The White Van Scam

Unfortunately, the folks practicing this scam seldom label their van this way.

I did not list this in my "Scams" article, which I will update. It is a scam or gag that has been going on for decades, and the Police will do nothing to stop it, as technically, the people perpetrating the scam are doing nothing illegal.

The scam goes like this:

You are approached by two young dudes in a white van (usually) and they say, "Hey Buddy! Want to buy a set of speakers, for cheap?"

They then go into a spiel about how they are delivering speakers for some company and ended up with an "extra" set. If they take them back, they say, "The boss will just keep them" so they offer you these $2000 speakers (or $4000 "home theater system") for a mere $500. Or $200 if you talk them down.

They show you receipts and invoices and catalogs that claim the speakers or the system is worth a ton of dough. They might even have a website to show you on your iPhone! But the brand is not one you have heard of.

You get the system home, and of course, it is garbage. The speaker cabinets are little more than cardboard covered with wood-grain sheeting. The speakers are tiny and sound awful. The whole deal might be worth $20-$50, if that. You've been scammed.

Why is this not illegal? Well, for starters, all they've done, like most con artists, is overcharge you for some goods. Overpricing things is not illegal in America.

And like most good con-men, they have hoodwinked you into buying them by insinuating that they are basically stolen merchandise. The speakers "fell off the truck" so to speak, and you are getting a good deal! It sounds so good (and illegal) that you fail to engage your usual skepticism.

This site has a list of scam victims going back for years. Wikipedia even has a listing for it. I was first approached by these clowns back in the 1980's. It is a robust scam! Of course, they have updated the scam for the new century by calling it a "home theater system" and not just speakers.

The people who do these scams are pretty much the lowest of low life. When you tell them you know it is a scam, they often will scream at you, spit at you, or even threaten violence. If approached by such individuals, I would walk away as quickly as possible, perhaps run.

Again, reporting this scam seems to have little effect - and it clearly is an organized ring doing this. This is America, after all, and ripping people off is a way of life.

Since most people are taken for only a few hundred dollars, and since most people are too ashamed to admit they've been had, the incidence of this scam is far greater than you might think.

Like anything else, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. When someone offers to sell you something out of a van, forgetaboutit!

Pricing Your Home

Pricing your home is not rocket science. And chances are, you already know what a fair price is.

There is an old joke that goes like this:

At a cocktail party, a philosopher is conversing with a young socialite. The philosopher is an older, portly gentleman with a full beard and unkept hair. The socialite is young and buxom and part of the smart set. The philosopher asks the socialite, "Would you sleep with me if I paid you a million dollars?"

The socialite thinks about this. Considering how much she gets from her trust fund, a million bucks would be nice to have. She says, "For a million bucks? Sure!"

The Philosopher then says, "Well, how about for $100?"

Shocked, the socialite slaps him across the face hard, and says, "What do you think I am? A prostitute?"

"Madam," he replies, "We've already established that fact. Now were are merely haggling over price!"

This joke illustrates that it is possible to put a price on almost anything, and also it is very easy to establish a range of price, as we shall see shortly.

Many folks, when listing their home, claim not to know what price to put on it. They interview real estate agents and often pick the one who oohs and aaahs about their house the most and also tells them the highest price for it.

This can be a huge mistake, as such a house will languish on the market for months, if not years, and often the seller, desperate at that point, will take a price lower than what he could have gotten for the property if it was properly priced to begin with.

Not only that, the seller loses out in a second way, in that he paid interest and expenses on the house for the year it was on the market. Such costs can easily be in the tens of thousands of dollars.

So properly pricing your home is important, to insure that it sells in a timely manner. You do not want to languish on the market, incurring added expenses as months elapse, and you do not want to end up desperate to sell later on and taking a lower price than you should have.

So how do you come up with a price? It is not hard. Chances are, you already have a number in your head - or multiple numbers. As in my pricing guide for invention licensing, there are usually three numbers - the number you'd like to get in your dreams (but never will), the number that you realistically expect to get (which you probably will) and the lowest number you will begrudgingly will accept (which you hope not to take, but will if you overprice your home!).

First, as in our philosopher joke above, you can establish a coarse range fairly quickly. If you are an average middle-class American, chances are your home is worth somewhere between the $100 and $1M range our philosopher offered the socialite to sleep with him.

"But wait!" you say, "That doesn't help me at all! That doesn't narrow the range very much!"

