Posted by TDot on Dec 24, 2011 in
Background Happy Christmas Eve y’all! 
This is a mostly pointless non-law-related entry, so consider yourself forewarned. I’m still working on school stuff and needed a break from law.
Top: Summer 1995, probably the longest my hair's ever been. Bottom: Today, the shortest my hair's been in my 30.75yrs of life.
And with a solid 2.5 weeks to go before school starts back, I randomly decided last night to try embracing my impending baldness and just cut off what little was left of my hair. 
It was a decision not made lightly… but one that was probably inevitable.
In the “Be Careful What You Wish For” Department, most of my younger years were spent cursing my mane. I was born with a full head of hair that tended to grow like kudzu for most of my life, and after it hit about 1/8″ in length it started to get absurdly curly.
My locks were so unruly throughout grade school that the occasional classmate would even inquire into my ethnicity (which successfully made me self-conscious about both what my hair looked like and the fact I only knew about a portion of half my bloodline). It was also problematic for pictures since the family often didn’t have the money to spend on haircuts every 2-3 weeks, but I didn’t trust anyone to cut it themselves.
But then I joined Student Government in college and the hair thing “fixed” itself… 
My last year at N.C. State undoubtedly ranks as the single craziest period of my life, trying to juggle being a second-term Student Senate President, a first-term President of UNCASG, a legislative intern down at the N.C. General Assembly, and an about-to-be-graduated senior in Computer Science.
Top: 06/13/08, the day I was sworn in to the UNC Board of Governors (flanked by NCAT SBP Marcus Bass and ASU SBP David Mofford). Bottom: 03/27/10, explaining my proposed budget at a UNCASG meeting at UNC Charlotte.
Going through it at the time, it didn’t seem like a big deal; sure I was averaging 4-5 hours of sleep a night, drank Vault Zero (and later Diet Mt Dew) like it was water, and would frequently skip meals to catch up on work, but I still felt great. I was on a near-constant emotional high from knowing I was helping to get things accomplished.
Then one day back in Fall ’08, QuietStorm came to visit me at the NCGA interns’ suite office, sat beside me, and noticed when I turned away that my hair basically wasn’t there. I had her take a picture with my BlackBerry because I didn’t believe her; seeing myself daily, I never really noticed a change from the front. She did, showed it to me, and I blurted out “oh my God”
Sure enough, after spending most of my life wishing I had less-crazy curls, I was in the process of joining millions of guys globally down the path to no curls at all.
I fought it for awhile. I’d intentionally cut the rest of my hair über-short to make it look like I meant for it to look that way. And when I was in my friends’ wedding last week I had let the top grow out as far as it could for a few weeks and then asked the barber to try and blend the top with the sides so it wouldn’t look quite so sparse.
A guy who used to wonder why other guy’s would ever shell out $$$ for hair transplants, I suddenly found myself trying to preserve what little of my own hair I had left… until last night when I said “@#$% it, why not?” and sheared everything off.
It’s definitely going to take getting used to; my head’s oddly shaped, and I can’t help but feel like I sort of look like the convicts I see when I watch Lockup on MSNBC. But I refuse to be one of those people having an existential identity crisis because they lost their hair.
And not having to pay anyone for haircuts anymore helps ease the pain 
That’s it from me for the night y’all, thanks for reading my ruminations on the averted midlife crisis Have a good night good night and Merry Christmas in a few minutes! 
Tags: About TDot, NCSU Student Senate, QuietStorm, SG, UNCASG
Posted by TDot on Nov 8, 2011 in
Things TDot Likes Good evening y’all!
This will be another abbreviated entry as I continue trying to climb out of the monstrously @#$%ing huge academic hole I’ve dug myself, but I wanted to highlight some of the election results from today’s municipal elections in North Carolina.
In particular, there are now at least 3 folks under 30 years old who got themselves elected to Town Councils across the state
Out west in Boone (home of Appalachian State University), incumbent 29-year-old Councilman Andy Ball got himself reelected to a second 2-year term. At the bottom of the group age-wise, the voters up the street in Chapel Hill (home of UNCCH) elected 22-year-old Lee Storrow to a spot on their Town Council. And down in Apex (20ish minutes from NCSU), 24-year-old fellow Wolfpack alum Scott Lassiter will be joining the ranks of that town’s government as well.
All three of these guys were active in the Student Governments of their respective campuses — I met Ball and Storrow in my role as UNCASG President, and served with Scott in the N.C. State Student Senate — and ran polished, idea-oriented campaigns. And although their respective political philosophies differ from my own, it’s pretty doggone cool to know they’ll now be making decisions that have a big impact on taxpayers in their respective towns.
Congratulations to the victors, and good luck for the next 2 years ahead!
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From the Things TDot Likes archives:
Tags: About TDot, NCSU Student Senate, SG, UNCASG
Posted by TDot on Oct 4, 2011 in
Things TDot Likes Not sure when that bullet-pointed update I mentioned is going to get posted, but this is one of the items I was going to add — and it really merits its own entry instead
From the “Ways to Feel Like an Underachieving Underachiever” file, check out this awesome story from the Raleigh News & Observer:
Motivated 16-year-old enters NCCU law school
BY LANA DOUGLAS – ldouglas@newsobserver.com
Tags: University of Baltimore | Durham | eduation | Ty Hobson-Powell
One look at Ty Hobson-Powell and you may think that he is an average teenager.
N.C. Central University law student Ty Hobson-Powell, 16, with his trademark Washington Redskins hat, waits to see one of his law professors. HARRY LYNCH - hlynch@newsobserver.com
He likes to play basketball and video games; he even occasionally wastes time on Facebook and Twitter.
But Ty isn’t the average 16-year-old.
He began classes at N.C. Central University Law School in August after he became the youngest person to graduate from the University of Baltimore at age 15, finishing a four-year degree in two.
The average age of a daytime student at NCCU is 24, according to Linda Sims, associate dean for student services at NCCU school of law.
“I wouldn’t say that I always knew that I wanted to get finished early,” Ty said. “I can say that from a young age I was driven.”
When he was 3 years old, he learned how to read, write and speak Chinese.
“He’s always been a very above-average kid, but normal,” said Edwin Powell, Ty’s father. “The word ‘why’ was always in his vocabulary.”
