Anyhoo.While we were there, we noticed two things on the menu that we want to go back and try. One is these fried avocado thingies. Like french fries, but instead of potatoes it’s avocados. RIGHT?! That’s a must-try item right there. The other thing we saw and drooled over was these chocolate turtle empanada thingies. Dough (YUM) filled with chocolate (yum), caramel (yum), and pecans (meh), then fried (YUM) and rolled in cinnamon sugar (yum), then drizzled with more chocolate (yum) and caramel (yum) and served with vanilla ice cream (yum).

So we decided that we’re going back later this week to eat those two things specifically. Like maybe Wednesday or Thursday night.

Monday afternoon I told Ninja Kid about our plans to chow down on this food later this week. But when I told her about the chocolate turtle empanadas, she gave me a really funny look. Like a kindof scared look.

Instead of this:

(source)

She thought I was saying this:

(source)

in

(source)

turtle in pinatas.

Ew.

These are in no particular order.

1. Take a felony murder case as my very first trial and then brag on Facebook when the judge declares a mistrial, without noting that the mistrial was due to my incompetence.
2. Refuse to ask for help on a case if I’m in over my head.
3. Sue the Internet when people say mean things about me.
4. Hire a law clerk when what I really wanted was an errand girl/refrigerator stocker/organizational expert/secretary.
5. Post sexiface pictures of myself on the Internet.
6. Dispense unsolicited, douchey-smug advice to bar exam takers about the reasons why people fail.
7. Make TV appearances for the purpose of trashing fellow defense lawyers.
8. Brag about my grades in law school. (This is really a moot point because frankly my grades are not much to brag about, but there are some a few maybe 25 people out there with worse grades than mine and I don’t want to sound uppity.)
9. Have a law-related vanity license plate.
10. Fail to listen to my gut instinct. It’s rarely (if ever) led me down the wrong path.

Neither one of us is sentimental about it. Yet. And maybe neither of us will ever be. Ninja Kid has gotten a lot of benefit from being in this dance company but she finds it increasingly less challenging as she becomes one of the more senior dancers in the group. And you guys, she’s just like me: if she’s not challenged by it, she’s not very interested in it. So she’s ready to move on. She still loves dance; she just needs someone to push her and inspire her and sortof kick her ass and get her motivated.

Ninja PawPaw (that’s my dad, for you noobz) is going with us, too, just like he has every summer for the past four summers. Ninja PawPaw is usually grumpy and in fact purchased and proudly wore a Grumpy Dwarf T-shirt the year we went to Disneyland for a different dance competition. Ninja PawPaw really didn’t like Disneyland. Huh.

Anyway.

Where Ninja PawPaw lives is just about an hour or so out of the way from the route we’re taking, so we’ll stop by and pick him up and then driiiiiiiiive and driiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive and driiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive some more. Now Ninja PawPaw really likes to yell at people in other cars when they exhibit substandard driving skills (which is like 94% of the time) and calls them names like “moron,” pronounced MOE-RON. Sometimes he will even embellish the name a bit and call someone a “moronican,” pronounced MOE-RON-IH-KUN. That’s how you know someone’s driving REALLY poorly. Three years ago, we were driving from Myrtle Beach to Raleigh-Durham to catch a plane and Ninja PawPaw was especially irritated with a shitty driver who had an Obama bumper sticker so he called that guy an “Obama MOE-RON.” I had been dozing off but that woke me up and I laughed until I had tears rolling down my face and my stomach hurt.

We’re going to be in the car together for four solid days—two going, and two coming home. That’s a lot of togetherness, folks. But I’m super excited about getting to see a lot of country that I’ve never seen before, even if we’ll be passing through at lightning speed to try to get where we’re going on time.

And just think of all the blog fodder.

The first time I decided to go to law school was back in 2006. I was living in Seoul, South Korea and as my teaching contract waned, I decided to get serious about my career prospects.