Au contraire. Compared to infinity, a range between $100 and $1,000,000 is quite a narrowing.

But you are correct that such a range is still somewhat idiotic. So narrow it further, in increments of $100,000. Pretty soon, chances are, you will fall into a fairly narrow range, as defined by a number of factors:

1. What you paid for the house
2. What your neighbors paid for their houses
3. What similar houses are selling for
4. What people can realistically afford in your area
5. Appraised values

We paid $350,000 for our home, added $100,000 plus in improvements. The market in our area has stayed largely flat since we bought the home. The house is clearly worth at least as much as we paid for it, and most likely more.

But it also clearly ain't worth a million bucks, or even close to that. Houses selling in our area for the $750,000 and up range have hundreds of feet of lake frontage and are directly on the water. So clearly, we cannot list in that upper range bracket. Even houses $500,000 and up usually are on the water.

A neighbor's house recently sold for $340,000, with 1/5 the acreage, no barn, and other amenities and no lake improvements (dock hoist, etc.). It is also a smaller house. That provides yet another data point, which seems to point to the $400,000 range as a likely selling point.

So you can see, starting at the extremes allows you to zero in rather quickly.

Still confused? Order an appraisal. We did, and we've done it in the past. Appraisals can be self-serving, to be sure, but they do provide some concrete documentation of values in the area, in a written format that involves some contemplation and calculation. It is well worth spending $300 or so to get this data, if you are at all unsure.

Finally, look at your carrying costs for a property, particularly if you already have bought your next home. If you have a mortgage payment of $1500 a month, utility bills of $250 a month, repairs, taxes, insurance and other expenses of $250 a month, then the house has a real cost to you of about $24,000 a year. Perhaps less, as some of that money does pay down the mortgage amount.

But if you are in this situation, you should think carefully about overpricing your home or turning away "low ball" offers. Yes, maybe you can "hold out" and get $20,000 more for a property. Maybe not - you might get less. What is certain, though, is that if you wait 9-12 months to "get your price" you are really doing little more than breaking even, if you incurred $20,000 in expenses in the interim.

That is the conundrum we are facing. Based on the numbers above (but not the appraisal, which has not come in yet), it would appear that our house would sell in the mid $400K range. However, if we could sell it quickly, we would make as much money on a lower-offer than we would by keeping on the market for 6 months to a year. It is costing us nearly $40,000 a year to keep this house, so if we could sell it sooner, rather than later, we would end up saving money. A "low-ball" offer that is $40,000 less than our asking price is really the same thing as a full-price offer a year later.

And yet, that is the opposite of what usually happens - people over-list their houses, they sit on the market for months, and then end up taking a lower offer.

Another important thing to bear in mind about home pricing, as I have mentioned in the past in this blog, is to consider price range.

Talk all you want about marketing and staging your home, open houses, or full-page ads. They don't sell homes. Local folks interested to see what their home is worth (or to go through your house and admire your squalor) are the only folks who read all that stuff. Real estate agents do all that work, because it raises their profiles and gets them listings.

No, what sells homes is price. Put it on the MLS, price it attractively (you don't have to GIVE it away, just price it realistically) and it sells. Listen to Edith Lank on this one - price is what moves homes, not granite counter tops.

And ranges can cause you to miss buyers. For example, if we listed this at $520,000 it would be a bit of a reach, perhaps, for this house. It also means that a real estate agent pulling listings for buyers (this is what sells homes) would then pull your listing when looking at homes in the $500,000 to $600,000 range. Those are some nice homes and you might end up looking pretty shabby next to them.

On the other hand, a buyer looking in the $400,000 to $500,000 range will never see your home, as the agent won't pull your listing when he runs the MLS for the area. So a buyer who would jump on your house never sees it, because the one criteria, price, has excluded it.

If you are near one of these price breakpoints, it may be better to move your price slightly under. $499,999 is a number that snags the "$500K and below" crowd. And let's face it, if you are listing at $520,000, chances are, you'd take $499,999 any day.

So understand the price break points and price within them, when reasonable. Your agent should have a good idea of these break points in your area. Usually, they are in $50,000 increments, except perhaps at the very top and bottom of the market.

We will wait for our appraisal to come in next week before making a final decision. But I suspect that it will be somewhere in the mid $400,000 range. It may break $500K, but I doubt it, based on comparable sales in the area. I suspect our three numbers will be $475,000 (if we can get it), $450,000 (a realistic number) and $425,000 (if we have to).

