"Law School Admit" Category

[CleanHands]

Currently a very significant proportion of the userbase on this forum appear to be 0Ls who have received law school acceptances and have yet to attend a single class but are using the "Law Student" tag. People using this tag are even asking school comparison questions and weighing competing offers. I have repeatedly done double takes seeing multiple different users with the "Law Student" tag posting things that anyone who has attended a Canadian law school would know is inaccurate.

There is a world of difference between being a 0L and being a 3L (who has actually written law exams, done legal work, gone through the recruits, etc) where the sorts of discussions common to this site are concerned, so it strikes me as actively misleading and confusing to have this tag widely used this way.

Can we add a "Law School Admit" category? It seems like almost everyone who has received an acceptance is too excited and proud to use the "Applicant" handle, and they feel the need to distinguish themselves from those who aren't "in" yet. Such a handle would placate that impulse without being misleading.

[Whist]

I used the law student tag because I asked a similar question on the Discord and most people suggested law student, rather than applicant. 

That being said, I agree that a law admit category would be useful.

[LMP]

I don't disagree with the new tag idea, but I think the concern is somewhat overblown. In two months every  accepted applicant tag becomes a law student tag with no appreciable difference in their legitimacy.

I'd like to think that, hopefully, no one blindly follows the advice of strangers online regardless of their tag. 

[CleanHands]

16 minutes ago, LMP said:

I don't disagree with the new tag idea, but I think the concern is somewhat overblown. In two months every  accepted applicant tag becomes a law student tag with no appreciable difference in their legitimacy.

Right now, for this cycle, yeah. But it won't be long until the next cycle, and there were 9 months between when I was accepted to law school and when I started. That's a lot of time to post bullshit on the Internet.

16 minutes ago, LMP said:

I'd like to think that, hopefully, no one blindly follows the advice of strangers online regardless of their tag. 

No, but @Ryn wrote, with respect to the tag system, that "[t]he purpose of it is to lend context to a post made by a member." It is currently doing the exact opposite of what it is intended to do. The tags should be removed entirely if they are going to be actively deceiving in many cases rather than providing that context.

Edited June 15, 2021 by CleanHands

[ZineZ]

7 minutes ago, LMP said:

I don't disagree with the new tag idea, but I think the concern is somewhat overblown. In two months every  accepted applicant tag becomes a law student tag with no appreciable difference in their legitimacy.

I'd like to think that, hopefully, no one blindly follows the advice of strangers online regardless of their tag. 

I'll wait for Ryn to reply on this generally, but I will take a moment to re-state a rule of the forum:

Anyone can select any designation and can change it at any time. You can also set it to "N/A" to show nothing. The designation is not confirmation that the poster is telling the truth about their background. We make no representation or warranty about the accuracy of any user's selected designation. You must not rely on any of the designations for any reason.

We remind you that providing or soliciting legal advice on the forums is against the Registration Terms, and you agreed as part of signing up not to rely on anything anyone says on here as legal advice.

 

 

[CleanHands]

Just now, ZineZ said:

I'll wait for Ryn to reply on this generally, but I will take a moment to re-state a rule of the forum:

Anyone can select any designation and can change it at any time. You can also set it to "N/A" to show nothing. The designation is not confirmation that the poster is telling the truth about their background. We make no representation or warranty about the accuracy of any user's selected designation. You must not rely on any of the designations for any reason.

We remind you that providing or soliciting legal advice on the forums is against the Registration Terms, and you agreed as part of signing up not to rely on anything anyone says on here as legal advice.

 

 

You should care about this if your site is facilitating this, rather than just giving people the tools to label themselves and then saying you aren't responsible for what people do with it and don't care if it's misleading.

Sure, anyone can select any label. Sure, that's not endorsed or verified by the site. Sure, people should read anything critically and that applies double to posts on an Internet discussion forum.

But come on dude, it's just irresponsible to provide this if your response is going to be "not our problem lol." Doubly so if apparently on the discord channel affiliated with this forum people are actively telling admits to label themselves as law students with the tools you provide to do so.

Just remove the tags entirely if that's going to be the official line to any concerns about them.

[Ryn]

1 hour ago, CleanHands said:

Can we add a "Law School Admit" category?

