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General discussion about law schools or your applications.
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What's Happening
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4
Rejected 2024
Rejected yesterday evening, notified via email. 157 LSAT, 3.71/4 cGPA, 3.72 L2. Applied general. -
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Chance For 1L Summer Jobs/Upcoming 2L Recruit With 1L Grades? Any Hope For Big Law?
It might push the needle in your favour, but I wouldn’t risk it. At the end of the day there’s no exact science to how things go on the recruiter’s end. One recruiter in Calgary explicitly told me that seeing a borderline candidate apply to the Toronto and Calgary offices of their firm was the deciding factor in not inviting them for an interview. Interpret it how you want. My personal sense is that not stellar grades + doing law school in Ontario is enough raise eyebrows upon seeing that you’re applying to both Calgary and Toronto offices. -
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Chance For 1L Summer Jobs/Upcoming 2L Recruit With 1L Grades? Any Hope For Big Law?
Thanks for your update - I just added the point that I have been in Alberta with family and friends up till high school, and my undergrad + law school is in Ontario. Anything changes with this? -
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Chance For 1L Summer Jobs/Upcoming 2L Recruit With 1L Grades? Any Hope For Big Law?
With your grades, applying to all big law firms in Calgary and Toronto strikes me as almost guaranteeing that you won’t get any interviews from either city. I don’t know what school you’re at, but unfortunately your grades seem too low to get Toronto big law interviews. Calgary firms will see that you’re applying to their Toronto offices and this will be a red flag, signalling to them that you’re not committed to staying in Calgary, and this may be a strong reason for not interviewing you. As your grades would probably give a better chance in Calgary, my advice is to apply to only to Calgary offices and not to Toronto offices. Still, big law might be a reach at this point, so consider applying broadly. -
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Chance For 1L Summer Jobs/Upcoming 2L Recruit With 1L Grades? Any Hope For Big Law?
It's May. Your best bet for a relevant summer job at this juncture is approaching professors to do a research assistant kind of thing. Maybe one of them has idle research funds and could use a hand. Big law may be a reach for you. Apply as broadly as possible. You're not disqualified from getting the job you want by any means, but you are not particularly well-situated for it and applying to the greatest number possible is the single biggest boost you can give to your chances of ultimately landing something in the recruit. -
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NY Recruit?
I also did not know anyone...until I started building my own network by reaching out to alums and Canadians working in NY. It's never too late to start networking. Even if you don't secure a job this time around, establishing contacts in the NY market will be helpful when you want to move down later. -
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Chance For 1L Summer Jobs/Upcoming 2L Recruit With 1L Grades? Any Hope For Big Law?
Hi everyone! Currently overwhelmed so glad to get some insight over 2 areas I am working through right now: 1) 1L Summer Jobs - I applied to almost all firms in the last 1L recruit in Toronto and Calgary but didn't get to hear back from any of them. Happy to note any connections, advice, or tips for getting a job this summer. I am pretty flexible with field/practice-area (law firm, in-house, banking, etc.), location, time, and pay/benefits this summer. Add: I have been in Alberta with family and friends up till high school, and my undergrad + law school is in Ontario. 2) 2L Recruit - I'll be taking part in the upcoming 2L recruit for Toronto and Calgary. With that I just got my 1L grades which give me between a B and B- as my overall 1L average. With an equal amount of Bs and B-'s with a few B+'s, I have a C+ and D+ in Legal Ethics and Indigenous so I am concerned how would my overall application stand? What should I do to make this situation better? I've took part in negotiation + moot competitions, pro bono work, and an executive role in my law school's corporate law club throughout my 1L. I also have client service/work experiences from the past 5 years, which includes real estate sales from the past 3 years onwards and [before that] retail banking and fast-food service all during undergrad. I am focussed on either big law/corporate (due to my work background) or government (litigation or prosecution) for the 2L recruit, but I'm not sure if I need to stay open/stick with one field or reconsider altogether. Great to hear from y'all! Thanks -
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Advice for LSATs
Also, OP, I think the logic games section has been or is being removed. Take challenging classes and consciously develop your skills in reading, reasoning, and writing during your undergrad. By the time you need to write your LSAT, you will probs be fine without much prep. The same skills will also serve you well during law school. I personally regret not taking writing courses in my undergrad lol. -
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Advice for LSATs