His mother, Liz Hobson-Powell, describes him as always being “very inquisitive.”
Ty credits his success to motivation and having a semi-photographic memory.
“If I study very intensely for a week, I can remember some things word for word. For example, I remembered all of the elements of adverse possession in a week,” he said.
Ty’s three siblings also are accomplished.
His older sister graduated from high school at age 17 and college at age 19.
His two younger siblings, Quinn and Reid, also show promise in their areas of interest.
“(There was) no pushing force from our parents,” Ty said. “They just reinforced our passions and did everything in their power to help us achieve our goals.”
‘We’ve encouraged them’
Ty’s father is a professor at Howard University, and his mother is a commander with the U.S. Public Health Service.
“I would have to say that we’ve encouraged them and with all the strengths that they have and given them the tools to go out and do what it is they feel they would like to do,” Hobson-Powell said.
“I’ve always said to my kids, putting letters behind your name does not define success, but leaving behind a legacy and looking behind saying, ‘I’ve helped somebody,’ that’s how you define success,” Powell said.
Ty chose to go to school to become a defense attorney after he met someone from the Innocence Project, which works with people it believes have been wrongfully convicted.
“I want to advocate for those who cannot advocate for themselves,” he said.
“I chose NCCU Law School because it is rooted in the tradition of breeding lawyers that go out and help the community,” Ty said.
He also has a passion for public speaking. His message encourages students to capitalize on every opportunity they get and parents to help their children achieve success in whatever path they choose.
“I think it’s reasonable to believe that a lot more people could be where I am right now,” Ty said. “Hopefully, I can instill values in youth and even adults to go out and strive to be as good as they can.”
“In a non-cocky way, I want to make sure that there are more stories like mine, because there’s a lot of people like me and a lot of people with potential to be like me, but for whatever reason, be it lack of support at home or lack of drive from within, are not where I am currently,” he said.
After he graduates from NCCU, Ty says he may attend medical school or get into politics.
You can follow Ty Hobson-Powell on Twitter @TyTheOriginator.
Douglas: 919-932-2008
And I thought I was hot stuff when I started at N.C. State at 17…
Assuming this guy makes it through law school — and if you can master Mandarin at 3, I’m assuming NCCU Law‘s strict-C curve is a relative cakewalk — he’s going to have his education knocked out early enough to do pretty much whatever he wants and still make an absolute killing financially.
Remember the chart I put together on gauging whether law school was worth the expense if I worked the rest of my life as an ADA? Where I intentionally overstated the expenses and understated the revenues?
Mr. Hobson-Powell can start in that far right column at Year 1 instead of Year 7 if he chooses 
I realize there are a ton of other factors at play of course: law is as much about life experience as raw knowledge, it’s a clique-ish profession based on relationships he still has to build, etc etc etc. But the inescapable reality is this young man has some pretty amazing talent and a golden opportunity to chart whatever path he wants when he graduates.
Hats off to him — I’m looking forward to counting him as a fellow Legal Eagle alum!
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From the Things TDot Likes archives:
Tags: 3L, About TDot, Competence FTW, Legal Eagles FTW, NCCU Law
Posted by TDot on Jan 9, 2011 in
Unsolicited Commentary By now I’m guessing all of you have heard about the horrific massacre that happened yesterday in Tuscon, Arizona. I was oblivious to what was going on until the NCSU-WFU basketball game I was watching got interrupted for a news alert.
The rush to be wrong first was nothing short of disgusting. Within minutes of me updating my Facebook status to express my bewilderment, wondering aloud if Mexican drug cartels were involved — what I thought was a rational question given Arizona’s immigration debates and Tuscon only being 60 miles from the border — a colleague felt the urge to explain that it was “a teabagger hit,” a refrain repeated across Twitter, Facebook and the media as shameless liberals seized on the tragedy moments after it happened to score political points and attack people they don’t like (while apparently forgetting they were often the exact same folks urging people not to jump to conclusions about the Ft. Hood terrorist attack last year).
Then someone somewhere stumbled across the psycho’s YouTube page and discovered he was a flag-burning atheist who listed among his favorite books Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto, not exactly common character traits and reading materials among the tea party set or the broader conservative/Republican bloc. Turns out that the guy is an utter fruitcake (as most rational people assumed) who defies political pigeonholing.
As one person commented on Twitter, “[b]oth sides miss the hypocrisy of their political gamesmanship in tying a mentally ill person to the other aisle’s politics.”
But the disgraceful hypocrisy of the political discourse created by the very people whining about the political discourse isn’t the reason I bring up that tragedy, so that’s all I’m gonna say on that particular aspect of it.
Later that same day, I found out that the Pennsylvania police discovered Sister of TDot wandering along the side of a highway. When they asked what in God’s name she was doing, she explained that everything in the house (that she shares with my parents) was radioactive and making her sick. She was committed to a psychiatric institution — but not before having thrown away everything in the house while my parents were out of town, from family photos and kitchen utensils all the way down to the food in the refrigerator.
Things can always be replaced and I’m thankful no one was physically hurt. I come from a family of limited means (hence why I had to drop out of college back in 2000) so I’m not sure what my parents are going to do, but they and my sister are all alive.
The bigger issue is that things shouldn’t have been allowed to get that far. My sister’s mental condition has been steadily deteriorating over at least the last 10 years. She’s intentionally broken things around the house. She’s threatened to kill my mother. She’s rummaged through my mom’s purse when mom was in surgery, reading her text messages in search of conspiracies while taking money to buy drugs. But while other family members (myself included) pointed out that things weren’t right, my parents and my brother have either been in denial or just unwilling to take serious action — Sister of TDot was involuntarily committed once before (after the death threat if memory serves me correctly), but because she’s over 18 she successfully petitioned to be released and within the week was off her meds and back living with my parents.
Now it’s déjà vu all over again, and I really don’t know what to think or feel about the situation.
We live in an overly-medicated society focused on avoiding personal responsibility at all costs, one where psychiatrists and doctors have developed a syndrome for almost every vice. Do poorly on a test? You must have ADHD. Drowning in credit card debt? You’re a compulsive shopaholic. Can’t keep your marriage vows and f*cking anything with two breasts and a vagina? Gotta be a sex addiction.
