LSAT preparations...

[Tatarin]

Sdraste,
I reshil nachat noviy thread dlia vsex kto seychas gotovitsia ili gotovilsia k LSAT. Davayte delitsia opitom podgotovki k testu, problemami v xode podgotoki i drugimi soobrajeniami in conjunction to LSAT and Law school.
Na danniy moment u menia glavnia problema s logic games. Ia v srednem trachu gde-to 20 minut na odnu zadachu. Kto nibud podelitis opitom about dealing with logic games. Spasibo.

[DanielMa]

Practice Logic games. Buy a book that has logic games drills.

Also, if you master everything else, and only do 2 out of 4 logic games, then you can still get 170+ on the LSAT.

[AshNazg]

Sdraste,
I reshil nachat noviy thread dlia vsex kto seychas gotovitsia ili gotovilsia k LSAT. Davayte delitsia opitom podgotovki k testu, problemami v xode podgotoki i drugimi soobrajeniami in conjunction to LSAT and Law school.
Na danniy moment u menia glavnia problema s logic games. Ia v srednem trachu gde-to 20 minut na odnu zadachu. Kto nibud podelitis opitom about dealing with logic games. Spasibo.

Get a book called Logic Games Bible (can download it from torrents). It is exceptionally good for logic games. Before I read it, I could do 4 games in 35 minutes, but I had to rush through the last one. After I read it, I could do 4 games in 27-30 minutes with 0 mistakes.

[Tatarin]

I have bought already the LG bible. It just that I don't solve the games from this book because I don't want to waste the preptests for future use. Instead I am solving non-authentic games from the "Ace the lsat logic games" This book sucks because the games are clearly poorly written and designed.
Does anyone of you know about job prospects in the Intellectual property law field? I will graduate with MS in EE next year this is why I am considering IP law.
Is is possible to break into >165 with one year of preparation for a guy who knows English for 4 last year only? I really got a filling that unless I get accepted into T14 schools I should not do LAW at all due to unbearable financial loss and risk.


Thanks.

[Alex Denisoff]

Does anyone of you know about job prospects in the Intellectual property law field? I will graduate with MS in EE next year this is why I am considering IP law.

Try browsing job ads for IP attorneys at bcgsearch.com to get at least some impression of the landscape, bearing in mind that there are only some twenty thousand active patent attorneys in this country (although IP law also includes at least copyrights and trademarks).
If you decide to become a patent attorney, you will need to prepare and sit for patent bar preferably while you are at law school, that would give you at least some competitive advantage when looking for a job.
If you have more specific questions I'll try to answer those, with a disclaimer that my knowledge of the field is very limited since I've been a patent attorney for only about six months now.

[Tatarin]

Alex, I've heard that IP law field is less competative because only a small portion of all lawyers qualify to sit for the patent bar exam. Is that true from your point of view? Are doing Electrical Engineering IP law? If yes, what do you essentially do? Is it interesting? I read couple of times that IP law can be borring? Thanks.

[Alex Denisoff]

Alex, I've heard that IP law field is less competative because only a small portion of all lawyers qualify to sit for the patent bar exam. Is that true from your point of view? Are doing Electrical Engineering IP law? If yes, what do you essentially do? Is it interesting? I read couple of times that IP law can be borring? Thanks.

1. I would not generalize as to the competitiveness. When a patent lawyer is being hired, the hiring firm can consider a number of factors in addition to the "tranditional" ones (i.e., common to all lawyers, such as school, GPA, law review participation, etc.); those can include: field and school of the candidate's technical degree; experience and achievements of the candidate in the technical field, etc. My own experience suggests that patent lawyers with EE/CS and Biotech majors are in higher demand than those from other technical fields.

2. I am doing mostly patent prosecution related CS/EE arts, plus some related to the mechanical engineering. Personally, I like it, but that's highly subjective. I would agree that it could seem boring to someone. To get a feeling of what it is, go browse uspto.gov, search for a couple of patent applications by some keyword combination from your field of expertise, and than find the application file wrappers by the application number using the public PAIR (again via uspto.gov). A file wrapper would normally include most of the patent attorney's work products: from the specification and claims to the amendment after final and/or appeal brief. Have a looks at some file wrappers and decide if that's what you want to do... Note: you need to find patent applications (not issued patents!) filed more than 18 months ago in order to be able to access the file wrappers via public PAIR.