Like I said, it ain't rocket science.

Note, the only exception to this rule is if you are in a market that has changed drastically lately (Florida, for example) or you are not up on the latest Real Estate trends. Most folks, however, seem to know exactly what houses sold for on their block - as gossiping about Real Estate prices is one of the major topics of conversation in most places.

Occasionally, you do end up with people who are so clueless about pricing that they absolutely give a house away. But that happens rarely. More often the opposite happens - people convince themselves their house is the Taj Mahal, and that it will sell for a million bucks. Such folks waste everyone's time, including that of buyers, Real Estate Agents, and even their own.

Price it realistically, and watch it go away.

Does Gas Mileage Matter? (YES!)

Gas prices have eased somewhat, recently, and no one is talking about them. But gas still is costly and gas mileage still matters.

As gas has hovered under the $3 a gallon mark lately, many folks have stopped obsessing about the price of gas. And sales of lower gas mileage cars and trucks have increased somewhat as a result. Granted, no one is going out and buying 8-mpg crew-cab dually trucks to commute to work anymore (unless they are total idiots), but sales of SUVs, particularly smaller SUVs, are fairly brisk.

Does gas mileage matter anymore? The answer is YES, and in a big way.

First, don't take this season's relative low fuel prices as any indication of a trend in fuel pricing. As someone who has experienced every gas price shock since the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, I can tell you that when gas prices seem to get lower, it is only the calm before the storm. Gas prices will spike and peak again, within our lifetime, that much is certain. $4 a gallon gas will come back before you know it. $5 a gallon gas, once though impossible, will be a new reality sometime soon. Before I die, $10 a gallon will seem "reasonable".

Why do I know this? Because as a youth, no one thought that gas would go over 50 cents. When it did, everyone predicted the end of the world. The world didn't end, and we moved on. We all said, "Well, it will NEVER hit a dollar-a-gallon!"

And of course, it did. Each major dollar level becomes a new benchmark in pricing, and we will surely see major benchmarks met in the coming years, with prices oscillating back to lower levels after people freak out and start conserving. It is like a pendulum. Gas went down to 78 cents a gallon during the Clinton administration, and we all bought monster trucks, SUVs, and motorhomes. It spikes to $5 a gallon during the Bush administration, and we dump these gas hogs for pennies on the dollar.

During a lull in gas prices, it may be tempting to buy a car, truck, or SUV that gets lousy gas mileage, and think nothing of it. But when prices spike, you end up regretting that decision.

And the funny thing is, there really is no "need" to own a gas hog. If you go back in time to earlier days of the automobile, many folks made do with cars with far less horsepower and far less weight, and got along fine. Even heavy trucks of the 1930's and 1940's had little horsepower. 100HP was considered a lot back then. Today, many folks feel they "need" 300 HP in a two-door coupe. Why is this?

Technology has improved, to be sure. We can make more HP with less fuel than ever before. The free market economy, in tandem with government regulation of mileage (CAFE standards, emissions standards) has produced a wonder of the modern world - the 300 HP car that gets 30 mpg on the highway.

But, for a little less money, you can "make do" with 200 HP or less, and get 35 mpg on the highway, or perhaps 40 mpg, if you are willing to "settle" for the 100 HP that once powered Mack Trucks during the war.

Things like full-time four wheel drive can really take away from your gas mileage. Even part-time 4WD can suck away gas, in terms of driveline friction and excess weight. If you are thinking of buying an SUV or pickup truck, ask yourself if you really "need" this feature, or whether you'd prefer 3-5 mpg in better mileage.

Moving forward, I can tell you that I personally would have a hard time buying any car that gets less than 30 mpg, if not 35. And for a truck or SUV, it should get over 20, preferably 25, mpg, in regular service.

I filled the tank on our 21 mpg SUV the other day, and it came to over $50. That sort of staggered me, in terms of fuel cost. $50 buys a nice meal at the Italian restaurant down the street - with a bottle of wine. The cost of fuel is very real, and yet many folks just pay the bill without thinking, considering it to be the "cost of doing business".

Don't be fooled by low fuel costs. Gas mileage still matters - in a big way. While it may be tempting to buy a "hemi" or a huge v-8, down the road you may regret such a decision, if you are using such a vehicle for general transportation.

Why I am selling my vacation home....