But when it comes to serious mental illness, the stuff that can get someone killed — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and so on — it seems folks are content ignoring it or making excuses for it or doing the bare minimum possible to avoid legal liability without actually fixing the problem. Just scroll back to that AZ shooter story for an example: the would-be assassin’s community college had him thrown out because he was mentally ill and the armed services rejected him for the same reason, yet no one reported him to any mental health authority to get help… and now at least a half-dozen people (including a 9-year-old girl) are dead because of it.
I’m sorry for the downbeat and dour entry tonight y’all, I’m just in a really despondent and “ugh” mood right now. If you think you or a loved one might have a mental illness, please talk to someone about it and try to get help before something happens and it’s too late.
And I’ll have something more chipper tomorrow, I promise
Tags: "Real" world rants..., About TDot, The Parents
Posted by TDot on Jan 3, 2011 in
Site Stats I bet y’all never thought you’d see one of these entries again
2nd month of 6,000+ visitors!
law:/dev/null crossed the 500,000 pageview milestone back in mid-November and I’ve been meaning to do another one of these entries ever since. Then studying and taking finals and working and vacation snuck in and I never got around to it
But December 2010 was our 2nd-best-trafficked month since we started — despite two 5-day absences — so I figure that calls for celebration! 
Quite a bit has changed on the server backend of the blog since July, including an increasingly aggressive (and thus far successful) effort at stomping out spammers.
Take a look at one of the new graphs I created below, which shows the number of spammy visitor sources I’ve added to the .htaccess file for banning. I recently started throwing in some keyword bans just to reduce the number of directives the server is processing; for example, instead of banning every spammer coming here from a buythisrandomdrugplz.com address, I’ve just decided to ban all the referers with “buy” in the URL.
The net result? While July featured an almost comically-absurd abundance of spam comments and we had a couple recurrence spikes in August and October, we’ve “purified” the traffic enough that December had the lowest number of spam visitors in the entire history of law:/dev/null
The downside is that the bans kill our pageviews-per-day and Alexa traffic stats, the latter of which are used for determining things like avvo.com’s Top Legal Blogs.
Over 1,000+ spammy domains banned!
Our ranking has steadily dropped like a stone over the past two months while sites like Bitter Lawyer — which has become spam-blasted and hasn’t had fresh content in 3+ months — actually find their stats going up over that same timespan
But, just between you, me, and the interwebz: I’d prefer having 6,000+ flesh-and-blood visitors a month actually reading this stuff instead of tens-of-thousands of spammers just crawling for comment forms
We’ll see if we can keep our current anti-spam success going in the new year. Honestly I’m just pretty amazed / impressed / blown away that we had as many visitors as we did in December, especially given my infrequent posting. So thanks to all of you 
***
On the search query front, we’ve had over 1,000 new queries since the last time I did one of these lists
Here are 20 of the 240+ unique search terms that brought folks here in December 2010:
- time magazine decade from hell picture: the picture was more thoughtful than the story itself
- 1l grade wait: will be at least a month for most law schools, sorry
- human shooting target: didn’t survive my concealed carry qualification shooting
- nccu law school grades: aren’t due until January 12th
- badass eagle: was briefly considered for my new gravatar — but I decided to stick with my current colonial eagle instead
- is law school worth it: yes
- is law school really worth it: yes
- t4 law school worth it?: probably
- essay explaining why i would attend north carolina central university: here’s a tip: if you can find it on Google, the admissions staff can find it on Google too
- if you turn in your tag for lapse in north carolina can you turn around and get a 30 day temporary tag: I could, so you probably can too
- gpa ncsu computer science: hopefully yours is higher than mine
- final exam advice: check out this entry and this entry — and GOOD LUCK!
- 1l gpa for top 10%: depends on where you’re going to school, but for the NCCU Law Class of 2012 it was around 3.28
- hey tar heels… kick rocks: please
- people v andrew madison mock trial keys to win: villify the Queen of Hearts
- first kid movie: was my first/only foray in a Hollywood movie (check #19 on that list and see my FB profile for the pics )
- how can a 24 year old get money for law school: apply for students loans. Lots of loans.
- do classmates know your 1l grades: usually no, unless they do really well
- grading curve nccu law: follows a strict-C, which I’m apparently the only one supporting
- can’t stand law students: then you’re probably reading the wrong blog
I missed going through these monthly…
***
And finally, here are the Top 5 most-viewed posts for the month of December 2010:
- On tackling finals: TDot’s Tips: More Final Exam Advice (11/30/10)
- On Fall 2010 grade expectations: Halfway done! (12/12/10)
- On combating spammers: Fight WordPress comment spam with .htaccess (08/04/10)
- On law students around the web: Law School Roundup #247 (12/19/10)
- On figuring out what to do with my life: Straddling the fence (12/13/10)
*THANK YOU* again to each of you for your continued support of us here at law:/dev/null!
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Past Site Stats entries:
Tags: "Real" world rants..., 1L, 2L, About TDot, Damned Lies and Statistics, Exams, Law Grades, NC State, NCCU Law, Tech Talk, Tips, Tuition & Fees
Posted by TDot on Dec 31, 2010 in
Randomness Back in July, I took my first bona fide vacation in ages when 雅雅 and I went to visit Nan and Pops for Independence Day and took a roadtrip through the Outer Banks of North Carolina on the way back.
This past week was so much better!
First, my employer closed down the office on both Thursday and Friday for Christmas. I don’t get paid time off or anything when they’re closed, but it did let me leave out of here on Wednesday night and spend more time with family.
