Law Student

For years, law firm software has been overly complex, frustrating, time consuming, and difficult. Today, solo attorneys and small firms have better options. Non-law companies are offering software online, like Gmail and Zoho.  And now, even law firm software is available online.

The two big players in the online law firm software niche are Clio and Rocketmatter. This is a review of Clio, followed by a comparison to Rocketmatter and traditional law firm software. Read the rest of this Law Student article »

This article was submitted by a guest author, listed at the end of this article.

It’s that time of year again—back to school. Soon, you’ll be up to your nose in coursework, with little or no time for yourself, not to mention the lack of time and money that comes along with your quest for the coveted law degree.

No one understands the life of a law student like your fellow law students, so take a couple minutes (when you can) to catch up with some people who feel your pain. You may get some great ideas, or find solace in the fact that others are suffering more than you. Here’s a list of some blogs written for and by law students for your perusal.

1. Law Magazine Weblog: No one knows the travails of law students and lawyers like the folks at Law Magazine Weblog. For articles on the life of law students and lawyers, to news and features regarding the profession, take a look at this blog for insights from others who Read the rest of this Law Student article »

The Frugal Law Student blog won the Law School division of the ABA’s blog contest, “Top 100 law blogs in the country.” But the contest was not without drama. Read the rest of this Law Student article »

Regent University School of Law has a web page listing its law students’ blogs. This was the first time I had seen a law school that published a list of blogs run by its law students.

Does your law school have a blog directory listing law students’ blogs? If so, please leave a comment here with the link for other law students to enjoy.

If you have a blog and you are a law student, medical student, seminary student, or MBA student, maybe you posted your blog posts on Digg.com in hopes of getting thousands of visitors to your blog, getting filthy rich, and retiring to Silicon Valley.

Unfortunately, Digg caters to geek topics, and despite the fact that most graduate schools have plenty of geeks, it’s really tough to get a popular post on Digg.

As a side note, the only post from TopLawStudent that made it big on Digg was this one, and Digg sent over 7,000 visits in two hours, which crashed our law school blog for the rest of the day.

A possible solution has arrived: School Blog Vote is a new site where students can post their own blogs and vote on other students’ blogs.

Benefits

The benefit of School Blog Vote to student readers is—students can find great websites, blogs, and blog posts of interest to students.

The benefit of School Blog Vote to student bloggers is—more people will find their blog. And that means increased visitor traffic, something every student blogger desires.

Categories for Various Post-Graduate Students

School Blog Vote is categorized into sections for law students, medical school students, MBA students, seminary students, and undergraduate students. This is nice because seminary students probably have little interest in res ipsa loquitur. Of course, seminary students can always check out the law student section for juicy gossip, such as the law student who got naked for Playboy (news story).

Anonymous Voting

One nice feature of School Blog Vote is that the site allows voting without having to create an account first. Once you’ve voted, you can’t vote again (and artificially drive up the votes). This appears to be tied to your IP address, so in theory, students could login to mulitiple computers and vote multiple times. But seriously, how many students have that much free time? Okay, maybe some do, but I presume the administrators at School Blog Vote have a way of taking care of that. Anyway, I like that you don’t have to login to vote.

However, you do have to login to post to the site, which I suppose is necessary to prevent spam (no, I don’t want to read about “Buy Viagra Online” or “XXX Paris Hilton photos”).

Criticism

School Blog Vote is a great idea. It is also a new idea. The problem with new ideas on the web are 1) they may not have much traffic for a while and 2) they may never have much traffic.

Still, I think it’s a great idea for a few reasons. I have a hard time finding other law students’ blogs, and I presume that medical students, MBA students, seminary students, and undergrads might have the same problem. It’s even more difficult to find good blogs. At School Blog Vote, the good posts rise to the top based on reader’s votes.

Also, a site like this gives students an incentive to start a blog, since students can see the best of what other students are writing.

Finally, School Blog Vote rewards students who blog by driving traffic to their blogs, which often generates income through Adsense, Chitika, or other blog advertising programs.

See For Yourself

So if you you support the idea of encouraging students to blog, or if you are a blogger who wants more visitors, check out School Blog Vote.

Facebook.com has many excellent applications. The best Facebook applications are

featured and reviewed at www.BestFacebookApplications.com. If you are a Facebook.com fan who uses facebook applications, you will enjoy this blog launched by another law student.

The blog is run by Brett McKay, a law student who publishes the Frugal Law Student blog.

After my first law school semester, a friend tried to convince me to leave Microsoft Word and instead take notes with Microsoft OneNote 2003 (Old Version). I refused. Finally, I decided to give OneNote a try as a 2L. I had no idea it would be this good.

OneNote has every feature that a student would use in Microsoft Word plus so much more!

Record Your Professor Synchronized to Your Notes. One of the coolest features is how it can record your professor while you take notes. Then later when you click on a note, you can play the audio of your professor talking exactly when you typed that note. So on take-home exams, you can just scan your notes for key concepts on your exam and re-listen to your professor discuss those concepts.

Search Your Audio Recordings. The new version, OneNote 2007, includes a feature to scan your audio recording for Read the rest of this Law Student article »

UPDATE: Real Lawyers Have Blogs says that one law school graduate landed a job with a large firm by blogging.

NOTE: If you are a law student or attorney with a blog, please see the offer to promote your blog at the end of this post.**

As blogging becomes more popular, it is inevitable that law students will increasingly become bloggers. Still, this may be a little surprising considering the immense time pressures that law students face. However, maybe it is exactly that pressure that entices law students to have a blog. That is, maybe writing to a blog is a release of tension, much like journaling used to be.

Marketing
Blogs can also be a form of marketing. For example, Andrew Flusche started his blog, Read the rest of this Law Student article »