1L Diaries: Final exam lost in cyberspace increases risk of heart failure

Editor’s note: KU Law student Natalie Hull wrote this journal entry during the 2009-10 school year as part of the 1L Diaries project. The diaries appear in the Spring 2011 edition of the KU Law Magazine. Read the full version of the 1L Diaries.

June 30, 2009 — I almost had a heart attack today. The essay portion of my Torts final literally almost killed me.

It wasn’t that the exam was too hard. It wasn’t that I was unprepared. It wasn’t even that I suddenly forgot everything the moment that I sat down to take it. Nope. That test tried to kill me through Murphy’s Law (feel free to insert law school irony comment here).

Basically, I was golden after the exam. I felt fine about my essay answers for the most part. A little iffy about the multiple choice portion, but everyone else felt the same so I figured we were all in the same grouping.

I walked out of the Torts final and mentally went into Property study mode since that exam was the next day – and even that exam went as well as I expected.

I let myself enjoy the weekend between sessions worry free. I lazed around a campfire at a random Iowa state park in an effort to “get away from it all.” I came home, caught up on cleaning and laundry. I read fashion magazines. Sunday evening I read the first-day assignments. All was good. I was calm.

Until this morning, when I received a horrible email:

Natalie, Can you stop by my office during the break between your classes today? [IT] has not been able to find your computer exam, so we need to try to determine where it is and what happened. Thanks.

If ever in life there were a call for OMG, this was it. O.M.G.

And I had to sit through 80 minutes of Torts talk (which I usually love!) trying not to hyperventilate and control the pace of my heartbeat. At one point, my neighbor said she thought I was going to burst into tears in the middle of a sine qua non discussion. I’m surprised I didn’t!

I couldn’t stop my brain from its pinball machine of pinging thoughts: Was I to blame? Was it my own negligence (don’t get me started on that irony!)? What happens if it can’t be found in cyberspace? Will they accept the backup that is saved on my desktop? Will I fail? Did I submit it correctly? Maybe I missed something.

When the break came, I ran to student affairs, praying there was a defibrillator handy. IT came in, hit two keys on my computer and declared everything “good to go.”

That’s it.

Seriously. That anticlimactic. I thought about asking for a confirmation number (and now, I think they should upgrade the software to include that!) before I could comfortably leave the room. I am still edgy about it all. What if there is another glitch? Would lightning strike twice? It can when thrown by a law school professor.

So, I am barely breathing until grades are posted. I’m not worried about the actual grades. I’m too busy worrying that I might not get an actual grade!

Natalie Hull, KU Law

U.S. Supreme Court finds California’s video game ban unconstitutional

As a librarian whose job is connected closely with the sharing of information, I find myself drawn to First Amendment cases. As a geek, I find myself drawn to video game cases. Well, as luck would have it, the United States Supreme Court handed down its first ruling in a case involving video games in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, and it’s a First Amendment case!

For those who aren’t familiar with the case, in 2005, California passed a law banning the sale of “violent video games” to minors. A group representing the video game industry brought suit claiming a violation of First Amendment rights. A California district court agreed, as did the Ninth Circuit. Here’s what the Supremes had to say (citations omitted):

The Act does not comport with the First Amendment.

(a) Video games qualify for First Amendment protection. Like protected books, plays and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium. And “the basic principles of freedom of speech . . . do not vary” with a new and different communication medium. The most basic principle — that government lacks the power to restrict expression because of its message, ideas, subject matter or content — is subject to a few limited exceptions for historically unprotected speech, such as obscenity, incitement and fighting words. But a legislature cannot create new categories of unprotected speech simply by weighing the value of a particular category against its social costs and then punishing it if it fails the test. Unlike the New York law upheld in Ginsberg v. New York, California’s Act does not adjust the boundaries of an existing category of unprotected speech to ensure that a definition designed for adults is not uncritically applied to children. Instead, the State wishes to create a wholly new category of content-based regulation that is permissible only for speech directed at children. That is unprecedented and mistaken. This country has no tradition of specially restricting children’s access to depictions of violence. And California’s claim that “interactive” video games present special problems, in that the player participates in the violent action on screen and determines its out-come, is unpersuasive.