Speaking of family, those of you who were readers back during Father’s Day or who are friends with me on Facebook might recall that it had been an incredibly long time since I last saw Son of TDot. Well at some point recently he asked his mom about who I was and if he could see me, so she arranged for the three of us to have lunch on Thursday
We met up at the food court of a local mall for what was probably one of the most nervous moments I’ve had ever in my life. It was amusing as I walked up because his mom was standing with her back to the direction I was coming from with Son of TDot facing my way. He saw me from about 75ish feet away and gave a look like “This guy looks oddly familiar”… and I basically gave him the same look, because I thought it was him but hadn’t seen him in so long I wasn’t sure
It’s not surprising to share similarities with your own offspring, but some of it still took me by surprise. His hair was cut short like mine and he looks a lot like I did when I was 12. We ended up independently ordering the same thing for lunch: a 10-piece chicken nugget meal from McDonald’s with a Sprite for the drink. His favorite subjects in school were the same as mine (science and history). He loves playing with Legos (I’ve still got a box of mine in the closet). He also loves RPGs, specifically Kingdom Hearts — a spinoff of the Final Fantasy series I play myself, so a good chunk of lunch was spent with the two of us talking video games
He also has allergies in the winter like I do, to the point where he keeps tissues in his jacket pocket. The look on his face was priceless when I pulled out my own batch of tissues from my coat pocket too 
I know he was nervous and I suspect his mom was nervous (and Lord knows I was nervous too), but all in all it was pretty awesome and I’m hopeful that it was the first meeting of many more in the future
The snow that was predicted (top) and what fell (bottom)
The next day was Christmas Eve, which is when the family gathers at Nan and Pops’ house to exchange presents with each other. If you count the various denominations of currency/gift cards as one gift, 50% of my Christmas presents were toothbrushes (an electric one and a travel one). It’s almost like my family was trying to tell me something…
Everyone got along this year, which is a switch from years past when there’s usually a bunch of arguing. And I enjoyed being able to finally afford presents for everyone in the family — even if it meant they all got NCCU Law paraphernalia
Then of course there was Christmas, my 3rd favorite holiday of the year after Independence Day and Thanksgiving Dinner was tasty and it was fun getting to hang out with the family.
Y’all already read about Snowmageddon 2010, my road trip back to Durham. The photo on the right shows the difference between what was forecast when I left for Virginia Beach and what had I actually fallen by the time I was driving home. The red dots respectively show Nan and Pops’ house in Virginia Beach and my apartment here in Durham.
It was a bit of a white-knuckle experience but in hindsight it was pretty cool
Our view from the hotel room
雅雅 and I then headed down to Orlando the next morning for the Champs Sports Bowl, where we got totally spoiled by Nan using her frequent traveler points to reserve a hotel room for us at the Grand Bohemian in downtown Orlando. We were automatically upgraded to the “concierge level” on the top floor because of it, which included among other perks a VIP lounge with its own bar just steps from our door 
The photo shows part of what I woke up to on Tuesday morning 
In a fitting dose of irony, however, our trip to Orlando happened to be accompanied by near-record low temperatures for Florida We had to bundle up as we were exploring downtown, and had to double-bundle up before heading to the stadium.
But I think one of the coolest aspects of the trip (aside from the weather) was being able to connect with dozens of friends from undergrad, all of us in a different city of a different state, traveling from across the country to reunite in support of our alma mater. It was a fun realization
Then of course there was the game itself, my very first bowl game that I attended in person
My new red NC State hat!
I upgraded my black N.C. State hat that I’ve had since 2000 with a new red edition to help add to the red shading of the arena — which complemented the shading of the post-game crowd after the Wolfpack followed up with a huge 23-7 win!
It was definitely a lot of driving over the past week, but it was well worth it! It’s been an amazing year, and I’m incredibly blessed to have an opportunity to end it the way I have.
Now I’m recharged and ready for the Spring semester to get underway
Hope all of you had equally amazing vacations, and have a fun and festive New Year’s Eve!
Tags: About TDot, 雅雅, Nan & Pops, NC State, NCCU Law, NCSU Wolfpack, Son of TDot, TDot's Travels, The Parents
Posted by TDot on Dec 30, 2010 in
Things TDot Likes Not only did Tuesday include one of the most awesome-est football games I’ve ever seen in my life, it also marked 10 years ( ) since I first became a member of the online message board community called The Wolf Web
Partial Screenshot of the TWW homepage
TWW was started back in April 2000, at the tail end of what turned out to be the dot.com bubble. Even though it wasn’t officially affiliated with N.C. State University it quickly turned into the de facto social network for the Wolfpack nation.
So on that December 28, as I was sitting in the offices of the McKinney & Silver ad agency trying to find ways to kill time (I was working as their under-utilized courier back then), someone suggested I check out the site as a way for me to stay connected to NCSU while I wasn’t enrolled in school… and I signed up
I can’t even begin to tell you how many hours of my life got spent talking with folks on that site since then
There’s little I can write in this entry to adequately describe what TWW was like back then. There were all sorts of people. All sorts of debates. All sorts of controversies. If anything of interest was happening on or near the N.C. State campus, odds were good you could get real-time and accurate information from TWW — something local news stations actually did on multiple occasions (I’m looking at you WRAL) well before stuff like Facebook and Twitter were even invented.
Some of News14's hacked closing reports
Students went to TWW for the news and gossip, like when a faculty member’s online nude photos of herself got discovered and she went to the press claiming they were photoshop’d instead. But there were also plenty of times when the TWW membership created the news themselves.
For example, when the NCSU Campus Police made their blotter publicly available on the web without taking the appropriate steps to secure it — they included the username and password in the source code — folks on TWW exploited the lax security and started posting fake entries (typically including derogatory remarks toward the police).
Similar hilarity had ensued a couple months earlier in February 2004 when the Triangle was crippled by a massive snowstorm and News14 Carolina made a poorly-moderated web app for reporting (and later editing) event closings. TWW found out, and I’ve got about a dozen screenshots like the ones on the left from some of the entries that were added 
The also played a decisive role in 2007 when a certain non-traditional student decided to run a campaign for Student Senate President against a guy who happened to like our University’s arch-rival
I spent the next 2 years regularly recruiting student leaders from them, hitting the boards for info and suggestions, and putting the concept of “netroots” activism into practice — not only proving it could be done, but getting to thumb my nose at people who said it couldn’t
Awesome photo courtesy of TWWer ambrosia1231
There were a fair share of somber moments too, as you’d probably expect from a massive community of people spanning ten years. I found out not too long ago that a friend I had met through the site — and who took what is probably the single best photo of 雅雅 and I ever — passed away in October 
But she and her husband, perhaps not surprisingly, met through TWW too (cue the “awwwww”). For every sad moment in the past decade, there seems to be a counterbalance by at least a dozen or more happy ones
Even though The Wolf Web’s heyday in the mid-2000s has long past, and it’s been fighting the “this place seems like it’s on the decline” perception since at least 2004, I’ve been blessed to meet dozens of really cool and interesting people since I signed up on that dreary December day ten years ago.
