1L of a Ride, A Well-Traveled Professor's Roadmap to Success in the First Year of Law School
Author:
McClurg, Andrew J.
Edition:
3rd
Copyright Date:
2017
48 chapters/videos
have results for 1l of a ride
1: Introduction (Andrew McClurg) 27 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Hello and welcome to the 1L of a Ride Video Course. I’m Andrew McClurg, a professor at the University of Memphis School of Law. I wrote the law school prep book, 1L of a Ride, on which this course is based.
- Much of the information in this course is drawn from 1L of a Ride, the book. Consult the book for more details. A lot gets left out in 10-minute videos. The videos are aimed at basic, first principles.
- In the meantime, strap in and hold on. It’s called 1L of a Ride for a reason.
- Professor Meredith Duncan teaches at the University of Houston law school, where she’s compiled a long list of publications and awards. Out of more than 9,000 law professors in America—Professor Duncan was one of only 26 selected for inclusion in a book called What the Best Law Teachers Do, published by the Harvard University Press.
- True story. I went on a canoeing trip with a group of law professors. First of all, you can imagine what a rollicking adventure that was. The woman at the canoe rental place asked what I did and I said, "Law professor." Without hesitating, she said, "I hate lawyers."
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6: First-Year Sample Course: Torts (Nancy Levit) 39 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In the previous video, Professor Duncan gave an overview of the first-year curriculum. Here, we focus on just one of the first-year courses to give you a sense of how to approach a course and analyze the elements of a cause of action. [As in the book version of 1L of a Ride, we selected Torts as our sample course.]
- In this 1L of a Ride Condensed version of Torts, we have covered Intentional Torts and Negligence.
- A tort is a civil wrong, other than a breach of contract, for which the law provides a remedy, usually in the form of damages or, at times, an injunction-or "stop that" order.
- In most civil cases, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff to prove the elements by a preponderance of the evidence, which means the plaintiff must show that it is more likely than not that each of the elements is satisfied. (This burden of proof in most tort cases differs from the burden of proof in criminal cases, which you TV legal drama junkies will know, is proof beyond a reasonable doubt.)
- As you might imagine, we've barely scratched the surface of a fundamental course that all first-year law students will take. The point has been to combine a big picture view of the law of Torts with the ideas of element analysis, burdens of proof, and claims and defenses.
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Chapter 2. Pre-Trip Planning: What to Do Before You Arrive 134 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Take a vacation. Exercise. Eat well. Get in good physical shape. Enter law school rested and ready to go. One of my 3L research assistants, proofreading this section, wrote to say he had a fond memory of reading
- Buying and becoming adept at using a notebook computer may seem like ridiculously obvious advice, but with the proliferation of smart phones and tablets, the advice is actually more relevant today than when it appeared in the first edition of
- Forget style. Functionality is the key. This comment from a 1L about things she wished she knew at the beginning of law school made me smile:
- That so many study aids exist flags one of the oddest aspects of legal education. Law is the only educational discipline where students feel compelled to routinely buy external books to explain what they’re supposed to be learning from their assigned books. I surveyed a 1L class asking how many study aids the students purchased during the first year and the answers ranged from zero to twelve, with an average of four. One student said he snatched up twenty-five study aids from a 3L in exchange for paying the 3L’s bar tab at the annual Barrister’s Ball (the law school prom), one more reason to socialize with your colleagues. My strategy in law school was to find one good study aid for each course.
- Law book publishers also offer e-casebooks, although I’ve never seen a 1L using one, and advise against it for several reasons. First, as discussed later, many law professors prohibit computers in class. Second, it takes more time and multitasking (a proven mental distractor) to highlight and insert marginalia in an e-book or PDF. Third, you’re not going to be able to flip back and forth easily among pages, as many law professors do during class. Fourth, while there is no definitive verdict as of yet, some studies suggest that reading from a computer screen may impair concentration and comprehension compared to reading from hard copy material. In one study, 92 percent of college students surveyed said they concentrate better when reading print materials.
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Chapter 1. Destination Law School 13 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Get ready to embark on a wild ride unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, packed with thrills, chills, and probably a few spills. Being a 1L will challenge you like you’ve never been challenged. Law school and a law degree offer the potential for great rewards, but at a cost. The first year of law school will be one of hardest years of your life. Law school will profoundly alter the way you think, and view and interact with the world around you. Your 1L experience will change who you are, whether you want it to or not.