(b) Because the Act imposes a restriction on the content of protected speech, it is invalid unless California can demonstrate that it passes strict scrutiny, i.e., it is justified by a compelling government interest and is narrowly drawn to serve that interest. California cannot meet that standard. Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively. Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media. Since California has declined to restrict those other media, e.g., Saturday morning cartoons, its video-game regulation is wildly under inclusive, raising serious doubts about whether the State is pursuing the interest it invokes or is instead disfavoring a particular speaker or viewpoint. California also cannot show that the Act’s restrictions meet the alleged substantial need of parents who wish to restrict their children’s access to violent videos. The video-game industry’s voluntary rating system already accomplishes that to a large extent. Moreover, as a means of assisting parents the Act is greatly over inclusive, since not all of the children who are prohibited from purchasing violent video games have parents who dis-approve of their doing so. The Act cannot satisfy strict scrutiny.

Read the full opinion.

W. Blake Wilson, Head of Instructional & Research Services

Salaries for the KU Law Class of 2010

We have yet to receive national salary data for the Class of 2010. We can, however, discuss the number of students and the corresponding percentage of students in the KU Law Class of 2010 reporting salaries for jobs requiring bar passage and JD-preferred jobs.

Job Type # Reporting Salary % of Employed Reporting Salary Median Mean 25th percentile 75th percentile
All Reported 102 78% $55,000 $61,888 $45,000 $71,000
Bar Passage Required 83 86% $57,000 $66,042 $48,000 $80,000
JD-preferred 15 63% $40,000 $45,405 $30,000 $58,000

The bar passage required mean of $66,042 for the Class of 2010 is down from $70,754 for the Class of 2009. 86 percent of 2010 grads with bar passage required jobs reported a salary, compared to 94 percent of the Class of 2009.

Here are the salaries of 2010 KU Law grads working in the public and private sectors:

Job Type # Reporting Salary % of Employed Reporting Salary Median Mean 25th percentile 75th percentile
Private sector 71 78% $60,000 $66,743 $48,000 $86,000
Public sector 31 78% $48,000 $50,768 $44,500 $57,000

The private sector mean of $66,743 for the Class of 2010 is down from $72,660 for the Class of 2009. 78 percent of 2010 grads with jobs in the private sector reported a salary, compared to 81 percent of 2009 grads.

The public sector mean of $50,768 is up slightly from $50,666 for the Class of 2009. 78 percent of 2010 grads with jobs in the public sector reported a salary, compared to 88 percent of 2009 grads.

Finally, here are Class of 2010 KU Law salaries in a number of additional employment categories:

Job Type # Reporting Salary % of Employed Reporting Salary Median Mean 25th percentile 75th percentile
Business 9 64% $45,000 $45,533 $35,000 $58,000
Judicial Clerk 3* – – – – –
Private Practice 62 81% $60,000 $69,821 $50,000 $100,000
Government 18 78% $52,520 $54,567 $45,000 $62,000
Public Interest 8 80% $45,500 $46,500 $38,000 $51,000
*To calculate salary information, NALP requires at least five salaries in a category. The three KU Law judicial clerk salaries reported in 2010 were between $48K-$55K.

The private practice mean fell from $79,259 in 2009 to $69,821 in 2010, partially reflecting a decrease in the number of jobs accepted at large (101+ attorney) firms — from 23 reported in 2009 to 19 reported in 2010. Also, jobs reported at small (2-10 attorney) firms rose from 24 in 2009 to 31 in 2010.

Todd Rogers, Assistant Dean for Career Services

1L Diaries: From journalist to law student in one week flat

May 29, 2009

It was a mere two weeks ago that I got accepted into law school. In the time since, I have had my first visit to Lawrence, been given a crash course in Lawyering and written more than a dozen briefs. It’s been a whirlwind — a Kansas tornado, if you will!

