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methamphetamine posted:I suppose everyone's experience will vary but the E&Es covered about 75% of what we ended up covering, which was worth my time in that case. So, you are saying that you wouldn't have done as well if you hadn't read E&E before your 1L year? I find that hard to believe. The fact that you were ready and willing to study so much before your 1L year tells me that you also have no problem putting in a significant amount of study time during the semester. I'm pretty certain knowing the hand formula 2 months early did not lead you to good grades; you would have done well regardless. You say there's no real reason not to study before your 1L year, but some people actually would rather do other things besides study for hours when the benefit is so marginal  The one thing most people do not have 1L year is free time, so I would imagine they'd want to spend their last remaining free weeks/months enjoying life before the misery starts. I don't know if you are a lawyer yet or what, but I can almost guarantee you were, or will be, the guy who thinks people should follow BarBri's ridiculous bar studying plan. That plan, much like studying E&Es months before entering law school, is just complete overkill.
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Jun 21, 2011 16:58
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This semester I went to the least amount of classes I ever have. I never went to one class. And when I say never, I mean NEVER. I don't know what the professor looks like. I did the best I've ever done. If only i started skipping class earlier. 
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Jun 21, 2011 17:12
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Solomon Grundy posted:Take some acting / improv classes to get comfortable being in the spotlight and thinking on your feet. When you go into your interview / trial / oral argument, act your way through it, pretending to be a confident, comptentent ball-buster. See the thing is I do great at public speaking or actual oral submissions in court but when it comes to interviews they're like "hey why do you want to work here?" and I'm thinking a good answer but what comes out of my mouth is "Oh I don't really want to but I guess it'll look good on a resume??"
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Jun 21, 2011 19:27
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CaptainScraps posted:This semester I went to the least amount of classes I ever have. I never went to one class. And when I say never, I mean NEVER. I don't know what the professor looks like. If this is true then it's super impressive. What was your strategy? I must know more of this glorious heaven you are describing.
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Jun 21, 2011 20:23
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BigHead posted:If this is true then it's super impressive. What was your strategy? I must know more of this glorious heaven you are describing.
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Jun 21, 2011 20:26
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Ugh I don't even want to read Getting to Maybe. Hanging out in #lawgoons for a few years leading up to law school and getting advice from jmraz and holyb and other successful law students during 1L year should be enough.
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Jun 21, 2011 20:32
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BigHead posted:If this is true then it's super impressive. What was your strategy? I must know more of this glorious heaven you are describing. Here is my strategy. If I go to class, I think I know the material and use my own notes and supplement with a copy/pasted outline. If I don't go to class and don't do the reading, I actually study hard and study smart through hornbooks and constructing AND rewriting outlines. Simply copying and pasting an outline doesn't help me; rewriting it helps me get the material inside my head. ...huh. I think I better start doing that for the bar.
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Jun 21, 2011 20:35
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I found that attending class improved my grades, because I was more likely to pay attention in class and thus be more engaged in the material and have a vague sense of what the class was about. Of course, I stopped bringing my laptop to class, I started sitting in the front rows of the lecture halls, and I started audio recording lectures as a safety net in case I missed something.
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Jun 21, 2011 20:44
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So I'm the only Northwestern 0L? It feels like we don't have a lot of people going to law school in the fall in this thread this year. I guess that's a good thing. People actually followed the strictest criteria so it's pretty much just me and the duck guy at Harvard. Or people just don't want to admit that they're going to law school.
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Jun 21, 2011 20:49
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BarBri was the last place I expected to see a Snakes on a Plane reference...
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Jun 21, 2011 21:06
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So what's a better choice, Davis or Hastings? Hastings is going to be 10k cheaper because of a grant. Where I live isn't a priority since both have their upsides/downside. Are the academics any different for either school? I know that I shouldn't care too much about rankings but Davis has been doing pretty well. Anyone going to either school?
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Jun 21, 2011 22:11
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William Lee posted:BarBri was the last place I expected to see a Snakes on a Plane reference... I think that was in the 2007 materials.
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Jun 21, 2011 22:18
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nic olas posted:I know that I shouldn't care too much about rankings Have you read any of this thread?
