Davenport Letter Of Recommendations: Fill & Download for Free

Pretty hard.Remember how you used to surpass all your classmates, back in college, and get all sorts of accolades? Well, guess what? — all the other star students are now your competitors in law school, and the competition runs between stiff and savage.True Story — my first year at Duke Law, I joined a study group. NO ONE can do all the reading assigned and/or otherwise necessary to do well in each and every one of your classes. That’s deliberate. The school engages in social Darwinism and hates first year law students with a passion. What have you ever done to deserve one of these rare slots, at this, the gateway to one of the most demanding and prestigious fields of endeavor known to the human race. [In truth, law school is none of those things, but you won’t learn that until the last half of your third year…] But, anyway, you get my drift.Your fellow students are all in the same boat as you, and logic suggests that if you pool together and work as a team, your individual result is likely to be better than if you go it alone.BIG MISTAKE, kiddo. What happened to my small study group was that we divided the course into ten parts, and each one of our ten students was going to be responsible for reading his (there were no women) part, outlining it, and handing over the notes two weeks prior to the year long course’s final exam. All clear? I did my part, as did the fellow who lived a couple of doors down the hall from me in our rathole apartment building. Then came the BIG DAY to exchange notes. Five of us turned in the whole outline of our part of the course. Two muttered excuses, and finally coughed up a few pages, a week late. And the others, after grabbing our outines, blew us off completely. Suckers!!!You see, my child, law school breeds not only stiff competition but savage survival at any cost, win at any cost, type thinking.Those of us who had been bilked had no recourse but to work like demons to blitz read our way through all the secondary sources (things called hornbooks, back then) and hope for the best. After all, our particular exam only lasted three hours — so, how much depth could Professor Kingsfield (to borrow a famous character’s name from the movies!) put into that time slot?But then again, having to go into overdrive on one course did not exactly help us out in studying for the other courses, so the damage was done to each one of us — a nice bonus for our competitors’ chances for making Law Journal, which is based solely on your first year’s grades. NOTHING else counts.“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” But sometimes, we get a chance to help Him out. It was odd, but as the years wore on, those ever so smart wise guys who had betrayed us all, and even those who just didn’t do their fair share although they made a pass at doing ‘something,’ all of them had their days of reckoning. It was subtle, but major research source materials disappeared from their lockers. Repeatedly. Almost completed papers that were due under stringent deadlines got erased from the primitive memory typewriters of the day… Interview times with firms offering the juicy summer law clerk positions got mixed up — One fellow’s letter of recommendation from his favorite professor got “lost” in the secretarial pool. For two weeks, until after the deadline for applying for U.S. Supreme Court clerkships had passed. [And no, I didn’t personally do any of those bad things to any of the culprits… for as Sun Tzu says, the wise man but has to sit by the river long enough and he will see the dead bodies of his enemies float by.]IF you want three years of this, where you will always be the dullest person at every party (because you are constantly checking your watch out of fear of being away from your studies for too long — “the law is a jealous mistress” and all that), then sign right up. Learn how to survive on just a few hours’ sleep, bad food, and bathing every third day whether you need to or not. [Lest anyone think this is an exaggeration, the last comment perfectly describes the fellow who graduated no. 1 in our law school class… not a bad person per se, either… everything he achieved was through dint of outworking everybody else in the school….]If you want that for your next three years, law school is for you.But what if your vision is to be a noble social justice warrior, righting the world’s wrongs, as you ride in to court to dazzle judgie pooh?Well — time for another reality check, kiddo. First of all, unless your name happens to be Plato or Aristotle, you ain’t that person. At best, you have a second class mind, like the rest of us in the profession. You will wind up adopting some political hack’s talking points as your great “truth,” and when you ride in to court, you will be sliced into small pieces by the real pros, those who actually know what they are doing because they have been there, learning all the tricks for years and years. Can you become one of them? — one of the real gun slingers? No. You are not good enough. Odds are, even after 20 years wasted trying to be good enough, you will be a second rater. Very few gunslingers survive long enough to become TV’s Matt Dillon… and the odds are against you. Way against you. By the time you figure that out, you will have wasted your professional life and join the ranks of burned out lawyers who suffer from alcoholism, drug abuse, and divorce. [Our record in those areas is abysmal, by the way.]Each year, the Bar loses as many vetern lawyers who quit us to go on to something else… anything else, in many cases… as we get new lawyers coming in to fill the ranks.Is that what you really want to do?Or, maybe you think you’ll be a hotshot deal maker, working in corporate mergers, or in IPO stock offerings. Well… good luck. I mean it — good luck. A high school football player’s chances of playing in the NFL for a ten year career, and a Super Bowl ring, are better than yours. Why? — because that’s how few of these slots are open. So, good luck.STILL want to go to law school? — and become a lawyer?Well, I tried my best to talk you out of it, kid. So, welcome aboard. Apply to law school. Go WAY into debt, with no realistic way to pay it back. Go out into a savage job market, where any law job… anything at all… is hard to find. And then, experience your moment of terror.What is your moment of terror? Somewhere out there, there is some poor soul who has a legal problem. To him/her, that problem is the biggest issue in the world. Your job is to guide this poor lost soul through the torments, and get them to some safe harbor, the best the law allows under this particular situation. It is a humbling feeling, and a terrifying one. YOU are the only thing that stands between your client and……………… well, something awful.That’s what we lawyers really do.

The professor's academic reputation depends upon strict honesty with such letters and if I cannot write a stellar letter, I refuse

“Justice delayed is justice denied.”Once your case is filed, it almost invariably takes forever to have it heard. There are reasons for this. The justice system is way underfunded, compared to the mass of cases that are inundating it in what has become a highly litigious society. [Translation: filing lawsuits is now America’s favorite indoor sport, what used to be settled by a frank talk, or a fracas in the back alley now goes to the lawyers… and this is “progress?”]Too many lawyers “run the meter.” Translation: lawyers who bill by the hour are the bane of the society. They bill you, the client, in ten minute subparts of an hour, even if it only took them five minutes or less to dictate a simple letter. The more billing time the lawyer puts in, the better chance (s)he has of being known as a “top producer” of $$$ for the firm, the better the chance the lawyer has of becoming an equity partner in the firm. It is a dirty, rotten system, with NOTHING to recommend it. Frivolous motions, stalling & delaying tactics [let’s starve the poor penniless plaintiff to death and then (s)he will be forced to settle this case for peanuts even though our client is guilty as sin], and other banes of everyone’s existence are common.The rise of the “litigator” who excells in pre trial Discovery, and in motion practice, but who runs in terror when a case really has to be tried… that evil creature is spawning itself all over the block. Do we wonder why Discovery takes so long? Specialized litigators are the answer, more often than not.Ambulance chasing plaintiff’s lawyers, who would sue for a $1 million if you stubbed your toe on your neighbor’s doorstep are another problem. No, it’s not nearly so bad as is often made out. That huge verdict against McDonald’s for someone getting splashed with hot coffee is not so awful once you look into the facts of the case (i.e., namely that McDonald’s had been warned repeatedly that something like this was bound to happen because their coffee was always too doggoned hot!). But still, this sort of abuse is a problem.The list goes on —And on.But you, gentle reader, get the point. We are in need of serious reform, a top-to-bottom reform of the whole system. Rarely in the history of human endeavor have so many good people worked so hard, and had such poor results. Something has to give, the center cannot hold, the time for radical change is upon us.Now… just what is the nature of the needed change(s)? Alas, that is for other, wiser heads than mine.