Going To Law School

anyway, no more thinking about this until tomorrow...

Am I correct that strict liability only applies in unreasonably dangerous activities and in certain kinds of products liability? I haven't looked at that stuff for a week and I'm already forgetting it. Torts isn't until the 19th.

Lucky bastard, I have torts this Wednesday. I'm revisiting it tomorrow. It's so easy to forget everything ... that's why I'm rereading every. single. case. on. the. syllabus. Screw outlines, I'm going down and dirty.

That's a little crazy if you ask me. Especially since some of the cases we read were badly reasoned and I actually want to forget them so I don't confuse myself.

Anyway, having CivPro on Wednesday is no better.

When preparing for exams I used to study 2 or 3 of the key cases for each proposition in detail, and just skim the others. I think if you try to absorb 150 cases you may be asking for a brain snap.

Nah, the professor told us if we want to do well we have to study "the hard way", which he defined as rebriefing each case over again; my other professor said that my approach was hers, and she graduated first in class at NYU. I mean, each case is a different proposition or amends the previous concept ... we had 150 of them. It's not like we did 3 cases of the same exact thing.

Also each case reiterates common law principles, so the repetition helps, too. Well, we'll see.

and re-reading the cases after finally understanding the 'big picture' so to speak is illuminating. Anyway, what counts are the results, so whatever. I like tough mental work, though. Makes you feel like you're ... alive for once, if only for a moment.

re-reading the cases is an amazing waste of time. kudos!

there's like one sentence (the HOLDING) you would need from any of those cases for an exam. that's what outlines are for.

yep i would have read the cases during the course, but i wouldn't have re-read them during exam prep. my approach was to understand the key cases in depth, so that you can demonstrate your ability to critically analyse a decision and apply it to a set of facts... not demonstrate that you've retained every case that ever had the words 'duty of care' in the catchwords. I graduated with Honours. Good luck with your approach though!

burt are you doing problems like i told you to? cutty is right about re-reading the cases

yep doing practice exam problems is how i used to spend my exam prep time too. there's a limit to how much info you can squeeze into an exam answer. i reckon quality over quantity.

also you have to make sure you know how to spit out the information and organize it quickly--memorizing cases isn't going to help

so true... when you're doing your practice exams, trying to work out a generic framework to apply to each subject is definitely helpful. Broadly, I used to start with: state the issues, state the law (i.e. the key case authorities), apply the law to the facts - then refine it for each topic by testing it on practice examples.

My friend is in law school and has fallen behind in her outlining so she has been pulling all-nighters for the past few days to prepare for exams, poor thing.

Do people actually enjoy law school? I hear that the first year is the hardest and it gets better after that. More and more medical schools are becoming pass/fail in their first year (including mine) so I'm wondering what being graded and ranked could do to a student in law school.

This is not to say that medical schools don't grade and rank, but there definitely have been efforts to move away from doing that during the first-year at least.

i dunno, i think it's gotten "better" in that it's less stressful because i don't care about the stuff that 1L's care about. but it's also more boring because you've learned how to learn things already. i worked a lot more this semester and i like my job so much better than school. i'm not motivated for exams at all.

Do people actually enjoy law school?

LOL. MAYBE you enjoy an academic environment. but there is nothing fun about law school. especially when you graduate and realize the case law method has not taught you one thing about actually being a proficient (or self-sufficient) lawyer.

cutty otm! i am currently doing a grad dip in applied finance because the case law method taught me nothing about the commercial context of the matters i work on, and commercial realities probably carry more weight in the advice we offer clients than accurate and/or insightful legal research. still enjoying it though. except for the long hours thing.

Following the advice of the professor who wrote the exams: bad. Following the advice of a bunch of random internet people who never took this professor: good.

He wants us to apply the basic principles of common law and the theoretical underpinnings of the doctrines we studied ... that shit was definitely not evident in the holdings of any case we read.

sure it is. the book is written that way.

i'm sure your professor did NOT recomment re-reading the cases. that is batshit insane.