I picked up some study resources a few months in advance of my exam date and hit the books.Though at the time, hitting the books meant mostly drinking watered down Korean beer and soju (rice wine) in copious amounts.

Some exam preparation probably would have helped. Come test time you could count on one hand the number of hours I’d committed to my new potential career path. Add to the mix that the night before the examination I had mixed myself into a drunken stupor and failure was imminent. I’m pretty sure I made it to the exam on time but with a pound in my head that sounded like Kim Jong Il on closed circuit television. I barely made it through the exam without nodding off. To no one’s surprise including my own, my score was horrendous.

That Was Then

At the time, law school seemed a noble pursuit. I was, after all, an English major. Well equipped to do very little professionally at the time other than tell people when asked what I might do with that “I think I’ll go to law school.” It was a great way to dodge an otherwise serious inquiry. I waited a few years and took a more serious stab at the exam in 2010 and scored infinitely higher. This past spring my wife and I moved to North Dakota where I currently plan to matriculate in the fall.

But even as far back as 2004 the idea was probably smarter than it is today. That was pre-recession as you recall and graduates were sort-of-kind-of finding work at the time. Today though, the landscape has markedly changed. As I countdown the weeks until school begins, I can’t help but be plagued by reservation and doubt. Is this the kind of debt I want to take on at age 30? Will there be jobs waiting for me on the other end? The noise on the subject online and in publications is less than reassuring.

More Schools, More Problems

The trickle of this economic recession did not discriminate. Firms large and small across the US were hit hard. Approximately 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs at large firms have vanished since 2008 according to a Northwestern Law study. (And that was pre-pre recession). Yet the number of law schools over the past few decades has increased at a rapid rate. I’ll leave the discussion of whether the legal field has reached its own saturation point, but it doesn’t take a economist to realize that increasing numbers of new attorneys leaves a scary looking job market.

What’s clear is that in the past 20-30 years educators began to discover the economic boomtown of higher education. There were (are) serious bucks to be made. Around 43,000 law degrees were handed out in 2009, 11 percent more than a decade earlier. Yet the jobs aren’t really there. My father, a solo attorney, has said since I was a young boy that the last thing the world needs is more attorneys. Many people pursue a degree in the same way masses buy lottery tickets; hoping to cash in with that six figure plus job straight out of school.

But in the past few years, new law schools have been popping up like little franchises hoping to cash in. Only in the past year has the number of people entering law school taken a hit. 2011 statistics from the Law School Admission council show an 11.5 percent drop in admissions. This is the first marked drop since 2001 and can be heavily attributed to borrowers and lenders alike unwilling to handout/take money as casually as they did pre-recession.

The good news? Fewer people are going which would, in a normal climate, translate into more jobs. But these are hardly normal times. With unemployment at a crushing 7-10% nationwide, it’s no news to anyone these days that finding a job isn’t what it used to be.

The news from recent graduates echoes this reality. Numerous blogs written by recent grads lament the current climate. Yet the number of schools is still on the rise as well as the cost of going. This seems unsustainable.

Why I Probably Shouldn’t Go

Now, a normal person would consider the reality before them and say to themselves “Self: That’s a no brainer. I think I’ll pass.” But I have been wrestling with this decision for a long time. Part of me wants to go. I think the legal field is wildly fascinating and vast and can be lucrative should you land one of these jobs. Even so, if I go, I don’t think that’s the route I’ll take.

Let’s peek at the numbers. An average law student will leave law school with an average of $70-80,000 in debt. I think this number is pretty conservative when you factor in tuition and living expenses. So let’s say $75,000. Not too bad. But with an 6.8% interest rate you’re likely to get on the bulk of an unsubsidized graduate student loan at that changes things. Let’s also say 300 payments (25 years) which is the max amount of payments for government Stafford loans. Here’s what we get:

A loan of 75K results in interests rates well over $80,000. If your jaw isn’t on the floor it should be. Crunching more numbers and we can see law school costs more than double the amount taken out in loans.

