Going To Law School

I was just looking through Glannon for stuff for my Civ. Pro class but it wasn't that helpful. I was having some trouble on the finer points of subject matter jurisdiction as taken from the constitution and various cases but Glannon really only seemed to outline the basics, which I more or less get.

I haven't started classes yet (we had two early Elements classes last week), so Civ Pro, torts, etc. are a MySteRy to me. I just want to make sure those damned braniacs don't kick my ass to down to median.

-to

So far the hardest seeming thing about law school for me is that pretty much everyone I've talked to sounds like they're smart, generally get the material and work very hard. I'd like to think I'm smart too, and I've been working hard too, but the fact is that we're graded on a curve and I'm not sure if i have anything that gives me an edge over most of them

Mostly true. Don't worry about it. Focusing on what others know -- or seem to know -- will cleave up your confidence. Just study the subject matter and how to take the all-important end-of-semester exam.

Yes, the end of semester exam ... how soon should you start studying for it?

I'm guessing the details of the litigation process will come to you over time as you read cases and examples. I happened to pick up a lot of it from my job and it will probably become more second nature to you as you get to see it in action.

I'd study just the materials as they're presented for the moment. I guess I started looking over everything about mid-semester, building momentum into our "dead week," where there were no classes and the students prepared for the final exams.

But it isn't too early to start analyzing the way the professors test their students. Many professors have old tests available. They will give you valuable insight into what the teacher is probing, and what issues are important to him or her.

(xp)

(To be fair, from time-to-time throughout the semester, I did go back in my study aids (e.g., Gilberts) and casually review earlier materials, just to see how they all related to each other).

Oh, two more things. First, be wary of study groups. Some are helpful, supportive environments. Others are incubators for paranoid, depression, mistrust and angst. Worse still, some people are in study groups less to review and master the material and more to scare others in the group, or prove that they're smarter or more knowledgeable than others in the group.

Second, don't worry about who sounds smartest in class. Some of the people at the top of my graduating class almost never spoke in class, or sounded nervous or hesitant or unsteady when they did speak. And some of the most articulate and confident speakers in the class were mediocre students. You never know, so it's unhelpful to worry about it.

So would you say it's more important to find the most decent and nurturing people rather than necessarily the smartest to study with?

Yeah, I'd say so. In fact, I think some of the highest ranking members of my graduating class didn't participate in study groups, at all.

I stopped participating in study groups during my first year. I kept studying with friends, informally and infrequently, during my second and third years, but even those experiences didn't seem very useful, in retrospect.

I got together to study with someone today and it just ended up being 3 hours of flirting and talking about the differences between the West Coast and East Coast. I think taking time to be social is probably more useful than actually studying anything.

i like daniel, esq.'s advice for study strategies

reading these recent posts makes me so glad i'm finished law school! good luck you guys, it's going to be hard work. There are some fun bits and lots of really fascinating bits but oh my goodness it was hard.

BUT being a lawyer is great!

Seeing how smart and hard working everyone at school is, it makes me regret this decision a little. "Making top 15%" seemed a little easier on paper.

all you can do is be your best and try and enjoy what you're doing, and don't take too much notice of what everyone else is up to. i wasn't one of the people piping up in class with lots of words of wisdom mind you, but that's the way i approached it (also the approach i try to take to the rest of the stuff in life) and almost by default i got awesome marks and thusly an awesome job.

I hated speaking in class, BTW/FWIW, despite being on my HS and college debate teams.

i hate it too because i fear people are thinking what i think: "why doesn't this asshole shut his/her mouth?" it makes me very nervous and i can never say what i mean. the worst was i took "gender and the law" as a fluff course last year and it was so catty and obnoxious most of the time that i never wanted to say anything despite, i think, knowing what i was talking about.

also i never study with other people. first year they harp on study groups too much and make you feel like you absolutely must have one or you're doing it wrong. i really prefer to work things out on my own, and that has worked fine.

yep i was often reluctant to speak up in class too. but a lot of my lecturers were fond of putting people on the spot, so i always did all of my reading before class and was prepared to answer those sorts of questions. i used to try and make myself answer one question each class too, which gave me more confidence in my conclusions than i would have had otherwise. also it helps you to get to know the lecturers, which i found to be a great help in the long run too.

i found my study group to be indispensable. we'd actually figure a lot of shit out by screaming at each other for hours. it was a very abusive environment, but it worked! we all made law review. we were handsome, too.