TWW kept me tied to N.C. State when I seriously thought I was never coming back. It provided a forum for me to develop my debating skills. Its members got me elected to office. And it kept me occupied and out of trouble for God-knows-how-many hours of my life
Not to mention giving me a topic for a blog entry
So to the creators and members of The Wolf Web: thanks
Have a great night everybody!
Tags: About TDot, 雅雅, NC State, NCSU Student Senate, TWW
Posted by TDot on Dec 12, 2010 in
The 2L Life Another month, another one of my sporadic weeklong disappearances
This has been a crazy week — spanning both final exams and a new job — but things are finally starting to get back into a rhythm so I can start focusing on the important things in life.
Including, but not limited to, the fact I’M NOW HALFWAY DONE WITH LAW SCHOOL!
::happy dance::
My last exam was in Evidence last Wednesday and with it my 2L Fall semester officially came to a close. Professors at NCCU Law have until January 12th to turn in grades so it’ll be awhile until I find out how I did, but here’s my expectations on how things will turn out:
- Constitutional Law I: Unlike the midterm that I knew I knocked out of the park, I thought the final was pretty @#$%ing difficult 30 multiple choice questions and then 3 essays spanning a whole range of issues. There were a few multiples I genuinely had no clue how to answer, and I was typing on the essays right down to the very last minute. After talking with classmates after the exam I’m fairly certain I missed a good chunk of stuff on the essays so at this point I’ll just be happy if my grade doesn’t have a negative impact on my GPA. Hoping for: B+.
- Domestic Violence: History, Law & Practice: I drew a bead on this class early, determined to deal with the difficult subject matter and ace the course. I tried to avoid skipping class (difficult for an 8:30am time slot), intentionally went overboard perfecting my motion in limine, thought I was fairly well-prepared for oral arguments, and just generally worked my @$$ off to excel at everything. This is the only class where I’ll be legitimately irked if I don’t get the grade I want Hoping for: A.
- Legal Letters: This was another paper-based course along with DVLaw, and I got near-perfect grades on all the assignments… except for the research memo I postponed in favor of studying for ConLaw. That dropped me to the bottom of the pile grade-wise, so the only hope I have for a decent grade is that (1) other classmates turned stuff in late too, and (2) my grades on the other assignments were marginally high enough compared to everyone else that I can edge past a few folks into the middle of the pack. Hoping for: C+ or better.
- Evidence: This one burns. 10 true/false question, 30 multiple choice, 1 essay. I know I completely and totally demolished the essay, in no small part due to knowledge I cemented in my brain doing research for DVLaw and from watching all 7 hours of BarBri’s online lectures (something I highly recommend for future exams). But the answer options on the multiple choice weren’t as precisely worded as I expected, and I often found myself feeling like I was playing a game of “pick the least wrong answer”… which means I probably didn’t know wtf I was doing Fingers are crossed but this one falls into the ConLaw pile of “I’ll be glad as long as it doesn’t drop my GPA.” Hoping for: B+.
- ZombieLaw (Decedents Estates I): My feelings toward this one have changed a bit since the post I wrote just after the exam. Initially I likened it to Contracts and my 1L Spring final, where spending a ton of time on questions just to work my way to an “either of these could be right” coin flip meant I did pretty bad. But in this case, although it took me 2.5 hours to grind through the 30 multiple choice questions, I eventually found an answer for each one that made sense to me — there was no coin-flipping at all. So my hope of hopes is that it means I got all the multiple choice right ::fingers crossed:: Hoping for: A-.
- Expected 2L Fall GPA: 3.400 | Probability Factor: 18.2%
Why the added “Probability Factor” on this particular grade rundown? Well, if all these grades turn out like I hope, that means I’d make the Dean’s List… a feat I haven’t accomplished since Fall 2005, my first semester back at N.C. State
Back in undergrad I had an incentive to perform well, since I had a pre-existing agreement with the Dean’s office set up in 2000 where they’d retroactively wipe away my sophomore Spring semester once I finished a summer session with “satisfactory academic progress” to prove I wasn’t totally incompetent. Of course I dropped out that June because I couldn’t afford tuition, so that semester of solid grades never took place until I came back 5 years later.
But here in law school, the only incentive I’ve got to perform well in class is just the self-satisfaction of knowing I can do it… and truth be told that’s just not a terribly strong motivator to a guy who already has an outlandishly oversized ego So I figure the odds of me actually making Dean’s List this semester are about 2-in-11.
If any of you get the urge to cross your fingers, say a prayer, or bribe a professor on my behalf please feel free to do so. Until then, y’all have a great night — and best of luck to anyone still dealing with final exams!
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From the grade-related archives:
Tags: 2L, About TDot, ConLaw, DVLaw, Evidence, Exams, Law Grades, Legal Letters, NC State, NCCU Law, ZombieLaw
Posted by TDot on Nov 14, 2010 in
Unsolicited Commentary Good evening y’all!
Yesterday I finally finished editing this entry on the monetary costs-vs-benefits of law school, which pulled together some easily-accessible data based on my own work history, ADA salaries in North Carolina, my tuition and fee payments for both N.C. State and NCCU Law, and so on.
Recognizing that it only took me about 2 hours for the data gathering / spreadsheet making / graphic creating / writing / editing, I didn’t tout it as a comprehensive panacea of analysis — even going so far as pointing out “[d]ata-driven analyses like this are, in a word, pointless. There are simply too many variables involved to produce anything useful[.]”
But that didn’t stop the comments on the post from being uniformly negative
All the commenters raised points worth considering though, so rather than limit discussion to the comments section of that particular thread I figured I’d do a copy/paste in a separate entry with my responses.
