Law doesn’t just happen in courtrooms and legislative buildings. It’s actually all around us, and a new radio and multimedia project in which one of our instructors (and frequent contributor to this blog), Mary Adkins, is involved explores all the ways in which that’s true.

The Life of the Law may interest many of you, particularly those of you who have gotten into the podcast craze–season one of their podcast just wrapped up, and all the episodes are available on the site.

For a contemplation of just how broad “the law” is, check out in particular Mary’s ongoing photo series, What The Law Looks Like. Here are a few of her shots:

Dump At Your Own Risk

Waiting to Cross

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Still waiting for your October LSAT score? Pass the time by catching up with some of this week’s top stories about legal education. Happy Reading!

Network ‘Yer Face Off! (Legal Skills Prof Blog)

LSAT scores will be here...soon

Legal Skills Prof Blog has some great advice for law students hoping to secure a job upon graduation. It’s all about networking!

The Shift Toward Law School Specialization(The New York Times Deal Book Blog)

Are general professional degrees in law a thing of the past? Find out how law schools are restructuring their curriculums to allow for increased specialization.

The Short on Long-Term Planning: Go to the Sources, and Here They Are (jdMission)

Want to know what makes for a strong law school application? Here are some answers from admissions officers at Yale, Michigan, and Columbia.
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Perhaps the cruelest part of taking the LSAT is the 3-4 week waiting period that test takers are subjected to before receiving their results from LSAC. It’s hard to imagine what the reason for this is, given that it is 2012 and the test is taken on a bubble sheet that can be easily run through a scan-tron machine. Being such a high stakes test, it’s no wonder why people waiting for their results will literally pull their hair out right around this time, when scores could literally be released any day now.

Any day now? Yes. While LSAC touts October 31st on their website as the day that scores will be released, past trends indicate that they consistently email scores out 3-5 days sooner than that.

The result of this imprecision is that October LSAT takers spend several days in a nervous stupor, constantly peaking at their inboxes through hand covered eyes to see if their results have arrived.

Guessing when LSAT scores will arrive is an imperfect science at best, but that doesn’t stop us from making our official prediction. In February of this year, LSAC cruelly released scores just one day before their listed release date. In July, they redeemed themselves by releasing scores 4 days early.

I’m very confident that October 2012 scores will be released either Friday (tomorrow) October 26th, or Monday, October 29th. I’m feeling optimistic today, so I’m going to go out on a limb and predict a score release of Friday, October 26th. Again, this is just a prediction — I don’t have any inside information. If I did, you’d all be the first to know. (Update: It appears as though my attempts to will the release of LSAT scores today was unsuccessful. I am as disappointed as you all are. Hopefully Monday is the day!)

Good luck to all of you who took this thing in October. Don’t forget to register for our free online review of the October LSAT, which will include explanations for the most difficult problems on the October exam.

The 3rd Edition Manhattan LSAT Strategy Guides

We are pleased to introduce to the world the newest (3rd) Edition of our renowned LSAT Strategy Guide series, on sale now in our store and on Amazon.

This time around we’ve overhauled our Logic Games Strategy Guide, nearly doubling its size. Like a geeky piece of cake that goes straight to the hips, we’ve added substantial bulk to our explanations, including hand written solutions for every game from PTs 40-66, simply because we love you.

So far the chosen few who have received advance copies of the LG book cannot stop raving about it. One forum user out there even admitted to wishing that they were still prepping the LSAT, just so they could read out new book. Yes, it is that awesome!

While the Logic Games Strategy Guide has been enhanced significantly, our Reading Comprehension and Logical Reasoning guides received simple face lifts and remain the basically the same awesome guides that they were in our 2nd Editions.

How Would The Supreme Court Perform on the LSAT?

A question I often hear is, “Does the LSAT actually have anything to do with law school?” And the answer is, however incredibly obnoxious, yes and no.

You don’t do logic games in law school, I’m sorry to report (because the first semester of law school makes logic games look pretty fun). And you don’t answer multiple choice questions in which you evaluate the logic of arguments.

However, you do use the reading and reasoning skills you’ve developed studying for the LSAT: dissecting arguments to determine their structure,

evaluating their internal coherence, and identifying where and how parties (or judges) disagree on the issue.

Do the kinds of “flaws” we look for on the LSAT actually appear in the cases you’ll read? Law professor Andrew J. McClurg, in a fascinating article that you can download and read for free here, shows us the answer is yes. They do.