[AshNazg]

I have bought already the LG bible. It just that I don't solve the games from this book because I don't want to waste the preptests for future use. Instead I am solving non-authentic games from the "Ace the lsat logic games" This book sucks because the games are clearly poorly written and designed.
Does anyone of you know about job prospects in the Intellectual property law field? I will graduate with MS in EE next year this is why I am considering IP law.
Is is possible to break into >165 with one year of preparation for a guy who knows English for 4 last year only? I really got a filling that unless I get accepted into T14 schools I should not do LAW at all due to unbearable financial loss and risk.


Thanks.

Use logic games bible, don't be afraid of wasting preptests. There are, I think, 56 preptests total so far since the inception of LSAT, which is a LOT of material to cover.

As far as breaking into 165, it should be possible with 1 year of preparation. But don't be so adamant on going to T14 only. I felt the same way and I was determined to keep writing LSATs until I got 180 to get into T14 (I have awful GPA - 2.6 cumulative, 3.5 in the last two years), so I needed an exceptional score on LSAT to get into a good law school. First time I wrote I got 170, and I was pissed off, because I kept scoring 178 on home tests, second time I got 166 (aced the two sections I did poorly on the first time around, but did badly on the other two). I said screw it and I decided to lower my standards.

Right now I am going to Bloomington (#38) with full tuition paid. I also had offers from several other schools in the 35-50 range with full tuition offers, which literally means you incur no financial risk (or minimal risk). Living in Indiana is dirt cheap, so Bloom's education will be minimum financial risk for me. And if I study well, I can always transfer up to a better school (and they treat 1L grades as being more important than grad GPA or LSAT score). Even if I don't study well, Bloomington still places strongly in Chicago (2nd financial center of USA), and it is very strong in the country in IT (I believe) and BioEthics (#6) (which is what I am interested at anyways). I also had an offer from Vanderbilt (#16) but they were stringy with their money, so I had to turn it down.


Morale of the story, don't get stuck up on US news ratings for law schools. They're important, but not that important. Unless you're going to T3-T4 school, your life is NOT going to be ruined by going to #25 instead of #14. Plus your grades + journal participation is more important in some sense than your school (unless you're from HYS).

[Tatarin]

Am I the only one here preparing for LSAT?

[northern_wind]

Am I the only one here preparing for LSAT?

Я сама хотела такой топик открывать.


Сдаю LSAT в декабре. Готовлюсь, решая prep тесты. Моя проблема в том, что LG делаю нормально (один или два вопроса в секции неправильно), но RC безобразно заваливаю.
Счет вертится в районе 160-162, и никак больше не получается (прорешала 12 полных тестов). Надо бы до декабря подтянуть пунктов на семь.

[Tatarin]

AshNazg ,
I do not think that hoping to transfer out from a low-tier to T14 is viable reason to go to a lower tier. I think only top 5% of a class is elligible to transfer out after 1L. Thus the chances for an average student to not to transfer are pretty high-95%. Moreover, it is a general consensus that T4's and T3's job prospects are next to bleak.

[kanada]

Любая работа имеет "boring aspects." Overall, however, law is not boring and for the most part it is extremely exciting/interesting.

Good luck.

[AshNazg]

AshNazg ,
I do not think that hoping to transfer out from a low-tier to T14 is viable reason to go to a lower tier. I think only top 5% of a class is elligible to transfer out after 1L. Thus the chances for an average student to not to transfer are pretty high-95%. Moreover, it is a general consensus that T4's and T3's job prospects are next to bleak.

I agree wholeheartedly on the T3 and T4. Unless you're extremely lucky, graduating from T3 or T4 will make you an ambulance chaser or a McDonald's waiter.

However, graduating from a school as low as 60-70 on the list is not entirely bad. You can still find decent prospects (~90k salaries) in mid sized firms and do a lateral transfer to a BIGLAW firm in a few years.

Aside from that, transferring schools does indeed take a lot of effort. You don't need to be top 5% to transfer - you can transfer with any grades, but of course the probability of transferring out to a better school is a lot higher if you got good grades. Since law schools grade on a curve, you need to be the best person in class (or, failing that, among top 10) to transfer to T14 from a non T14 school.

On the plus side, transferring schools looks better on resumes I heard, because people see that you have put in a lot of effort to transfer schools and obviously you're capable of working hard. So from that perspective, someone who transfers into Harvard might be preferable to employers than someone who just went to Harvard straight away.

[Tatarin]

AshNazg , What is the average starting salary for brand new IP lawyer from T1/T2 school? I know the question is broad, but tem ne menee.

