trudiannracquel

Category: Law & Law School

  • ACTUAL COSTS of attending Law school in Canada

    A concise list of how much I’ve spent on applying to Law school (so far) and what I anticipate I’ll have to spend. This will be constantly updated as I go through the application process, and all prices are in Canadian dollars.

    Signing up for the LSAT – $222 (twice, since I didn’t do my LSAT in August as planned. This blog post explains why)

    ~ Purchasing additional online tests through the LSAC website

    Materials for studying (for my self-study) – The LSAT Trainer ($64.99); 10 Actual, Official LSAT Tests ($48.25 + $61.62 + $38.42 + $3.99 [this was thrifted])

    The Official LSAT SuperPREP – $3.99 [thrifted]

    Each school’s application fee on the OSLAS website

    Request for transcripts (I’ve been to 4 post-secondary schools)

    Travel to Forums/Info sessions/School Tours

    Running Total = $665.29

  • What to DO BEFORE you apply to Law School

    Welcome back to another post! Today, we’ll explore some things I found helpful to do BEFORE applying to each law school.

    This list might be a bit extra for some. When the goal is law school, why would you want additional stress when the LSAT is already stressful enough? However, where you attend law school might change whether you even continue studying law. The environment you’ll be in, the people you’re surrounded by and how your school is set up can help you all play into your success. As a forward-thinking person, I’ve looked into many things before starting the application process. For context, all law school applications in Canada open by mid-September and all will be closed on or before December 1. I will also be taking the LSAT in October to give myself the chance for improvement in November or January. That said, I take everything I choose to spend my time and money on very seriously. And three years in a long time to be in a place you don’t like. Imagine being in high school all over again, except it’s even harder to transfer and if you fail, there are no alternate pathways such as a GED.

    Law school is serious business. Besides figuring out why law and why law school, here’s what I’m doing before I select a school to apply to:

    Attend school-specific info sessions/workshops. They’ll tell you what’s unique about their program, the make-up of the staff and faculty, the resources available for students and pre-students, the courses you’re taking, and what may/may not stand out on an application to their school. I’m documenting my experiences on my YouTube channel of the sessions I think were most helpful in my application journey. I would even check the websites of schools you’re not interested in to see if they have free sessions you can attend that will help you in the process.

    Review each law school’s website. Do they have clubs? Do they have mental health services? Mentoring? What types of waves have they made in the field of law? If it’s important to you, do they have some dedicated to diversity and equity and can you see this in their photos or their application categories?

    Attend LSAC info session/Forums. I didn’t even know these existed until I saw them on a university’s website. According to the LSAC, you’ll usually be able to interact with people from many or all the law schools in your country. I would suggest you come up with questions specific to each school, and my blog post concerning those is here (it will be posted next week). Make a good impression and present yourself as you wish to be remembered; you never know who you’ll see there. The one I’m attending should also give us law school application tips and access to free resources on the LSAC website. Again, my experience will be documented in as much detail as I’m comfortable giving on my YouTube channel.

    Tour the schools you’re interested in. This will be difficult for some people, especially if you’re like me and some of the schools are in a different province. I would advise checking on YouTube if other students or the school have put up tours of the buildings and the layout of the campus. Here, you will see what the professors are like and what the students are like. Are they stressed out, or knowledgeable and what do they say about school/life balance? Is the location of the school convenient? Is it a campus you imagine yourself in? How far are classes from each other? How does distance play into walking to classes or the library in the winter? Do you feel safe there? What about commuting? All of these questions are important to your law school experience.

    Email their JD Admissions or Student Ambassadors for any questions you may have. For example, my undergraduate program was three years online, and I needed to ensure they would accept this as their academic requirements. I also sought help on which avenue to apply and advice regarding my references. My next step, once I’m about to select schools in my application, will be to email students about their 1L experience. Ask as many questions as you need, and don’t be afraid to. People are there to help.

    Have enough money saved for the application/studying process. Here is my blog post on the hidden costs. As I go through the process of applying on the OSLAS website, I will also be writing and updating this blog post on the actual costs of attending law school.

    Have basic business/professional things accessible and available. These will be needed for in-person forums, applying to law school and general preparation. I would propose (a) professional photos; Mine aren’t professional, but they meet the basics of most applications/photo requirements. (b) your updated resume – a version where the school is at the top (for the law schools) and a version where your work experience is at the top if you start applying for jobs/mentors. (c) your mission statement or 2 key things you want to hit on when people ask you why law.

    Finally, celebrate little wins. and big wins. And your decision to even start this challenging journey, because why did you even choose this life? LOL

    The next post will be what I asked of each law school before choosing them. It’ll be a list of things important to me. As a Black, first-generation female immigrant, what are the things that would be vital for my experience to go smoothly? Again, applying to law school is expensive and time-consuming. I would hate to waste my own time and the time of those who read my application.