McClurg examined a number of logical fallacies in Supreme Court decisions, focusing specifically on Justice Rehnquist (the article is kind of old) for reasons he explains that I won’t get into here. I recently stumbled on the article and plucked a few of my favorite examples to share, followed by LSAT questions that exhibit the same flaws. If you’re curious, geek out by finding the flaws in the Court’s reasoning below and then comparing them to the LSAT questions that are analogous:
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Here are the free LSAT events we’re holding this week.

10/23/12 – Online – Writing Your Way Into Law School Workshop (with jdMission) – 8:30-10:00 PM

10/27/12 – New York, NY – Free Proctored Practice LSAT – 9:30 AM – 1:30 PM

10/27/12 – Online – Free Online Trial Class – 12:00-3:00 PM

10/28/12 – Zen and the Art of LSAT Review Session – 8:00-10:00 PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.

Wahoo!

Happy Friday, everyone! Take a break to check out our weekly set of LSAT and law school-related links.

Want to Stand Out from the Pack? Start a Blog! (The Girl’s Guide to Law School)

Ruth Carter, author of The Legal Side of Blogging: How Not to get Sued, Fired, Arrested, or Killed, talks about why law students should start blogging and offers some tips for getting started.

The Short on Long-Term Planning: To Addend or Not Addend? (jdMission)

This week our friends over at jdMission explain why you should not write an addendum explaining your LSAT score.
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Must. Have. Coffee.

For years, I prided myself on not being addicted to anything, and then I had a child. Now I cannot function beyond the cognitive level of a stuffed iguana if I do not have an espresso. In fact, if I do not have this aforementioned elixir within 23 minutes of awaking, I wreck the emotional stability of everyone around me for the entire day. I accept this new reality, blame my son, and plan to quit one day (though my wife will not permit me to attempt any going cold turkey experiments if I am within 200 miles of her or my son—sort of a caffeine restraining order).

To add to my anxiety about coffee, I saw a news report last week stating that excessive coffee drinking makes us much more susceptible to glaucoma. This makes sense—on occasion I have noticed my eye twitches from drinking coffee, making me look like a fish on crack. Being in Denver, where there are more medical marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks (really), if I do get glaucoma, I’ll have a fine reason to visit one of the well-named “pharmacies” near me: ReLeaf, Club Med, 420 Wellness, Grateful Meds… (Honestly, I was just trying to work in a way to list the ridiculous names – here’s a longer list.)

So, I looked up the article, and being an LSAT geek, besides wondering if I should pick up and move 200+ miles from my wife and child during a caffeine-sobering period, I also wondered about the increased risk. Whoever conducted this study (and I hope my tax dollars didn’t pay for it) reports that the “increased risk was on the order of 66 percent.” Now, on my crappy local news, (sorry, Denver 9 News), the reporter seemed to suggest that drinking coffee equals eye death. What do you think?

So, here are some questions for you to chew on (and respond to in the comment bar):

Assuming the study is correct, do you think we can say that you are now more than 50% likely to get glaucoma?

Based on the study, can we say that heavy coffee drinkers are now very susceptible to getting glaucoma?

Similarly, though with different content, think about this argument: People are more likely to pick the number three than any other number when you ask them to “pick a number, one to four” because you have effectively said the numbers one, two (“to”), and four, and so their minds fill in the number three. Therefore, when you ask someone that question, the person is more likely than not to pick three.

I await your responses!

Here are the free LSAT events we’re holding this week.

10/18/12 – New York, NY – Free Trial Class – 6:30-8:30 PM

10/20/12 – Online – Free Trial Class – 1:00-4:00 PM

10/20/12 – New York, NY – Free Proctored LSAT Practice Exam – 9:30 AM – 1:30 PM

10/21/12 – New York, NY – Free Trial Class – 5:30-8:30 PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.

We hope you’ve had some time to relax since last week’s LSAT! In case you haven’t, we encourage you to take a seat and check out some the top law school features from the week.

Free Webinar from jdMission & Manhattan LSAT Helps You Write Your Way Into Law School (Law School Podcaster)

If you haven’t had the chance yet, be sure to tune into this week’s podcast from Manhattan LSAT and jdMission. We tell you how to write essays that grab the attention of law school admissions committees.

Looking for a Law School to Fit Your Politics? (WSJ Law Blog)

Did you know that you could choose a law school to fit your politics? This week the Wall Street Journal shared which law schools host the most liberal and most conservative students.
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