- While we can’t attach deep psychological meaning to these answers, dashed off hastily and perhaps in jest, the students’ spontaneous associations are nevertheless revealing. Their first-semester playlist reflects the rollercoaster ride of emotions inherent in being a 1L, including:
- Like being a parent, one can truly understand and appreciate the first year of law school only by experiencing it, so let’s start by looking at some reactions from those who did. On the last page of my first-semester Torts exam, I sometimes insert this bonus question: “Write the name of a song or a song lyric that best describes your feelings about the first semester of law school.” (It doesn’t count for any points, so don’t get your hopes up that law school exams are that easy.) Below are some of the responses. Lyrics are in quotation marks.
- But don’t let these answers bring you down. They were solicited at the end of a long, tough semester, seconds after the students completed a grueling three-hour exam. And even then—even in the very worst of times—many students expressed excitement, hope, optimism, and pride, as in:
- The best analogy I have for explaining how law school will both take you by surprise and forever alter you involves becoming a parent. When I was an expectant dad many years ago, friends and family told me the same kinds of things about becoming a parent. “It will change your life forever.” “It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.” “Say good-bye to your old life.”
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Chapter 22. “Night” and Other Nontraditional Students 58 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Impressive! She was a student of mine long before I wrote the first edition of
- All 1L classes form close bonds and make deep friendships, but night students have a unique bond. It’s not that their friendships are better or deeper than friendships among day students, just different. A plausible explanation is their shared circumstance of being in survival mode the entire time in law school.
- One of the hardest parts is that the law school atmosphere makes part-time night students feel like second-class citizens. When I began law school, the financial aid person went home at five. Night students get off work at five and start getting to school around five-thirty for classes that begin at six. So if we needed to do anything with financial aid, we had to try to find a way to take off work because we were accommodated. Likewise, school clubs and organizations would meet at lunch during the day, effectively cutting all night students out of every social and support activity that existed. I was working a fifty-hour-a-week job when I began law school. I took my vacation from work so I could attend orientation week. I remember one particularly derisive day student cracking the comment to me, “Well, it must be nice to only take three classes when the rest of us have to take five.” I replied, “Yeah, and I’d trade my fifty-plus hours a week that I work full-time for your extra...
- This point had not occurred to me, but that’s why I ask students for help. It surprised me that several former students commented on the unique nature of relationships between night students and their professors. More than one student said that professors seem to go a bit “easier” on night students, as in this comment responding to a question about the pros and cons of being a part-time student:
- He went on to explain that he and his wife grew further apart until divorce resulted, and identified poor communication as the main culprit. Take heed of his closing remarks: “Part of the artistry of being an effective attorney is being a good communicator. Start now and start at home.”
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Prologue 61 results (showing 5 best matches)
- 1L of a Ride Video Course
- 1L of a Ride Video Course
- Additionally, I once was a successful law student. In 1980, I graduated third in my class at the University of Florida College of Law, where I was a member of the law review and Order of the Coif, an honor conferred on the top 10 percent of graduates at select law schools. While my memories of the first year of law school are distant, some of them remain quite clear, which says a lot about the impact of the 1L adventure. I still remember my first day of law school orientation, first class, first Socratic interrogation, and first exam.
- Like all roadmaps, you’ll want to keep this one handy throughout your 1L trip. If you were taking a real one-year road trip, you wouldn’t just glance at the map before you backed out of the driveway and toss it aside. You’d review it each time you entered new territory or faced a new fork in the road.
- To stay in touch with the modern 1L experience from a student perspective, I continually seek input from law students. Their interesting, insightful, and sometimes poignant comments add confirmation, as well as balance to (and relief from) the drone of teacher talk that will be bearing down on you for the next many pages.
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Chapter 12. Note-Taking 54 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The insight is not new. Many others have made the same observation without the benefit of the study. All the way back in the first edition of
- What can you safely leave out of your notes? Frequently, in Socratic case-dialoguing a turning point occurs where the dialogue shifts from fleshing out the assigned case and corresponding rules to a more generalized discussion of the issues marked by “What do you think?”-type questions. At this point, you usually can relax and enjoy the discussion without worrying about having to write much down. Most professors expect 1Ls to analyze and solve legal problems on the exam, which usually does not require extensive policy discussion. But 1L profs do use policy questions, so, again, generalizing is always risky.
