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CaptainScraps posted:This year I'm just going to pop the cases into Westlaw and steal the headnotes. Every single 1L case is in Wikipedia, and most of the rest of the cases are as well. I didn't even buy the textbooks when I figured that out.
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Aug 8, 2010 06:11
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BigHead posted:Every single 1L case is in Wikipedia, and most of the rest of the cases are as well. I didn't even buy the textbooks when I figured that out. What about the rest of the materials in the casebook? The commentary and practice questions, etc Also, what do you do when you get called on in class and need to direct the professor to where your answer came from? "198 U.S. 215 at 221" isn't very helpful when the rest of the class is using a casebook with the page numbers edited out with an abridged version of the case.
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Aug 8, 2010 15:39
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jake1357 posted:What about the rest of the materials in the casebook? The commentary and practice questions, etc You mean, the things that are not on the exam? jake1357 posted:Also, what do you do when you get called on in class and need to direct the professor to where your answer came from? "198 U.S. 215 at 221" isn't very helpful when the rest of the class is using a casebook with the page numbers edited out with an abridged version of the case. Someone tried this back on my very first day of 1L year. He got called on and described d a few facts that had been edited out of the casebook. The professor knew something was up and pressed him until he admitted that he'd read a hornbook instead of the casebook. Very embarrassing on your first day of law school, but it still doesn't affect your exam performance.
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Aug 8, 2010 15:47
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jake1357 posted:What about the rest of the materials in the casebook? The commentary and practice questions, etc Irrelevant filler that textbook authors use to make their casebooks appear to be more than just abridged versions of cases that you could find for free elsewhere. quote:Also, what do you do when you get called on in class and need to direct the professor to where your answer came from? "198 U.S. 215 at 221" isn't very helpful when the rest of the class is using a casebook with the page numbers edited out with an abridged version of the case. You just tell your professor that you actually pull and read the entire case for every assigned case, because the abridged version just doesn't do it for you. 
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Aug 8, 2010 15:48
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That's cool, whatever works for y'all. I know that I got a lot out of the questions and, to a lesser extent, the commentary. I had a couple of professors who used variations on questions from the casebook in their exams. That seemed especially true for the professors who wrote the casebook that they assigned. Obviously, different professors will have different policies.. But for Property, for example, I'm happy I did the casebook's practice problems, because the test had similar questions.
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Aug 8, 2010 16:26
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jake1357 posted:Also, what do you do when you get called on in class and need to direct the professor to where your answer came from? "198 U.S. 215 at 221" isn't very helpful when the rest of the class is using a casebook with the page numbers edited out with an abridged version of the case. "I left my book at home." If you do your reading at home vs. at the law school, it can be a pain in the rear end lugging your books back and forth. So long as you're familiar with the case and are answering the questions, nobody's really going to care that you don't know a page number. I stopped bringing books to class as soon as I found a reliable outline.
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Aug 8, 2010 16:43
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maskenfreiheit fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Mar 19, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2010 16:51
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You're learning!
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Aug 8, 2010 17:02
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jake1357 posted:Also, what do you do when you get called on in class "Pass"
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Aug 8, 2010 18:16
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Draile posted:You mean, the things that are not on the exam? I disagree with this (that textbooks aren't necessary because you can get all the needed info from Wikipedia/Westlaw/outlines/hornbooks). I know several professors who get very angry when it is obvious to them on an exam that students were relying on outside materials that weren't covered in class. That makes sense because it's basically telling the professor that he/she didn't do a good enough job teaching and left out important parts or was so confusing that you had to resort to other materials to make sense of it. I used lots of old outlines and hornbooks while making my outlines, but I always made sure I knew that it was actually something we talked about that I could have plausibly learned from listening in class.
