Merlin

Hardee-har-har.

FINE! I'm probably a 17.

This is hilarious: http://www.newyorker..._shouts_rudnick

Nice NaperVic! That's exactly right!

I think (hope) that Bella was intentionally set up that way. She has no personality so the reader can project their own personalities onto her and be immersed in vampire love.

Do you do this? A little or a lot? Just the little Crabtree and Evelyn shampoo bottles or do you go all out and grab toilet paper and tissues and stuff? Or do you go even MORE overboard and start grabbing towels and pillows (mattresses!?!)

Try this one out for size. If you can solve it within say...30 minutes, you may be at an advantage for 1/4 of the LSAT. Supposedly, this puzzle was invented by Einstein as a boy. Here is the premise: There are five houses, each painted a different color. Their inhabitants are of different nationalities, own different pets, drink different beverages and smoke different brands of American cigarettes. Here are the rules: There are five houses, all in a row. The Englishman lives in the red house. The Spaniard owns the dog. Coffee is drunk in the green house. The Ukrainian drinks tea. The green house is immediately to the right (your right) of the ivory house. The Old Gold smoker owns snails. Kools are smoked in the yellow house. Milk is drunk in the middle house. The Norwegian lives in the first house. The man who smokes Chesterfields lives in the house next to the man with the fox. Kools are smoked in a house next to the house where the horse is kept. The Lucky Strike smoker drinks orange juice. The Japanese smokes Parliaments. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house. So--who drinks water? Who owns a zebra? Can you go one step further and figure out everything, including who lives in which house, owns which pets, smokes which cigarettes and drinks which beverages?

Great points. But remember that a lot of the stories (mine, certainly) reflect the personal fantasies of the authors...so of course there's going to be lots of wealthy, perfect characters having hot, hot sex.

Bazinga!

Rap is one of the worst inventions of mankind. If I had that guy I would school him in appreciating some Bach.

Finally a 9 we can both agree on.

So I'm actually down for this...shopping at South Coast then bonfire at night?

People with the dual degree have intimated to me that you either follow one track or the other, both in school and beyond. If you go into the JD track and end up at a law firm, your MBA is not only useless, getting it requires you to sacrifice one additional year plus whatever time you could've used to learn about law practice. If you go into the business side, the JD becomes useless, and you would've wasted an extra two years of potential experience working. (The MBA is two years, the JD is three years, a joint-degree usually takes four years.) For that reasons, employers (on either side of the JD/MBA split) tend to prefer single degrees because it shows you're dedicated to their industry--JDs for law firms and MBAs for businesses. As for the top schools that offer dual courses, often it's an attempt to tie a weaker program to the stronger one--for example the JD/MBA at Yale makes their weak business school attractive when paired with the their number one law school, and the reverse would be true at UPenn. Of course in many instances the dual degree can be useful, but from a pure cost/benefit analysis, it's generally better to stick with one.

I'd have to disagree with this. From the research I've done, it seems that employers shy away from JD/MBAs because that kind of person can't really make up their minds. And yes, a lot of JDs can work in other fields, but those numbers are much smaller than JDs working as lawyers--probably not a good idea to bank on getting one of those gigs.

Ahh yes, I heard that you and Quonus were both lawyers. Right now, I have to think I'm pretty committed to going...having done everything to prepare for it. I'd love to hear some thoughts on law school in general and advice on legal careers though--where do you work? In private practice or otherwise?

1) PROFESSOR OBAMA'S FINAL EXAM, FALL 2003 He then describes the nature of those laws. Here is the prompt: 2) JUSTIN BIEBER'S PATERNITY SUIT--GIRL'S STATEMENT Makes you see Barack Obama and Justin Bieber in a new light doesn't it? Bet that's the first time you heard of their names used in the same sentence!

I really don't know how I feel about this story. On one hand, it's so sweet I never want it to end. On the other, I can't stand not knowing what happens to them. Ugh.

Ahhh You Are Not Alone...I watched the version where a man who sounded like he was 60 translated the dialogue slightly out of sync... Wild Tigers I Have Known was also good, but a little artsy for my taste. Summer Storm is another favorite. Awesome plot, and very well acted. Sounds like it would've made a good GA story.

Ah great! Not really questions, but I AM currently applying to law school and wanted to start a blog about it. The first entry is sort of an introduction to the aspiring law student. Just wondering if anyone would want to read it. If I DO have questions, would it be all right to PM you?

Dunno if this has been mentioned yet...but my favorite is probably Latter Days. Explores some very important themes and the whole story is just very touching. As a bonus, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in it AND there's an airport sex scene.

I try to read what's I've written so far--going back a couple of chapters for example--so I become immersed in my own story. That way, the trains of thought will start running again as I think of ways while reading old chapters to take the story forward.

Just wondering if there are any aspiring (or current) law students of lawyers in the GA community.

