Getting Readmitted to Law School

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I don’t need to be readmitted again. I have started my last semester of law school and will graduate in May.  This post is for those who are trying to be readmitted to law school after being dismissed for academic insufficiency.  “Kicked out of law school” or some variation is one of the most popular search terms bringing people to my blog even though I haven’t written much about law school.  For those searchers I’m posting what worked for me.  Hopefully, it will work for them as well.

Different schools have different processes but at my school when you were kicked out you had an opportunity to present your case to a committee on why you should be readmitted.  The first thing the committee wanted to see was that I was able to do the work.  Since I had finished my first year with good grades this showed that I had the ability to do law school work.  Next I needed to show a reason why I hadn’t done well the past semester and why I would do better if readmitted.  The reason I did poorly was due to depression.  After being dismissed I started counseling which helped with my depression and allowed me to do my law school work at a normal level again.  Even with being able to show why I would do better if readmitted I probably wouldn’t have been readmitted if it weren’t for the fact that I had a school administrator strongly advocating my case for me.  I can’t thank her enough for her help and I’m glad that I’ve shown with my performance since being readmitted that it was the correct decision to readmit me to law school.

Your reasons won’t likely be the same as mine but this should give you an idea of what you need to do.  If you are kicked out in the spring semester and want to be readmitted for the fall semester there are several things you can do over the summer to help your case.  You could take a non-law school law class. Or you could write a legal paper.  Or you could work in a law office, it would be very helpful if they allowed you to show some of your work.  I think the thing that would be most helpful though is to convince a member of the readmission committee to advocate for you.  The committee members are going to give much more weight to a fellow committee member’s opinion than anything you tell them.  If you can’t get a member of the readmission committee to advocate for you than an administration or faculty member would be your next best choice.

I can’t guarantee that these tips will get you readmitted but they should help your case.

December Income- $1309.44

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Here is a breakdown of my income for December.

Online Income

$450.12

Interest

$16.96

Bank/Other Bonuses

$44.10

Surveys/Mystery Shopping

$34

Stock Dividends

$53.10

Cash Back

$26.16

Car Sale

$480

Medical Study

$205

Total

$1309.44

My income was higher than my expenses which is always good.  Without the sale of my car though it would have been pretty close and my expenses will normally be higher than they were last month.  My income will probably go down a little this month. I need to find a way to ramp my alternative income up or get a job. I know a lot of people would be pretty happy with the alternative income I’m generating but since I’m not working I feel like I should be doing better.  I’m wasting a lot of time that could be put towards earning more income or at least doing something productive.

Five Radical Ways for the U.S. Government to Raise Revenue

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The federal government is running a humongous deficit but politicians don’t want to raise taxes or cut services since that would be unpopular.   Here are a few of my ideas for new sources of revenue for the government.

  1. Legalize Marijuana- And then tax it.  The government is already making money off tobacco and alcohol it might as well make money from marijuana also.  This should also result in a large savings for law enforcement since they would no longer have to expend money to enforce the marijuana laws.  If legalizing marijuana worked then legalizing more drugs could be considered.
  2. Legalize Prostitution- And then tax it.  They would need to come up with a workable system for this.  The Nevada system with the brothels taking 50% of the prostitute’s income is not a good model.  The prostitute should be the only way making money off her(or his) work, except the government of course.  This also should result in savings for law enforcement.
  3. Legalize Internet Gambling- And then tax it.  People are doing it anyway the government might as well make some money from it.  So far my ideas have all been about legalizing vices and thus moving money from the underground economy to the tax coffers.  I have a couple ideas that don’t involve vices too.
  4. Put Advertisements on Money- Just replace the back of a bill with an ad and the government would have a large source of revenue.  Alternatively, they could also replace the $1 and $5 bills with coins and eliminate the penny.  That would not be too radical though and it would save money rather than generate revenue.
  5. Sell Naming rights to public sites- Professional sports teams make big money selling naming rights to their stadiums.  The federal government could cash in on this too.  Perhaps they could have the Washington(Mutual) Monument or the U.S. Capitol(One) building.  I’m sure you can come up with better examples than that.

As you might guess I’m not entirely serious about these ideas but I do believe there are some sources of revenue out there that the government has yet to tap.

My Stock Portfolio is Up

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My portfolio of individual stocks I started investing in last year is finally showing a profit.  Not much of one but compared to the 30% loss in my Roth IRA it looks pretty good.  This doesn’t matter much since I won’t be using the money for several years but it is good to see it heading in the right direction.  I wish I could say that the superior return of my stock portfolio compared to my Roth IRA was due to my investing skill but it is mostly attributable to luck.  I didn’t start investing in my individual stocks until late October/early November after the stock market had already declined steeply.  This wasn’t because I was timing the market but because I didn’t have the money to invest before then.  Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.

December Expenses- $707.55

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for December 2008.

Household $414.69
Transportation $27.18
Food $38.73
Entertainment $103.19
Debt/Education $90
Phone $33.76
Total $707.55

I’m quite happy with my expenses for December. This is the level I’d like my expenses to be at every month. They will be somewhat higher this month because I have to pay for my health insurance. My new health insurance is payable every six months rather than quarterly as my previous health insurance was. I’ve decided I’m going to list my pro-rated monthly expense for health insurance rather than list it as a lump sum expense every six months to give a more accurate view of my average monthly expenses. The food expense is for lunches out and snacks only, the rest of my food expense is included in either the entertainment or household expenses.

I’m also considering paying $600 to sign up for my school’s bar prep course. That will obviously cause a serious increase in my monthly expenses for this month. Bar registration fees and bar prep fees will raise my average monthly expenses for the first part of the year but the last part of the year I should have very low expenses. Hopefully those will offset each other and I’ll meet my goal of having less than $10,000 in expenses for the year.