This year the average passage rate for the public schools in Texas is 87.4%. (Houston, Texas Tech, Texas, and Texas Southern). The average bar passage rate for private schools was 90.1%.

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Examinees who passed the July 2009 Texas Bar Exam

The second candidate slated for an on-campus interview, Professor Richard Gershon, (Charleston School of Law; Tax, Estate Planning, Property) served for five years as the Dean for Texas Wesleyan School of Law. He went on to become the founding Dean of the Charleston School of Law from 2003 to 2007. Charleston has been provisionally approved by the ABA.

Professor Peter Rofes (Marquette School of Law; Constitutional Law) is the final candidate that is currently scheduled for an on-campus interview. Although Professor Rofes lacks ties to Texas, he has taken on leadership roles at Marquette, having served as the Director of Part-time Legal Education and currently serving as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.

The on-campus interview schedule will be as follows:
Professor Brian Shannon October 6-7;
Professor Richard Gershon October 8-9;
Professor Peter Rofes October 13-14.

Letters of recommendation or support can be directed to the following members of the Dean Search Committee:

Search Committee Chair
Dean Fred Hartmeister (Dean of the Graduate School)
PO Box 41030
Lubbock, TX 79409-1030

Vice Chair
Professor Jorge Ramirez
1802 Hartford Avenue,
Lubbock, TX 79409

Members
Provost Bob Smith
PO Box 42019
Lubbock, TX 79409-2019

President, Guy Bailey
150 Administration Building
PO Box 42005
Lubbock, Texas 79409-2005

Chancellor Kent Hance
124 Administration Building
Mailstop 42013 Lubbock, TX 79409

Textfixer.com, a website originally designed for web developers who were editing code, offers a text-editing tool that is useful to anyone who regularly cuts and pastes text between documents: a line break remover. Line breaks are the broken lines of text seen when text is pasted between documents that are formatted differently. For lawyers and law students, this is most often seen when cutting text from a dual-column PDF document, such as a statute or case prepared on WestLaw or Lexis, into a word processing document. Unlike most formatting problems, pasting text as “plain text” does not get around the problem of line breaks. Although line breaks can be removed manually or by a “find and replace” command, using textfixer.com seems to be the quickest and easiest way to ensure properly formatted pastes.

Additionally,Textfixer.com preserves paragraph breaks while removing only the line breaks from the text. To use the line break remover, simply cut and paste the text from the source to the website, hit the “Remove Line Breaks” button, and then cut and paste the resulting text into the document you are working on.

Headline Image Credit: Immortal412

2. Switch between text case: Highlight a portion of text and use the Shift+F3 combination to switch between text case. Word will toggle through sentence case, upper case, and lower case.

3. Switch to small caps: Use Control+Shift+K to switch highlighted text to small caps. This is especially useful for citations on law journals.

4. Delete entire words: The Ctrl+Delete combination will delete entire words, which will save you some time when you are making substantial changes to documents.

5. Quickly add annotations (also called “comments”): This shortcut works even if you don’t already have the Microsoft Word reviewing Pane open: hit Ctrl+Alt+M to insert an annotation (comment) into a document.

6. Switch between open Word documents on a Mac: If you are using Microsoft Word on an Mac, you may have noticed that the standard key combination to switch between open windows, Command-Tab, does not switch between open Word documents, but instead switches to the next open application. There is a shortcut to switch between open Word documents on a Mac:  Command +`. The ` button is the same as the tilda (~) button on the keyboard. It is usually right above the tab key, to the left of the 1 key.

7. Add a footnote in Word documents: If you are using Word on a Windows PC, the Alt+Ctrl+F combination will insert a footnote for you with out having to go through the insert-menu at the top of the page. If you are using Microsoft Word on a Mac, the combination is Option+Command+F.

8. Use the built-in thesaurus: The Shift+F7 combination will look up a highlighted word in the thesaurus sidebar in Microsoft Word.

9. Insert the date: The Alt+Shift+D combination will enter date quickly into a document.

10. Move entire paragraphs: The Shift+Alt+Up or Down Arrow combination allows you to move entire paragraphs up or down in a document.

Bonus Tip: Set your auto-recover to one minute: By default, Microsoft Word automatically saves documents every ten minutes. Since recreating ten minutes worth of work often takes more than ten more minutes, play it safe and change the auto-recover time to one minute. That way, if Word does crash, most of your work is easily recoverable. Here is how to change your auto-recovery time in Word 2007:

1. Click on the Office Button (the Office icon in the circle on the top-left of the window
2. Click on Word Options (it is on the bottom border of the menu).
3. Click on the Save tab.
4. Make sure the AutoRecover box is checked and change the interval to one minute

This is also a good time to change the AutoRecover location to something you can easily locate if you ever need to. I have my location set to a folder within the Documents folder on my computer.

