Going To Law School

wtf's DES?

torts exam should be just a story about something bad happening to someone, you recognize what the issues are (like oh it's not clear there's proximate cause here, the defendant did or didn't have a duty toward the plaintiff, etc.). you might also get a policy question where you have to tell what the pros and cons of adopting a different theory are. i would find some old exams or a book with practice problems in it.

Do they make old exams available at Cardozo? You should get some of your profs old exams.

Mine basically just gives you a really long fact pattern with tons of different issues in it and then writes "discuss," or "assess the liabilities of the parties" or something like that. So you might have six people and you have to explain why and under what theories each might/might not be liable, any defenses that might come up and whether they're likely to succeed, any issues that might come up with damages, joint-tortfeasor liability, etc.

The advice I get over and over again is that you're not trying to get the right answer but trying to properly identify/examine/address/discuss as many ambiguities and sticking points as possible.

DES was a very popular drug that turned out to increase the risk of... was it birth defects or cancer? Anyway, it was a big market-share liability case (lots of different companies produced DES and it was impossible to figure out which one produced the DES a particular plaintiff had ingested)

The DES thing comes from Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories, apparently one of the standards for market share liability.

(the case happened in 1980, so for you oldsters it was probably less standard then)

Yeah, our prof said it's basically useless to name drop cases, only if you use it when you're illustrating principles

SPOT THE ISSUES

if you see a similarity to a case.. cite it, and then say what's different in the hypo

IRAC

ok i remember that case. you might have to know that, i dunno. some professors use problems that resemble real cases you read, at least in part.

btw it's impt to outline your answer before you write the problem. then the exam becomes like a large series of related short answer questions!

maybe also mention law and order, or boston legal? you know, to seem like you care about the law a lot?

Our exam's closed book, no notes, so the professor said not to bother citing cases. It's more of a test of theory

i'm almost amused when max pops up in the law threads

I guess if we did a market share liability case, we'd have to demonstrate we understand the formula of x multiplied by y dispersed amongst blah blah blah, and then apply the percentages if the theory is met in some other way. Hurting, you get any of this shit?

a closed-book exam is a good sign, i think. i hate open book and i hate the whiners that ask for open book exams.

What about a closed-book Civ Pro exam?

if it's a test of theory, read your prosser hornbook. oh, you didn't buy one? yr fucked

my civ pro exam was closed book and i pwned it. a lot of people cried after that exam and i laughed at them.

(j/k)

burt, it's really hard to gauge what your teacher is going do. everyone is different. my civ pro exam was comprised of two two-page long ridiculous fact patterns. i remember one involved a federal civil rights statute and the erie doctrine. the other a defective snowboard and how it related to juridiction over the manufacturer, the seller, etc.

like you have time to look in the book anyway

^^^ otm

FOUR HOURS will never move faster than it will during a law exam final

You know, civ pro's not really that bad ... my problem is, I'm sloppy when reading questions, and so I come up with truly bizarre responses to ridiculosuly easy questions. : {

I really need to bone up on the Erie doctrine's tree of fun.

i've got an open book exam in my medical ethics course and it's making me wish i could lawyer the shit out of the answers

you can lawyer the shit out of anything... if you're a lawyer

read the problem more than once, burt!

Anyway, I'm going to be bad and skip class tomorrow for an extended Thanksgiving break. I can't sleep anymore :{ None of the 1Ls here I know can sleep thanks to exam time. Perhaps we should have all gone to cheaper schools.

yeah that's the problem.

actually thinking about taking the LSAT, just for shits.

you should ignore what other people are doing or whether they are sleeping or not sleeping. you will be much happier. xp

The exams I did the best in during law school were the ones where I had exhausted the supply of earlier answers. With several, the professors rescinded their offers to "look over" our practice exam answers. I got a little nutso.

With torts in particular, they'll prolly do a little on intentional, a little on market share and other "exotic" brands of torts, but they will inevitably spend the majority of the exam on negligence. So, just learn the way your professor wants you to understand negligence, and apply the fuck out of it to as many practice exams as you can get.

The outlining is ESPECIALLY important when you get hit with a huge multi party question. If you've done enough practice questions, you'll do two things when faced with a ridiculously huge fact pattern:

(1) you'll want to throw up
and
(2) you'll start outlining, and arrive at answers.

Practice, practice, practice. Don't just spend your days b/t now and the exams memorizing. That only really works in Property.

is that why i did best in property? i didn't practice shit.

future estates lol

I really need to bone up on the Erie doctrine's tree of fun.

Ugh...the old Erie Doctrine. Anything in particular hanging you up about it?

And yeah...I found Property to be first year's answer to Trivial Pursuit. Not a whole lot of multi-step analyses, but rather a regurgitation of what you identified to be the relevant rule, and then move on.

i got A+ in propert

y

and now i exercise eminent domain over all you bitches

Nah, I need to study it more before I really have any good questions. I basically get most of it, but it doesn't feel ... complete, you know? Like I don't have all the snazzy answers some nerds in class have.

srsly property can rape you on the bar exam though.

i never had snazzy answers. most of the snazzy answers people are not that smart. i think you worry too much, tbh.

I guess if we did a market share liability case, we'd have to demonstrate we understand the formula of x multiplied by y dispersed amongst blah blah blah, and then apply the percentages if the theory is met in some other way. Hurting, you get any of this shit?

― burt_stanton, Tuesday, 25 November 2008 21:42 (9 minutes ago)

We didn't spend a lot of time on the intricacies of market share liability -- it was covered as a subset of actual/but-for causation (i.e. what do you do when you can't prove causation).

I doubt a torts prof is going to ask for a very detailed analysis of market share liability alone unless you really covered it in depth (of course I'm only basing this on my own prof's old exams). I don't think "applying a formula" is as important as recognizing how the theory fits into negligence in your fact situation, how it would address/not address policy concerns in your situation, potential difficulties in applying it, etc.

truth bomb on Blackacre.

BURT!!!! Holy Shit. Take this next sentence as THE most important one for the next month of your life:

It doesn't matter - not ONE LITTLE BIT - what anyone else in the world is doing to prepare for exams.

Outline the materials you covered in class, make sure you at least understand it while you are reading through your outline, and then do practice exams. I cannot stress this approach enough.

In the IRAC form of answers, the issue spotting is terribly important, but the analysis is where you get the points. The more comfortable you are with grabbing a set of facts by the balls and ripping it apart and throwing it back ont he page in the form of a logical answer, the better you increase your chances of doing well. ATTACK that shit. If something doesn't make sense - like "Why is THAT there?" its b/c you haven't found a place for it yet.

Don't let anyone else psych you out for the next month. Just treat it like a REALLY busy month at work.

Our torts prof always reminds us to look at everything through the lens of "Who do we want to hold liable for what and why and how can we do it?" Even principles that are supposed to be solid tort law/theory are bent all the time if it just seems particularly right or wrong to impose liability in a certain situation. Proximate cause is basically just a lot of over-argued bullshit that all boils down to whether or not we have gut feelings that someone should be liable for something.

Hurting OTM. Proximate cause = Negligence Sniff Test

What's this Iraq thing everyone's going on about?

Yeah, I'm a kvetch and a worrier. Even though I was raised Catholic, I fit right in here at Yeshiva U.

they didn't teach you IRAC wtf?

i prefer CREAC but yeah burt you should know that

i'm starting to doubt whether he's even really in law school