- This leads us to an important decision faced by new law students: whether to handwrite class notes or type them on a computer. A new trend in legal education in this regard is a seemingly backwards one. Until the past couple of academic years, at least 90 percent of my students used computers to take notes in class. Then suddenly one fall (which could be a great title for either a romantic comedy or disaster movie about the first year of law school: ), the majority of my new Torts students showed up carrying pens and pencils instead of computers.
- Before we move on to other note-related tips, let’s take time out for a real example to highlight what we’ve covered so far. Below is a comparison of class notes taken in a Torts class by two students we’ll call Jane and Roger regarding the privilege of self-defense to the tort of battery. The privilege of self-defense, where applicable, operates to negate what would otherwise be an actionable tortious battery (i.e., an intentional harmful or offensive bodily contact on a person).
- As shown by dozens of educational studies, taking notes furthers two important goals: encoding and storage of information. With regard to encoding, the process of taking notes enhances attention, idea-processing, organization, and retention of classroom material. In other words, writing down lecture content leads to better learning of the content than simply listening to it, even if one never reviews the notes. Thus, while students think it’s a blessing when professors give them copies of their PowerPoint slides or notes, which some law professors do, they’re missing out on one of the primary benefits of note-taking: the encoding function. One note-taking study showed that students who took and reviewed their own notes on a lecture performed better on a test than students who were given a copy of the lecturer’s notes to review.
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12: Managing Stress & Maintaining Well-Being (Nancy Levit) 26 results (showing 5 best matches)
- 3) I'm very grateful that many of you seem interested in the concepts in 1L of a Ride - or at least you are on the other end of technology, so you seem like a civil and polite group. I'm grateful either way.
- Choose happiness and I hope that you enjoy the ride.
- It helps if you can unpack the sources of stress, and if you have a good plan and a support system for dealing with the anticipated stress factors. Two of the major law school stressors are a fear of the unknown and a fear of failure.
- The unknown will become the known quite soon. You'll get into a cadence, a rhythm, pretty quickly. Tthe sleeplessness, high anxiety, and immersion in this new language and structure of thinking that occur in the first few weeks will get better. People make the mistake of thinking that their entire three years of law school and the many years of practice after will feel like the first few weeks of law school.
- Beware of Alcohol and Substance Abuse: More than half of all lawyer disciplinary actions involve some form of substance abuse. Some law students try to respond to the stress of law school (or anesthetize themselves) with "a few drinks." Alcohol is a depressant; it doesn't solve the stresses, and, in fact, can become a problem. All fifty states and D.C. have confidential Lawyer Assistance Programs, which provide counseling and mentoring to both law students and lawyers suffering from mental health or substance abuse problems.
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Chapter 11. Case-Briefing 154 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Does this mean that all students who don’t brief their cases are destined to flunk out of law school? No. I asked students who had read an earlier edition of
- I disagree with your emphasis on case-briefing. My GPA is not stellar, but I am certainly not on academic probation and my grades are above the 2.5 required to compete for law review. I think that less time spent case-briefing and more time spent working on hypos and old exams, and also reading study aids, is time better spent. I feel that the professor will tell me what they want to see on an exam during lecture and that by case-briefing I am merely reinventing the wheel. (Ironically, I see
- • I briefed all my cases in all my classes during my entire 1L (and most of my 2L) year. I know many people who relied upon “online briefs” but these were not typically the highest-ranked students. In my opinion, briefing cases during the 1L year cannot be overemphasized.—
- • I briefed every single case that I read as a 1L. That is not to say that I don’t read online case briefs, or even incorporate some of the lines from those case briefs into my own. But I never read an online case brief, nor do I copy-paste an online case brief into my own or print off an online case brief. I read the case, make notes in my textbook as I gather the reasoning that I believe is relevant, THEN read the online case brief, THEN make my own case brief. It sounds like a lot, but it doesn’t take much time when you get efficient at it. While everyone is different, the three guys I study with, who pretty much followed the same process as me, all did well (top 10, 15, 25 percent).—
- The problem is that these benefits of case-briefing are intangible. That, combined with the time-sucking nature of preparing case briefs, leads many students to give up on case-briefing too soon. The benefits of case-briefing, though unseen, are real. But you don’t have to trust my opinion. Trust the students quoted below. I wrote to three students, each of them ranked number one in their respective class, and asked if they briefed all of their cases as a 1L. Here are their responses:
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2: Planning Ahead & Biggest Fears (Andrew McClurg) 39 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The book version of 1L of a Ride offers a list of tangible pre-law school “TO DO” items.