Our vacation home was nice, but there are a multitude of compelling reasons to sell it.

As we all start thinking of retirement, it makes sense to set up your life in such a way that your expenses are minimized. There is no point in having a high-bucks lifestyle when you retire, unless you are truly rich.

But for the rest of us, having a plan of how to live on a day-to-day basis and afford a comfortable retirement is the goal.

After much hemming and hawing, we decided to market our home in New York and retire full-time to Jekyll Island. Oh, when I say "retire" I mean that I will still work part-time. But I no longer will have the need to make a six-figure salary, just to pay the bills.

There are a number of reasons why I am doing this. Everyone asks me for a single reason, but there really are so many, it is not possible to point to one thing that made us decide to move. There is no "straw that broke the camel's back" - it just seemed like it would be a lot easier all around to downsize.

Here are a number of reasons that have compelled us to this life-changing decision, in no particular order:

1. Saving money: Owning two homes means a monthly mortgage payment of about $2400 a month, plus the additional taxes of $6000 a year, additional homeowner's insurance of $1000 a year, two internet service bills, two sets of utility bills, plus extra maintenance. Easily, this adds up to $5000 a month or more in extra living expenses, or about $60,000 a year, nearly half my income. Granted, there are some bills that will go up slightly (utilities in Jekyll) and mortgage interest is tax-deductible. But regardless, our need for income will drop dramatically and our disposable income will rise dramatically as a result of downsizing. We can also save more.

2. Going Negative: Despite all the savings I have enacted in this blog, our monthly cash flow has been going negative in recent years. Not by a lot, but we are incurring debt and/or finding it hard to pay down debt. When your savings balances decline and your credit card debt increases, it is a sign you are spending more than you make. Time to take action and make changes. So we are.

3. Too Much Work: Owning two homes is a staggering amount of work, and our New York home has a lot of labor associated with it. Everything, it seems, needs to be cleaned, oiled, checked, tuned up, winterized, de-winterized, waxed, polished, put away, taken out, weeded, watered, fertilized, and generally taken care of. The moment you stop doing these things, bad things happen - things break or wear out, leaving you with expensive repair bills. A smaller home with fewer "things" is the answer. Less work, more time for play.

4. Poor Internet Service: We pay nearly $80 a month for Internet service at the farm by satellite, and it is poor. The local cable and phone companies have no plans to EVER offer Internet service here. Not a deal-killer, to be sure, but another grain of sand in the balance beam.

5. High Taxes: Real Estate taxes, and every other tax, are high in New York. The welfare system here is enormous, and local schools are gold-plated and teachers highly paid. This is great if you are on welfare and have three kids in school. But there are no jobs, and what few jobs that are here are chased out of the State. Long-term, it makes sense to move to somewhere where taxes are lower, if we plan on living on a fixed income.

6. Indians: Compounding the problem of the welfare state are the many Indian tribes who have convinced the Federal Government to expand the size of their reservations and allow them to operate casinos, gas stations, and other businesses, tax-free. They are driving local businesses bankrupt, as they can undercut everyone else's prices. Mathematically, if this trend is allowed to continue, it is a certainty that the Indian tribes will operate every business in the State. Of course, many of these casinos and businesses are operated by people who do not have Indian-sounding names.....people who might be working for...

7. The Mafia: Yes, New York is a corrupt State, and organized crime is a real problem. Not in the sense that they are killing people on the street or shaking down citizens. But rather, they have their fingers in everything, and as a result, every government project gets bogged down in corruption and overpricing. This in turn leads to staggering taxes and a depressed economy. Tony Soprano isn't "cool" at all. His type ruins civilizations.

8. The Weather: While it is beautiful here in the Summer months, in the Spring and Fall it can be cold and rainy, and in the Winter - well forgetaboutit. Dreary and depressing are the order of the day. It is cheaper to come up here for three months in a camper than to buy a home here and leave it vacant for six months or more.

9. The People: You have never seen such an unhappy bunch of complainers in the world. Everyone in Ithaca is upset over one thing or another. Most smoke pot and/or are on anti-depressants. They are crazy - and not in a good way. Most are unpleasant to be around, as they have such negative views on life and everything. They despise happy people and people who are successful and have money. They have this neo-socialist attitude that the State should run everything and no one should have ambition. While they like to think of themselves as educated, they really are not very bright people. Who in their right mind would endure New York winters and New York economic conditions? Not smart!

