Deep thinking goes on daily at the University of Chicago Law School.
But on rare occasions, the students dress up in suits and comment on each other's outfits.
They sometimes take boat cruises on the Chicago River and go to Second City.
They have anxiety-provoking OCIs (on-campus interviews for law jobs).
And one law student was a candidate for Miss Illinois.
They even eat lunch.
To get out this kind of news about "our law school's daily life" to potential students, the U of C Law School this month launched it's third blog. It's called "A Day in the Life."
Compared to the law school's Faculty Blog and its Chicago Global blog, this latest online forum is light, student-oriented, chatty.
It's on the Web at http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/adayinthelife/.
"Ninety percent of our applications last year were filed electronically," said Ann K. Perry, assistant dean for admis-sions. "These applicants are just online all the time."
So the new blog is a recruiting tool, "another way for us to communicate with the prospective students in a way that they like and enjoy."
U of C law students are posting blog entries on "A Day in the Life," as are four administrators, Perry said.
A Sept. 17 entry is headlined: "OCI from the Student Perspective."
It describes Sara Feinstein's anxiety as she and the other 2Ls prepared recently to interview for law jobs for the summer of 2007.
"Walking down the main hallway, where students are camped out with laptops, NALP books, and coffee," Feinstein listened to her fellow students as they traded interview tips.
She overheard: "He's an IP litigator, make sure to ask about his last case" and "This one firm grilled me for 15 minutes about the brief we wrote for our writing seminar last April. You might want to review some copyright law."
The students' willingness to help each other, Feinstein wrote, demonstrated "a true esprit de corps."
She added, "Compliments on suits and shoe/tie choices abound. In a class of our size, such friendliness and support has come to be the norm."
Meghan Dawson, a U of C transfer student, wrote on "A Day in the Life" that she feared when going into OCI that she might be treated as "second-hand goods." She was pleasantly surprised.
"You get more callback offers than you know what to do with," she wrote afterward, "especially if you're person-able in the interviews and can really show the firm that they have what you want -- whatever it is.
"Bottom line -- OCI at U Chicago is great because it's more flattering than nerve wracking. Everyone will get a job...."
A prospective student who checks out the blog further might find the explanation for that statement that "Everyone will get a job."
About 300 hundred employers sought to hire University of Chicago 2L students for summer jobs -- and there are only 200 2L students.
This is according to a Sept. 10 blog entry by Mary Beth Wynn, a U of C law grad who now works in admissions.
In the recruitment game, "I think we just try different things every year," Perry said.
Law school applications nationwide have been dropping. They were down 6.3 percent nationally this year and 4.6 percent last year.
But Perry proudly pointed out that the U of C bucked the trend and recorded a slight increase this year, to 4,829 applications from 4,801 last year, or up 0.5 percent.
At the highly selective U of C, fewer than 200 law students will make up next year's 1st-year class.
Yet the drive to recruit goes on, and even alumni are expected to contribute to the new "A Day in the Life" blog, said Michael B. Machen, director of financial aid at the school.
"We're all excited just to see where it goes," he said. The admissions blog "is the wave of the future...."
Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, a lecturer in law and director of internal communications, helps with the technical as-pects of all of the law school's blogs.
"A Day in the Life" began Sept. 1. Already it gets about 80 hits a day and 550 a week, according to Perry.
"To our knowledge, Harvard is the only other top-tier [law] school that has an admissions blog," said Sabrina Miller, a spokesperson for the law school.
"A Day in the Life" is running a contest through Sept. 30 to see what town or school not currently on the list for re-cruiting visits will get one from Perry or one of her staff before the end of the year.
Nashville, Tenn., is ahead.

Copyright 2006 Law Bulletin Publishing Company