- Let’s shift gears. Do you have fears about law school? I’ll share a secret with you. Let’s keep it between us. I was terrified as a 1L. What I didn’t realize was that everyone else was, too.
- A survey administered after a recent bar exam found that 90 percent of participants gave an A or B grade to the quality of their law school experience. Only 1 percent gave law school a grade of D.
- If you come to law school expecting A’s or to be in the top 10 percent of your class, you're likely to be disappointed. At most law schools, A’s are scarce, and due to a sticking point called “math,” since the dawn of legal education, 90 percent of students don’t finish in the top 10 percent.
- The happy news is that it doesn't take A’s to be an excellent law student and successful lawyer. Many of the most impactful lawyers in America were C students. One law school has a nice basketball court built for students bearing a plaque: “Donated by a C student.”
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Chapter 18. Legal Research and Writing: An Interview with Five Experts 160 results (showing 5 best matches)
- an increase since the last edition of
- The single most iterated 1L gripe—and that’s saying a lot—is that the workload required for legal writing is disproportionately heavy compared to the credit hours allocated. Usually, the workload for a law school course corresponds to the number of credit hours for the course. But students would argue we reversed everything for legal writing, requiring more work for fewer credit hours. Students complain that this allocation is completely arbitrary, but they’re wrong. It’s all done according to a highly scientific, mathematical formula:
- You heard it here first. Legal Research and Writing will consume you. Legal Research and Writing is known as a “skills course.” Your other 1L courses are all likely to be “doctrinal courses.” While first-year doctrinal courses differ in content, they are extremely similar in format. Each will involve similar daily reading assignments of judicial opinions from a casebook, some mix of Socratic Q & A and lecture about those cases in class, and the same single-exam evaluation method at the end of the semester. Whether it’s Civil Procedure, Contracts, Criminal Law, Property or Torts, the quest for first-year success will follow a similar path and require similar tools and strategies. Thus, nearly all of the advice in this book applies equally to each of the doctrinal courses in the first-year curriculum.
- —1L’s “biggest surprise” about law school
- 3. A response that is fraught with errors, typographical errors, and formatting errors. Typically, there is a correlation between a lack of precision in analysis and a lack of precision in style. Errors with these “finer points” distract a reader from the analysis and limit the amount of confidence a reader has in the writer’s prediction of the outcome.
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Index 140 results (showing 5 best matches)
Chapter 16. Law School Essay Exams: Fifteen Common Mistakes 133 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Most first-year law school exams consist of essay questions or a combination of essay and multiple-choice questions. This chapter focuses on essay questions, while the next chapter addresses multiple-choice questions. These chapters are a perfect example of why you need to consider
- Let’s go back to the practice question for an illustration. Contrary to the popular understanding of the word, the tort of “assault” occurs when a person acts intending to create in another an of a harmful or offensive bodily contact. No actual bodily contact is required. If a contact does occur, it’s a battery.
- Some students misconstrue the IRAC methodology as an inflexible formula, which it most definitely is not. Some even go so far as to set their answers up in the form of an outline with headings like “ : … ‚” etc. Don’t do that! I inserted those words above only as a guide. An answer to an essay question should read like, well, an essay. IRAC is simply a structural way of thinking about legal analysis in a problem-solving context. It has no application to some types of essay questions, such as policy questions.
- An example from the practice question will bolster the point. As discussed above, tort law recognizes as a defense to a battery claim a legal privilege to use reasonable force to protect other people. The privilege is known as “defense of others.” “Defense of others” is a term of art. It’s the legal name attached to the privilege.
- Here’s a way to test yourself on this point. Look at your discussion of a particular issue. Visually cut it out with an imaginary pair of scissors. (Avoid real scissors. Hide all sharp objects during periods of exam stress.) The excised excerpt should be able to stand alone as a complete and coherent discussion of that issue without having to refer to other portions of your answer. If it doesn’t, you may be dancing to the Monster [Issue] Mash.
