Although I understand that this can be very difficult to do, you must view the popular published law school rankings, skeptically. These rankings are not only untrustworthy, but mislead students into thinking they need to attend a highly ranked school or they will be second rate lawyers do to their “substandard” law school education. This is simply not true.

What is true, in my opinion unfortunately, is that going to a highly ranked law school can have an enormous financial (note: NOT educational) impact on your early legal career. That is why I wrote Covert Tactics for Getting Into the Law School of Your Choice. As I explain in that book, however, even if you do not attend a highly ranked law school, you are not absolutely doomed to suffer professionally and financially for the rest of your life. Indeed, many times you may be well-served, both educationally and financially, by attending a lower ranked law school.

But back to law school rankings. In addition to a number of studies suggesting that the data underlying the rankings is inaccurate, due to schools trying to misrepresent the true data in order to achieve a higher ranking, it is impossible for any ranking to consider all of the relevant factors, which may vary from individual to individual.

Also problematic is the fact that most of the ranking are based, at least in part, on the subjective opinions of individuals at the various schools. Of course, such subjective opinions are likely to simply reinforce the historical opinions regarding the “top tier” law schools. Indeed, if you look at these rankings historically, you will find that they really haven’t changed much over the years.

The reason that it is important that you understand the invalidity of the rankings is that you should understand that the quality of your legal education is likely to be nearly as good, and in some respects may be better, at the University of Idaho as opposed to Harvard.

Depending on who you are, you may be much better off, for a variety of reasons, attending even a very low ranked school. This may be the case even if you have the opportunity to attend a higher-ranked school.

For example, if your intent is to establish a small town practice in rural South Dakota immediately after law school, it may be unwise to attend Stanford Law School over the University of South Dakota School of Law.

Why? Let me give you three good reasons, though there are likely many more. First, you are not going to be particularly highly paid in rural South Dakota, regardless of where you attended law school. As a Stanford Law graduate you are likely to either be saddled with a high debt load or have spent a significant amount of your savings getting through school. Although few law schools are cheap, you should carefully consider whether it is worth spending and extra $100,000 to have a fancy name on your wall.

Second, as a small-town practitioner, you are going to be very reliant on relationships with other attorneys, the business community, and potential clients in general. Spending three years in Palo Alto, far away from the center of your future universe, will do very little to develop those relationships, so law school rankings are virtually meaningless.

Finally, the education isn’t going to be much better at Stanford than at USD. Believe me, in writing this I have prepared myself for the inevitable barrage of criticism that will inevitably be hurled my way. I say this with confidence, however, because I know lawyers from a wide variety of law schools and find a relatively equal distribution of idiots among alumni from top 50 and bottom 50 schools. It really depends on what you are willing to put into it – not what they give you.

There are even some law schools not approved by the American Bar Association that may be worth considering in limited situations. Depending on what you want to do, and the particular laws of the jurisdiction where you intend to practice, a non-ABA accredited school may be a worthwhile choice.

At the end of the day, you need to make a wise choice that you will be happy with for the rest of your life. Don’t put a school on your list just because it is a highly-ranked law school or fits a formula or because you think it will look good on your resume.

Even if we find a cure for cancer in the next decade, you are not likely to live much more than 90 years on this earth. Don’t spend 3.5% of it in the wrong place.

This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety in any ezine, newsletter, blog or website. The author’s name, bio and website links must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.

My Friend H. Jefferson, Jr. is an expert on on law school admission, having applied to and been admitted by 11 of the top law schools in the United States. To learn more about the the techniques and strategies you can use to get into the law school of your choice, visit lawschoolacademics.blogspot.com,

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Photos Union

“I like to pursue a law degree, but I **** to become a lawyer. What else can I do with my law degree besides being a lawyer?” You may be frustrating with this question in deciding to take up a law degree program because you worry that the law degree can’t help you to find a career after graduation. Most often people with a law degree pursue careers as lawyers, but you are not limited to this career with a law degree. Law degree students find many career opportunities in other fields such as banks, real estates and factories and they also manage restaurants and hotels, and work as university’s administrator. This article will help you discover some of career opportunities with a law degree.

