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Thinking LSAT

Episode 56: Are Law Schools Responsible for Assuring You Have a Job After Graduation?

Thinking LSAT

Nathan Fox and Ben Olson

Education

4.8 • 868 Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2016

⏱️ 90 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nathan recommends adding something unusual to your morning coffee. Try it and look like a badass at your next brunch. (2:30)

David, a listener who graduated in 2006 with a degree in civil engineering, asks about his chances of being accepted into a good law school despite his cumulative GPA of 2.78. He is currently preparing to take the June LSAT after letting his 2009 score of 161 expire without applying to any schools. Ben uses the LSAT/GPA calculator to give David an estimation of his chances at admission. (9:15)

We discuss the importance of highlighting personality and “painting a picture” of yourself on your law school applications. Exhibit A: Cate Hall, a graduate of Yale Law School who quit a successful law career to become a professional poker player; she was recently interviewed on one of Nathan’s favorite podcasts, “Thinking Poker.” You can listen to that episode here. (26:00)

An article in the New York Times discusses Anna Alaburda, a 2008 graduate of Thomas Jefferson Law School who is charging the institution with inflating their employment stats to convince people to enroll in their program. The story prompts our discussion about the responsibility of a law school in their students’ future employability. (33:35)

Nathan’s heart skips a beat when Cate Hall, the aforementioned poker player, likes the tweet he wrote about her! Tweet Cate and beg her to come on our show. (51:30)

Listener Cordelia is preparing for the LSAT and is planning to purchase one of Nathan’s LSAT books to help but she doesn’t know which one to choose first. Nathan recommends starting with his primer Introducing the LSAT, a “quick and dirty” overview of the LSAT’s most common concepts and how to handle them, and then moving on to Cheating the LSAT, which walks the reader through one full test. (53:35)

We work on the official June 2007 LSAT, Question #17- a particularly useful flaw question in the Logical Reasoning section. Play along by downloading the free June 2007 LSAT here. (58:10)

Listen closely as we discuss the argument and you will hear even more authentic Costa Rican birdsongs! This episode features a less melodious species of bird (or maybe it’s a monkey?!) but will put you in a tropical mindset just the same.

Got questions you want us to answer in a future podcast? Send us an email! Follow us at @thinkinglsat and tweet us a question!

Take a listen and let us know what you think.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

The Hello and welcome to episode 56 of the thinking else

0:24.8

podcast this is Ben Olson and I am in Sanicidro

0:29.3

Costa Rica still and with me today is Nathan Fox and where are you Nathan?

0:35.0

Oh I am in Los Angeles for another couple weeks my classes in San Francisco

0:41.6

start at the end of this month so I'll be here for another couple weeks. My classes in San Francisco start at the end of this month, so I'll be here for another

0:44.5

couple weeks and then I'll be back and forth from San Francisco to LA for the remainder of the

0:50.4

spring.

0:51.4

Yeah, because you're doing a class or you're going to start doing a class there in LA too.

0:55.4

I'm doing a weekend class. I'm calling it at El-Sat boot camp, April 23rd and 24th in Los Angeles.

1:14.3

Yeah, you can register for that via my website if you're so inclined. But yeah, I'll be back for I have a break like a 10 day break in my class schedule in San Francisco. So I'll be back here probably for that whole chunk

1:18.0

and then I'll just be back and forth.

1:19.6

I don't know.

1:20.0

I can't decide.

1:20.7

I'm a no math. Cool.

1:23.0

How's it Costa Rica man?

1:25.0

It's good.

1:26.0

It's it's it's it's really nice here.

1:29.0

I don't know what to say we're leaving soon so that's a little depressing we're leaving on

1:33.3

Wednesday today's Monday and we've really liked it here it's been relaxing everyone

1:38.6

here is at least the people that we've interacted with are very relaxed and I do feel like that's a

1:44.8

cultural thing in stark contrast to DC and so that's it rubs off on you no matter how hard you try you know if you didn't want to but

1:57.5

There's no reason not to want to but yeah, it's very nice here

...

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