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Chapter 25. Recapping Law School’s First Year in the Words of Students 138 results (showing 5 best matches)
- When you reach the end of your 1L ride, I hope you won’t find yourself in the position of the student quoted above, bemoaning his unwillingness or inability to heed advice. I’d rather picture you smiling and thinking, “You know, that book I read about the first year gave some really good advice. I’m glad I followed it!”
- One of the frustrating aspects about giving advice on how to succeed in law school is the certain knowledge that many students won’t follow it. This is true no matter how great the advice. As we near the end of our figurative 1L ride, I thought the best way to reinforce the advice for law school success and well-being that you’ve been reading would be to hear it retold in the words of those who labored through the real 1L odyssey. Borrowing from humorist Dave Barry, I’m hoping that reading the same advice coming from law students will assure you that “I am not making this up” and help drive home key points.
- • I watch as some peers travel to see significant others on the weekends or pine away about someone who is away from them. I think this is a waste of time. I would probably not enter law school and hope that a long distance relationship would work out. I think I would probably just agree to go separate ways. Time is too valuable as a 1L to deal with relationship drama, especially long-distance relationship drama.
- —1L nearing completion of the first year
- You now have the information and advice you’ll need to avoid falling into those traps and succeeding in law school. It may seem far off, but it won’t be long before you’ll be finishing your own 1L adventure. Before you know it, you’ll be . Like the rest of life, your time in law school will fly by.
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9: Essential Study Techniques (Nancy Levit) 33 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Professor McClurg tells a great story in the book, 1L of a Ride, about being in trial and asking the court reporter what she thought about the testimony of a key witness. When she said she didn't remember it, Professor McClurg said, "'How could you not remember any of it? You took down every word verbatim!' She said that she never thinks about what's being said, because that would interfere with her recording it accurately."
- A study group is just a group of people who get together to go over cases, test collective knowledge of rules and their application, or work through hypotheticals. The benefits of study groups are that different people bring various points of view to the discussion and different people can pick up on subtle points of the material. Study groups are often a useful support system, too.
- One of the best ways to review is to create an outline. An outline is just a compendium of all of your class notes, hypos, examples, and ideas from briefing in one organized place.
- All of that said, you need to play to your own strengths-if you have cramped and slow handwriting and you're a wizard fast typist with an immense amount of self-control when it comes to email, you might prefer to type.
- But you don't just decide in August to go a run a marathon in December, right? You log miles, you run a 5K, a 10K, a half. That's what we're going to talk about-how to assemble all that you're learning and how to prepare for a single test at the end, so that you'll be ready and feel ready to go the distance. As Professor McClurg says, "90 percent of preparing for and studying for law school exams occurs during the semester."
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- Your experience is likely to be similar. For most readers, the first year of law school may still be an abstraction. I hope I succeeded in giving it shape in these pages, but when all is said and done, what I said at the beginning of the book is true. The only way to truly understand and appreciate the 1L experience is to live it. Good luck on your journey. Here’s to a smooth ride!
- I still remember the day of my last exam of my 1L year. What a feeling! It was like being released from prison. I walked out of the law school into bright sunshine and felt light as air. That night some of my non-law school friends staged a big party at a subterranean den called and painted to resemble Middle Earth, located beneath a block of dorms on the University of Florida campus. (Tolkien was popular on college campuses long before the
- But human nature is funny that way. While I definitely would not want to repeat the first year, like many lawyers, I look back at it with nostalgia and fondness. For better or worse, there has never been another year of my life resembling my 1L experience. I’ve never learned as much or experienced as much camaraderie in any one year. There was a lot of stress too, but, fortunately, the human psyche seems designed to remember the good over the bad.
- I was the only law student there. I doubt I mentioned law school the entire night, having learned months earlier that non-law students could care less about it. I did think about it though. I have a distinct memory of sitting in a chair watching the hubbub around me, sipping punch, and feeling blissfully happy, thinking: “I’m done! I can’t believe I’m actually done!” Temporarily forgetting, I guess, that I still had two more years to go.