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Aug 8, 2010 18:34
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terrorist ambulance posted:Reading books where every second word is highlighted is irritating and distracting, I have no idea how people find that helpful Amazon's Marketplace comments are actually pretty useful here. I never did any writing in the margins but I liked to highlight things myself that looked important (when I was a 1L, every other word; later on, a few important phrases), so I'd go through the listings looking for anything marked as Good+ quality with "minimal notes in margins" or "lots of notes, no highlighting". Saved hundreds of dollars buying casebooks that were almost untouched and then sold them back to the bookstore, often for more than I paid for them. jake1357 posted:What about the rest of the materials in the casebook? The commentary and practice questions, etc Skim them and squiggly-mark anything that the professor seems to spend a lot of time on and/or says "this is something I like to put on the exam."
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Aug 8, 2010 18:35
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Unless your professor is actually listed as an author on the book, the practice questions will not be nearly as useful as old exams and may actually hurt you by teaching you to focus on the wrong things. The commentary may occasionally be useful when it introduces a difficult subject (like the rule against perpetuities) but the commentary following a case (with citations to law review articles and other bullshit) is absolute filler.
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Aug 8, 2010 21:45
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jake1357 posted:What about the rest of the materials in the casebook? The commentary and practice questions, etc 100% of case books are 100% useless. The sooner you realize this the better you will do on exams. Buy hornbooks and a spare Convisors and you will learn 100% more than you would ever learn from the lovely casebooks that the for-profit lawschool hawks to you every three months. What in the hell do you think the commentary actually adds to the casebook that you can't find anywhere else? A hornbook is all commentary without the useless drivel. Hooray you just got top quartile. jake1357 posted:Also, what do you do when you get called on in class and need to direct the professor to where your answer came from? "198 U.S. 215 at 221" isn't very helpful when the rest of the class is using a casebook with the page numbers edited out with an abridged version of the case. The law professors aren't there to teach you the law. They exist (for the most part) to teach you some antiquated poo poo that has 100% nothing to do with anything. If they call on you, say "pass" and move on with your life. If you are compelled to answer, then read a hornbook beforehand and answer based on what the law is. The facts of Spivey v Bataglia are totally irrelevant to anything other than the question of "what are the facts of Spivey v Bataglia." They will not come into play or be in any way relevant on your exam, the bar exam, or private practice. Why do you feel you need to be relevant during in-class discussion? So you can earn a cookie while the professor fawns over you? Who gives a gently caress, you're not there for cookies, you're there to burn $150k on a useless education. You need to become educated, not suck their dick any more than you already are. I don't understand where people get the notion that law school teaches you the law. It doesn't, and the professors don't, and you won't learn it there. Quit pretending to try. 1L (and most of 2L/3L) year teaches you absolutely nothing unless you can remember stuff until you take the MBE. After that, the law school certainly doesn't care about your learning experience unless you're in a clinic and/or trial practice and/or ADR and/or rarely 1L legal writing (highfive samglover). There are many fun classes during 2L and 3L but all were equally irrelevant. Grammar Fascist posted:I disagree with this (that textbooks aren't necessary because you can get all the needed info from Wikipedia/Westlaw/outlines/hornbooks). I know several professors who get very angry when it is obvious to them on an exam that students were relying on outside materials that weren't covered in class. That makes sense because it's basically telling the professor that he/she didn't do a good enough job teaching and left out important parts or was so confusing that you had to resort to other materials to make sense of it. I used lots of old outlines and hornbooks while making my outlines, but I always made sure I knew that it was actually something we talked about that I could have plausibly learned from listening in class. You 100% should not give a gently caress if the professor is miffed that the for-profit institution they work for doesn't want them teaching you the actual law. That's not your problem. You need to rise above this and learn the law, so when you step into the courtroom you aren't a complete moron, and when you take the bar you aren't confronted with something that is completely alien to you. If I went to Med School and had some moron teaching me how to leech AIDS patients, I would ignore him and learn how to properly treat AIDS patients. Or if he were teaching me how to pray the cancer away, I would learn on my own how to administer chemo. Why? Because you want to be a competent doctor. Being a competent lawyer upon graduation is literally at the bottom of the law