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Jun 21, 2011 23:27
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MoFauxHawk posted:Have you read any of this thread? Has something been said specifically regarding Hastings and Davis? Should I got digging through 300 pages looking for it? nic olas fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jun 21, 2011 |
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Jun 21, 2011 23:31
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nic olas posted:Has something been said specifically regarding Hastings and Davis? Should I got digging through 300 pages looking for it? No, that's why I quoted the part about rankings. What makes you know that you shouldn't care too much about rankings? The first page of this thread makes it clear that ranking is the most important factor when choosing a school. That doesn't mean you should always take the higher ranked school over the lower ranked school, but it is important. Anyway, right now Davis is 23 and rising unusually quickly and Hastings is 42 and on a mild downward trend. My advice as somebody who isn't even in law school yet is to go to Davis because I think the ranking difference is worth 30k, assuming you're already going into serious debt. But also maybe just don't go to either for the reasons mentioned throughout the thread about law school in general.
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Jun 21, 2011 23:51
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nic olas posted:So what's a better choice, Davis or Hastings? Hastings is going to be 10k cheaper because of a grant. Where I live isn't a priority since both have their upsides/downside. Are the academics any different for either school? I know that I shouldn't care too much about rankings but Davis has been doing pretty well. Anyone going to either school? I'm an attorney who lives in Sacramento, works in the kinda Bay Area. And my dad was a hiring partner for a large regional firm, so I kind of know the lay of the land. The answer is probably davis, but tell us where you want to work, why you want to be a lawyer and why the gently caress you're going to law school
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Jun 22, 2011 00:04
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Stop fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Jan 30, 2013 |
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Jun 22, 2011 00:17
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I would most likely want to work in San Francisco, although I guess that wouldn't be guaranteed going to either school. I'm gravitating heavily towards public interest and both schools do that well, so I don't know which would be better, which is why I was asking if anyone had experience with either school. If Davis being 23rd really makes a difference, enough to overcome the locational benefits of living in SF (including things like proximity to legal culture and pro bono opportunities), then I guess I should go there, but that seems unlikely unless somehow Hastings is going to drop into 2nd tier or Davis is going to break top 20. And I want to be a lawyer for reasons that don't involve money/family/getting laid and it's pretty irrelevant for this conversation.
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Jun 22, 2011 00:31
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Linguica posted:This is a dangerous strategy. Some professors do in fact take attendance, or have attendance policies, even if they don't say they do. I know of at least one lawgoon that got pretty badly burned by never attending a big lecture-style class and the professor raising a stink about it.
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Jun 22, 2011 00:32
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nic olas posted:Has something been said specifically regarding Hastings and Davis? Should I got digging through 300 pages looking for it? I heard the McGeorge law school dominates that area. A common slogan is "if future careers you wish to forge, you'll all soon wish you'd gone to McGeorge"
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Jun 22, 2011 00:47
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nic olas posted:I would most likely want to work in San Francisco, although I guess that wouldn't be guaranteed going to either school. I'm gravitating heavily towards public interest and both schools do that well, so I don't know which would be better, which is why I was asking if anyone had experience with either school. Well, Davis has gone from 35 to 28 to 23 in three cycles so I think it has good odds of breaking the top 20 within the next couple of years. I don't know enough about the area or the industry to give advice about the location-based advantages during law school. San Francisco/Hastings might be better for doing legal work during the school year, but for applying to summer jobs and permanent jobs, no matter what the legal area is, I'm guessing Davis will be better. It's not just about getting rich, it's about getting any job. Somebody like Copernic or Sigmachiev needs to answer about that. MoFauxHawk fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Jun 22, 2011 |
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Jun 22, 2011 00:48
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Lemonus posted:I presumed that Chocolate Milk guy was from NZ- maybe he is from Aus and knows about MERW that way? Edit: oh he is. This was a couple of pages back, but I'm a girl in Christchurch. 
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Jun 22, 2011 00:50
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nic olas posted:And I want to be a lawyer for reasons that don't involve money/family/getting laid and it's pretty irrelevant for this conversation. I would normally say davis. The exception might be government work for counties (like PD, which might be public interest). Hastings seems to ahve been connections to counties with money and might be able to get you an internship with an office that can hire you, unlike the poor Yolo and SAC offices. Even then, I'd still say go to Davis. You should note that davis has only been out of the 30s for a few years and may drop back down, right now impressions of the school locally haven't changed. Davis has done a pretty good job ignoring Sacramento firms, but i think they have focused on bay area firms. What do you mean by public interest. There probably aren't jobs in that. Oh, wait, you have $10k/yr to go to hastings? Go to hastings. Don't go to law school though.