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Chapter 9. Law Professors 99 results (showing 5 best matches)
- 1L of a Ride
- New law students share a similar fascination about their professors. In part because the 1L universe is so small, your first-year professors will become the center of it, at least early on. While it diminishes fairly quickly, at the beginning, law students often view their professors with something approaching veneration. At a social gathering during orientation many years ago, I was standing in the restroom at a urinal when a young man next to me exclaimed, “I can’t believe it! I’m peeing next to Professor McClurg.” I’m pretty sure he was serious.
- Terrence had impressed me more than once as being not only a good student but a good person. He received good grades and was a member of the law review. Most important, way back as a 1L, he demonstrated his integrity and good heart when he approached me after Torts class more than once, troubled by legal doctrines that led to unjust results. I offered to help Terrence draft an explanation of the incident to submit with his bar application. I thought that, framed properly, the incident could be explained. It worked. His bar application sailed through without any questions asked. Would I do the same thing for every student? No. I did it for Terrence because I believed in him.
- Lawhaha.com, my legal humor blog, collects, among other items, funny memories of law school. One category is “Those lovable, quirky law professors,” which includes tales about a bald, white professor who raps in class, a professor who acts like nothing unusual has occurred when a tooth flies out of his mouth and bounces off a table during a lecture, a professor who begins class teaching the wrong course from the wrong book, a professor who runs into a door and teaches an entire class with blood streaming down his face, and a distinguished professor who stalks the classroom for an entire hour with toilet paper hanging out the back of his pants.
- When I was a kid, I loved watching reruns of , a sitcom about the misadventures of young Theodore Cleaver (“the Beav”). Beaver had a teacher named Miss Landers who began every class with a sunny, “Good morning, class.” The class always responded in unison, “Good morning, Miss Landers.”
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Chapter 20. Maintaining Well-Being 92 results (showing 5 best matches)
- 1L of a Ride Video Course
- In forming your inner circle, seek people who are optimistic about life, even if cynically so. Nattering Nabobs of Negativism, described in Chapter 4, should be avoided. A 1L shared this tale of an encounter she had with a Nattering Nabob:
- I’m convinced that even in the era of rising tuition law students could shave a substantial percentage off their loan debt by living more frugally. Compare my Spartan law school existence to the lifestyle of many current debt-ridden students: they live alone without roommates, drive nice cars, eat out frequently, drink $5 cups of coffee like water (which they also buy instead of turning on the tap), enjoy $15 martinis, take vacations, belong to health clubs, etc.
- Make it a contest: every time a person mentions anything about law school, they have to pay a penalty of some type. I held an end-of-the-year party at my house for my Torts students. One of the student party organizers came up with a game in which each student was issued three clothespins on arrival. If a student mentioned anything about law school, anyone who overheard the statement could take one of their clothespins. The students with the most clothespins at the end of the party received prizes.
- Just because you’re not in the top 10 percent doesn’t mean you’re not an excellent law student or won’t be a great lawyer. Law school exams measure a limited range of skills. They don’t measure oral facility, resourcefulness, dedication, heart, grit, integrity, or even necessarily the amount of knowledge a student has acquired.
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Chapter 24. Law Review, Moot Court, and Other Extracurricular Activities 42 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Didn’t qualify for or participate in the law review write-on competition? All is not lost. Far from it. One of the most unusual developments in scholarly legal publishing during the past couple of decades has been the explosion of law school “secondary journals” (so called because they are considered “secondary” to the primary law review), also called “specialty journals.” American law schools now publish a staggering 720 specialty law journals, a remarkable increase from the already high 400 counted in the previous edition of
- In this chapter, we’ll review the most important and common co- and extracurricular activities. Before proceeding, however, remember my warning way back in Chapter 6 about the dangers of overcommitting to extra activities
- Many students also tout the networking benefits of participating in student organizations, which can be important in a tough job climate. As this 1L explained:
- (As you know from Chapter 6, she and I differ on the issue of 1L involvement, but I want to give you the benefit of both sides.)
- Write-on competition details vary, but they typically include a time-limited writing assignment over a period of days, such as an analysis of a recent case, accompanied by a test on citation style. One drawback of write-on competitions is their timing. They generally begin shortly after the completion of first-year exams, deterring many qualified, but exhausted students from participating in or completing the competition.
