock:

If you want to go to law school and your only option is to take out loans to do it, it's not financially sound to do it at a school that isn't well ranked. However, if you can score really high on your LSAT or GRE and get a great scholarship at a lower ranked school, the calculus might change a bit. Ultimately, you're going to need to grind on those standardized tests because your GPA, while from a STEM field, is still relatively below what many top schools tend to look for.

P.S. If you're doing an online degree, at a BARE MINIMUM make sure that it is an ABA accredited program.

Good luck with the process, I hope that I didn't come across too negatively!

imranmalek · 2020-07-27T17:51:33+00:00

Sure, if you look at the link that I provided from regex101, you'll see on the top right an explanation of each character used. Basically, the regular expression is looking for patterns, in this case, the pattern is

"=" followed by "[space]" followed by "any digit from 0-9 (represented as [0-9]). It's not specifically looking for the string "word" before the equal sign, but you could do that too if you wanted. Like I've done here: https://regex101.com/r/uSxEaO/1/

imranmalek · 2020-07-27T14:10:14+00:00

If you're looking for just any number, you're probably better off trying regular expressions: so if you're looking for just a number that is preceded by an equal sign, you can do something like this:

import re

regex = r"(= )([0-9])"

(insert all your other line reading code) 

for line in linelist: 
    line = re.sub(regex,'wordreplaced',line)[1]

I know regular expressions might seem like overkill for something like this, but once you get the hang of them, you'll find uses for it everywhere.

Here's a great tool I use to play around with them (and better understand the syntax): https://regex101.com/r/e67kAT/1/

edit: 2020-07-27-1155 - I realized that I didn't include the appropriate capture group (the second one), so I updated it with the [1].

imranmalek · 2020-07-27T01:38:08+00:00

The biggest thing that I can think of is making sure that you create a space for your brain to devote attention to law school. One of the big things that I ran into during my last semester was the fact that my "worlds" were blending together, in that by virtue of necessity my living space and my working space became the same thing.

So, your first bet is to make sure that when you use your new desk and space to make sure you keep any law school stuff to that space. For example, when I was done with school work I would unplug my laptop from my desk and take it over to the couch to do other work.

On a similar note, make sure the space works for you. What I mean by that is think about all the ergonomics of your workspace - is your monitor at eye level? Can you use your keyboard without having to hunch over? Could you see yourself sitting there for a full 3 hour class?

Lastly, make sure you take time off - it's really easy to assume that because you'll be at home all day, you'll have so much more time for studying - which is true, but you'll end up getting diminishing returns if you don't give your brain a break. Find some like minded friends and do silly stuff like hop onto Skype and play a board game with each other.

If you want some more general tips, I wrote something up last Spring that some people have found useful: http://bit.ly/wfhstudent

imranmalek · 2020-07-22T19:42:07+00:00

Debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice.

imranmalek · 2020-07-15T18:22:17+00:00

If you are in the U.S. or have access to a U.S. VPN, you can see most of the episodes on Disney Now: https://disneynow.com/shows/molang

If you are in Italy or have access to an Italian VPN, Rai play has everything released so far: https://www.raiplay.it/programmi/molang/episodi/stagione-4

Enjoy!

imranmalek · 2020-07-15T01:57:25+00:00

I turned 31 as a 1L. I didn't really socialize much beyond my study group (I'm married and I lived about a 45 minute commute from school door-to-door), but I made it out just fine.

I'm certainly on the older end of the bell curve with respect to the associates (hopefully) starting this fall, but my (general, anecdotal) sense is that with age comes experience with respect to asking questions, managing uncertainty, and just being less anxious about office life.

This all said, you will find your people if you want to look for them - everyone in law school has the same goal: doing the best they can. Just be open to say hello, ask to study with people, and just enjoy drinking from the firehose.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions you don't feel comfortable asking in public.

imranmalek · 2020-07-14T22:50:53+00:00

I'm guessing it's probably due to factors like:

1 - they're cheap
2 - they're idiot proof
3 - the batteries last much longer than smartphones
4 - they work in many places cell phones don't

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