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Jun 22, 2011 00:51
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Soothing Vapors posted:This happened to me. Motherfucker emailed the dean because I missed his gay loving First Amendment class a few times. Oh no now I will never know the answer to "but where do we draw the liiiiine" You not only missed your fellow students valuable comments as they explored the ramifications of 1st Amendment jurisprudence but you deprived them of your important and critical thoughts on this subject. I am very disappointed in you Mr. Vapors.
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Jun 22, 2011 01:07
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Read the post from the last page about not buying textbooks for a semester. I know a 1L who did that for his first semester and got straight C's. But then again, his mom is a name partner of a small firm back in Cali and he did modeling and was a computer programmer before law school, so he'll probably be alright.
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Jun 22, 2011 01:25
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William Munny posted:Read the post from the last page about not buying textbooks for a semester. I know a 1L who did that for his first semester and got straight C's Yeah, don't do that. Wait until at least second semester. A lot of 1L is teaching you how to read a case. and 2L and 3L
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Jun 22, 2011 01:47
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nic olas posted:San Francisco . . . public interest About 8000 people will slit your throat for one of those positions (including me) (this is true of most legal markets right now but especially NorCal)
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Jun 22, 2011 02:03
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methamphetamine posted:Popping in here to say that this is bad advice endlessly parroted by people who have no experience on the issue. Read the Examples and Explanations on Civpro, Contracts, and Torts if you have time. Read Getting to Maybe, but also read How to Do Your Best on Law School Exams by Delaney. Check out LEEWS if you have time. This is terrible advice, at least for a T14. You are not expected to memorize rules at a T14. Knowing the rules isn't quite optional, but having the little elements and whatnot is what your outlines are for. You need the in-class discussion of corner cases to do well on exams. On the other hand, wasting time on casebooks and prepping for cold calls might not have helped my grades, but it definitely helped when I needed to ask professors for recommendations and connections - which is when you want to be the person who spoke up in class and whose name they know. If PLS says don't read your casebooks and don't prep for cold call classes, it's wrong. (Within reason: I'm not saying memorize cases, but in classes that cold called, I knew basic facts and could talk the law of every case we were assigned that day.) So, my advice? (Graduated from a T14, journal, moot court, cum laude, etc. Yeah, gently caress you, I'm a gunner.) Do not under any circumstances read any law (actually, I'd argue that part is true for any law school). Do not read LEEWS - I've skimmed bits of their advice and jesus christ would it have been counterproductive for me on most, but not all, exams. The most but not all is even more of a reason not to do LEEWS - you need to learn how to figure out what a professor wants if you want to do well, and any system asserting "the one true way" will gently caress you on that. E&Es may be helpful (they would have been useless for my contracts/torts courses, but hey, professors vary and mine was a crazy but awesome race crit) but they will be more helpful when you have some clue what you're reading. Read Above the Law so you know what you got yourself into. Read fun books because it's the last real chance you're going to have to read for fun for the next couple years. And if you absolutely positively MUST read about law, pick up books like Anthony Lewis's Make No Law (or Gideon's Trumpet if you're more interested in criminal law than in defamation) or similar historical works slanted to a non-legal audience. They'll make you excited to be going to law school, which is going to be needed to counterbalance ATL. Basically, enjoy your summer. You won't know a loving thing worth knowing for law school til you actually get there, so stop trying so hard.
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Jun 22, 2011 02:04
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Red Bean Juice posted:About 8000 people will slit your throat for one of those positions (including me) (this is true of most legal markets right now but especially NorCal) Yes I would kill a man for such a job and I'm not a killer. I would teach his family members to play frisbee and I hate playing frisbee. Duke 1Ls still don't have grades. If I'm below median again I may drink a whole bottle of whisky like that dude in Party Down. EDIT: it sounded kind of sexual so I changed it Sulecrist fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Jun 22, 2011 |
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Jun 22, 2011 02:29
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Dallan Invictus posted:It...didn't end in tears? Horray Canadian articling goon!  So what will you be doing for the CRTC?
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Jun 22, 2011 02:52
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I'll be articling at the CRTC next year. (non-Canucks: our telecom/TV/radio regulator, like the American FCC - why yes I am a cyberlaw panda!)