I think this is a worthwhile addition. As I said before and as others have quoted, the purpose of the tag is to lend context to questions or answers, not to create legitimacy. But if there is no description for someone who is no longer an applicant but is not yet a law student, then using the wrong tag will in fact create the wrong context. While arguably applicants who have been admitted are still closer to being applicants than they are to being law students, the reality is they are neither, so it probably is good justification for a new descriptor.

2 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

Sure, anyone can select any label. Sure, that's not endorsed or verified by the site. Sure, people should read anything critically and that applies double to posts on an Internet discussion forum.

But come on dude, it's just irresponsible to provide this if your response is going to be "not our problem lol." Doubly so if apparently on the discord channel affiliated with this forum people are actively telling admits to label themselves as law students with the tools you provide to do so.

These two things are, in my view, conflicting. I have difficulty with someone taking the position in the first sentence while simultaneously holding the opinion in the second. If it's not endorsed or verified by us, and everyone should critically analyze anything anyone posts here, then how can you suddenly say there is a duty to do otherwise?

[CleanHands]

Just now, Ryn said:

These two things are, in my view, conflicting. I have difficulty with someone taking the position in the first sentence while simultaneously holding the opinion in the second. If it's not endorsed or verified by us, and everyone should critically analyze anything anyone posts here, then how can you suddenly say there is a duty to do otherwise?

I don't take issue with you having the disclaimer about the tags. I took issue with that just being a reflexive response to hide behind if the tags are causing some broader issue (like in this case where a misleading selection has immediately become a common practice here owing to the available options) than a random person just lying (which obviously you can't control and anyone could do in a post anyways).

But I jumped the gun, because your first paragraph deals with this concern, so thanks for that, all good. 👍

[ZineZ]

45 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

I don't take issue with you having the disclaimer about the tags. I took issue with that just being a reflexive response to hide behind if the tags are causing some broader issue (like in this case where a misleading selection has immediately become a common practice here owing to the available options) than a random person just lying (which obviously you can't control and anyone could do in a post anyways).

But I jumped the gun, because your first paragraph deals with this concern, so thanks for that, all good. 👍

You've misunderstood the purpose of my response. The intention wasn't to either be reflexive or hide behind a tag. Your suggestion is one that was taken into consideration pretty soon after you posted it, I was waiting for Ryn to give a response instead of jumping the gun when it's their decision to make.

However, using discussions such as this one to remind people about the general rules around tags is worthwhile. 

[almostnot]

I think it’s great as is (with the new label), but @Ryn and @ZineZ could also consider year categories: 0L, 1L, 2L & 3L. 

As was mentioned, there’s lots of difference in the knowledge those groups have. 

[Hegdis]

As ever it's a balance between online reputation and offline identifying info. People figure out which school you re attending pretty quick. Openly appending the exact year to each of your posts is pretty much asking to be doxed - even offline.

I think once you've been accepted you can call yourself a law student; I think that's a better indicator than attending a class or a certain number of classes. At the same time, I see the trouble with people perhaps coming across as more knowledgeable than they are. And though it's a short window, it's a key one to many of our posters. So my suggestion would be politely request clarification when needed.

On the old board a person's reputation would pretty much identify where they were at: something only those who stuck around and participated in the community really got to know. People keeping themselves to the application and acceptance / rejection threads probably never knew (or cared). But we would often get requests for these tags, so people could more easily weight the experience behind the opinions / advice / anecdotes. We are trying that here. The minute it's more of a pain in the ass than an assist, it's gone.

 

[Pyke]

Honestly, I'm not sure the title adds a whole lot of value. I would favor less tags, not more. 

What is the purpose of the tags? I suspect at least one purpose is to provide some information about the poster to others... it certainly creates the impression of accuracy, which of course isn't true. I see lots of downsides but not a lot of upsides, but that's just me.

[GGrievous]

6 hours ago, CleanHands said:

It seems like almost everyone who has received an acceptance is too excited and proud to use the "Applicant" handle

I'm an example of a user OP is talking about and frankly I have no issue with using whatever handle is deemed most appropriate for someone between the two stages. I actually had thought about mentioning something similar. But their statement quoted above is just so silly.  

Edited June 16, 2021 by Barry

[Ben]

Hope this stops bothering you soon man! All the best