1. Legal Consultant

Do you know that many large organizations such as Intel Technology Corporation, the giant manufacturer for CPU and chipset have a legal department in the company? Corporations have a variety of problems that require them to have an attorney or a team of attorneys on staff. They provide legal consultancy to the company on labor negotiations, tax law, investment, public releases, product manuals, public announcement notes, public release news and other legal related activities. You can start you career as a legal consultant to a corporate with your law degree. If you want to involve in business field with a law degree, then, you should choose a law degree that consists of courses in management or business administration besides the major law’s courses.

2. Evidence Law Consultant

If you have knowledge or have working in medical genetic field, then a law degree could provides a great help in your career. You could work as an evidence law consultant in courtroom, when a jury is presented with DNA evidence, your legal expertise is needed to help those member in the jury in solving many legal questions.

3. Wills & Trusts Writer

Many people have started to realize the important of having a will & trust in their estate planning. It’s a booming field as the market is exploring and it creates a good career opportunity for those students who are taking a law degree that major in this area. Today, a will is no long just a piece of paper with directives from a decreased individual. A living will has gained it popularity in today society. Such new and emerging market needs have created new career opportunity for the law degree students.

4. IP Consultant

Since the mergence of Internet has given rise to the need for experts related to the intellectual property (IP). If you are earning a law degree that major in Intellectual Property Law, you may start your career as an IP consultant. Software companies and companies with new products & technologies development will need your service to protect their IP right and resolve any copyright issue.

In Summary

Although most law degree students are having their careers with a law related job, but their workplaces are not limited to legal firm. Many businesses and companies require law expertise or legal consultant on staff. Hence, with the unlimited career opportunities available for law degree students, you do not need to worry about your future. Go ahead to pursue your preference law degree as your career opportunities are waiting for you.



Giga Flux

Introduction

We think Tourism represents a great deal for any state strategical development. We believe its diffusion and awareness must be so much present in formal as in informal education; thus, we will take over the law teaching issue in higher levels and oriented to tourism students.

From a historical perspective, it is not wrong to assert that Tourism syllabi, in South America in general and in our country in particular, are fairly new. And therefore the reflection on it remains, from a scientific point of view, in an embryonic state.

So recent is it that the UBA has not been able (neither it did not want to, nor has it not been allowed) to include a university academic offer . The first dilemma of the touristic career (still under debate) has been whether Tourism Ph.B., which comprehends hotel Management knowledge should be set forth, or it should be dealt with as two separate Ph.Bs with a common trunk. Although it is not our purpose to elucidate such an enigma, it is important to emphasize it, since it directly affects on any juridical subject content we should try to introduce.

We would also like to clear up that, previous to any discussion and for market reasons, Universities have come across the disjunctive as to incorporate careers related to hospitality industry into their faculties or departments. The second question was then: Where? Thus, some universities, chose a humanistic perspective and added them to their social sciences faculties . Others, from a more technical view, tended to attach them either to their Statistics department , or to the Geography department . The newest ones decided to create independent departments or faculties , others submitted their location to structural causes . And finally, there were institutions who, from an interpretation closer to management, set them in the Economics environment ; situation which, by the way, coincides with our country’s political definition .

But if it was such a problem to set the Tourism Ph.B. at Social Sciences Faculty, none the less problematic was it to set a Law subject into the respective Ph.B. degrees (Hotel Management or Tourism).

From the curricular layout beginnings, it seemed obvious that the normative subject, which gave unity to the whole vision of professional future, could not be absent from the sector’s regulatory frame. And although, to some extent, almost everyone agreed to set this knowledge in the last career grades, the main issues every subject should be based on were not usually dealt with, i.e.: What is taught?; how is it taught?; and what for?