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editted to remove suggestions of terrorism
hypocrite lecteur fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Jun 22, 2011 |
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Jun 22, 2011 03:53
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Linguica posted:This is a dangerous strategy. Some professors do in fact take attendance, or have attendance policies, even if they don't say they do. I know of at least one lawgoon that got pretty badly burned by never attending a big lecture-style class and the professor raising a stink about it. Yeah, if you're going to truly commit yourself to skipping, body and soul, you have to approach the professors early in the semester during office hours. "Sorry, I've missed a couple classes...wasn't sure from the syllabus what your attendance policy was. Do you count off for absences? I haven't gotten a penalty or anything like that, have I?" Be proactive about your laziness.
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Jun 22, 2011 04:10
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I'm a 0L too. Meth, what "professor's games" were you referring to? I'm planning to avoid PLS.
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Jun 22, 2011 04:22
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The trick about law school is that "knowing the law" is peripheral to doing well. E&Es, etc. are great to figure out what the law is. But congrats -- everyone figures that poo poo out. For 1L, you do well by identifying, discussing, and then "answering" as many issues as possible. Succinctness is golden but a well developed conversation is necessary. "IRAC" (issue, rule, analysis, conclusion) is a good starting point. Professors will generally tell you if they like it. If they tell you they like it, use IRAC like it's god's gift. If they tell you it's neat but not necessary (and especially if you have a word limit), focus on the issue, analysis, conclusion. Regardless, you get most/all of your points from the analysis. So always use only single sentences for the issue, rule and conclusion -- if even that (e.g. underlined headings for different sections can constitute the issue spot). Analysis of a issue is pretty simple in the abstract. Analysis involves discussing the following: Plaintiff argues X because Y. Defendant counters A because B. Yup, that's it. Please note that the most important part of the analysis is the "because..." part. In fact, here's another great way to start writing: Y. Therefore, Plaintiff argues X. Defendant counters with B. Therefore, A. See that? You lead with the reasoning and end with the conclusion. This is a good style to use if you want don't want to lead with your conclusion (generally a bad thing). Add your own personal preference as you see fit -- your legal writing class is actually a legitimate way to figure this out (one of the few things it's good for). Also, there are multiple levels of what can be argued for each factor. It's basically a plug-in from what you've read in class. Getting to Maybe calls this "forks." Forks in the Law. Forks in the Facts. I rarely found Forks in the Facts, but I don't think they're nearly as important (see below). I envision Forks in the Law on both a horizontal and vertical scale. Horizontal forks are when you want to apply different jurisdictional standards. Vertical forks are using the same legal principle but interpreting it in a different fashion. You might be reading this and feeling like: HOLY poo poo. WHERE DO I GET THIS poo poo? Casebook (cases are grouped together by topic, but generally show you the different ways to apply horizontal or vertical forks). Class discussion (what the professor says; only pay attention to the kids who are "law school" smart -- but you'll figure this out only for Spring semester after Fall grades come in). E&Es, etc. generally help explain how the legal systems work and what the jargon is, but by and large they do not explain the different arguments to use. Thus, they have limited (but an important, by all means) function. The facts of individual cases generally mean gently caress all on the exam (not true in real life lawyering). The legal principal is what you want. Regardless, I usually put 5-10 words describing the important facts of a case in my outline. Thus, if I found it especially helpful to really drive a point home, I would distinguish, extend, or apply the legal principle based on the facts of the case we read in class. To this end, don't fret too much about professors who ask you to marry two contrary holdings. It is infrequent that you will be required to do this on the exam itself (but it's still a good mental exercise in class to figure out how to distinguish the holding based on the facts). I did have one professor who stressed the entire semester that we would have to distinguish the VERY PRECISE FACTS of the cases we read from the hypo facts on the exam. He's the only one who did that (every god drat day), and he's the only one who required that poo poo on the exam. So, like, if you get a professor like this, pay attention to the god damned facts. However, it is worth noting that if you read in class different cases by the same court applying the same legal rules/mechanisms but come out differently, pay attention to the facts. Those rear end in a top hat courts think that they're making some sort of distinction because of the facts. You will want to definitely compare/contrast the facts on the exam with the facts of the case. Apparently beyond 1L is different, but there are no right answers on an exam. GTM basically tells you that the answer is always "maybe." If you're ever stumped - in class, on an exam, whatever - take a moment to pause and then start your response with "Maybe." It forces you to explain both sides of the argument, which is the start of a good analysis (there usually being shades of gray that need to be discussed for each side instead of broad brush strokes). Also, find a student TA (2L or 3L) who is super nice and ask if they wouldn't mind reviewing your responses to exam hypotheticals (or at least discuss with you in person how you should have responded). This should be done after you have done a few practice hypotheticals on your own. This is super important but by god don't start until Week Five at the very earliest. Week Seven is a good time to start worrying about actually writing this poo poo out. tl;dr: Don't waste your summer reading supplements. Start reading at the beginning of the school year. Learn how to read a case. Pay attention to the "forks" practically spelled out to you in the casebook reading -- including the comments and notes cases. Once you're readily seeing these forks in your casebook, you've learned how to read cases. Don't worry about not getting it right away. I only started to get it around week 14 of Fall Semester and truly started seeing things straight in the Spring semester. Use supplements to learn jargon and legal mechanisms. Don't be afraid to ask questions, but (A) don't be a douche about it, (B) make sure it's a legitimate question (hint: hypotheticals in and of themselves are not a legitimate question), and (C) limit yourself to one question per class. If you have any other questions, that's what office hours are for. I did the above and did really well. The three other students who did better than me didn't read during the summer (zing). The conversations I've had with them generally land on the same big points in this post. Whoever did summer E&E reading ITT overdosed on probably the easiest part of law school. Enjoy your last weeks of summer. Green Crayons fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Jun 22, 2011 |
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Jun 22, 2011 04:46
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It's only the first day of summer, don't say that!