If you are on a Mac, the steps to change the AutoRecover save interval are as follows:

1. Go to the Word Menu
2. Select Preferences
3. Click on the Save icon
4. Set the “Save AutoRecover interval to one minute.

As the amount of scholarly material available on the web increases, so to does the need to an efficient means to find, sort, organize and cite the material. Below are twenty of the best tools available on Firefox that researchers can choose from to build a customized, highly efficient research tool.

Part I: Find What You Are Looking For.

1.  Use Firefox Quicksearch

Setting up a quicksearch allows you to run searches from the address bar using very simple customized search commands instead of visiting a search engine or installing a toolbar to run searches.

For example, I’ve set up a quicksearch for Google, so that all I have to do to run a Google search is go to the address bar and type in “g searchterm” and hit enter.

Example:

Typing in “g olympics” and hitting enter

results in:

Adding thumbnails next to your Google results is covered later in the story. You can skip directly to it by going to Tip #12.

Creating a QuickSearch is as easy as 1, 2, 3:

1. Visit any webpage that has a search field that you commonly use. (For example, go to http://google.com)
2. Right click on the search field. Choose Add a Keyword for this Search…

3. The Add Bookmark dialog will appear. Give the bookmark a name, e.g. “Google” and create a keyword e.g. “g” and click “Add.” The Keyword is going to be the command you use to run the search so keep it short and make sure it is something that is intuitive to you.

Now to run a quicksearch, all you have to do is go to your address bar and type in the keyword and search term to run a quicksearch. If you set up the Google Quicksearch described above, try typing in “g olympics” in the address and then hit enter to see your results.

2. Find in Tabs

With the advent of tabbed browsing came the need to be able to sort quickly through open pages. The Find in Tabs extensions allows users to search multiple open tabs at once. It displays all occurrences of the search terms from your open webpages in  a display pane that also highlights the search results in context, making sifting through search results a breeze.

3. Resurrect Pages

Resurrect Pages allows researchers to bring webpages back after they have shed their ethereal coils. When a webpage is not longer available, either because the content changed or the website no longer exists, Resurrect Pages searches caches and archives that mirrored the content while it was available, so that in many cases you can still retrieve the information you were looking for. Resurrect Pages searches the best caches including Google, MSN, and Yahoo Caches, CoralCDN, the Internet Archive.

4. BugMeNot

BugMeNot allows users to bypass registration at many free websites. This is a great way to skip registering for news websites merely to read archived articles.

5. BlueOrganizer

BlueOrganizer creates “smart menus” and “smartlinks” based on the page you are visiting to offer helpful features that aid in research. For instance, it recognizes book names, movies, individuals, and songs to find more information about those items quickly and effortlessly.

6. Surf Canyon

While Google is often a researcher’s search engine of choice, there are times when you don’t find what you are looking for on Google. For those times, there is Surf Canyon. It adds top search results from Yahoo, MSN, Craigslist to your search results. The additional results remain hidden under a bull’s eye icon and can be easily displayed and hidden again by clicking on the icon. Surf Canyon can also find the most relevant results from deep in your search results and bring them to the forefront.

7. Customize Google

This add-on removes Google ads from search results, suggests topics as you type, and allows you to quickly search other engines like Yahoo, Technorati, and Ask Jeeves.

8. Update Scanner

If you have a page you want to watch for changes, Update Scanner will notify you of changes made the to the page. It highlights the changes made to a page since you last visited the page and can notify you when the page changes.

9. Breadcrumbs

If you have ever found what you were looking for, only to lose it again because you forgot to bookmark or print out page, you will understand just how useful Breadcrumbs is. Breadcumbs can search through the pages you recently visited so you can find the result you were looking for without retracing your steps by running the original search over again.

10. Read It Later

Read It Later is a tool specifically built for those pages you want to get back to to finish reading, but aren’t certain you want to bookmark just yet. Read It Later offers a simple interface that makes marking a page to read later as simple as clicking a check mark at the end of your address bar. Once you’ve read the story, click on the checkmark again to remove the page from your to-read list. You can also have your to-read list delivered to you as an RSS feed so it is accessible wherever you are.

11. Highlight All

This add-on highlights every instance of a given word or string of words on a webpage. To use Highlight all, hit F8 to enable the extension, and then select any word with your mouse, all other occurances of the word on the page will also be highlighted. This is an excellent way to focus you initial read of a long document when you are going through a large number of search results.

12. GooglePreview

GooglePreview adds a thumbnail image next to each of your Google search results so that you can quickly determine if the page is worth a further read.

