The Red Velvet Lawyer

And, the Number of Applicants Tends to Track the Number of LSAT Takers.   So . . . .  LSAC has now posted data on the number of LSATs administered at the December 2013 sitting.  As a commenter to a Faculty Lounge posting here , known as  "Former Law Review Editor,"  notes:   "Only 28,363 people took the December 2013 LSAT." I blogged about the historical data here .   For another summary of the historical data, by LSATs administered, look here . The recap: Date of Administration/Number of Takers Dec. 2013/28,363 Dec. 2012/30,226 Dec. 2011/35,825 Dec. 2010/42,096 Dec. 2009/50,444 (highest since 1987 when LSAC began keeping these records) Dec. 2008/43,646 You have to go back to 1997 to see this low level of Dec. LSAT takers (then, 29,879 takers).  It has never been lower since LSAC began keeping (or at least publishing) data on LSAT takers in 1987.   Jan.13, 2014 Update:  From the same comment thread by commenter, "Jesus Buddha Moh

Content, Permission, and Social Media Marketing:  What You Need to Know  to  Market Your Legal Services More Effectively As promised in an earlier posting , here is my list of recommended reading on content marketing.   Chris Brogan, Google+ for Business: How Google’s SocialNetworking Changes Everything (2013). Brogan explores this newer platform that allows you to follow influences (unlike Facebook where people must give you permission to follow them).   I joined it because I figure the Google bots were paying attention to the content (like my blog postings) that I reposted there.  I also follow Brogan through his website, http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ , which is very stylishly designed and includes an example of a “Valuable Free Offer” opt-in page.  By opting in, you get on his “list,” which then serves as permission for him to continue to engage with you.  He also has a podcast (available in iTunes) and blog . Kelby Carr, Pinterest Marketing for Dummi

Content Marketing,  the "Long Tail,"  and  Your Legal "Tribe" Last spring, I helped teach our law students about starting a solo practice.  I taught the session on marketing a law practice.  One thing I tried to do was update the so-called "old-fashioned" legal marketing techniques for a more web-based/technology-based strategy. Christine Kane, Gold Mastermind, and Up Level Your Business If we offer it again this spring, I could provide even more valuable advice for 3Ls because of the path I've been on this past year as a member of the Gold Mastermind training offered by Christine Kane through her Up Level Your Business coaching programs. One thing I said last year, that I would repeat this year is this.  We now have cheap ways to find our "tribe" and then provide members of that tribe with high quality content that does several things: Positions you as an expert in an area of law; Let's you tell your story in a mean

Refining the Data Analysis Further  and  Adding Assumptions The National Jurist , as promised, has followed up its December 2013 article (apparently no longer available if you don't have a subscription) with the data on which it relied to predict that an equilibrium between new legal jobs and new law grads would come in 2015.   Here is the link. This article also predicts jobs will exceed law graduates for the graduating class of 2016, but reaches that conclusion by applying an historic average for full-time employment in "bar-passage required" jobs of 69 percent. It says: The analysis by both [Profs. Young and Merritt] assumes that the number of [new] jobs remains flat and that the balance point between supply and demand is 100 percent full-time legal employment by graduates within nine months of graduation.  But since NALP began tracking data in 1985, the percentage of recent graduates who were employed in full-time legal jobs has never exceeded 84.5 p

Understanding and Solving Complex Environmental Issues This Cold Morning Schools and offices closed as the temperatures dipped to lows not seen in decades. Experts explained what was happening here and here .  A deep dip in the jet stream allowed the frigid cold and winds of the North Pole to descend far south.   This morning, my little micro-climate in the central Appalachian Mountains registered a temperature of nearly six degrees below zero.  My home town of St. Louis, inundated with a large snow fall and even colder temperatures, is reportedly "closed" today.  The entire city. As I write this post, I am bundled in a fleece robe, long underwear, yoga pants, a hat, and my pink, fluffy, finger-less gloves.  I've got a lap blanket wrapped around my legs and mid-section, but I'm about to crawl inside my down sleeping bag so I can continue to work at the computer comfortably. Boo Boo, my littlest dog, is wearing two layers of dog clothes and has cur

Distinguished Alumni  of the  Appalachian School of Law: Magistrate Nicole Lawson Legal Career Nicole A. Lawson is another ASL graduate serving as a Magistrate for the Supreme Court of Virginia, along with Elisabeth Griffith and Zack Stoots .    She works in the Norfolk Magistrate's Office. (Lis Griffith, fellow ASL alum works in the same office.)    Lawson and her husband, Robert Wnukowski, moved from Stafford, Virginia to Virginia Beach, Virginia the week after they returned from their honeymoon in August 2012.   She was hired the following month as a Magistrate.  After the two-month certification school process, she began holding bond hearings and issuing arrest warrants, search warrants, temporary detention orders for mental health crises, and emergency protective orders. Robert works as an 8th grade Civics and Economics teacher at Kempsville Middle School located in Virginia Beach.    The  Magistrate Manual  describes the position this way

Creating  Your Own  Future Chris Brogan, one of the bloggers I follow who gives advice to entrepreneurs, offered this advice in his E-zine today: I’m asking myself a bunch of recurring questions every single morning, and all throughout the day: * What’s my vision of myself and my business and how will I make that real today? * If I say I am ____ (this kind of person), then what does that look like in action DAILY? * What can I do to change reality towards what I want it to be? What, specifically, can I change to make the world come closer to matching my vision? These are huge questions, but they are business questions, they are life questions, they are the questions of an owner. They are not “how do I get the boss to notice me” questions. They are “how do I get the UNIVERSE to do what I want it to do” questions. * * * Your year is made up of days, and those days must be treated like your only hopes and chances exist within them. So, I will quit watching e