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Jun 22, 2011 04:58
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For what it's worth, some professors like a variant on IRAC type format where you *do* lead with the conclusion (CREAC - conclusion rule explanation application conclusion). What's the issue outcome, what's the general rule, how has that rule been applied in various similar situations to generate parallels, how does that rule come down here, restate your conclusion for good measure. Also, on exams, I never found starting with maybe to be helpful - instead I picked the side I wanted to argue and started arguing for and against that side. I found it easier to have a vantage point than to try to write the neutral point, even if the exam asked me to couch the answer in neutrality ("You are a clerk to Chief Justice Fishdog, write a bench memo", for example) - you dress up the answer in neutrality at the end, but advocating throughout can give a better structure (as long as you keep in mind that the answer is nearly always going to be a close question throughout so that you don't give conclusory answers). And now you know why anyone who claims that they know what professors want without knowing the professor is full of poo poo. You know how to figure out what professors want to see on exams? Read. Old. Exams. Your professor likely makes them available - go look at best exams and feedback memos and see what they actually liked and learn from that for the exam proper. And don't do any of this before week 7, especially during 1L. Even during 3L, I refused to think about finals (beyond doing the reading and going to class) until week 7. Kalman fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Jun 22, 2011 |
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Jun 22, 2011 05:05
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Trash Can Man posted:I'm a 0L too. PLS is basically an 800 page treatise exclaiming how terrible the philosophy of legal education (the Socratic method, etc.) is, and how law professors are just elitist fakes who know nothing about the law and who have no intention of teaching anyone anything about the law. PLS is all about outrage regarding the fact that, gasp, law professors don't just tell you the "rules" of law, but instead hide them behind the mysticism of the Socratic method, and proposes that law professors believe that natural-born lawyers will intuitively grasp these rules, which is then the only thing that the professors care about for exams. This is partially dumb and wrong, and the aspects that are correct are obvious to anyone who has read anything about law school. Yes, law professors do not teach in the style of rote memorization and they do not tend to test or grade based on what they discussed in class. Most books about law school already explain this, and do it without being an 800 page, self-published and typo-ridden conspiracy theory about law professors. PLS also advises not to read Getting to Maybe, which is the one book basically everyone agrees is worth reading. He instead advocates reading some other obscure, self-published exam guides, basically because he and the author of said books are friends. He then basically advises reading every other legal book sold on Amazon before going to law school, but don't ever buy or read casebooks. Ever.
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Jun 22, 2011 05:07
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Dallan Invictus posted:It...didn't end in tears? Congrats! Do they do any hireback? I found out today that one of my friends is articling for $350/week. That comes out to less than minimum wage assuming a 40 hour work week.
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Jun 22, 2011 05:08
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CaptainScraps posted:Yeah, don't do that. Wait until at least second semester. A lot of 1L is teaching you how to read a case. and 2L and 3L Pretty much the only thing law school taught me was how to read a case. I can skim the poo poo out of a case and get to the important parts like a pro.
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Jun 22, 2011 06:17
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Kalman posted:And now you know why anyone who claims that they know what professors want without knowing the professor is full of poo poo. You know how to figure out what professors want to see on exams?
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Jun 22, 2011 06:26
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