13. Cooliris (Formerly PicLens)

Cooliris is to image and video searches what the iPhone is to phones. Cooliris offers an amazing interface that allows you to sort very quickly through hundreds of images and supports sites including Google Image Search, Youtube, Flickr, and Picasa. It is hard to imagine an interface that beats coverflow on Macs and iPhones, but the CoolIris interface does.

Check out the demo:

The interface is so good, that in response to user requests, CoolIris has even come out with a PowerPoint plugin and instructions for users of Keynote to add CoolIris functionality to desktop presentations.

Part II: Save, Organize, Annotate, and Cite Your Search Results.

14. Iterasi

As previously mentioned, Iterasi allows you to save dynamic webpages for future reference, even after the content of the original page has changed. Since I posted my review of Iterasi, Iterasi has added support for Mac OS X, and a scheduler which automatically archives webpages on a regular basis. In a conversation I had with Alex Williams, the Director of Product Marketing for Iterasi, I mentioned the availability of short permanent URLs to access the notarized pages would be a feature I thought users would really appreciate so they can more easily use Iterasi for citations in professional publications. I am happy to report that the most recent version of Iterasi offers this new feature. This is a company that is listening to what users want and responding quickly. Keep an eye on this add-on for additional features in the future.

Scheduler Tool Unveiled:

15. Zotero

Zotero allows you to “collect, manage, cite” your research sources. What is great about Zotero is that it not only organizes saved webpages, and search results, it also allows users to add external material like files or documents to the organized structure.

16. Delicious Bookmarks

Delicious Bookmarks lets you to save bookmarks and tag the pages so you easily find them later. The bookmarks are available from any computer with access to the Internet by logging on to your Delicious account, which make it an ideal took for users who research from more than one location. Delicious bookmarks also allow you to find the most popular pages for any tag and access your bookmarks  from any computer.

17. Fireshot

At its most basic level of functionality, Fireshot allows users to capture images of the pages they are visiting. Unlike taking a screenshot using your operating system, Fireshot can take a picture of an entire webpage, even when portions of the page are not visible on the screen. Fireshot also features a built-in editor that allows you to crop the pictures, annotate them, and save them for future reference or to share with colleagues.

18. Diigo

Diigo allows you to highlight, annotate, and save annotated webpages for future reference. While registration is required, and it adds a toolbar to your browser, pages 2 and 3 of the registration process can be skipped and the toolbar can be hidden.

19. Clipmarks
This allows you to save portions of webpages for future reference, print only the parts of pages you want, and email portions of pages to yourself or others. It is the perfect tool for printing or saving multiple non-continuous sections of a page.

20. PrintPDF

If your computer does not already have the capability of “printing” a file to PDF format, PrintPDF adds the capability to save webpages as PDF files directly from your browser.

If you have a favorite Firefox plugin or tip for researchers, or if you agree or disagree with the suggestions, leave a comment. Thanks!

[ratings id="756"]

The Paper Chase

Professor Kingsfield was right; law school changes the way you read, the way you think, and the way you analyze. Not unlike boot camp, this three-year odyssey is meant to break you and then remake you into something better than you were before. There are a number of things that you can do to ensure you come out on top when all the making and breaking is done:

1. Get advice from 2Ls and 3Ls who are successful in the areas you want to be successful in. There are a number of ways to be successful in law school. You can make the highest grades, become an acclaimed advocate, or become an editor for a law review or law journal. An important key to being successful in law school is getting advice from students who are already successful in the areas you want to be successful in. Every law student wants to make good grades, and high grades, more than anything else, are rewarded upon graduation. Find students who are at the top of their class and find what worked for them, how they managed their time, and how they prepared for their finals. Find students who have had the professors you are taking to get an idea of what to expect and what the professor expects of you. If you want to focus on honing your litigation skills, seek out a mentor who has been on a national mock trial or moot court team. If you want to become an editor on law review or a law journal, focus on improving your writing skills, pay attention to detail, and find someone who already is on a journal to learn about what it is like being on a journal and tips on effectively managing your time.

2. How you do on the final is much more important than how you answer a question in class.
The Socratic Method strikes fear in the hearts of 1Ls across the nation every year, and it is easy to be caught up in just reading for class to make sure you can answer the question when the professor calls on you. However, knowing the minutiae of every case is not what is going to get you the best grades, you need to be able to step back and see the big picture, so don’t sweat it if you get an answer wrong in class, but make sure you understand why you missed it, and focus on preparing for the final.

3. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Every year brave young law students start their outlines from scratch. While there is utility in analyzing cases and creating your own outlines, especially when you first start studying the law, the time you have available to you in law school is limited. Make the best use of your time by using existing outlines as a starting point, which you can then tweak and make your own. Conversely, you will never want to rely solely on someone else’s outline. Make sure you agree with their conclusions and summary of the law. When in doubt, consult with your professor.