Now that I’m 30, it doesn’t seem financially wise to take on such a heavy amount of debt. After all, anybody with student loans or a mortgage knows that even with relatively low interest rates, you’re biting off more than you’d like to chew.

Until recently I had all but signed the loan papers to start my post-graduate education in law. Perhaps cold feet is common. Maybe that’s what I’m experiencing. But the more I think about it the harder decision it becomes. Had I considered this before? Absolutely. But it’s a difficult decision to be sure. At 20 years old, maybe it was a good idea. But at 30, it’s a bit harder to rationalize.

Leading up to this decision all the stars seemed to be aligned. I was accepted, my wife found immediate work that allowed us to move, and some family friends graciously allowed us to rent their extra property. Late this spring it seemed like a really great idea. But as the day nears the thought of shouldering additional higher education debt has me mired in indecision.

Why I’ll Probably Still Go

Regardless of these and other scary numbers, there’s a value on this profession and education in our society. The legal profession is intellectual labor and at the very least puts you in a career classification that people still seem to respect. Plus, the jokes alone. I mean come on – hard to pass up.

Do I want to pay for law school? Absolutely not. Do I think that despite the financial hardship I’m signing up for that new doors will be opened? Yes. I do have a notion (unrealistic or not) that having the degree will afford me certain opportunities. Whether that’s in the private or public sector I’m not sure. Will I find work right after graduation or have to forge a more difficult path on my own? Who knows? One thing is clear: law school is a risk. As my deadline nears I’m forced to look at some big questions about which path I’ll choose. Either way, risk abounds. I’m trying to remind myself that in this situation as in life, there is no right answer.

“If you wait to do everything until you’re sure it’s right, you’ll probably never do much of anything.” Win Borden

Sean Marrin blogs at A Simpler Life.

**********

Want to write a guest post for law school ninja? Email me at masterninja[at]law-school-ninja[dot]com. You can publish under your name or anonymously, whichever you prefer.

Then we put our flip-flops back on and get in the hot car and maybe go have a drink and a bite to eat, and everybody is happy because we’ve been surrounded by beautiful things for a while, in perfectly accessorized houses with good smells and new appliances and fresh paint in the most updated colors and furniture in the most current styles.

And then we get back in the hot car again and drive home.

To our imperfectly accessorized and eclectically furnished home built in the late 1980s, with country blue wallpaper in the dining room and bright brass fireplace cover and an omnipresent layer of dust on all surfaces. To our dark green carpet in the bedrooms that desperately needs replacing and our smallish bedrooms and our even smaller closets. To our kitchen with its dated, mismatched appliances and formica countertops and not nearly enough cabinet space. Oh, and don’t forget the laundry closet. Yes, it’s a closet. Not even a room, just a closet.

Sigh.

I like my house a lot, except at Parade of Homes time. Every year it gives me the fever. I want a new house and all new furniture. Usually the feeling passes after a few days because my rational self (yes, I do have one, jerkfaces) realizes that all that stuff costs money, which is something my mother always told me does not grow on trees, although I may or may not have planted a dollar bill in the back yard last spring just in case she’s wrong.

This year may be different, though. I may not get over it this time. Several facts have been brought to my attention in a short period of time and this has resulted in an acute and very severe exacerbation of new-house fever.

1. The extra house payment I’ve been making every year has increased the amount of equity I have in my house by more than I’d thought it would.
2. The selling prices of houses in my neighborhood are higher than I thought they were.
3. Current interest rates are a full 1.65 percentage points lower than what I currently have financed.

What this all means, for those of you who don’t jump to conclusions as easily as I do, is that I could, in theory, have a house worth twice what my current house is worth for almost the exact same monthly payment that I’m making right now. Which means easily another 500+ square feet, another bedroom and maybe another bathroom, newer appliances, updated floors and walls, and a real pantry. AND A REAL LAUNDRY ROOM.

