Law School

*Note-My new posting schedule is for Saturday’s posts to be about law school or law and Sunday to be about goals.  Monday through Friday will be about frugality but there will probably often be some overlap in the weekday and weekend subject areas.

If you’re in law school you probably know all about LexisNexis and Westlaw.  This post is not going to be a tutorial on how to use them.  Instead it is a suggestion to make sure you are getting the rewards out of them.

LexisNexis and Westlaw both have rewards programs that award points for doing various research activities.  They both want to make sure that you become a paying client when you graduate and enticing you to use their research systems now helps ensure that you will keep using them.

There are many different ways to earn points.  The easiest is to do the Fact or Fiction? at LexisNexis and the Daily Trivia at Westlaw.  These are not many points but they don’t take long and since you can do them frequently they add up.  To get the big points though you need to do tutorials or participate in the classes that the reps occasionally have.  These usually provide many more points.  I recently completed a forty-five minute class for 800 points.  That was well worth it since I can redeem those points for a $10 gift certificate and still have points left over.  Of course I also improved my research skills.

I prefer the LexisNexis reward program to the Westlaw one since they have a variety of $5 and $10 gift certificates you can redeem your points for.  This makes it quicker to get value for your points.  Westlaw doesn’t really have smaller items to redeem your points for.  The best choice in their program seems to be using the points for books.  Right now I’m just letting my Westlaw points accumulate and I’ll redeem them for something big when I finish school.  It doesn’t really matter which rewards program you like best since you should participate in both.  Keep your eye out for various opportunities to earn extra points throughout the semester.  These programs are a really good deal since you earn points for stuff you would or should be doing anyway and you gain valuable knowledge at the same time.

I had my meeting with the re-admissions committee today and I have been re-admitted to law school.  I’ll return for the next semester which starts in January.  I have to retake a couple of classes.  I’m not thrilled with having to do that since it will probably mean it will take me an extra semester to graduate.  Of course graduating one semester later is better than never.  Both of the classes are important bar subjects so I do need to know them.  Taking them a second time should make them pretty easy.  Since this week is Thanksgiving week I have to wait until next week to finalize all the details.  The important thing though is I’m back in.

I turned in my paper for law school Thursday night. The paper is going to be a major factor in whether I am re-admitted to law school. I’m not completely pleased with how the paper turned out since I procrastinated and didn’t get the paper exactly like I wanted it to be. I believe it should be good enough though. My professor was going to look over it this weekend but I haven’t received any feedback yet. I’m relieved to finally have this paper done though. I’ve basically done all I can for being re-admitted now. I have to wait until Nov. 20th before I meet with the re-admission committee but I think my prospects look good. Now all I have to do is wait.