I've never written a blog before. But you guys seem like a cool bunch, so I'll give it a try. Also I want to get my reputation up from Zero What I want to do here is to talk about legal things--things related to law, the practice of law, the enforcement of law, and law school--both as encouragement for myself to be reading legal news, as well as to give information to aspiring law students in the GA community. So first, let me self-introduce. I am what they call a 0L--that is, a senior in college who's in the process of applying to law school. I've gotten into a couple already (don't want to say which ones exactly lest I out myself), but the process runs through till August, if you're on a wait list. In this post, I want to make an introduction to law school, and give the reader assess whether it is the right decision.Through the application and, now, the waiting process, I've learned a few valuable things that I wish I had known at the beginning of the application cycle. Please note that none of the following is meant to discourage, merely educate. 1) Before you apply, ask: is LAW SCHOOL right for me? Do not rely on caricatures of law school life based on things like Legally Blonde, or even law school websites. If you are seriously thinking about applying, make sure you sit in on classes at your local law school (if one exists) or at a law school nearby (there are hundreds of them). Do you like reading? We're not talking about GA fiction here--do you like reading legal writing? If you don't know, pull up any law journal (most of them are free) and try out an article that you find interesting. Read a few Supreme Court rulings. Do you like writing? Again, not talking about GA fiction. Pull up your law journal again and read the "notes" and "citations". Those are the things you will be writing in law school. Do you think you are the kind of person who is willing or able to write that sort of thing? NOT A TYPICAL LAW STUDENT 2) After answering 1, ask: would I enjoy the PRACTICE of law? Do not rely on caricatures of legal practice based on things like Law and Order, Suits, Damages, or John Grisham novels. All those things are amazing, and I enjoy all of them, but they do not represent what legal work is like. Instead, legal work and legal hiring generally work in the following way: After the end of your 1st year of law school (hereafter, 1L), you will get a set grades that will almost completely determine where you will end up practicing law. In most law schools, the fall after 1L involves an event called On Campus Interviews, or EIP--early interview program. Through this program, law firms and other legal recruiters come to your campus and screen law students. If you are lucky, have the right grades, and have a charming personality, you may be invited to a callback. If again you do well at the callback, you will have a job. NOT AN ACTUAL LAWYER There are generally three types of jobs: PRIVATE PRACTICE: This huge and diverse group makes up the vast majority of legal hiring right out of law school (or right after 1L). This group includes large law firms--some with over 3000 attorneys--handling multinational deals, mergers, corporate litigation, and the like; mid-sized law firms, which mainly handle regional issues; and small law firms, which many say is a dying breed and more and more are snapped up or put out of business by the aforementioned large and mid-sized firms. This group also includes things like plaintiff's firms (see: Damages), criminal defense (see: Law and Order), and civil representation (see: Intolerable Cruelty, Ella Enchanted, Liar Liar). GOVERNMENT WORK/PUBLIC INTEREST: This makes up a smaller percentage of legal hires, and the difficulty of getting this type of job varies from the ultra-prestigious Manhattan DA's Office to phone-answering boy in the district courthouse. This group also includes things like legal aid and legal work for ACLU-type non-profits. BUSINESS/IN-HOUSE WORK: This group of recruiters almost never hire straight out of law school. Usually, they ask for lawyers with a few years' experience at a law firm to lateral in. No matter what job you take, remember: you won't start doing cool things like argue before the Supreme Court or even the local village court jury until you have many years under your belt. Your first years as a lawyer will mostly include doing things like document review--sifting through millions of emails to find information; and due diligence--researching things like legal liabilities for companies undergoing mergers. It will include a LOT of reading and writing...I cannot stress this enough. You will read and write and rewrite memos until your fingers bleed. You will draft and re-draft motions to do the simplest things all night long. But if you get through it, that's when the fun starts. 3) If you've decided you want to be a lawyer, ask: WHICH law school should I attend? The answer to this question should depend on three things: WHERE DO YOU WANT TO LIVE? Of the more than 200 law schools in the nation, only 3 of them--Harvard, Yale, and Stanford--offer truly portable degrees. That is, you can take your Harvard Law Degree and work anywhere in the world and they will trip over themselves to grab you. If these schools are not an option, choose a highly ranked school in your region. The University of Virginia, for example, feeds well into the South and D.C. markets, and The University of Texas dominates the market in Texas. HOW DEBT AVERSE ARE YOU? Law school is a huge investment. At full sticker price, a legal education will run you at least $200,000 dollars. To offset this, there exists things like scholarships and loans. How you perceive the trade-off, of course, depends on you and you alone. For example, a debt averse person might turn down paying full tuition at Columbia Law School for a full ride at Boston University Law School. But is this a wise decision? WHERE WILL YOU GET A JOB? This is, without doubt, the single most important consideration. The legal market is over-saturated by J.D.'s in the tens of thousands. Every year, about 45,000 new attorneys pass the bar, but only about 30,000 legal jobs are created. This means that the law school you choose--and its reputation--is vital to your future livelihood. In general, the Top 14 schools, from Yale to Georgetown, have excellent job prospects (and excellent loan repayment programs, more on this in a later post), the Top 50 schools have decent job prospects, and past the top 50, job prospects get increasingly grim. An excellent resource for legal job statistics is lawschooltransparency.com. And please, for the love of God, do not attend a non-ABA accredited law school. On that note--I know someone is going to say, "oh but I went to People's College of the Law and now I have my own practice and am a gajillionaire/Supreme Court Justice/God." If that's you, then congratulations, you beat some very steep odds, because that's all it is, odds. You are placing a $200,000 bet on a legal career (depending on scholarships), why be more risky than you need to? NOT A GOOD LAW SCHOOL 4) Once you have a goal set, ask: WHAT can I do to get into the school of my dreams? Remember, if you get any advice from this blog, it is that law school is an extremely numbers-driven game. Remember when you thought your SATs and high school grades were important for college? For law school, this is much more the case, with your college grades and LSAT score being important than any other component of your application. Good numbers can overcome a weak major, lack of extra-curricular activities, lackluster recommendations, or a boring personal statement. To get your GPA up...well you know how to do that, I won't tell you. To get your LSAT score up, remember: the test CAN be learned. ANYONE can score in the 95th percentile. I will post specific study strategies and such later. But for now, just know this. If you took the test cold and got a 150 (out of 180), don't despair! Raising your score by 20 or even 30 points is not nearly unheard-of. Anyway, this was my first post. Feel free to let know what you think and whether I should continue. I hope I can help someone out there struggling for answers. In the meantime, the December LSAT is this coming Saturday. If you're taking it, knock'em dead!

My favorite is probably... Although I adore anything and everything by Bach.

Omg I think I just came in my pants.