You guys. Don’t even try to talk me down.

Sometimes you plan for things to happen a certain way. And sometimes unexpected things fall in your lap, and that’s good. But sometimes your lap can’t hold all the things that have fallen in it, and what you should do is pick one thing to take out of your lap so that you can keep the other things. But you don’t do that. Instead, you think I’ll just make all these things fit in my lap because dammit I want all these things. And maybe they all fit for a little while, but eventually something drops to the floor and shatters and you realize you had way too many things in your lap.

When I planned out my 2L schedule, I knew I would be taking 16 hours each semester and writing at least one appellate brief for competition. Early in my 2L fall semester, a job opportunity landed in my lap and I snapped it up. I hadn’t planned on clerking anywhere during the school year so I hadn’t scheduled classes with that in mind. But I figured that getting practical experience by clerking would be super beneficial to my future career, so even though I wasn’t quite sure how I’d fit another part-time job (I’ve had one all along, not law-related) into my schedule, I decided I’d be crazy not to just find a way to make it work.

So. I’ll just go ahead and say it: I fucked up. Big time. As in, I got fired from my clerking job.

This actually happened back in March, and I’ve wanted to blog about it, but I wanted to make sure I could be fair and objective, not reactionary.

What it boiled down to is that I had too much going on, and I was unable to give my employers the time commitment they needed. And what I’ve learned from this is that if you try to do too many things at once, you end up doing none of them very well, which is certainly not a tolerable state of affairs. I am not a mediocre person. Mediocrity is unacceptable; I don’t like to have to settle when I fail to meet my expectations of myself.

I know a young attorney in another town who went solo about a year and a half ago. As is common practice, she got on every appointment list that she could in her county and in a lot of surrounding counties. Sure enough, the clients started rolling in, and my friend had plenty of work to do. In fact, it didn’t take very long at all for her to realize that she had more to do than she really wanted. She had so many open cases that she felt like she was having to give them all short shrift just to keep her head above water. Worried that she was going to royally screw up a client’s case, she started withdrawing from appointment lists one by one, so that now she is no longer on any lists. She’s just finishing up the cases she had going and wants to concentrate on taking paying clients for a while. She wants to be able to focus on a particular case more fully, she says. I don’t know if this is a great idea, but it’s illustrative of the fact that taking on too much is a bad idea for everybody involved–you, your family and friends, your miscellaneous obligations, and, most importantly, your clients.

Of course, what constitutes “too much” is different for everyone. But really, if you think about it, you know when you’re over-obligated. In retrospect, I knew I shouldn’t have taken that job. I simply didn’t have the time. But I managed to convince myself that I could make it work, and then my ego and reality collided and I discovered that I am not, in fact, invincible.

I’m very sorry that I let my employers down. I let myself down, too. But I am glad, in a way, that this happened now rather than 18 months into my solo career, like my friend. I’ve tried to turn this into a learning experience and I think I’ve got the gist of the lesson now, and fortunately no clients were harmed in the making of this epiphany.

Don’t overbook your life. You are not infallible. Sometimes your lap just isn’t big enough to hold all the things you want it to.

Before I started law school, I decided to take a law school preparation course. This course was supposed to be a crash course on what to expect during your first year of law school.  In addition, the course was to teach you how to brief a case and do legal research. For those of you who have already been accepted to law school, this may be something that you’re contemplating. The following is my personal opinion regarding a law school prep course.  Furthermore, I will not reveal which prep-course I took because there are many out there. The cost of these prep courses can vary depending on the company and what it entails so I would advise you to think it over carefully.

As someone who has always been a B+ average student, I wanted to get that A. This was especially true because law school is so competitive and the job market is so low right now. I wanted that advantage, so I decided to look into a law school prep course.  I researched as much as I could, but there was not much on the web about the topic. I asked myself: Why not spend a little bit of cash and get that added advantage over the other students?