school's list of priorities. Unless you go to HYS maybe. Also, 1Ls should absolutely make a blanket assumption that your 1L professors aren't teaching you enough. If you think anything else then you just haven't learned the truth yet. Example: Everyone who has made it through 1L spent... ohhh... about 8 weeks on the Statute of Frauds in Ks, then after graduation spent about 1.5 hours on it for BarBri/MicroMash/whatever, and learned literally everything possible to learn in those 1.5 hours. Personal anecdote: For my Common Law K exam 1L, I spent exactly one really long sentence and a second short sentence talking about the law of the statute of frauds. "The Statute of Frauds demands a contract be written and signed by the party the K is being enforced against in six situations: 123456. The Statute of Frauds can be waived under point 3 when two of the following three things happens: X Y and Z." That's an A+ exam right there. 8 weeks at $125 an hour plus 1/5 of a $200 book boiled down to 2 sentences, neither of which I learned from my professor. Nothing I heard come crawling out of his money sucking hole ever became relevant thereafter, until the MBE where I paid a lot of people to reiterate the concepts the 1L professor utterly failed at teaching. God why do people still go to law school. You 0Ls think I'm just ranting but you're so utterly naive. BigHead fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Aug 9, 2010 |
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Aug 9, 2010 08:23
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BigHead posted:That's an A+ exam right there. I didn't disagree in almost anything else that you posted but this is just flat-out wrong unless you were like referring to what the platonic form of an exam answer would look like in a world free of the foibles and egos of professors. There were 80 people in my contracts class. I would say that once the exam rolled around 75 percent of them were able to rattle off that explanation you just gave while also cracking a 17th century hand-carved tumbler fire safe. Yet only 15% will get As, let alone the ever elusive A+ which is pretty much a myth of story and song at this point. No, those grades are reserved for people that not only know the material cold but are also able and willing to form it in the style the individual professor will be amenable to on that particular day - and therein lies the rub, best I can tell. And that level of familiarity with the professor and the professor's preferred style can't tumble out of a hornbook, sadly. I don't disagree that this is all a silly bullshit game, I just disagree regarding the level of preparation necessary to play it well.
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Aug 9, 2010 09:00
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Feces Starship posted:I didn't disagree in almost anything else that you posted but this is just flat-out wrong unless you were like referring to what the platonic form of an exam answer would look like in a world free of the foibles and egos of professors. There were 80 people in my contracts class. I would say that once the exam rolled around 75 percent of them were able to rattle off that explanation you just gave while also cracking a 17th century hand-carved tumbler fire safe. Yet only 15% will get As, let alone the ever elusive A+ which is pretty much a myth of story and song at this point. Fair point, and you're right. But I found in my experience that as long as I could spout verbatim 2 sentences of rule on every point I would get at least an A-. So I will rephrase. "That's an A- exam at least, if you recite it verbatim. YMMV."
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Aug 9, 2010 09:17
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It's interesting you folks can just say "pass" and be done. We received one "unprepared" per term and you had to communicate it to the professor before class began (usually in writing). If the professor called on you and you weren't ready to discuss the case and you hadn't submitted your unprepared, they could report you for an honor code violation.
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Aug 9, 2010 12:18
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I don't think I knew anyone who totally blew off class and still did well. Class does teach you reasoning and application skills even if you don't realize you're developing them. I know everyone pooh-poohs "thinking like a lawyer" because that stupidly implies some kind of rarefied thought process that normal humans can't achieve, but it's still worth asking yourself whether you would possess the same skills that you do now if you'd skipped law school entirely and just read a bunch of hornbooks instead.
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Aug 9, 2010 14:01
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Holy poo poo, being unprepared was a mark upon your honor (and your family's honor)? I certainly got a number of stern looks upon passing and once saw someone get kicked out of class, but goddamn. Also 0L's: BigHead is right, if you buy a Conviser's mini-review you will get As. Mattavist fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Aug 9, 2010 |
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Aug 9, 2010 14:03
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Alaemon posted:It's interesting you folks can just say "pass" and be done. Honor code violation? Are you sure about that? For the few professors who did track preparation, the penalty was grade-related, not honor code-related.
