Exams Tomorrow? Study Tip: Relax

[Editor’s Note: This month, faculty members are posting on their exam taking tips. This is the fourth post in the series.]

As law students know, tomorrow begins exam week.  We have endeavored to present some exam taking tips from some of the faculty who will be administering those exams.  (Those tips can be found here, here, and here.) I’d like to add one more to the list.  Relax.

It may seem odd to say “relax,” but I think “relax” is an important exam taking tip that is often overlooked. 

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Police Stops Go Up, Citizen Complaints Go Down — What Gives?

The Milwaukee Police Department has just released some new data on traffic and subject stops. There is a fascinating story here on policing strategy. Since 2007, Milwaukee has experiened a dramatic increase in the number of stops: both traffic and subject stops are up close to 250%. This has been part of a deliberate strategy to increase the number of police-citizen contacts, especially in high-crime neighborhoods. (The MPD has also been very active over the past four years in promoting uncoerced police-citizen contacts, too.) The objectives are to gather intelligence, disrupt criminal activity, and enhance community perceptions of safety in public spaces.

As hoped, crime has indeed gone down considerably since 2007: violent crime is down 24%, and property crime is down 21%. Whether and to what extent the increased-stops strategy has caused the crime drop is uncertain — the MPD has also made some other significant changes in the past four years, and, in any event, crime has been dropping nationwide — but the causal claim strikes me as at least facially plausible. Providing some additional support is a month-by-month breakdown of auto theft and robbery data: in general, in months when stops have lagged, auto thefts and robberies have gone up; in months when stops have increased, auto thefts and robberies have dropped.

But safety has a cost.

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Greetings From Your December Alumni Blogger!

As I’m sure many of you have read, there have been numerous articles lately discussing how in the current economic climate some clients are refusing to pay for work done by first year associates. These articles often go on to criticize law schools in general for inundating students with legal theory only, and not preparing graduates for the actual practice of law. One recent article can be found here. Other notable articles, like this one discuss whether investment in a legal education is worth the cost, and suggest that a technical education might be a better bet financially.

A true discussion on the merits of these articles could easily lead to hours of debate. In fact, given the current job market, employment statistics, and the cost of a legal education, it might be easy to agree with these authors. But I think there are benefits to legal education that can’t be measured in dollars and cents, and for me these articles are discouraging and devalue a hard earned legal education.

Thus, as alumni blogger of the month, and an employed professional, I want to use my first blog post to remind myself and others of the many ways my education at MULS prepared me for work in the professional world. So, below is my personal list for your consideration, feel free to add to it in the comment section.

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