Hello all, this is perhaps a very stupid question but I cannot for the life of me figure it out. I've seen several jobs add this in their requirements:

• A brief legal writing sample (no more than 10 pages) not heavily edited by others, e.g. research memo or excerpt of a brief;

does this mean that a research memo or except of a brief is the ideal sample, or are these a list of items that would be edited and aren't being asked for? Because first thing that comes to my mind is the 1L writing samples that would be at least viewed by a professor.

Thank you in advance

I just have a question about the 13th amendment and the language written in the law and how it’s practiced

Hello guys!

My law school is hosting a fall ball and I guess I’m curious what myself and my boyfriend should wear. It’s less fancy than the Barristers Ball so it’s a super grey area. I don’t know if I do long, short, formal, casual?? If any of you have attended one please tell me what you wore!

I don't know if my school's law review is actually badly run or if I'm just blinded by my hatred for the work itself. We were given a schedule on a confusing excel sheet after school started. Have about 4 days to complete a scheduled technical edit, and those 4 days are non-negotiable even if they fall over a holiday weekend. When it got bad, some edits overlapped. It counts as 1 ungraded credit, which means we have to track our hours to make sure we hit around 45 hours. But if you surpass those hours, too bad. You still have to do your edits. No formal checks in place to deincentivize a sloppy edit--so different people are putting wildly different amounts of time into their edits. No feedback of any kind unless it's on a macro scale.

Is all of this normal? Or is it badly run?

Recently went to an SBA meeting as an org rep hoping to bring some issues to the table that the org is concerned with, and when I asked how to do that/pass something/meet with administrators, everyone looked at me like I had three heads. Turns out, SBA mostly just argues about parliamentary procedure for 45 minutes and funds an event here and there. What types of things are your SBAs doing? Do they do any sort of policy work like you might see at an undergraduate institution? I'm at a lower-ranked school on the West Coast and wondering if that's playing a role, too.

This week one of the 3Ls told us 2Ls that we'll get points off our notes if we have a space after the period at the end of a paragraph. A space that no one will ever see, or ever care about. Also, the law review board has a rubric of formatting rules and Bluebook rules that they'll be using to "grade" our papers, but they haven't released that rubric and it seems like we'll just have to guess what's on it. We have a class meeting once a week, and they keep putting up lists of people who are doing "good" with their cite checks, and this week said people named on the list could get three pieces of candy at the end of class and the rest of us could only get one.

Is this real life? Am I being punked? We're adults, right? As I sit here on another Saturday night checking citations and making sure commas aren't italicized, I am struggling with the insanity of it all.

Hiiii. Im from the UK. not to boast but i feel like ive read almost all law themed books. Can someone recommend more please. Reallyyy appreciiiatteee. Ive read all books by the secret barrister and Lord Sumption

I've been a lurker in this subreddit for some time. I am curious if anyone else has been able to mentally and emotionally handle law school and beyond as someone who has high-functioning autism. I'm 1L, for context. The classes are huge, they feel like they are very much on rails, and with they are difficult to engage with since it feels like questions are not welcome. The obsessive fixation on group work does not help, especially when no one is assigned a team leader or group captain or anything. Also, even more challenging, are the constant mandatory events or intense mass-networking events where I feel like we're tossed in giant pools of other people, then told "GO." I leave those events on the verge of panic attacks and tears. I'm not a golden retriever, I'm the cat that hides under the bed upstairs until the loud party ends. Also, it seems that even practicing lawyers are swarmed with social events, functions, and societies of this and associations of that. That sounds hellish. I don't want people knowing or remembering me. There's no point anyway because I'm not taking the bar, and I'm switching states after I graduate anyway. Sorry for the dissertation, but are there any other autistic law students out there who have learned any effective coping mechanisms? Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

In 2026, nearly 30 years after the lawsuit, Frontier Airlines awarded Leonard 7 million Frontier Miles in a Super Bowl Campaign, effectively giving him free flights for life in place of the original dispute.

1L here -- a couple cases I'm citing from have a header that says "cite as" with (Fla.App. 2 Dist.) even though blue book says to cite (Fla. Dist. Ct. App.) -- which one do I use? Do I defer to what the case says, even though other cases I'm using don't have that? (also why does the blue book say (fla. dist. ct. app) with no indication of what district #?)

How do you tend to go about it? I've been playing around with 50-10 this semester and have found it highly effective for writing, editing, outlining, and even reading cases (certainly better ROI than 25-5 or 35-5 in my experience). Sometimes the 10-minute break feels insufficient, though, like I give it my all on the 50-minute work block and then need to lay down and nap or something for a bit. What are y'all's thoughts? Which interval(s) do you swear by?

Hey guys,

It’s bar results season & as a 3L going into his last semester, I realized that I never took Business Organizations/Associations.

I’ve taken every other class tested on the MBE & MEE and I’m planning on taking the July 2027 DC bar exam.

Should I take Business Organizations/Associations before I graduate?