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Aug 9, 2010 14:42
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Our exams tested on fact patterns. Not explicitly, but sections of the fact pattern would almost always mirror a case or two that you read and you were expected to recognize that and apply the analysis that you learned of the case to hat section. Of course, our school doesn't have an effete B+ or even B curve for 1Ls and I know plenty of people who studied and managed to get Cs and Ds. Maybe your one sentence on the statute of frauds is enough to get you an A- in one of your liberal ivory tower schools, but some of us don't ahve those luxuries.
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Aug 9, 2010 14:48
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I'm not a gunner but I've never said "pass" because as a fat sweaty old douche attending a TTT, I need to get my pride from somewhere. I have a really fast skimming ability I guess, it always stuns me how many people can't come up with SOME WORDS when they get called on. This conversation is obviously really prof specific, I 've had at least two profs pull exam Qs directly out of commentary/review question stuff from casebooks. Plus I've never read a "hornbook" unless E&Es and CrunchTimes are considered hornbooks.
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Aug 9, 2010 15:04
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We could get our grades bumped up or down depending on participation. Some professors has specific rules about it. Speak X times, get a bump. Pass X times, get dumped. Others just sort of decided at the end depending on their feelings. Upside of the latter is that they pretty much wouldn't drop anyone's grade unless they were really terrible. I think it was always limited to one increment. So a B could become a B+ or a B-.
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Aug 9, 2010 15:40
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I am sitting down to write a mail to the author of one of my coursebooks (who is an adjunct here at Uppsala university) where I am pointing out several errors in one chapter of his book. Things are about to get pretty interesting. I think I've kind of transcended the gunner thing I had going when I was younger, instead just settling for being an autistic law nerd.
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Aug 9, 2010 16:43
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Alaemon posted:It's interesting you folks can just say "pass" and be done. Really? People put up with this as adults? I'm the king of passing but mostly because I haven't been paying attention and have no idea what they are asking me.
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Aug 9, 2010 17:48
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I don't think being an adult gives you a right to show up to class unprepared without the risk of penalty.
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Aug 9, 2010 18:51
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Draile posted:I don't think being an adult gives you a right to show up to class unprepared without the risk of penalty. It's my education that I've paid 160k for, as long as I'm not disturbing others I'm not sure why they should care.
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Aug 9, 2010 18:58
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Roger_Mudd posted:It's my education that I've paid 160k for, as long as I'm not disturbing others I'm not sure why they should care. Exactly.
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Aug 9, 2010 19:04
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Exposing the fraud of law school is very disturbing though.
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Aug 9, 2010 19:17
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I am checking in for the new thread. I am finally starting my senior year of university and will be taking the LSAT in October. My first attempt at home I got a 141, so I am going to buckle down and study hard. I am shooting for USC, UCLA, LLS, USD.
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Aug 9, 2010 19:24
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Draile posted:I don't think being an adult gives you a right to show up to class unprepared without the risk of penalty. Many do penalize people - through their grading. But they're usually up front about their policies and expectations on Day One, giving you the opportunity to drop their class if it's not something you agree with. I can't imagine it being an honor code violation to show up unprepared though. That would be something you'd have to disclose on bar applications and stuff - seems very harsh, especially since there are varying degrees of preparedness. It really has nothing to do with a violation of ethics - which is what an Honor Code should be about - lying, cheating, stealing, academic fraud - those make sense. Then again, UVA is super serious about its honor code and you have to go before the student judiciary, and there's only one punishment - Dismissal from the University - if you're found guilty, so that would be crazy harsh for just being unprepared for class.
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Aug 9, 2010 19:33
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Enigma89 posted:I am checking in for the new thread. I am finally starting my senior year of university and will be taking the LSAT in October. My first attempt at home I got a 141, so I am going to buckle down and study hard. I am shooting for USC, UCLA, LLS, USD. Are you blind, illiterate, lazy, or purposefully not reading the OP? I'm going to rule out blind and illiterate, since you've managed to post in this thread. So, either you are too lazy to read the OP or you are purposefully ignoring it. Which is it? don't go to law school
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Aug 9, 2010 19:38
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We do have socratic lessons over here starting at the second year, but I've never heard of anything actually happening when people go "I don't know." or "didnt read lol" at a direct question posed to them. I have a friend who had that as a policy through and through and he's almost done now.Enigma89 posted:I am checking in for the new thread. I am finally starting my senior year of university and will be taking the LSAT in October. My first attempt at home I got a 141, so I am going to buckle down and study hard. I am shooting for USC, UCLA, LLS, USD. The trolls have really been getting pretty lazy lately. 