For clarity, I’m using the same snippet-by-snippet response style I ran with in deconstructing the Pope Center’s hit piece on me way back in March. If you haven’t already done so, I’d encourage you to read yesterday’s entry and the comments yourself just so there are no concerns about me misrepresenting what was said
Here we go…
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Aaron Massey: Since we’re both American, this might be completely anti-cultural, but I think you’re calculations are still significantly off because you’re not accounting for retirement savings plans. The head start on retirement that both the HS diploma and the BA/BS degree would have can make a big difference once you start factoring it in. A higher income is nice, but so is compound annual interest/stock appreciation.
I didn’t include any mention of retirement savings in my post, because it’s simply not relevant to the discussion
If you take a look at the “caveats” section of the entry, my only requirement is that any money earned during college or law school can’t go to defraying education expenses — done solely to artificially magnify the cost of that education for the purpose of the analysis.
The vast majority of college students work, which is why the common categorization of years in school as a true “opportunity cost” barely holds water (and retains even less). If a freshman wants to set up a 401(k) and put money into it from his side job, he wouldn’t run afoul of my analysis. Similarly, there’s nothing stopping a law student from taking a chunk of their financial aid refund or earnings from a summer associateship and socking that into a retirement plan as well.
Now in both cases they’d be better off financially by paying down their student loans, since their long-run net return on investments will likely be less than the 8% loan interest rate I’m using. But if they did that I couldn’t artificially inflate the student loan interest for the analysis
If we assume students can and do work (but simply don’t defray education costs), a corollary question may be “Will they be putting away as much as someone working full-time?” And the answer to that is “It depends.”
Unlike the full-time employee, typically students get to have their living expenses (rent, electricity, etc) rolled into their financial aid package; it’s why economic analyses typically show traditional college-aged students having the highest discretionary income of any age group. Under those circumstances, a student could easily put away a comparable amount for retirement if they had the inclination to do so.
Since planning for retirement isn’t precluded by my analysis and could easily be done by all three hypothetical students, I think for this particular analysis we’d lose more from the confusion inherent in tackling too many issues than we’d gain from discussing 401(k)s and related savings plans
***
Aaron Massey: Also, I also think you’re generic approach to the four year college degree is a little difficult to justify. Some degrees (like computer engineering) have starting salaries that average about $60,000. Others are almost half that.
Could some folks start out making more money? Of course. But similar to bringing in the discussion of retirement savings, expanding the analysis to include a litany of possible starting salaries for the BS/BA track adds a lot of noise without much signal.
For example, if we’re going to differentiate degrees like computer engineering to account for the higher salaries, it’d only be fair analytically to also differentiate the law track to rely on that expertise — an attorney doing IP-related litigation before the US Patent & Trademarks Office will be making far more than the ADA salaries I included
Synthetic Work-Life Earnings Estimates by Degree
The generic approach also has the benefit of its reasonableness being reviewable against aggregate data compiled by the government. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau produced this compilation titled “The Big Payoff” analyzing data on average salaries and synthetic work-life earnings by education level, gender, race, and so on.
Based on the government’s compilation, I’ve overestimated lifetime earnings of the diploma-only worker by ~$150K, underestimated the BS/BA earnings by only ~$53K, but underestimated professional degree earnings by ~$1,698K (aka $1.7M). The rhetoric about them being “difficult to justify” notwithstanding, my numbers are generally in line with the government’s except for the legal salary (that I’ve gratuitously underestimated).
So while a more-nuanced approach might provide a minimal amount of added clarity (at the expense of a lot more reading), I’ve already tilted the numbers so far in favor of the non-law school route that doing so isn’t particularly meaningful.
***
Aaron Massey: Still, the most important problem with this sort of raw calculation is that your disclaimers in the preliminaries are far more important than the rest of the post. “Worth it” is a question of happiness, which is often not at all about money. Sometimes, life happens and no amount of money will help.
I wholeheartedly agree, 110%. It’s why I linked to Jack Whittington’s entry on that very topic, and why the “I’d have more fun doing law” argument was central to my email to BL1Y.
But since Jack already covered the “Happiness is important” route, and BL1Y covered the “You’re not going to be happy” route, that left me with only the financials
***
Aaron Massey: Realistically, the best advice anyone considering law school can receive about whether it is “worth it” is this: “Don’t just think that you’re going to be better off financially; run some numbers using some potential scenarios, including one in which you abandon law altogether. Also, don’t just think that more money will actually make you happier; be honest about what your life goals really are.”
I agree with everything here except the first word — strike “Realistically” and replace it with “Ideally”
Realistically, almost no one’s going to do that level of analysis… which is why I did it for them
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BL1Y: A lot of the trouble with students going in to law school is that they look at data like this and see law school as an investment. It’s not.
If you sit on the couch eating potato chips every day, your JD doesn’t bring in any money. If you go back to your old job, your JD typically won’t get you a raise (especially if compared against 3 lost years of seniority). A JD is merely a credential on your resume that may, or may not, make certain new job paths available to you.
What many law students don’t realize going in is how much work is then required. The JD doesn’t bring you any extra income, you do. You have to work for it.
I’m not entirely sure there’s a point here.
The same complaints you’re levying against a JD are also true of a BS/BA, but I don’t think that means we make the leap to saying folks should avoid giving up 4 years and various sums of $$$ to get a college degree.
***
BL1Y: And, for many people, the stress, boredom, long hours, and shitty atmosphere are not worth the increase in salary.
And, what makes law school a particularly shitty “investment” is that until you start working after graduation, you really have no idea whether you’ll like it or not.
This is a perfectly fair criticism, though I think you overstate the ability to figure out if someone would like law or not before going to law school.
There’s nothing preventing an aspiring law student from performing a little due diligence by trying to get a job in the legal arena and/or talking extensively with current practitioners. Is it going to be a perfectly accurate representation of actually living the life of a BigLaw associate? Not at all. But it should provide at least enough of an idea that it would remove “Am I going to be content / not hate my life?” as a concern before going in.
And once they’re in, if for some reason they haven’t done their research beforehand, at the very least they should learn whether or not they hate it through summer associateships or clinic work or something similar — hopefully in time to bail out before tacking on another 2 years of student loan debt.
If they haven’t done any due diligence at all before or in law school, or they have but pride stops them from getting out even though it’s not for them, they can’t then turn around and claim unfair surprise when they enter the job market and hate what they do for a living. As Professor Ks said last year, “Laziness is not a defense.”