10. Private Road: We live on a private road, and in the time we've been here, it has gotten worse and worse. The problem is, the people (see #9 above) just bicker at attack one another and nothing gets done. "Love thy neighbor" is not the order of the day. Again, these are not bright folks, and often the simplest points are lost on them, because they'd rather believe what they want to believe, rather than think. When confronted with our crumbling private road, for example, one homeowner said, "Isn't there some government program that pay to have it re-paved?" This is the sort of genius thinking that goes on here. Stupid! Living on a private road is like owning a Condo, on a small scale, and you know how I feel about condos.

11. Access to Medical Care: The nearest hospital, in either direction, is 20 miles. In Brunswick, there is a state-of-the-art hospital nearly at the end of the causeway. Health insurance is cheaper in Georgia as well.

12. One Level Living: While we are ambulatory now, it makes sense, as we age, to think about a home without stairs. Jekyll has one level living with wide doors.

13. Doing Things Rather Than Owning Things: While it is nice to have a vacation home, it is also nice to go to different places. Owning a vacation home locks you into going to the same place, year after year. We can't jet off to Europe, or take a trip to Alaska, or go on a cruise - because all our time and energy is devoted to taking care of two houses.

14. We Can Rent For Less: If we really want to spend the summers up here, we can rent a house for less than the annual carrying cost of owning two homes.

15. Debt-Free: Selling the home means we will be debt free - no mortgage, no credit card debt, no car loans. Less stress, no "need" to make huge sums of money. More time for Golf or relaxing.

16. More Money for Retirement Savings: We will be able to put more in our 401(k) as a result of severely reduced cash flow needs.

17. Real Estate Appreciation Flat: There is no point in "holding on" to Real Estate in the hopes it will gain in value, as the market is flat and will remain so for at least 5-10 years.

18. Carrying Cost Versus Price: While it may take some time for the house to sell, we can sell it at an attractive price for a quick sale. Since it is costing us $5000 a month to maintain two homes, setting an unrealistic price and waiting a year or more for a buyer would end up costing us $50,000 in expenses. Better to lower your price by $50,000 and sell quickly.

19. Owning fewer "things": Consolidating two homes means we will own far fewer things to maintain and worry about. Two cars (maybe only one) fewer shoes, fewer clothes, fewer appliances, fewer computers, electronics - everything. Owning two of everything is time-consuming and taxing.

20. You Can Always Come Back: Just because we are selling the house doesn't mean we can't rent a place here - for far less than owning a home. The idea that you have to leave permanently is ridiculous. Downsizing, on the other hand, is a good idea.

21. Utilities Cost: In addition to the cost of two utility bills (even when we are not there, both houses consume energy) the cost of utilities in New York is far higher than in Georgia. NYSEG charges a minimum utility fee for the house, barn, and lake, so regardless of whether a kilowatt is used, we pay $25 a month on each. Cost per kilowatt is higher in New York, of course, and we rely on propane for heating, which is not cheap. In addition, since the house in Georgia is smaller, it uses less energy. Oddly enough, it is cheaper to air condition the house in Georgia than to heat the one in New York.

22. Phone service: We can rely on a land line in Georgia now, and go to a disposable-type pay-as-you-go cell plan for our cell phones, if desired. This could save us a lot of money and we would not have to rely on cell phones for our main communication.

23. Golf: There are four golf courses on Jekyll, and they are rarely played in the winter months. The courses are in much better shape than in New York, where the season is short. If we volunteer for the Authority, Golf can be free. Yes, free.

24. Beaches: There are miles of empty beaches on Jekyll, and it is a nice place to hang out and see the water. We just don't get that in New York.

25. Driving: You can get most of your daily needs on the island, where the speed limit is 35 mph and you can drive your golf cart or NLEV on the road. In New York, it is a good five miles to the local corner store and 20 miles to the grocery.

26. Biking: A bike path goes around the entire island, and you can use your bike to go anywhere on the island. Biking in NY usually requires that you drive somewhere to go biking. Local roads have narrow shoulders and 55-mph speed limits. Not conducive to biking!

27. Penis Boats: A nice relaxing day at the lake is a wonderful thing. That is, until the guy with the 1500-horsepower penis boat goes roaring by at 150 decibels. This sort of white trash behavior kind of ruins things. For a vacation home, perhaps a quiet, smaller lake in the Adirondacks, would be nicer. Just saying.