So I took a week off from work, non-paid. The course covered all the same core courses that most 1L students take their first year of law school. A mock-classroom experience was held where we got cold-called upon, while we were also expected to read and brief cases. Did the program accomplish what it claimed it would? Did it give me insight on what to expect? Did it show me how to brief a case? Did it show me how to do legal research? Yes, it did everything it advertised it would accomplish.

I’ll get straight to the point. Did it personally help me to get that extra edge? Did it give me that extra advantage that I needed in order to get an A in each and every class? No.

However, I did not follow the program to a “T”. The course had outlined a certain study-pattern, but the truth is that everybody has his or her own way of studying.  I know some people that read every night, I know some that read every other night, I know some that read only on weekends, and I know some that don’t read at all. You have to develop your own way to study. There is no right way, because we all learn differently.  I developed my own way of studying and everyone had their preferred method of studying, and I’m sure you will find your own.

Should you take a course like this? That decision is up to you.

The school may give you a quick lesson on how to brief a case, or you may ask an upper classmen or a friend, but trust me – you will learn quickly.  As far as legal research, there will be LexisNexis and WestLaw student reps at your campus and you will also have an account rep that gives you tutorials, so you will learn how to do all of that as well.

You can read a book on what to expect, you can talk to law students, you can go to a law school fair, a law school open house, or sit in on a class; and I recommend that you do all of the above.  The truth is that nothing can prepare you for the fight that law school gives you.

I would compare it to someone who isn’t a runner, but plans on running a marathon, so they go talk to runners.  They have an idea of what’s going to happen, you start your stride, your heart rate goes up, your legs get tired and your lungs start to ache.  So now you have the idea, you think, “I’m ready for this, I got this.”  Then, once you start running that marathon and you are halfway into the run, you think, “It’s ok I expected this.”  Then you realize that this marathon is longer than you thought, you didn’t expect to be this tired, you didn’t expect for it to hurt your lungs this much.  You knew it would hurt but you didn’t think it would hurt this much.  It’s good to get an idea, but when you get here you will find out for yourself.

Jose blogs at Law of Jose.

Shut up. I like Applebee’s. They have a salad that I really like with grilled shrimp and avocados and bacon and cheese, and it’s delicious. And it’s not expensive. So there.

Next to our table was a big table made out of a bunch of little tables pushed together. At that big table sat about seven or eight adults and three kids. There were cupcakes in the middle of the table, so I presume it was someone’s birthday. The kids were young; the oldest was probably three. NK and I had gotten a fair way into our dinner when I thought, You know, those little kids sure are quiet. And everybody knows that a quiet kid is quite possibly a doing-something-he’s-not-supposed-to kid. So I was curious.

Upon more careful inspection, it turns out the kids weren’t being particularly well behaved so much as they were well entertained. You see, someone’s parents had brought the portable DVD player and the two older kids were watching a movie.

At the dinner table.

In a restaurant.

You guys. I realize Applebee’s is not some highbrow, super-classy establishment serving fine cuisine to the city’s upper echelon. But really? You needed to bring a movie for your kids to watch while they ate dinner at a restaurant? I almost don’t even know where to begin with this. Almost.

I’m not even going to bitch about the amount of TV that kids watch. It’s too much, in general, and anybody with more than two synapses firing at once knows that already. Sometimes it’s okay to let your kids watch TV. Even mindless TV is okay in moderation, depending on the age of the kid. I, too, am guilty of having allowed the TV to babysit my kid on more than one occasion. It happens. Nobody’s perfect.

But no matter where you fall on the TV-watching spectrum, in no universe is it okay to bring a movie to a restaurant for your kids to watch while they stuff themselves full of french fries and chicken fingers, just so they will stay quiet and out of your hair while you catch up with your friends.