Nah, he said do it "the hard way". I talked to my professors about what I planned to do, and they gave it a hearty thumbs up ... and they were all the #1 or #2 students in their classes. "Rebriefing all your cases? That's a great idea!" said the former SCOTUS clerk, honors fellow, and #1 student at NYU law.

a fair few of my lecturers used to deliver a speech about how if you don't read every single case on the case list you'll never do well (although i don't recall anyone saying 'read all these 150 cases 2 or 3 times'). after a while it became a question of time for me though. there simply was not sufficient time to devote to reading and re-reading entire cases. everyone has a different approach though. realistically you don't have to follow the advice of the professor or the random internet people or anyone else... you might have to be a little more flexible than blindly following what every lecturer says to you to find an approach that really suits you though.

If it doesn't work, fair enough. but I'm really starting to understand this shit by doing this.

So gem, where did you graduate ... 1, 2, or 3 in your class?

eagerly awaiting the results of this experiment.

haha you're classic burt! you'll fit right in at law school, it's full of people like you

What experiment? I wouldn't know how to craft duty rules on my own if I didn't read through all the friggin cases again. If I just looked at my notes I'd still be as clueless as I was before.

But yeah, thanks for the psych out guys. You my classmates or something?

oh burt. dry your eyes princess! i'm sure you'll pull through your torts exam just fine.

I had the time to read all the cases, though ... twice! I'm about to finish that up, and then work on distilling my notes, and then devote myself to practice exams.

It's closed book, so we have to use principles and theory in answering the questions. Those concepts are contained in basically every paragraph but the holding, which just says "yes this good."

no. the holding in a case does not say that.

I mean, if I wasn't doing this shit, what would I be doing with my time? The professor only has 2 old exams on file.

making the most concise and helpful outline possible and reading it over and over again.

making mindmaps, flowcharts, methods of attacking any question thrown at you.

these are all memorization/reasoning/reading comprehension exams. you aren't going to memorize entire court decisions, so you should be memorizing the holdings and why they were decided. succinctly.

cutty you are talking to a sock

Eh, I already have someone's outline for this professor... the scholarship program I'm in gave us a bunch, and it's pretty good. As far as mindcharts, I'm going to do that later today.

It's not about -why- they were decided, it's about -how-. The professor said it's useless to mention any specific cases

cutty otm again. do you only have one exam? and does your library not have other old exams that you can use? i get that you worship your professor and all but you'll probably get some mileage out of other professors' exam problems as well. there's only so many ways you can draft a law exam.

I'm not sure it would be too useful ... half of our syllabus was based on some weird little philosophy supplement this guy prepared.

burt there are other sources for practice problems, such as E+E

You guys are going to do fine. Don't get stressed, don't study up until the minute before the exam. Your comments and your back and forth indicate to me that you are well on the way to being able to write a good exam answer.

The best thing you can do in exams is take your time, outline simply and thoughtfully, and write a concise and organized answer. Figure out the arguable points, and take as many facts on either side of that argument from the fact patterns as you can for each argument.

Budget your time well. A good number of my professors used to assign point totals to the individual questions, and I would divide my time according to the percentage of worth for each question. That approach kept me from NAILING the first question but bombing the second one because of poor time management.

And don’t get cute. Keep it right in the confines of the question. Answer what the question asks.

I cannot say that I envy the pre-holiday exam rush, but its an exciting time. Try to have some fun with it. I mean that seriously. And when you’re done, just leave. DON’T do the post-mortem discussion outside the exam hall. Go have a beer, and then start studying for your next exam.

torts

Sad to think only a few months ago I had no idea what that word meant.

I'm almost there, maaaan. first establish duty ... then breach, by analyzing reasonable care, circumstances, etc., in light of duty to defendant, then causation a) cause in action, sometimes b) proximate cause, and then damages.

I smell like shit and I haven't used my vocal cords to speak to another human being in about 3 days

all my class mates have taken this torts exam so easy. it's like, "really guys, you've mastered this so easily?" am I stupid here?