No wonder just until a few years ago one could take any university program and notice that its core themes were some sort of fast and summarized Civil Law course, with some reference to Hotel Management laws and travel agencies. Nothing more contradictory or detached from the content, skills and appreciations students should incorporate during this stage of development. The underlying idea seems to have been: “Should there be a Law subject, we do not know how or what for; then let the lawyer who gives it place its content”. And thus we have seen such nonsense as Tourism students trying to elucidate the right-possessor’s degree in a complex succession, or wondering about the differences between divorce and de facto separation or the like. Posed this way and stating the obvious, the experience has become frustrating for everyone.

It is not difficult to think this problem could be avoided, had they taken similar and tested pedagogical experiences as reference. Such as, for example, Law teachers from Economics and vice versa who long ago had to work getting over this kind of obstacles for the sake of a holistic vision.

The Law is not some panacea for all sector’s evil, nevertheless it soothes, modulates and directs them. And since we are dealing with a transverse activity as Tourism, it is sensible insert this subject at the end of the academic studies. The Law will work as an engine or as a hindrance, depending on how we build it as participating citizens.

WHAT

Following the test period two inquiries were made: 1) Is there some subject we can call: “Tourism Law” or are we just facing one of the many activities which require some specific regulation? And, after that 2) from which content should the very subject layout spring?

For the first question some authors (they certainly followed the Saxon Travel Law trend of thought) risked the first hypothesis focusing on the “travel agent” actor as the main generator of new contractual figures, so Puig andVitta were able to assert the existence of a “…Tourism Law which is no longer framed in the traditional Civil or Commercial Law matrixes that is only partially concealed by the Navigation Law in both its species aerial and maritime”. Nevertheless, we think that in order to define the autonomy of a branch of the Law, it is necessary to discover whether the principles which govern it are axiologically original so that they make up a complete and closed systematic juridical construction, and make it unnecessary to appeal to the principles of another branch .

As we can see, the debate, still open, goes beyond an academic whim; since whether we choose one posture or the other it will suit the curricular development.

The second question also had dissimilar answers;

1) some understood they should assume students counted or should count on a solid civic formation which allows them to fully go into the different meanings of the law.

2) others proposed that although this was what “it should be” it was not what they perceived within the classroom; therefore the proposal was to “recover” the knowledge to frame the activity. That is to say, I can not develop or expose the “Law” theme if the student lacks the basic notions of “State”, “Nation”, etc…

3) a minority (probably more pressed by a limited time schedule than by curricular academic needs) tended to go straight to content nucleus; mentioning maybe during the process, but leaving it to the student’s initiative, the reconstruction task or the basic concepts incorporation.

HOW

Avoiding the pedagogical debate on whether content determines methodology or not; let’s admit at least they condition it. From our point of view, there are three factors that help in the way of teaching:

A) Teacher’s formation; the subject as given by lawyers bears their formation’s virtues and faults. This is because there are few or no Tourism and Law specialization courses; therefore this demand can not be reached with foreign proposals which obviously suit their own country’s legislations.

B) The institutional. In a structural sense on two levels;

1) From a macro-level variables can be:

i. “time schedule”,

ii. “duty”,

iii. “Level” (University or Further Education) will operate as filter and selection when it comes to establishing curricular priorities and

iv. “Setting” the career regarding the faculty or department it belongs to. Put in other words: if the tourism Ph.B. belongs to a Natural Sciences faculty or department its subject content in general, and the juridical ones in particular can be different from another one which belongs to an Economics faculty.

2) “Institutional culture” also prevents the subject from being dealt with as a water-tight box, but be into gear with others which are a key issue in the global problem interpretation. Thus Tourism Policies, Social Tourism, Programmed Learning, etc. feed and are fed by the normative.

C) The Political. Programs can not merely be a laboratory’s production, or a more or less lucid result of a couple of professionals´ experience. They should be a scientific and academic production reflecting and framed into a wider and serious political proposal, and giving the sector a real “state policy” status, highly above occasional speech and in harmony with the OMT directives to which we belong.

To sum up: The strategies we have been looking through are diverse and deserve to be considered without dogmatism, as follows:

1) Several European programs in general and Spanish ones in particular have dealt with the issue from the different Law branches, so it is not odd to find a “Tourism Private Law” or a “Tourism Public International Law”, etc.