    Take care,

    Trudi

  • Why I CANCELLED MY LSAT 1 WEEK BEFORE taking it

    If you’re at all familiar with the LSAT for 2023, you’ll know there are a lot of changes for this cycle of exams. In addition to new options, they partnered with a new proctor for those of us who choose to take the LSAT remotely/online. Aaaaand, we also know, if you keep with LSAT news, there was a catastrophe on Friday. However, before the meltdown of the LSAC website and Prometric, I had already decided to cancel my August LSAT exam date. Here’s why:

    I made it my identity

    I was approaching the LSAT in the wrong way. I made it my identity and not just the next step in a journey. I was forgetting myself and my own reasons for wanting to get into law school. Basically, I overwhelmed myself and put too much pressure on literally 3 hours of my life. If I did it, it would have just been for an ego boost to say “I can prep for 2 weeks for one the most important tests up to this point in my life”. Which, I cannot do.

    I wasn’t ready

    My practice test scores were still well below what I would want before feeling comfortable applying to law school. And in order to make up for the nerves you’ll feel and the mistakes you may make in exam conditions, you need to be scoring at least 2 points above your goal score for a few tests in a row. I was scoring a consistent 15+ points below my target.

    Burnout

    I just finished my Bachelor’s in Psychology 2 weeks prior to my exam date. Yay me! I don’t know what this is a symptom of, but I find it’s a bad habit of mine to overbook myself, be stressed out (and either become obsessive or enter zombie-zone) and then be upset at myself for booking important things so close to each other. I did not take the time to recuperate after studying for my final exams for my degree. And that reflected in how I was testing, even a week after my dedicated LSAT study.

    Skipping the Fundamentals

    If I’m being honest, I still didn’t understand basic concepts. And I didn’t know this gap in my knowledge existed until I started reading answers and wondering what some of the words mean. It was only a week before that I realized the difference between ‘fails to consider’ and ‘ takes for granted’. I didn’t feel comfortable doing most things in logical reasoning. When I started reading sometimes, my brain mushed words together and jumbled them. I also wasn’t as fast in reading comprehension as I could be. I’ve been reading and consolidating a lot for the past 3 years in academic contexts, so it was strange to realize that I’ve been reading wrong for the LSAT. I kept getting 1-2 questions wrong per passage and that’s not good enough. In the games section, while I’ve gotten way better at the skills required, I still struggle with new diagramming techniques because I hadn’t practiced often enough, and I kept getting 1 or 2 questions wrong per section. Again, not good enough for me.

    Saving my Self-Esteem

    Finally, my mental health and self-esteem would have plummeted. As I said, a lot of my identity was wrapped up in this test. However, I forgot that my identity is not a law student or future lawyer, it’s a representative of God. So if I had taken it in the headspace I was in, it would’ve felt like a reflection of me as a person, not a person taking the LSAT. I would’ve felt not smart, not good enough, even though the LSAT is simply a test of mental stamina and anybody could do well in it with enough practice. And if took it in that state and failed (which I would’ve), it would deter me from ever taking it again. Which means I’d never go to law school. And I believe that that’s where God is directing me towards.

    So why was I going in unprepared?

    I could’ve made up an excuse like “God does miracles with empty things”. Of course, he does. I have no idea how I even got into the university I’m in, or how I made it to graduation with all the external factors. But, he does miracles with people who he’s prepared. And if I’m being honest, I simply wasn’t prepared. I didn’t do even half of what I could do or what I’m capable of. I didn’t make it through enough practice tests, and drills, or even complete the study guide I bought. I wasn’t comfortable explaining concepts to myself, let alone working them out in a high-pressure situation.

    So, I made the decision to cancel. And knowing what I know now, I don’t think I could have made a better decision for myself and whoever I impact in the future.

  • The HIDDEN COSTS of Applying to Law School

    Good morning, fellow prelaw students! Welcome back to a new post!

    Unfortunately, you read that right. There are costs BEFORE you even consider paying for tuition, textbooks, or a townhouse if you’re fortunate.