4. Get to know your professors.
Law schools pride themselves on low student to professor ratios and as a result most law school professors have the opportunity to get to know their students. However, it is up to the students to take advantage of this opportunity. Take the time to meet with professors when questions in during the semester, rather than waiting till the end of the semester to approach them. There are students who never set foot in a professor’s office do very well on their exams. Just because they haven’t been in the professor’s office doesn’t mean they haven’t spent the semester getting to know the professor. Successful students seek out prior exams or model exams that the professor has made available, and contemplates questions that could arise while they study, so that they know what to expect on test day.

5. Get to know your law librarians.
Law librarians are a great resource. They know how to use online resources like Westlaw and Lexis, as well as print resources better than probably anyone else in the law school. They are also there to help you find what you are looking for. There are numerous databases and resources that are often overlooked by even experienced researchers or lawyers that law librarians are familiar with. They can also assist you in forming good Boolean searches, give you search tips, and point you to the best starting point for your topic.

6. Find time for yourself.
Law school will likely be the most challenging endeavor you will have undertaken at this point in your life. It is important, now more than ever, to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Regular sleep patterns and exercise may seem hard to fit into your schedule, but are even more important now that it seems like you don’t have time for either.

7. Use technology wisely.
The smaller the laptop, the better. You law school books are going to take up a lot of space and the last thing you need is a 17 inch laptop to lug around every day. Back up your work religiously. Email yourself documents that you are working on at the end of each day. On the weekends, back your laptop up to external drives or at the very least to a thumb drive. Finally, use a free service like Mozy to back up your documents on a regular basis.

8. Master the law school exam.
Your entire grade for a law school class is often based on a single final exam. Master the law school exam process: http://www.leews.com/ and Getting To Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams.
At the very least, pick up old exams and do practice questions under timed conditions. Also, be aware that very often commercial outlines go into areas of law not covered by your professor, so to maximize your study time, seek out old exams or practice questions from the professor, the law school library, or other students. Law school exams usually consist of a long fact pattern followed by a series of questions. There are often no right or wrong answers. You are getting graded on spotting issues and them analyzing the potential outcomes. The facts usually come down somewhere in between two or more cases you looked at in your reading so you will have to compare the facts presented with fact patterns you came across in your reading and then predict how the court will come out. The prediction isn’t what you are graded on; it is the analysis of the facts and law that leads to your prediction that is graded. If you don’t correctly spot the issue, you lose the opportunity to get points for either the analysis. A very simple way to think of a law school answer is set forth by the IRAC Method: Issue, Rule of Law, Analysis, and Conclusion.

9. Consider joining a study group.
Going over the material with another person or a small group of people will help you hash out concepts, and ensure a thorough overview of the subject. Study groups sessions should be secondary to extensive individual study, so as a group you can focus on practice questions, clarifying issues, and making sure you have hit all the main concepts.

10. Don’t underestimate the value of after-class review or overestimate the value of reading for class.
After-class review is as important, if not more important than reading for class. Reviewing after class ensures that you completely understand the material. It should be the third time you are covering the material, the first being when you read before class, and the second being when you went over it in class. After-class review also allows you the opportunity to take any questions you still have on a topic to your professor for clarification. After class review sessions are also the perfect time to review and make notes to your outline.

Good luck to all of you starting class here in the next few weeks. I wish you all the best, and look forward  to seeing additional tips posted in the comments.

Some schools have lower average debt because of generous scholarship programs. Driving down the average debt on graduation at SMU are over $5 million in scholarships given out each year. Other schools have lower average debt because many of their students are employed while in law school. For example, at Texas Wesleyan, over half of the law students attend part-time, allowing students to pay a greater portion of their law school expenses as they go. This explains why Texas Wesleyan students have one of the lowest average debt burdens on graduation despite being one of the most expensive law schools in Texas.

While most law students are not able to maintain full-time jobs and attend school at the same time, students can maximize their chances of getting a scholarship by applying to schools where their LSAT and GPA scores are well above the school’s median.

The Debt to Earnings ratio is a measure of how much debt the average law student acquires for every dollar they earn their first year out of law school. Since the D/E ratio reflects the amount of debt acquired, the lower the D/E ratio is, the better.

The D/E ratio overcomes one of the limitations of the C/E ratios: artificially inflated costs of education. Since students can only qualify for loans up to the school’s published cost of education, many schools inflate the COE so that students who need extra money are able to qualify for loans. Since D/E ratios reflect loans that were actually awarded, the ratios closely track the expenses that exceed the average student’s ability to pay out of pocket. While neither the D/E or C/E ratio alone can answer the question of what law school is best for a student, both metrics provide an interesting look at factors that law students should consider as they decide which school to attend.