I mean, it's their own opinion so I won't fault them for it, but when people start suggesting that "prep is useless, overrated, and unnecessary," I think it's helpful to provide an alternative viewpoint that preparation is, in fact, sufficient on its own to achieve a perfect score on certain sections. I don't even know if it was exhausting tbh. I feel like with the prep resources available nowadays, it was quite easy to learn the system I found most optimal, and then do a few practice tests to get used to doing it under timed conditions. My diagnostic tests were high -- I also believe I had good logical reasoning skills at the time -- but prepping made these scores even better and more consistent. I offered a caveat in my OP that I think extensive prep is only necessary if you want to score very highly. For those were it's not important to do so, then yes, there is less of a need for extensive prep.- 2
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Advice for LSATs
lol. People here acting like the skills tested by the LSAT cannot be learned or developed through time. Given OP is in their first year of undergrad, instead of starting doing specific preps right now for the LSAT, it might be a good idea to focus on the skills tested by the exam. You can certainly develop these skills by taking classes in your undergrad program that focus on reading dense materials, writing, and subjects that require heavy abstract and logical reasoning. While I personally did not prep for a year for the exam as I did not decide on applying to law school until the year of apps, I did find that my background in math, stats, and CS prepped me well for logic games and logical reasoning on the exam. On the other hand, I had lots of difficulty with finishing RC with the same accuracy on time and I did spend a lot of time learning the requisite RC skills. After some time in law school, I find that my RC skills have drastically improved compared to the time of my LSAT; i.e., the skills tested can always be improved. So, I don't think it's good advice to focus too much on the aptitude element of the exam. That is certainly true to some extent, but you can def learn to develop the skills necessary to perform well, as long as you have average intelligence, which most of us do.- 1
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Advice for LSATs
This sounds exhausting, and I struggle to see how it’s a rebuttal of the point others are making, which is that they should do a diagnostic and see if they need to waste time learning about the four kinds of logic games or whatever. A bunch of people just have reasonably good logical reasoning skills and so don’t need to draw little doodles or whatever. -
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Advice for LSATs
Hmm. I scored in the ~95th percentile when I wrote the LSAT and was PT'ing in the 170s -- so, might be worth providing my own personal viewpoint here as it seems to be an alternative one. It's interesting to me that people believe the LSAT is more of a natural aptitude test opposed to a preparation test nowadays. I could see this being the case more in the past (before an abundance of prep materials were so widely accessible). However, I would definitely say preparation is more important for achieving a high score. The LSAT has become formulaic in a large sense. Preparation resources and platforms have made it so Logical Reasoning and Logic Games questions could be answered using quite foolproof systems. I remember when I was doing Games, I was able to break down the questions into one of four types. Based off that, I would use a specific chart and corresponding system that led to me always scoring 23/23 (I would get the odd substitution question wrong 1/10 tests). This was not really due to me having an aptitude for the LSAT but, instead, developing a strong, consistent system through preparation. The same was true for the LR section. If you could identify what type of question it is, preparation resources nowadays provide candidates with a system to accurately answer these questions. To hammer this point home: I had a close friend who was writing at the same sitting as me who had a diagnostic score, in what I believe, was the low 140s. The LSAT did not come naturally to him at all. He really struggled for the first month or so. He ended up scoring higher than me and insane LSAT preparation is one of the main factors he attributes to getting into UofT. I guess I'll conclude by saying if the goal is a score of 159-162 (around ~80th percentile and usually good enough for law school admission to majority of the schools in Canada if you also satisfy the GPA requirements), then prep is still important but less so. This score is probably achievable by just doing some practice tests/questions. But, if you want anything higher, you're probably going to have to prepare heavily and develop strategies and consistent frameworks for answering questions.- 2
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Advice for LSATs
Extensive prep is obviously good for increasing admission chances. The reason to not prep extensively is that too much prep will likely inflate your sense of competence. If it takes you a year of study to achieve the median score at your target school, you should really reflect on whether you should attend that school. Because I guarantee that most your future classmates won’t have taken a year of prep to get that score, and you’ll likely underperform compared to them, as learning to write the LSAT is not the same as developing mastery over the skills for which the LSAT tests you. By speaking about a year of prep, I’m picking an extreme. It’s all on a continuum, so it’s obviously not the same for those who needed less time to prep. But it’s not a bad idea to recognize when you’ve reached the limit of developing your natural aptitude and transitioned into purely grinding the test, stop there, just write the test, and apply with the score you get.- 1
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Advice for LSATs
Lol I understand what aptitude means. I'm saying that it's not the only factor in determining your LSAT score. Your aptitude is going to determine your starting point and your upper limit. Where you score in that range will be determined by how you prepare for the test.- 2
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