Officially, I was wait-listed — hence the news of my acceptance a mere week before orientation. It was welcome news for a multitude of reasons, the least of which being that I had been unemployed for the past four months.

I was a secondhand victim of the recession. I quit my job as the online editor for a newspaper in Texas and moved to Kansas City in January 2009. But no one was hiring. In fact, the Kansas City Star laid off more than 100 employees during my first month in the metro.

I love the news business, always have. I have been writing news stories as far back as I can remember and love being part of a business whose job is to record “modern history” for those who will follow. When I started my career as a professional journalist (after getting my bachelor’s from the University of North Texas), I toiled hard to quickly work my way up through the ranks.

At my final newspaper, I dined with generals who led the troops in Iraq and covered the democrat’s campaign as they tried to get the soldier vote. But more than that, I fought for the rights of online readers. I know it sounds dramatic, but the Internet is a scary thing for many journalists and most publishers. It comes with unknowns that scare the pants off of lawyer-fearing publishers, but subscription-paying readers want more and more.

In an effort to aid the ailing industry I so adore, I decided to apply to law school. The process to get in was pretty tough – at least for me. I was scheduled to take the LSAT in December 2008. I lived in the middle of nowhere and didn’t have access to any LSAT study classes. My preparation came from nights spent with an endless pot of coffee at IHOP after working 12-hour days.

To take the exam, I had to drive an hour and a half to the nearest law school. It was a crazy morning that included dealing with a foster dog with kennel cough into the late hours of the night and finding a place to (literally) stash her while I took the test. I made it to the testing room with 20 seconds to spare.

The nightmare of the test doesn’t need to be expressed, right? But let me tell you, the first section I was given was the dreaded logic test. I answered eight of them. I got a second logic section a couple of sections later that I zipped through. I figured the first, horrible section was just the experimental section but later found out it wasn’t. I guess they are going to decide the second section was too easy. Experiment failed.

Anyway, I was pleased with my score. And it was a good thing, because I never want to take that exam again.

Enter personal life: a move to plan and a house to handle. By mid-January, I had quit my job, completely renovated my house, prepped it to rent, packed up my five animals and moved 700 miles to Kansas City.

The next six weeks included hunting (fruitlessly) for a job and getting my applications for law school prepared. In the end, I turned them all in just within the deadlines – and this made the wait for my answers that much worse.

As it turns out, being on the wait list is worse than the initial application process. It involves more recommendations, more essays and, in the case of one school, an interview with the Admissions Committee.

But in the end, I barely remember the stress and emotional yo-yo that was my life. What does it matter? I’m opening my life to a second career. I’m now a law student at the University of Kansas. I have joined about 45 22-year-olds who got their undergraduate degrees last week. But I’ve survived my first week and couldn’t be happier about the path life has given me.

Natalie Hull

National employment numbers for the Class of 2010

Last week, the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) issued a press release detailing general findings from employment information submitted by 192 U.S. law schools for the Class of 2010.

Four key national observations:

  • The overall employment rate of the Class of 2010 nine months after graduation was 87.6 percent, the lowest since 1996. NALP calculates this employment rate based on graduates whose status is known, counting all types of jobs as employment. If you apply the new US News methodology, which is based on the total number of graduates, the overall nine-month employment rate for the 192 law schools reporting falls to 84.1 percent.
  • Only 71 percent of the jobs reported by the Class of 2010 were both full-time and permanent.
  • Only 50.9 percent of 2010 grads reporting working for private law firms, a drop of five percentage points from the Class of 2009.
  • The percentage of private practice jobs with large (500+ attorney) firms fell from 25.6 percent in 2009 to 20.5 percent in 2010.