28. Trash#1: The Mafia (see #9) runs the trash business. So throwing things away up here is expensive and difficult. We have to keep trash in our garage all week and then haul it ourselves to a transfer station, where it must be sorted and put in bins. It is messy, disgusting work, and the only alternative is to hire a service, which still requires that we truck the trash 1/4 mile down the road. At the transfer station, locals park right in front of the dumpster or literally blocking the road, so dumping your trash becomes frustrating, as some idiot takes his time blocking everything while he "takes his turn" dumping his garbage. And yes, you have to pay $3.50 per bag to do this. In Jekyll, we do have to pay a trash fee, but they do pick up the trash from your home once a week. We also have a recycling center, if you want to use it.

29. Trash#2: We have a 5 cent per bottle deposit in New York. Not lucrative enough like in Michigan, to make it worthwhile - just annoying. So you harbor smelly beer bottles in your garage (or worse, car) for weeks until you have enough to take back to the store. It takes days to get the smell off your hands. And they recently decided to expand this scheme to non-carbonated beverages and perhaps even wine and liquor! Hmmm.... have you noticed a correlation between States with deposit laws and States that have depressed economies? Almost every State you see listed on the deposit bottles is in a state of funk. Perhaps over-governing people is the reason.

30. Trash#3: The mafia is in the trash business. Decades ago, New Yorkers bought into the "trash crises" lock, stock, and barrel, believing that for some reason, we would run out of places to throw our trash. This is, of course, nonsense. So trucks drive from all over to dump trash in huge landfills. This means a lot of truck traffic, usually on local roads, and usually from smelly, run-down trucks being driven over the speed limit. On our State Route 90, the State has had to replace three major bridges, which have all but collapsed due to the weight of these trucks. When pressed for reform, we are all told "nothing can be done about it". Well something could be done, but the mafia running the trash business would break your kneecaps. Hmmmm... have you noticed a correlation between States with heavy organized crime influence and States that have depressed economies?

31. Been There, Done That: When we first moved here, it seemed like there would be an endless list of things to do, places to go, and things to see. But after a while, once you've done the same thing over and over again, the thrill is somewhat diminished. It is fun to visit the local wineries, but after you've been to the same one a dozen times, there is little that is new. Ditto for the local restaurant. And once you've been to a dozen wineries, well, they all start to look the same. Granted, some folks find comfort in this sameness, and go on doing the same thing, over and over again, year in and year out. But for me, I like to have some change in my kibble.

* * *

These are just some of the reasons we are selling. There are many more as well.

Now, reading this list, you may think I am terribly unhappy with the house. Not so! These are just the reasons AGAINST owning it. There are many more reasons to stay there, and believe me, it has been a multi-year process to weigh them.

The weather is nice, there is boating, room for hobbies, some job opportunities, space, people, friends, good food, etc.

And there are limitations to living down South, including higher insurance, hurricanes, crazy old people, and other issues.

But taking all that into the balance, it seems that, moving forward, it makes more sense to own a smaller house in an easier place to live. And this is not to say that we won't move from Jekyll, when the time is right - perhaps to somewhere that doesn't need hurricane insurance!

It is a big step to walk away from such a nice house. But on the other hand, living debt-free will be a lot more fun than owning stuff.

Now excuse me, I have to go fix one of the 10 toilets I presently own...

P.S., a friend of mine sent me this link, to a hilarious Slate article on the same subject.

Law School For Idiots

Law School may seem intimidating at first, but this is only because of the scare stories. What could be easier than a school where all your grades are based on the final exams?

Any idiot can go to law school, and as I like to say, I'm living proof of that. I just finished reading Scott Turow's "1L" which is an account of his harrowing experiences in his first year at Harvard. As he learned in the book, part of the problem of being a law student is not that the work is hard, but rather in learning that it is easier than it appears.

Getting in to law school is no big deal. Get a good grade on the LSAT. To do this, you have to be somewhat smart and good at those SAT-type tests. But also you have to invest the money in taking the LSAT review course. The course will train you in the questions you will expect to see, and it will easily boost your LSAT score by several percentile points. I ended up in top 1% after taking the review course. Not bad.  It got me into GW even with mediocre grades.

Train yourself to take the test, and you will do well on the test. This is a theme you will see throughout law school and on the Bar exam. Try to train yourself on the law in general, and you will do much more poorly on the test - even if you end up learning "more" in the latter method.