***
BL1Y: The huge rates in depression, drug abuse, and suicide indicate a very high risk of being stuck in a job you hate. In fact, it’s probably easier to get a job in Big Law than to get an enjoyable one.
I concede I’ve got rose-colored glasses on this one, having already “enjoyed” the life of a homeless college dropout myself. I’d happily trade a sh*tty work environment that at least keeps bills paid over having to sleep in a shelter next to Bob the Crackhead and wondering if my personal effects will be pilfered by Methamphetamine Jane by the time I wake up
But, more broadly, concerns over work environment are applicable to the BS/BA folks and the diploma-only people too. That’s the nature of just about any marketplace.
My suspicion is that the higher incidents of the various pathologies you noted are more the result of higher reporting, since lawyers play higher up the socioeconomic ladder — it’s easier to be an addict when you’ve got the money to spare, and to hire a therapist to talk about your depression when you actually get health insurance benefits and vacation time that you can take without wondering how your rent’s going to get paid.
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Va.: I was really looking forward to this post, but I’ve got to say I’m a little disappointed with the methodology.
It was a quick post by a current student cobbled together on ACC football Saturday — cut me some slack 
***
Va.: I also think that your analysis doesn’t really capture the “worst case” scenario that I’m seeing play out among people I know. Your expectations of being able to obtain a job after law school are certainly reasonable (or at least they should be), and you seem to have no illusions (unlike many law students) about how easily $160k jobs are to come by. However, despite applying for any and every job they see (including ADA positions), many people I know aren’t employed. I know people who graduated in 2008 who are still doing temp attorney contract work. Some can’t even get that. A lot of people aren’t doing what they set out to do or have had to make geographic compromises that take them away from friends and family. Although I certainly hope you find a job before graduation or soon thereafter, being unemployed for 6 months to a year or more can start you off in a financial hole that can be pretty difficult to get yourself back out of. The uncertainty is stressful and “settling” for jobs you don’t want lowers your quality of life.
Unemployment is a legit point, and one I thought about when I was writing the entry.
But I opted to exclude it as the “worst case” scenario because the overwhelming majority of people still find jobs. Even acknowledging the games law schools play with their employment data, few schools have 6-month employment rates below 80%. It didn’t make sense (to me at least) to tailor the analysis toward the other 20%, particularly when the economy will likely be turned around by the time 2013 gets here.
If we want to factor in unemployment, though, it can be done fairly easily from an economics perspective by weighting the results. Essentially we’d take the projected work-life earnings and multiply by the percent probability of being employed, e.g. the $2.7M x 80% if we assume permanent 20% unemployment for the person’s entire work-life.
Doing comparable calculations for the other two columns makes law school less attractive from a marginal cost-benefit standpoint, but still a financially better option than just high school or just college even factoring in law school costs.
I’m less sympathetic on the “they’re not doing what they want yet” argument, but that’s also out of my own personal bias than any rational reason. My first job after dropping out of N.C. State was loading UPS trucks from 3am-8am Monday-Friday; it didn’t pay much and definitely wasn’t what I wanted to do, but it kept a (non-crackhead-containing) roof over my head and helped shore up my financial foundation while I looked for better work. The same principle applies to the law grads — I know it’s not much consolation to the people stuck in that situation, but where you start isn’t where you end up
***
Va.: And a good chunk of law schools are private and have much higher tuition than you do.
Very true… but a point that doesn’t necessarily change my conclusion
On the one hand, I concede that plopping in cost data for other law schools affects the lucrativeness when using my salary numbers.
On the other hand, students have a choice in what law school they attend as far as cost is concerned. Using me as an example, NCCU Law was my first choice because UNCCH Law charged twice as much despite similar bar passage rates and employment prospects in North Carolina (which is where I’d prefer to stay professionally).
And on the third hand, in many cases the more expensive schools also have better employment rates and salaries — a point you yourself made to me back in January
***
Va.: Anyway, I think your conclusion should probably be a bit more cautious in tone. If you don’t get the job you want, or any job at all (god forbid…), then the evaluation would certainly change.
This is probably true. But would any of y’all still read this blog if I wasn’t flippant most of the time?
Besides, if I don’t end up where I want maybe BL1Y will let me join him, Namby Pamby and Nando in the Cynics Club
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So that’s my rebuttal y’all
Have any comments / criticisms / witticisms / thoughts of your own? Please post them below
Tags: About TDot, Damned Lies and Statistics, Money Money Money, NC State, NCCU Law, Tuition & Fees
Posted by TDot on Nov 13, 2010 in
Unsolicited Commentary Just over a month ago, I shot an email to BL1Y as part of his open-ended challenge to defend reasons for going to law school. I wouldn’t characterize his counter-argument as bulletproof, but I doubt it was meant to be — BL1Y has staked out his niche as a sardonically dismissive critic of the legal arena (“Defunct Big Law Associate” as he puts it) and he excels at it, so he’d be stepping out of character to offer anything beyond a cursory rebuttal.
I’m comfortable letting the man own his chosen niche
But then a few weeks ago Jack Whittington over at World Wide Whit posted an entry on the non-monetary side of law school’s value. It’s a good read, and prompted a colleague to remind me of the BL1Y entry and ask me for my thoughts on the financials.
Fast forward past my weeks of slacking on the blog posts, and you get this entry
Is law school really worth it, just looking at the money involved? To borrow the title of Thursday’s entry, “Yes, but…”
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I. THE PRELIMINARIES
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Data-driven analyses like this are, in a word, pointless. There are simply too many variables involved to produce anything useful for more than a couple people in a very narrowly-defined set of circumstances.
Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying to you. Period.
But with that disclaimer out of the way, having the data to look at it can still provide some insights — particularly if you happen to fall in that narrowly-defined set of circumstances
For this entry, I’m using myself: a mediocre student at an unranked Tier 4 law school interested in becoming a prosecutor in the same state.
====================
II. THE CAVEATS
====================
As you’d probably expect, there are a lot of these
Here goes:
- Generally, these stipulations (and even the data itself) are intentionally focused on producing the worst-possible case for law school. If law school’s still “worth it” under this worst-case analysis, by default it’s “worth it” under normal circumstances.