Three additional NALP findings relate directly to my last blog post about “bar passage required” and other jobs. As a review of NALP definitions, a “JD preferred” job is one for which the employer sought an individual with a JD, and perhaps even required a JD, but the job itself does not require bar passage, an active law license, or involve practicing law. An “other professional position” is one that requires professional skills or training but in which a JD is not required and may not, in some cases, be particularly applicable. Finally, a “non-professional” position is one that does not require any special professional skills or training.

  • Of the Class of 2010 graduates for whom employment was known, nationally only 68.4 percent obtained a job for which bar passage is required. This is the lowest “bar passage required” percentage NALP has ever measured.
  • An additional 10.7 percent of 2010 grads obtained “JD preferred” jobs, compared to 9.2 percent for the Class of 2009. This is the highest national “JD preferred” percentage since NALP began tracking this statistic in 2001.
  • 5.6 percent of 2010 grads reported an “other professional” position, while 1.9 percent reported a non-professional position. Both of these figures were up only a fraction of a percentage point from 2009.

The next Career Services blog posting will break down national and KU Law specific salary data for the Class of 2010. We’ll report on the number of students and the corresponding percentage of students reporting salaries for jobs requiring bar passage, JD preferred jobs, and jobs in the public and private sector. We’ll then list the mean, median, 25th and 75th percentile salaries for each of those categories.

Finally, we’ll discuss national and KU Law specific salaries in the following employment categories: business, private practice, government, public interest and judicial clerkships.

Todd Rogers, Assistant Dean for Career Services

Executive talks about features of WestlawNext

Interview with Mark Schiff, vice president of product marketing at Thomson Reuters regarding the launch of WestlawNext. Taken from the CRIV Sheet: The Newsletter of the Committee on Relations with Information Vendors

Mark Schiff, in an interview with Caren J. Biberman, gives us the low-down on WestlawNext. Schiff says Thomson Reuter Legal (TRL), in making its decision to develop a new platform, felt it was operating from a position of strength as Westlaw.com is preferred nearly 2 to 1. But in talking with customers and viewing and analyzing the search logs, TRL discovered there were opportunities to make substantial improvements to the legal research process.

For example, when starting on Westlaw.com, users are asked to choose a database to search. Some viewed this as a stumbling block because it requires the customer to know where the answer is. Also, when searching on Westlaw.com, you need to use precise syntax and linking tools, which sometimes makes it difficult to find answers immediately. With WestlawNext, TRL created a dramatically different search process called WestSearch. In a literal search, document results are tied to a database selection and the words typed into the search box. WestSearch lets the searcher use simple descriptive terms and eliminates the need to choose a database. Because it uses a search algorithm (behind the scenes) that leverages West’s key number system, key cite, headnotes and indexes, the most relevant documents still appear in the results.

While the search algorithm takes into account customer usage, Schiff says this is only a small part of the algorithm and that it places greater importance on customers doing something significant with the document (e.g., e-mailing or printing). The algorithm uses aggregated usage across the entire professional customer base to further understand connections and associations between documents. Schiff explains that WestlawNext still allows for terms and connectors searching. However, TRL feels WestlawNext will offer a dramatically improved search as it takes advantage of the relevancy ranking and filtering within the program.

WestlawNext allows users to organize research within the platform by allowing them to highlight and add notes to documents, and then store them in folders within WestlawNext. The documents you put in folders remain there forever; they are never deleted.

All of Westlaw.com’s content is accessible through WestlawNext, although certain content sets, such as public records, are not available within WestlawNext; users must instead access them on Westlaw.com. Schiff also indicates that not every content set will make use of the WestSearch algorithm (e.g., public records).

Schiff states that while TRL will continue to add and update content on Westlaw.com, he doesn’t believe librarians will see lots of new feature development. Rather, the long-term vision is for a single platform: WestlawNext. However, there is no retirement date for Westlaw.com, and Schiff believes it will be “years” before that becomes a possibility.

What do you think of WestlawNext compared to classic Westlaw? Let us know!

W. Blake Wilson, Head of Instructional & Research Services