Having some decent grades will help you get into law school as well. Now if you are one of those overachievers who wants to work for a big New York law firm, well, you need great grades from a name school and a good LSAT score to get into the "name" law schools like Harvard or Yale. But for the rest of us schumcks who will end up practicing law at a more parochial level, that really isn't necessary - nor is all the stress of law school.

Once you are in law school, relax. Very few people flunk out of law school. Most people who leave do so for other reasons - they find they don't like the law, for example. But failing? Hard to do.

Here's the dirty little secret of law school - one that I didn't "get" until my second year: All of your grades are based (in most cases) on your score on the final exam. And in most cases, what is taught on the final exam has little bearing on the coursework over the semester.

I wasted a lot of time trying to participate in class and being "prepared" for class, when what I should have been was prepared for the Exam. The oddball cases discussed by the Professors ended up confusing me and I didn't learn the basics of the law until it was too late.

So as a "1L" you can stress out about briefing cases or being "prepared for class" to be called on to "brief the case", but it really means nothing at all, other than maybe an academic interest in the law.

By your second year, you will find that many students are skipping more than half their classes. Some of my friends attended not a single class in some courses, and still ended up getting an "A" because they aced the Exam, which was a near-copy of the previous years' exam. I tried to "learn" by attending classes and reading the material, and nearly did the impossible - I nearly flunked out of law school.

Once I started training myself to take the exams, my grades improved remarkably. I am a slow learner, sometimes, but I finally figured it out by the last year of school (which is four years for us night students).

Approaching Law School as an Engineering grad, I assume naively that the classwork was related to the coursework on the test. In Engineering school, I could show up, pay attention, take notes, ask questions, and get an "A" on the Exam. Law School was a completely different ballgame, and I doggedly (and stupidly) tried to apply my previous skill set to Law School, blithely ignoring my neighbor's different approaches. I felt that somehow I was learning "more about the law" by doing it my way. But passing the test was the main idea - the main idea I missed, initially.

The grade for each course is based on the one and only Exam, and the Exam is based on two things: Black letter law and issue spotting. The exams are basically essays and some ask you to spot major issues (the important ones) which is really not hard to do. Don't get caught up in the tricks they use to distract you - getting you to go off on a tangent on some minor issue that won't carry the day. Spot the main, important issues, and you are assured a good grade.

Such exams are easy to grade for the professors. You spot five of the six main issues, you get an "A". You go off on what seems like an interesting tangent, but fail to discuss most of the main issues, you get a "D". It is that simple - the simple, direct answers take the day. Bullshitting about tangential nonsense might make you think you look smart, but it misses the main idea.

Similarly, the essays are based on the "Black Letter Law" which is the well-worn path the law usually takes - not some obscure case which is presented in class only to confuse you and to make you wonder if the law makes any sense at all. Professors like to teach you about esoteric oddball cases in order to illustrate basic questions in the law or to get you to think about the boundaries of that well-worn path.

Many first-year students, myself included, fail to grasp this simple concept and end up confused - wondering why one piece of case law says the opposite of another, based on nearly the same facts and circumstances. Scott Turow, in his book, recalls his struggles with this same problem - that he failed to grasp that what his professors were trying to do is ask questions with no clear answers, and then get you to think and argue about the law. The professors are not providing answers, but trying to get you to think - like lawyers - by asking questions.

But generally, these sorts of things are not on the Exam. The Exam, which is the whole deal (and graded anonymously) deals with your basic understanding of the law, and generally doesn't address esoteric questions.

And many professors re-use the same (or similar) questions from year to year on the exams, or rotate them from time to time. Law school libraries generally have copies of old exams for you to look at, so you can train yourself to take the exam by taking old Exams.

My grades improved remarkably when I realized this simple trick. Train myself to take the exam first, then think about the esoteric aspects of the law second. I would sit in a room and take an old exam, typing up the answers, in the time allotted for the "real" exam, as an exercise. In some instances, I would use the actual exam room, so that by the day of the Exam, I had been through the experience several times and was not all freaked out by it. By then, the Exam room was my comfortable lounge, and taking the Exam was something I had done several times already. I was relaxed, to say the least.

Typing answers is also a good idea, if you are a good typist. A typed exam is easier to read and one professor confessed that he automatically graded such exams higher than poorly scrawled answers in "blue books". Usually the typing room was less crowded, too, so you can have a little more peace and less stress than the large auditoriums where the main part of the class is taking the test.