- This is also a “cash only” analysis. On income, I’m only counting salaries and excluding benefits since they’re difficult to value. On costs, I’m only counting tuition and mandatory fees; optional expenses are excluded since they’re… well… optional
- All of the income scenarios assume someone starting at 18 years old and “retiring” at 55 years old.
- The starting point for each income column is based on the data sets in Section III below.
- For the diploma-only column, it assumes a +$2K/yr raise over each of the first 5 years. My rationale is that a non-degree-holder will usually get very close to their (generally low) salary limit in the marketplace fairly early in their career.
- In terms of inflation / cost-of-living raises, after the initial 5 years the diploma-only column assumes a 2% raise per year. For the BS/BA column, it assumes a 2.5% raise per year. And for the JD column, it (i) uses the 20-year step structure the state government uses for salary increases in the first 20 years, (ii) assumes no additional salary range increases during those 20 years, and (iii) projects a 1.1% salary increase for each year after maxing out at the top step.
- Feel free to quibble with me over the percentages Regardless of the specific rate, each of the 3 columns would be adjusted in tandem — and since this is a differential analysis, that limits the significance of any rate changes.
- I assume the student either (i) isn’t working during the years in college and law school, or (ii) if they are working they’re putting $0 towards defraying the cost of education (e.g. you spent all of your summer associate earnings on hookers and blow
).
- On the cost side, the law school column includes an extra $21,000 per year in student loans taken to help cover living expenses in place of a job. This amount is roughly comparable to what North Carolina law students can take before maxing out under the U.S. Department of Education standards.
- The “Tuition & Fees Total” row can be considered a proxy for total required student loan debt (plus the extra $63K for law school living).
- For the student loan interest row, I’m using a 30-year repayment at 8.0% interest. This is done intentionally — revisit the first bullet point — to maximize the amount of interest that would have to be paid out. Realistically you’ll want to refinance at a far lower rate on a shorter repayment term
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III. THE DATA SOURCES
====================
In terms of data collection, I gathered info from a few sources:
- First, I used my own tax returns from when I had dropped out of N.C. State to help approximate earnings for someone without a college degree.
- For the BS/BA column, the starting amount was based on a survey of several of my friends who are alumni of N.C. State’s Department of Computer Science along with about a dozen other alumni from various disciplines (including the lower-paying humanities degrees common among law students).
NALP salary data for 2009
- On the law column, I downloaded all of the ADA salaries in North Carolina from the News & Observer’s Data Central portal that includes a list of all state employees and their salaries. To check the reasonableness of using this data, I also grabbed one of the spiffy graphics from the National Association for Law Placement on reported salaries in the legal industry. For salaries reported to NALP this past year, 95%+ of attorneys make $40,000 and up. Their curve correlates well with the ADA salary data, which tops out around $120K for some ADAs who’ve been around for 30ish years.
- For the undergraduate cost info, I used the tuition and fee data from my last year at N.C. State multiplied by four years. For law school I did the same thing, using this year’s rates at NCCU Law and multiplying by three years. In both cases these end up producing overestimated expenses — since tuition and fees were both cheaper last year, and the cheaper still the year before — but the difference isn’t significant enough to matter.
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IV. THE EARNINGS
====================
Putting all of this together, here’s the chart of annual salaries over time:
Raw salary data from 18 to 55
The green cells are years where someone is working. The red cells are “in school” / opportunity cost years, where the student either isn’t working at all or is working to pay for stuff other than their education. And the yellow cells depict how long it would take to “pay off” the cost of education if 100% of the salary was devoted solely to paying off education-related debts.
Remember the latter item is an artificial construct for illustration only — realistically folks will be repaying student loan debts for years, not putting their entire salary toward it. And we’re intentionally using a 30-year repayment schedule to artificially inflate the cost of law school
Also remember this chart is for “providing a common starting point for talking” purposes only. It has -0- predictive value. We all control our own destinies; if someone’s not making enough money, they can find a way to make more — it just might involve making decisions they’re not comfortable making. But in general no one is stuck doing the same thing for 30 years if they really want to do something else
====================
V. THE ANALYSIS
====================
So now we have roughly what our hypothetical earnings would be if we worked until 55 years old with (i) just a high school diploma, (ii) a college degree in an average major, or (iii) a law degree working as an ADA in North Carolina.
Now let’s bring in the cost data and do some comparison. Here’s a quick chart showing how things shake out:
Even after repaying law school, the JD earns more than the BS/BA
So under this model an average college graduate can reasonably expect to make an average of ~$18K more a year than someone with just high school diploma, enabling them to “pay off” their education in 3 years and 1 month. Factor in the cost of repaying that schooling and the net advantage over a diploma-only worker drops ever-so-slightly to +$17K/year, or roughly $605K over a 33-year career.
Using this same model, the soon-to-be-ADA can reasonably expect to bring in ~$409K more during his career than his baccalaureate-bearing friend — even after the 3 additional years of “opportunity cost” and the expense of paying off student loan debt that’s almost 6x more (and working 3 fewer years to boot).
====================
VI. SO IS LAW SCHOOL REALLY WORTH IT?
====================
It certainly is for me
Even with working a government job and staying there permanently, I’m looking at making at least $1,000 more per month than I would with just my college degree. And that’s making the (hopefully false) assumption I’m not competent enough to earn more. It also doesn’t include any assistance from foundations like NCLEAF, which provides $$$ for student loan repayment for lawyers working in the public interest arena.
And, as Jack noted in the post I linked up at the top, I’ll be doing something far more enjoyable to me than being a script monkey in a cubicle
But, as with all of these things, your mileage may vary. If you don’t like law but think it’s a quick way to get rich, doing law school is probably a bad idea. If you’re determined to go to an expensive law school but will be tempted by suicidal thoughts if you’re one of the majority of lawyers not pulling in $160K+ a year, it’s probably a bad idea. Etc etc etc.
****
There you have it folks. I’m sorry it’s so long, feel free to commence with the TL;DR comments below
The moral of the story is, for me at least, deciding to pursue the law route was definitely a good idea — and I’ve got the data to back it up
Thanks for reading, and enjoy the rest of your weekend everybody!
Tags: About TDot, Damned Lies and Statistics, Money Money Money, NC State, NCCU Law, Tuition & Fees
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