2) In our country, following our treatise writer’s tradition, some have established a General Part and a Particular Part; it is as much as saying that while the first one involves the subject’s founding concepts, the second one aims at the specific themes (Hotel Management, agencies, etc.)

3) Some teachers have focused on Law transmission, others have thought of the traditional case method and some of us have opted for mixed techniques.

4) But even if it is difficult to know where to start from, so it is to know where to arrive at. We have seen some complex proposals including trade issues, such as “Time shares”, which although they are closely connected to the touristic phenomenon, it is not thus since they compel us to long juridical considerations in order to comprehend them all. In other proposals it is worrying the lack of themes such as “Natural and Cultural Heritage” by understanding they exceed the required for the professional formation. We shall disagree with such an opinion, since we consider it axial in the subject into which every notion of “sustainability” fits.

WHAT FOR

“First in the intention, last in the execution”, as the old saying goes. The what-for-answer is usually given in that which some teachers call “objectives”, nevertheless most of the times its formulation may be so open and general that it produces ambiguity.

Who utters this first statement? Who outlines each subject’s objectives? : the University. How? Going to the polls with the teacher, with the specialist (or at least they should) Where? In the subject’s outline first, and in the general incumbencies afterwards. Why? By proxy.

With a dubious legislative technique, the 24.521 Higher Education Law, in its 42nd Article speaks of “competences” and delegates their resolution to university institutions. This has produced a chaos of overlapping careers (e.g. Guides) or confusion (e.g. between Tourism Ph.B and hotel Management Ph.B.). This could be solved just by declaring the career of “public concern”. This status compels both the Ministry of Education as well as the Council of universities to specify any careers professional incumbencies. Thus, giving some part to the CONEAU (National Commission of Evaluation and University Accreditation) in the institutional qualification, misleading academical offers could be avoided and the profession would be appraised as of those proposals having the minimum required quality. (That is why, no matter how difficult state supervision is for the private sector, several universities have been struggling for the career to be declared of “public concern”).

As verbally expressed, the somehow shared objectives (neither exclusive nor excluding) arising from the different programs are:

Cognitive:

1) To master the Law basic concepts

2) To relate the different social types with any enterprise’s juridical frame

3) To analyze jurisprudential cases

Procedural:

4) To diagnose responsibility regulations in particular situations

5) To decide whether to appeal to the judicial system and/or to the alternative systems of conflict solution

6) To apply and cooperate with the making of the different sector’s contract modalities

Appreciative:

7) To show interest in the cultural and natural heritage

To work interdisciplinary

9) To show respect for the rules

Sitting from the other side, students also have their own perception on the different answers. They usually give us some hints in the annual poll (always so significant):

A) For life

B) For the completion of my professional formation

C) For determining whether I will need a lawyer or not

D) For being able to count on another management tool

As we can see and despite generalization, institutions and students are not (at least on this point) so disconnected. Civic knowledge is indeed useful and necessary at any instance of citizenship, but in the context of a Tourism career it becomes unavoidably instrumental.

Thus, such an activity, intended to be a model and a development impeller, implies respect for the regulatory frame it is embedded in. Not because (as we said at the beginning) it is going to solve its problems, but because any activity dealt with a “fair play” has greater growth opportunity and generates inversion.

OUR PROPOSAL

- We think it should be talked about a Tourism Applied Law from a multiplicity of actors;

- That certain real deficiencies students normally “drag” from Technical school should be replaced, and therefore this requires an average time schedule;

- That as long as we invest on research, it will be possible to develop subject content;

- That it is necessary to generate academic forum and a courses offer which allows the completion of teacher formation lawyers need to give a multidisciplinary approach;

- That curricula must, without losing originality, integrate with the State’s general planning; and this planning should also articulate with the OMT guidelines;

- That the Tourism Ph.B. career should be proposed as of “public concern”, giving it study level hierarchy and removing shady-zones from its “competences”.



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