    1. LSAT-specific Resources – This is the first thing everyone spends money on when they start their LSAT studying. Or any standardized test to get into a specialized program/field. As usual, there are books or programs you need to study with to create a study schedule, for explanations, for what to focus on, etc. Some people choose to do classes, which could be valuable depending on your learning style or what you’re comfortable with. I have a blog post here of LSAT resources I’ve used or am planning to use, both free and paid for.
    2. LSAC – This is where you need to take the LSAT, so it’s non-negotiable. The LSAT costs about $200, provided you don’t want to see your grades in advance or cancel your test if you don’t feel prepared or any other benefit I haven’t explored on the website. If you want access to extra practice tests (your sign-up gives you 4 in a simulated testing environment, as well as a sample essay question), you need a subscription of about $100.
    3. Applications – Hello and welcome to ‘I have to pay the province to get into the school.’ If you live in Ontario, there’s a standard $200+ fee on the OSLAS website, plus some schools require specific applications that they may have to pay for.
    4. Study supplements – My biggest surprise was how much food I’ve been eating. If you watch the YouTube chronicles of my time studying, you’ll see me get frustrated with eating almost every three hours. Intense concentration requires more brain work, apparently. The more your brain works, the more calories you use and the more you need to eat to supplement and ensure you build the stamina to keep going. And, you want to nourish yourself with good food, which costs more.
    5. Time – I saved enough money to apply for law school, finish my last semester of University and support my basic needs, including bills, for about a year. However, what I didn’t budget for was how long each application would take, how long it would take to write a good essay, to apply for multiple scholarships, to actually study, or even to ask professors for recommendations! All these things I never budgeted my time and energy for. And my mind was overloaded once I realized this.

    As you can see, there’s a lot more that goes into law school than just grades and LSAT scores. There’s a lot of pre-planning and sacrifice before you even get to step 3, so it really makes sense to make sure that’s what you want before you decide to start the journey.

    Hopefully, this post helped put things into perspective for you and helped you decide your law school journey.

    – HL

  • FREE LSAT RESOURCES for the Self-Study Student

    I have been studying for the LSAT on and off for about 3 months now. I plan to take the August 2023 LSAT and apply to law school for the Fall 2024 cycle. Fingers crossed I do well enough to make it into my top choice!

    For the way I learn, I need to have a schedule and a daily to-do list to keep me on track. I may not actually follow said list (which is why it’s taking me this long to study), but a visual spread of what needs to be done always helps. For that, I have used the LSAT Trainer by Mike Kim (3rd edition). The good thing about this is that you can view samples of chapters online, create study schedules according to how many weeks you have to study and he provides lots of supplemental resources on the site. This way you’ll be able to gauge if it’s worth your money since it is upwards of $80. I don’t have the financial resources to take a dedicated course and it has been years since I’ve been in a normal classroom setting, so the ability to go at my own pace and work in silence is golden.

    You also need to register on the LSAC website, which is where you’ll take your LSAT and communicate your scores to potential schools anyways. An initial sign-up is free and you get access to a few practice tests on the website. This is good because you’ll get the feel of how the LSAT is administered online if you’ve chosen the flex option. The flex option is when you can take it online, from home, and is new since COVID. In conjunction with the LSAT Trainer, and required to get the most out of his program, is the 10 Actuals books. We do drills from the 72-81 edition. And we do practice exams from the 82-89 edition.

    That’s it for required paid resources that I’e used. I also look in the thrift store for resources and there are usually a few books that are under $5. Now that that’s out of the way, here are the YouTube videos I’ve used so far to supplement my understanding, as well as a few apps that I have not yet tried out that come recommended. Also, some websites used the term ‘analytical reasoning’ instead of ‘logical reasoning’, however, they are the same. Note that most often, these videos may not have the specific question in the video because of copyright reasons.

    Videos I’ve used:

    LSAT Lab – for lecture style explanations (specifically for logical reasoning and logic games so far)

    Law School Grit – to explain ‘if’, ‘only if’ and ‘if and only if’ statements

    LSAT179com – to explain ‘either…or’ statements

    LSAT Unplugged & Law School Admissions Podcast – for help explaining specific games and diagramming (he does speak kind of fast though)

    LSATMax LSAT Prep – for help explaining specific games and understanding questions (she diagrams a little differently than the LSAT Trainer, but it’s still clear to me)

    Eric Wilson – for help explaining logic games (this one is my favourite recently)

    These videos helped me curate my study schedule and process:

    Banter with Babs – HOW TO STUDY effectively and her resources.

    Nadia Cianca – How I raised my LSAT Score (she talks about her resources and introduced me to the concept of blind review)

    Resources I have yet to try:

    KHAN Academy – to help with Logic Games. I have downloaded the app, so I’m currently using it just to refresh how to diagram games on the go. It does come recommended by the LSAC.

    PowerScore – to help with Reading Comprehension. I’m not sure if their resources are free, but they do have a podcast on Youtube and Spotify for specific LSAT tests administered.

    The LSAT Unlocked – no idea what this is yet, but if I still feel unprepared I may try to find it at the library/thrift store. *update: it’s not free or cheap, but it might be a replacement for LSAT Trainer if that book doesn’t vibe with you.

    7Sage – they have explanations for specific questions, which would be useful. But I just haven’t needed them yet.

     

    That’s it for now! I hope this helps to guide your studying a bit! I will update this blog post as I happen upon resources or videos that help me with specific things.

    Good Luck

    HerLife