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Changes On My End
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Last week I left Citizens for Global Solutions after a few years as an advocate there. I'm doing some personal travel through Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and China starting in about a week and probably won't be up on this blog during that time, but I'll share pictures when I get back.
The other news: I'm leaving D.C. to start law school in the fall. It's hard to look forward to three years of something so academic after being involved in such important policy battles, but a legal education is the tool I need and this is the right time for me to get it. So, starting in the fall, expect my posts to be less frequent and less informed on some of the issues I've tracked. But I won't disappear, I promise.
-- Scott Paul
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Reader Comments (3) - post a comment
Good luck with law school and we await your travel reports.
Congratulations! Now for some fast advice (that I wish someone had given me at the same juncture):
1. concentrate on getting the very best possible grades the first year: getting on a law review etc. is important for career options.
2. a. While you obviously have to fulfill course requirements, otherwise only take courses that light your fire, float your boat--you get the idea. Makes it easier, and easier to get good grades.
2. b. NEVER take a course, that you otherwise don't want to, because the subject is on the bar exam. That's what bar review courses are for.
3. The clinics can prepare you for a practice area. The courses alone won't, and most employers end up directing you to the areas where they need you anyway.
4. You will have to take a bar review course. The bar exam itself is an extended lesson in acute bulemia: binge, purge--and, hopefully, never repeat.
Best wishes.
Yes, congratulations, I guess, Scott
I too went to law school to increase my options. And to avoid the draft I must confess, which didn't work out as smoothly as I would have wished.
In any case, Wendells's advice sounds about right, that is, if you are interested in high performance vs. getting the damned J.D. and a bar.
Myself, I got the degree (in the top quarter of my class at GW but I was never much motivated to excel; actually "sticking it out" more accurately described my trajectory, thoughI did choose and enjoy a number of courses -- not strictly bar review oriented, e.g., international law and seminars; law of the sea; jurisprudence; negotiation -- and spent a lot of time reading victorian novels in a wierd sort of compensantion for the drduge of the law school grind. Commercial paper was a bear. Tax law atually interestng.
And yes, ahem, the bar and bar review. I hit the NY bar without a review course and did not pass. So, living in DC, I took a bar review course at the next opportunity, and did pass. Eventually went to work for the Feds but have not since used the degree or bar admission in a strict way but have found the grounding and method useful in numerous ways.
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