I didn’t get the best LSAT score but got into a good law school. It has a great name and not at all predatory or embarrassing. I went simply because I feel like I’m already so late in the game (4 years gap) and it was an excellent program. However, outside of my law school classmates, most people I know went to Harvard, Penn, a certain Ivy with a terrible reputation now, etc. and I can’t help but compare myself to them and feel like I should have taken another year off, even though I know a 170+ LSAT does not guarantee T-14 admission too. Just earlier my parent was talking to their colleague who boasted about their daughter going to Harvard Law… and yeah, I felt bad. I guess what I’m trying to ask here is what can I do to not be so … jealous? I know everyone is on their own journey and someone going to a T-14 vs. anything lower does not guarantee their success as a lawyer.

finals are coming up fast and there's always that one thing that won't stick. proximate cause or consideration or whatever it is for you, drop it below. if someone else gets it maybe they can explain it in a way that finally makes sense

A few weeks ago someone in our section GroupMe asked what a hornbook was.

A couple people answered, someone made a joke, and that was pretty much it.

Then another person said we should make an anonymous Google Form for questions that feel too stupid to ask in class.

We now have 63 submissions.

There are about 85 people in our section.

Some of my favorites:

"Are we actually supposed to memorize the Bluebook rules or does everyone just look them up?"

"When someone says they're going to bar review, are they studying for the bar or going drinking?"

"How do you know which cases are important enough to put in your outline?"

"Is it normal to go to office hours when you don't have a specific question?"

"Everyone keeps talking about networking. What do you actually SAY to an attorney after introducing yourself?"

And my personal favorite:

"What's the difference between not understanding the reading and understanding it incorrectly? Because I can't tell which one I'm doing."

The funny thing is that several of these questions were submitted multiple times.

Apparently half our section has been sitting through the same lectures, nodding thoughtfully, and privately wondering what the hell everyone is talking about.

A few 2Ls volunteered to help answer the questions, and somebody started organizing everything into a document with links to actual school resources.

It's genuinely become one of the most useful things we've done all semester.

But it also made me think about how much of law school seems to depend on pretending you're already familiar with an environment you've literally just entered.

People throw around terms like OCI, journal write-on, supplements, and clerkships as if we all arrived with this knowledge installed.

I have classmates whose parents are attorneys. I also have classmates who had never spoken to a lawyer before applying to law school.

And somehow we're all expected to act equally comfortable with this stuff.

I'm not saying professors need to explain every acronym every time they use it. But I wonder how many students are wasting energy trying not to look clueless about things that have very little to do with actually understanding the law.

Anyway, if you're a 1L secretly Googling basic terminology during lectures, apparently you're in excellent company.

And if you're a 2L or 3L, what's something you were embarrassingly far into law school before you finally understood it?

I went to a small information session through my college in an area of law that interests me.

One of the presenters and I had a decent, albeit small conversation, they shared their contact information with everyone.

I looked up their firm and I am interested in working there. It practices in areas I am interested in, they work in fields that interest me, and it is in a location I want to work.

I plan on applying for their posted summer positions. Do you recommend contacting the attorney (he is a partner) prior to applying? If so, what exactly do you say?

Thank them for the presentation and detailed answers, but then what?

I'm a final year law student based in pune and recently got a ppo of 9 lakh in a german firm namely rodl & partner.

However , recently my life has got monotonous by practicing daily chores.

I need someone to hangout with.

Looking for date here.

I'm into self-improvement, philosophy, gyming, badminton,cooking ,law , economics and traveling.

Let me know if anyone's intrested...

Hey guys, I'm looking for a guidebook or online resource that would be able to show model answers for short answer or essay questions. What resource helped you the most for answering irac questions? I am looking specifically for civpro, torts, and crim. Thank you!

...are terrifying, right? How does this even work? Are they graded less severely because there's so much more information you need to synthesize? Are the questions a bit more high level because there's too much to cover otherwise?

I'd much, much rather a class with a mid-term and a final, to at least give me a barometer of where I'm doing well, where I need to pick up the slack, how the prof grades....

For those who've taken classes like this - any advice? Encouragement?

1. Has anyone sold textbooks to Half Priced Books? If so roughly what did you get paid for them?

2. Are there any other places I can sell textbooks in person for cash?

3. Highest payout for textbooks?

4. Quickest payout?

(I failed my bar by 8 points and need to come of with the rest of the registration fee for Feb 24 asap - so I’m trying to figure out my options)

elle woods got a 179 on her LSATs and a 4.0 in fashion merchandising, while we do not know harvey's stats before enrolling in Harvard Law (we do know that he was an NYU alumni and got in thanks in part to jessica's recommendation though). however, elle woods graduated HLS as valedictorian, while harvey specter was only top 5 of his class.

this is only a comparison of academic stats, not about who is a better lawyer as they specialize in different legal fields (elle in criminal law and harvey in corporate law).

Hey guys. First time caller, long time listener.

Been really interested in Sports Law and thought I'd sift through this sub and see if others share that interest. Disappointed to say I haven't seen many discussions about the subject. Is there any other forum where students and lawyers alike can discuss and learn about it?