Again, if you want to be a legal superstar, you'll want to get on Law Review and have stellar grades. For me, as a night student, this was not even an option. I just wanted to get the degree that I needed to keep the job that I already had (writing Patents). Passing the courses - and the bar exam - with the minimal amount of fuss was important. Becoming a great legal scholar in Constitutional Law, well, that wasn't as important.

And speaking of the Bar Exam, it is just a test, just like the LSAT or the law school exams. No need to freak out about it And guess what? They test you on issue spotting and black letter law, just like in law school. Really smart people screw up the bar exam because they are really smart people - too smart. They read a simple question with a couple of "ringer" distracting facts in it, and assume the question is a "trick" and that the main issue deals with the distracting facts. But what the examiners are really looking for is you to barf up the basic idea, to show you understand the basics of the law. You miss the basics, and all the esoteric tangential issues are of no use. And it is a pass/fail test.

Again, the bar review courses (I used BAR/BRI) are essential. Many of the legal concepts I learned in law school did not coalesce until I took the bar review course, which reduced an entire semester (or year) of coursework into a few days of outlines. Suddenly, it all made sense.

Many of the questions on the actual Bar Exam were verbatim from the review course. Some always are. The multi-state portion repeats a lot of questions (and some are basically unanswerable). You can drill yourself on multi-state questions (available in electronic form) to the point where you can pass the Exam just because you've memorized all the "correct" answers after a while.

When I took the State Bar Exam, I was very sick and running a fever due to an ear infection. I was in very bad shape, ready to pass out. As a result, I wrote short, simple, direct answers to the exam questions, covering the main ideas.

I passed.

Friends of mine, all panicky and nervous, were sure that there was a "trick" to each question, and that by addressing some tangential issue in a long-winded essay, they had mastered the bar exam.

Some of them failed.

I am not trying to trivialize the study of law, of course. One of the major hurdles one faces as a "1L" and as Mr. Turow discusses, is learning to think like a lawyer and learning the unusual lingo of the law. First year law classes and the Socratic method do help you learn to "think on your feet". There is value in the classwork, at least initially.

And as Mr. Turow discusses in his book, many of the "case books" published by the professors often abstract the cases to the point where you can barely make sense of them. In fact, no one could make sense of them.

So in that regard, such "cheater" materials like nutshells, outlines, and other study aids are important in cutting to the chase when studying law school materials. Hiding the main idea is very common in law school, and there is no sense in going on a treasure hunt, when someone can just hand you a map.

When a professor leaves out basic information from a case in the case book, it really is just making simple ideas seem harder than they need to be. Why they do this is a mystery to some - perhaps because they want to make law school seem harder than it is - and keep people out of the guild as a result.

There are, of course, some courses where the grade is not based on the exam - moot court competitions, courses with research papers due, etc. Such courses tend to teach you more about what you will actually be doing as a lawyer, and as a result, you may be better off putting more effort into your moot court brief than into attending every class for a course where the grade is based on the final.

Perhaps that sounds crass, but this is the way the law schools have structured the game - so in a way, it really is their fault. As Mr. Turow noted in his book, by the second semester, many of his classmates - as many as 1/3, were skipping classes regularly to concentrate on more important things, such as research projects or moot court briefs. And this was at Harvard, supposedly the greatest law school in the nation.

One wonders why they would structure a legal education in such a manner that encourages students to take shortcuts or skip classes. But perhaps that is another part of the education itself - learning to spot what is important and necessary and most useful, and also identifying what is less important and less necessary. In medicine they call this triage, separating the dead and dying from the merely wounded, and concentrating efforts where they are most useful and will produce results.

Most lawyers only have limited resources to bear on a given legal problem (limited by their client's ability to pay) and thus have to adjust their efforts to where they would do the most good. The most bang-for-the-buck.

Law students have to do the same thing. And perhaps that is one of the more important lessons in law school. You learn to separate the wheat from the chaff - what is important from what is window dressing. You learn to think analytically instead of emotionally. And that last item is why some people drop out. They don't want to learn to be analytical, on the grounds it is dehumanizing.

Like I said, it took me nearly four years to figure all this out. By the time I sat for the Bar Exam, I realized that I had wasted much of my law school education trying to do things "right" when I could have learned more and gotten better grades by applying the principles of triage to my work. It was a hard and expensive lesson to learn.

And here you are, getting it for free. Enjoy.