I just renewed the license for vBulletin, the software that powers the Mac Law Students Forum. If nobody is using the forum, I’ll shut it down within the next few months, but if Mac-using students are using the forum I’ll keep it up and running.
In blunt language: If you like the Forum, use it and tell your friends about it, or the cranky law school grad who runs it will shut it down. 
I’m putting the Mac Law Students blog on ice. All of the content published from December, 2006 until now is still available. I just won’t be publishing anything new. The Mac Law Students forum will stay up at least for a while, but activity there is declining so I may archive it as well.
For the last year or so I’ve been trying to build a structure that would keep MLS going after my departure. Unfortunately and through nobody’s fault, that has proven to be a bridge too far. Attending law school is a grueling affair, and focusing on school-related activities should rightly be every student’s first priority. Perhaps it is telling that I started this blog in the first place; it must have been the first evidence that a legal career wasn’t really what I wanted.
Writing MLS, posting articles from other law students, and communicating with everyone who contacted me in connection with the blog has been very rewarding. Thank you for making it such an enjoyable distraction.
I am now quite busy with productOps, a software product development firm in Santa Cruz, California. In the months following my graduation in May, my partners and I have created the company and are off and running. If you ever find yourself in need of web or software development services, look me up.
Finally, I leave you with this sincere wish: May all your finals be absurdly easy, and may you get out of law school more than what you put into it.
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This article tells us something we already know: Law firms are playing it careful these days. I wonder though, how are law schools going to respond to this? Some law school graduates (self included) elect not to become lawyers. Some want to become lawyers but can’t find good jobs in the legal field. And some find legal jobs and get the axe because of circumstances beyond their control.
From what I’ve seen, law schools give lip service to the notion that a law degree is useful in a variety of non-legal fields, but they don’t do a very good job of exposing those options for students. The result is that many students go into tremendous debt and wind up having to scramble to find a job outside the legal profession, without any real help from the school that was more than willing to take their tuition money.
I guess this gets to a fundamental question about the role of law schools: Are they simply professional schools that churn out lawyers? Or are they graduate schools that turn out critical thinkers who can apply their skills in a variety of jobs?
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Back in the bad old days, when using a Mac was looked at as a form of deviant behavior, Mac users could always count on each other. The “Mac community” isn’t just an empty moniker; Mac users have always helped each other out.
Now that the Macintosh platform has been reborn, it’s heartening to know that the same community spirit still prevails. Witness the growth of MILO, the online forum for Mac-using lawyers. Founded by über Mac advocates (Get it? Lawyers… advocates… I slay me) Ben Stevens and Grant Griffiths, this group now has over 900 members and is going strong.
If you want to see how lawyers use Macs “in the field,” check out MILO.
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Before I write anything more, let me first tell you this: I deliberately have kept this blog as politically neutral as possible, in order to be as welcoming as possible to readers of all political persuasions. With that said, I also think there is room to respectfully disagree on politics. After all, the cornerstone of a democratic society is the rule of law, which is really at root a common set of beliefs about how society functions. We can agree to disagree, in the knowledge that healthy debate only makes us stronger.
With that caveat out of the way, here’s my little pitch. The Obama campaign is looking for volunteer attorneys and law students who can help with voter protection in swing states. If you’re interested in volunteering, here’s a link to the Obama Voter Protection Program signup page.
And whether you’re an Obama voter or not, I think we can all agree that business as usual isn’t working too well in America. Exercising our right to vote is the first step in affecting change.
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