If it has not become apparent from all of these posts, the name of the game in law school is exam time. Everything you do should be focused on exam time. Even now.

Which means - read everything so that you think you understand it. I found Gilbert's/Glannons/Examples and Explanations to be helpful as checks for understanding.

Keep organized and up-to-date. DO NOT FALL BEHIND.

Don't take it any more seriously than you feel it necessary in order to meet the first two. More often than not, the stress in law school comes from not understanding what the point of it all is. The point is to (a) kick ass on exams and (b) get a job with those kick ass scores. It will frequently take you a few times to get something - and that's the way it is supposed to be.

For what its worth, plese feel free to fire off questions of any type to me via this forum. I know I was very thankful for the guiding light of some already graduated persons my first year.

I used study groups for some classes, but not for a lot - maybe one every other semester. The model described by cutty is probably the best: everyone does the reading on everything, and shows up, ready to argue. The splitting of duties model will end up biting you in the ass in the end - you are the only one who gets to take the exams.

ughhhh. I'm on top of all my work and readings and basically understand everything, but the class thing messes me up. I mean, I understand everything the professor talks about, but then when he asks questions, and classmates answer with these crazy wackadoo things and the professor's like, "right, exactly!" I'm like, "I have no idea what the hell is going on??!"

I mean it's like, where the hell are these people coming up with these things? Am I doing something wrong? Am I not making the right connections?

Remember: Some people who sound good in class will be mediocre students; some people who never speak or sound awkward in class will be top-notch students. Don't worry about who sounds good in class. It's all the exam.

Did you start regular classes yet Stanton? One thing I've noticed so far -- when the prof asks a general, political sciencey question about the general role of the courts, checks and balances, democracy, etc. lots of people think they have smart things to say. Once you get into an actual case, most people shut the fuck up.

My first class was today. Nobody ever asks questions regarding the solid material in the case ... it's always these associative things, and that confuses the hell out of me. Everything the professor says I totally get, and our briefs basically match up (he'll tell us his as guidance), but some of these students who go off on class make me never want to speak.

Today in civ pro the professor mentioned an example case from the text about enforcement of child support -- the point of the example had to do with standing to sue and redressability, not child support, but of course the next four people to talk all gave opinions on how to enforce child support payment that actually had nothing to do with the topic at hand.

I think since some professors include class participation as part of their grade, students will just say whatever the hell they can. Do you have the class Elements of Law? I'm having trouble understanding what the point of that class is. Everything we're covering in that we're concentrating on in every other class.

No, we just have Civ Pro, Torts, Crim and Legal Writing. There is a lot of material that gets covered in more than one class in the beginning, but mostly just stuff about the court system, binding vs. persuasive authority, etc. -- obviously once we get past that there won't be much overlap.

At least one of my professors has said she will consider "quality, not quantity" in participation.

I think since some professors include class participation as part of their grade

I always thought this was nonsense when Professors said class participation influenced grades.

We've got Elements (for the first half, with exam, and Contracts the second half), Civ Pro, Torts, and Legal Writing. I've done Civ Pro work already and that stuff makes sense... Elements of Law, no idea what the hell that class is about.

I always thought this was nonsense when Professors said class participation influenced grades.

I had one prof say it was something like 10%, and another claimed he uses it to bump you up as much as half a grade if he thinks your participation was strong.