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Aug 9, 2010 19:38
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Girlfriend got all offended when I told her the Internet convinced me not to go to law school. She's a T14 grad with a job. She doesn't get it.
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Aug 9, 2010 19:42
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I remember one time I skipped a class so I didn't get the assignment for the following class and I asked a classmate what it was because I knew I was on call that day. I did the reading and I go to class and he asks me about a case that was actually a class ahead of the cases my classmate told me we were supposed to read so I said "I did not read that case, I don't know" and he gave me this "oh dear" look and asked someone else, who immediately had the answers he was looking for. I come to find out later that he had in fact NOT assigned that case for that day, he just happened to ask a gunner prick who had read ahead to make me look bad Still got a B (or whatever Northeastern's equivalent of a B is, a "very good" or something like that)
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Aug 9, 2010 19:44
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Ainsley McTree posted:I remember one time I skipped a class so I didn't get the assignment for the following class and I asked a classmate what it was because I knew I was on call that day. I did the reading and I go to class and he asks me about a case that was actually a class ahead of the cases my classmate told me we were supposed to read so I said "I did not read that case, I don't know" and he gave me this "oh dear" look and asked someone else, who immediately had the answers he was looking for. Why in the world doesn't northeastern not use grades like everyone else?
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Aug 9, 2010 19:53
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I'm putting in a resume for a lateral position.
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Aug 9, 2010 19:58
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lipstick thespian posted:Why in the world doesn't northeastern not use grades like everyone else? Did you use the double negative in a clever way or was that a typo and you're just asking why northeastern doesn't use grades? If it's the former I dunno what you're asking, if it's the latter, Northeastern is a kind of hippie school that was designed to break the mold of obsession with grades and class ranking and cut throat competition, and instead was meant to foster a more cooperative atmosphere with a focus on experiential learning. I've heard professors describe it as the "anti-harvard" (Harvard, ironically, no longer has grades). Instead we get a pass/fail and a written evaluation, a paragraph or two describing our performance in the course, usually centered around a buzzword like "good" or "very good" or "excellent" or "a general competency with a working knowledge of the rules of civil procedure". Some professors are better at it than others. Ironically, however, one of the professors is tasked with going through our evaluations and assigning grades to them upon request for transcripts so I kind of don't like the system
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Aug 9, 2010 20:00
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HooKars posted:Many do penalize people - through their grading. But they're usually up front about their policies and expectations on Day One, giving you the opportunity to drop their class if it's not something you agree with. I definitely agree. Professors who require participation (as they are certainly allowed to do) should be upfront about the consequences of non-participation. Honor code violations for being unprepared does seem harsh, and there's no doubt that it's excessive if the only punishment for violating the code is expulsion. I think most schools have some kind of lesser punishment though, like a reprimand or a mark on your record that has to be disclosed to the bar.
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Aug 9, 2010 20:05
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Ainsley McTree posted:Did you use the double negative in a clever way or was that a typo and you're just asking why northeastern doesn't use grades? The double negative was unintended, yeah. But drat, that sounds harsh. It also seems very pointless if you do end up having to translate it for transcripts anyway.
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Aug 9, 2010 20:21
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Alaemon posted:It's interesting you folks can just say "pass" and be done. seriously? Cooley sounds like a loving concentration camp Enigma89 posted:I am checking in for the new thread. I am finally starting my senior year of university and will be taking the LSAT in October. My first attempt at home I got a 141, so I am going to buckle down and study hard. I am shooting for USC, UCLA, LLS, USD.
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Aug 9, 2010 21:09
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