| Topic Name: |
ban the LSAT |
| Message Name: |
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| Date Posted: |
01/17/2002 |
| In Reply To: |
1) The majority of my legal experience has been at a small IP Boutique (20 lawyers). It is quite possible that the younger lawyers I have dealt with have been given much more responsibility than are the associates in larger firms (Hell, the even have me preparing complaints and licensing agreements). I took issue only with the second part of your earlier statement that a major in the humanities better prepares you for a legal career (I completely conceded that it does for LS). From my experience it does not (from yours, it may). 2) The problem with eliminating curves in math/engineering/sciences classes is that the prof. writing the exam (in physics for example) can either give an easy exam where the mean would lie in the 80's or a difficult one with a mean in the 20's. (this is actually what a prof. explained to me after I received an 18 on a thermo test). On a difficult physics test an 18 is NOT F work and should not be graded that way; thus the need for a mean. Also there is something to be said about comparing your work to that of your fellow students. If a prof. does an awful job of teaching a particularly difficult topic, the entire class should not be penalized for not doing well on the exam. Lastly, to say that there are "accepted standards and work products that will warrant a given grade" is a bit sketchy. From one Poly Sci prof. to another, there is little to no consistency in grading. In every major there are "hard" teachers and "easy" ones. What these titles really mean are that some profs. expect a higher standard and others a lower one. 3) Most of my friends are econ/poly sci/english/history majors and I could not disagree more that they have a "real aptitude in ability in their chosen disciplines." I have taken econ classes with the econs, and poly sci with the PS and what they really have is an aptitude in ability to maximize their grades with doing the least amount of work. For the most part, they do not love (nor even enjoy) their majors. Rather, they have mastered ways of getting ridiculously high grades (be it storing all the formulas in the calculator or blowing away profs. with 40 pages of colorful-and meaningless - Excel spreadsheets and graphs) while spending all day in the gym. |
| Message: |
1) So, you are saying that a science major is better prepared for LS than a humanities major?
At a boutique firm, of course, yes, the jr. people get more responsibility. This is part of the point of being at a boutique. As for the specific work in IP law, I can't comment except to say that this is a niche area and I don't think that what lawyers in that practice area do can be generalized to make conclusions about the skills needed across the field. The firm I work at has huge and well respected litigation and corporate groups -- most of what these lawyers do involves, to a large degree, reading and analyzing documents. We also have a big tax group ?? what they do is different, but they are, again, a specialized niche, so I wouldn??t argue that a degree in accounting will, in general, better prepare a person for LS / practicing. If you want to argue that a degree in sciences/engineering/math is better preparation than the humanities for an eventual career in IP law, maybe you can make a more convincing case. Beyond that, you are on thin ice with your argument.
2) So, it sounds like it's possible to know 20% of the material in a given course and still get a passing grade, due to the way things are curved. If this is so, what the hell are you people complaining about? :-)
For an example of the standards I am talking about, surf to this page: http://history.berkeley.edu/faculty/Adamthwaite/H162/gradeexpect.html
I'd say that this pretty much summarizes the way grades in humanities classes I have taken have broken down. Yeah, there are easier and harder graders, sure... however, this plays itself out in whether you get an A or A- or B or B+... C work for one professor will not get you an A with another.
3) I guess I'd be curious to know if you took advanced / upper division econ / polisci classes or intro / more basic classes. If so, this may explain the ease with which these people got good grades in those particular classes. You happen to have chosen as examples, btw, two humanities disciplines that I don't have a tremendous amount of respect for. They are not what I would call particularly rigorous in general -- this is not to say that there aren't kickass PS and Econ people around, there are. But it is much easier to coast through those programs without ever doing serious work -- serious work is more like one particular route you can take, if you are so inclined.
So, this falls under the purview of "fluffier" humanities majors. At a place with a History, Philosophy or Anthro program worth a damn, it is not possible to graduate without doing serious independent research which produces original thought of some kind.
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