Well, don't go by me. I had no inside information, and it's been years since I've been in law school. I'm just saying it always seemed to me to be about the final exam, and little else.

i'm tutoring in evidence at my old law school this semester, and i have to assign 10% of my students' marks to tutorial attendance and participation

Law sounds so much harder in the US than here in Australia. I really didn't do much outside of attend class and cram in the last few weeks before exams.

i am amused by burt's anxiety in classes.

That makes it sound like you're in class with him.

"i hate it too because i fear people are thinking what i think: "why doesn't this asshole shut his/her mouth?" it makes me very nervous and i can never say what i mean. the worst was i took "gender and the law" as a fluff course last year and it was so catty and obnoxious most of the time that i never wanted to say anything despite, i think, knowing what i was talking about."

Ha ha I won the law prize for 'Law, Gender & Feminism'. My proudest moment (and my only prize obv).

they give out prizes now?

yeah, what tim f said applies to law school in scotland too

US law school sounds a bit hard and daunting

It really seems like a properly full time thing. I did law split with arts (you can do law at an undergraduate i.e. sort of college equivalent level here) and had on average about 12 hours a week of contact hours. I did paid work between 15 and 25 hours a week for my entire degree. From the sounds of it that wouldn't really be possible at the US law schools...?

How's work going for you cozen?

I'm almost qualified (3 days to go). I've disliked it for the most part but then I don't think it was ever for me.

However, it is good for choice quotes, especially from bosses. My boss just told a client that "Nigeria is a lawless country" (!!).

Any other plans?

I wish my work was good for choice quotes.

I have plans but I'm being guarded and sheepish about them for the most part, because I don't want to jinx them.

In the short term, I'm off on holiday round Scotland on my bike. In the mid-to-long term I have something promising lined up but am just waiting on a solid job offer.

but some of these students who go off on class make me never want to speak

If this is your first, gut-level instinct with regard to class participation, I would follow it. I tended to be one of the folks who spoke in class pretty regularly, but always tended to talk about the topic at hand - I've always been a person who learned best by asking questions. None of my classmates minded me (or so I was told), however, because I was asking questions about the material, as opposed to just talking to hear myself talk. There were others in my section, however, that had earned everyone's animosity by the second week in class.

"To me it seems like (rephrasing of point that was already made three different times when we were talking about the subject 10 minutes ago)"

Dude! Its like you were IN my first year section!

Part of me really doesn't want to hate these people - we all have our own learning processes, self-learned or otherwise, that we need to go through to get things learned. Paraphrasing in a forum that will either approve or disapprove of the paraphrase is one of these methods.

The problem is when this paraphrasing becomes burdensome on the rest of the class's learning - like "STFU, dude. We want to get to everything we read!"

In real law world, I was just given the following assignment: Here's what I think happened. Write me that story, but with facts to back it up. Awesome.

Torts and Civ Pro are way better, I just had my first classes - I can actually talk about my interpretations of the case that relate to the case. I guess my Elements class is a weird thing ... nobody really has a grasp about what it is, aside from a way to ease students into law school.

I'm also becoming a library rat. I know when I schlep back to my apartment there's no way in hell I'm going to do my assignments... well, at least.

I just read 22 pages of a Supreme Court opinion on the use of FRCP Rule 8(a)(2) and Rule 12(b)(6) regarding some complaint filed on telecom monopolies, and it was downright fascinating.

Ok, q for the vets:

A friend approached me and one other guy with a study idea. Basically there are three of us and three classes that use example cases (the other is legal writing). So he thought we could each take one and be responsible for a running *crib sheet* of all the principle and note cases for that class. I agreed, but just wondering if I'm making extra work for myself.

On the plus side, there's obviously the division of labor thing, and having all cases discussed in an easy format would be good.

On the minus side, maybe this winds up expending too much energy on note cases that, while they illustrate important exceptions and points, we don't have to know them by name or anything.

On the plus side again, just going over all those note cases thoroughly would probably help to remember important rules, variations and exceptions.