[DanielMa]

AshNazg , What is the average starting salary for brand new IP lawyer from T1/T2 school? I know the question is broad, but tem ne menee.

It depends on the georgraphic location and the size of the firm. Top firms pay 145-160.

[Alex Denisoff]

AshNazg , What is the average starting salary for brand new IP lawyer from T1/T2 school? I know the question is broad, but tem ne menee.

http://www.nalpdirectory.com/dledir_search_advanced.asp

[Tatarin]

Does being Russian/Tatar makes me URM for law school consideration (admitance chances increase)?
How should i choose a law school : best general ranking or best IP law ranking?

[AshNazg]

Does being Russian/Tatar makes me URM for law school consideration (admitance chances increase)?
How should i choose a law school : best general ranking or best IP law ranking?

URM include: non-Hispanic Black, Mexican American, Puerto Rican Hispanic, Native American or Alaskan Native.

So no, Tatar/Russians do not classify as URMs. You could however reference your background heavily in your application essay and hope that your experiences are unique enough for them to let you in on account of "unusual background".

For selecting law schools, best general ranking (or national recognition) usually trumps best IP ranking from my experience, however, if you have a specific city where you want to work in mind, or specific companies, it might be beneficial to go to a school that is located in the same city as the one you plan to stay in. The reason for this is that the companies from that city will likely pay more attention to their local schools than schools from elsewhere in the nation (excluding T14). Basically schools have regional and national pull, if a lower ranked school has a stronger regional pull in the area where you want to work than a higher ranked school's national pull in the same area, consider going to the lower ranked one.


As far as salary goes, like Daniel stated above, the starting salary for associates at biglaw companies is 160k right now across the board. Most companies offer end of year bonuses up to 20%, plus a signup bonus of 30-75k for clerks, depending on where they clerked and for how long. Summer internship salaries are 3.1k per week.

[Tatarin]

A new question for everyone:
What was your first diagnostinc score , what was your average practice score and what was your actual score?
Where did you study for lsat? (Dorms, library etc.)
How did you motivate yourself?
Спасибо

[DanielMa]

A new question for everyone:

I scored in the 166 - 175 range on all of the diagnostic tests and 170 on the real one. I studied everywhere I had a chance - home, work, library, airport, etc.

[Tatarin]

Just for the record, a lot of those lsat downloads on the file sharing services have had some of their answer sheets switched out and some material fudged deliberately in order to confuse people. I advise you steer clear and buy the real thing.

Thats quite impressive.

[kanada]

Знаю много человеков, которые годами рассуждали в какую отрасль лучче идти, где больше платят, где интересней работа, а лСАТ так и не сдали. До сегодняшнего дня достают вопросами. Сдай LSAT, а потом выбери университет и отрасль. Какая разница кто как сдал и кто сколько зарабатывает? Важен только твой результат.

[northern_wind]

Сдай LSAT, а потом выбери университет и отрасль.

Я думала, я только одна так рассуждаю и заморачиваюсь проблемами по мере поступления. Типа, сначала - ЛСАТ, потом поступить, потом не вылететь после первого же семестра, и т.д. А остальные такие умные - уже к будущей зарплате примеряются.

[PumpkinHead]

Привет!

Я сейчас тоже готовлюсь к сдаче LSAT, сдаю 29 сентября. Но я хожу на курсы по подготовке TestMasters. Logic Games - можно натренироваться - у меня поначалу тоже по 20 минут на одну игру уходило, сейчас где-то 10 минут в среднем (бывают игры сложные, так на них и сейчас по 20 минут уходит ).

Reading Comp у меня страшно скачет - бывает 24 правильных ответа, а бывает, что и 14 - ненавижу тексты про жуков-пауков (так называемые, научные). У меня сразу мозг работать перестает, как только я такой passage вижу.

Курсы очень сильно помогают - на каждый тип вопроса по Logical Reasoning есть своя тактика ответа. Например, есть тип вопроса 2N, так правильно ответить на этот вопрос в подавляющем большинстве случаев можно только путем negating все варианты ответов.

[northern_wind]

Reading Comp у меня страшно скачет - бывает 24 правильных ответа, а бывает, что и 14.

Такая же ерунда. Как только выползает дурацкий текст про добычу нефти или останки динозавров, у меня прямо мозг парализует. Хотя National Geographic вполне могу на досуге почитать для общего развития. Может, еще фактор ограниченного времени сказывается.

Как ни странно, у меня лучше всего удаются проклинаемые всеми Logic Games.