If your kids are too young to behave themselves at a restaurant for an hour, do not bring them to a restaurant. Leave them at home with a babysitter, or stay home with them and have your friends come over to your house instead of going out. Failing or refusing to teach your kids how to sit still and endure an event that doesn’t revolve around them is lazy and irresponsible, and you’re certainly not doing your kids any favors.

So Osama bin Laden is dead. I mean, I definitely did like 457 fist pumps and said a whole bunch of joyous cuss words when the news came out. I like it when America gets the bad guy. It’s a good day for the country, for both (yes, both) Presidents who’ve led the country since 9/11/01, and for our military. There’s been a whole bunch of navel-gazing on Twitter and elsewhere about whether we should have celebrated his death. I think that’s a valid point. Remember after 9/11 when the footage was released of Palestinians dancing in the streets in celebration of the terror attacks against us? Yeahhhh. That didn’t feel so great. In fact, I was outraged by it. Is that the moral equivalent of Americans taking to the streets in celebration of OBL’s death? I don’t know, really. You could draw a distinction in that on 9/11 innocent people died, in contrast to a military operation targeting an enemy of the state. When I think about it that way, I don’t see it as morally equivalent. But when I think of how it looks to other countries around the world (who are ALWAYS watching, you know), well, I think maybe that’s not the best image we could have projected. What do you think?

This summer we are traveling to the following places: Colorado Springs, San Antonio, Myrtle Beach, and some lake outside of Austin. Give me all your recommendations for restaurants and places to go/things to see.

Does it seem like people are a whole lot dumber than they used to be? Sometimes people say the dumbest things. It’s increasingly difficult for me to avoid snarky responses. Is this a consequence of old age? (Hey. Tread carefully here. The correct answer is along the lines of Old age? What would you know about old age, Ninja? You can’t be a day over 25!)

Late last week, a high school classmate and friend of mine shot himself. He died on Sunday. I don’t know why he did it. I feel like he is at peace now, and I feel like he was really troubled for a long time. I know that there are a lot of sad people who loved him and wish he hadn’t ended his own life. That’s the thing, when you kill yourself. You’ve solved your problems, for sure, but you’ve created a lot more for the people who are left behind. I would think that if you ever actually got to the point that you were *seriously* considering suicide (and I don’t mean taking 8 Tylenol PM tablets and announcing it on Twitter or Facebook, but really, seriously considering it), you’d also have to be to the point where you just don’t care that much about anyone but yourself. Because otherwise, how could you do it? I wonder what it’s like to get to that point where nothing matters except for your own problems. And I wonder how horrible those problems must be for them to completely overtake an entire life. How terrifying must it be to believe that there is literally no escape from your problems except by death, and damn the consequences? I can’t imagine, and I don’t want to find out. I’m not trying to be insensitive here, really. Mostly I’m just rambling and processing. You can tell me I’m out of line if you think I am.

I saw this today and it made me giggle.

NINJA KID: I realllllly like those new Baked Lays we got at the store. Omnomnomnom.
ME: Really? I don’t like them at all. I’ve tried to snack on them twice and I just don’t like them.
NK: Is it because they’re baked, or what? Why don’t you like them?
ME: No, I really like baked chips; it’s not that. It’s the flavor or something.
NK: I love the flavor! I can’t believe you don’t like them!
ME: Well, I get that they’re going to taste a little different since they’re baked and all, but I don’t understand why they can’t just use the same seasoning on baked chips as they do on regular chips.
NK: [confused look]
ME: I mean, if they use a certain combination of spices and salt and such on regular Lays Sour Cream & Onion chips, why can’t they use that same combination of spices and salt on the baked version? Why would they change it up? These chips don’t taste like Sour Cream & Onion flavor AT ALL. NOT ONE BIT. And I don’t like them.
NK: Mom? We didn’t buy the Sour Cream & Onion Baked Lays. Remember? We bought Parmesan and Tuscan Herb. That’s what they’re supposed to taste like.
ME: [meanface]