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Chapter 21. Welcome BACK to the Jungle: The Perilous Second Semester 78 results (showing 5 best matches)
- I tell my students not to worry too much if they can’t land a paying summer legal job after their 1L year. For one thing, they don’t have a great deal of control over the situation. The job market is tighter than it used to be. Also, many law firms simply don’t hire students after their first year because they haven’t learned enough yet to be of value.
- The realization that law school is going to be a long haul is worsened by the fact that much of the excitement and adrenaline that fuels students through the first semester evaporates. Students arrive at law school brimming with anticipation and energy. Seeing and feeling it is one of the great pleasures of being a 1L law teacher. But like romances that lose their dizzying effects once the newness wears off, law school can seem like more of a chore than an adventure after the ebullience of the first semester subsides.
- A major cause of second-semester stress at many schools is an increased workload. Some schools add an extra course in the second semester. Professors may move at a quicker pace, which means longer reading assignments and more rules to memorize. Some students voluntarily take on too many extra activities, such as participating in student organizations, which I cautioned against doing as a 1L back in Chapter 6.
- And then there’s the appellate brief and oral argument, one of the heaviest burdens of 1L existence. As discussed in Chapter 18, most students’ second semester load in Legal Research and Writing will include having to write an appellate brief and engage in an oral argument before a mock appellate court. No reason to rehash the subject, except to note that these requirements add substantially to second-semester workloads. It takes more time and effort to research and write an appellate brief than to compose the law office memoranda assigned in the first semester. Additionally, the oral arguments consume tremendous prep time and emotional energy. Some schools make it into a competition, adding to the pressure and workload.
- To say this is unfortunate would be an understatement. The fact is you and your 1L mates are all in the same boat. There’s not much meaningful practical advice I can give you on this issue other than to put you on notice that over-competitiveness is not an attractive quality. If you do well your first semester, follow the vow of the student above. Keep it to yourself. People will respect you all the more for it. If you brag about your high grades, people will despise you, with justification. A professor at another law school told me about a student who received an A on her memo assignment in Legal Research and Writing, then proceeded to carry the memo around on top of her stack of books, with the A clearly showing, for three weeks until the professor had a “little chat” with her about it. “Her classmates were about to crucify her,” she reported.
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Chapter 3. Fear Factor: Top Five Law Student Worries 52 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Don’t get me wrong. A lot of the material is difficult and not all students grasp the law equally well. Some legal topics (the law of “future interests” in Property comes to mind as a quintessential 1L example) do approach utter incomprehensibility, but even those riddles can be unraveled by most students if they put in the necessary effort.
- OF L . & A 1L E
- If you’re stressed out about starting law school, take comfort in the fact that you have lots of company. Every 1L you meet, whether they show it or not, will be feeling the same way. Two weeks into the first semester, I asked a group of students to name their “biggest surprise” about law school. One student wrote: “My biggest surprise is that everyone feels the same way that I do. My insecurities are shared among most of my 152 peers. That provides tremendous comfort in that I am not the only one feeling overwhelmed, scared, stressed, and excited all at once.”
- We’ll talk more about the sources of 1L stress, including tips for reducing and managing it. In the meantime, if you find yourself feeling alone in your fears and doubts, take solace from one of my favorite quotations, by motivational educator Stan Dale:
- And upon demurrer by the plaintiff, judgment was given for him; for though it were agreed, that if men tilt or turney in the presence of the King, or if two masters of defence playing their prizes kill one another, that this shall be no felony; or if a lunatick kill a man, or the like, because felony must be done animo felonico; yet in trespass, which tends only to give damages according to hurt or loss, it is not so; and therefore if a lunatick hurt a man, he shall be answerable in trespass; and therefore no man shall be excused of a trespass (for this is in the nature of an excuse, and not of a justification, prout
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Chapter 14. A Short Course in Law School Exams 57 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In order to ensure fairness among the 1L sections and maintain rigor in grading, the following standards apply to the required 1L courses except for Legal Research and Writing … :
- In a survey in which law students were asked to rank the importance of twenty-four suggested changes to legal education, “more feedback on academic process” finished second only to smaller classes. Of all the alleged deficiencies in legal education, the single-exam format is the one I have the hardest time defending. Particularly because so much rides on grades in law school, it seems unsound and unfair to evaluate a student’s knowledge and understanding of fourteen intensive weeks of complex material based on a single exam.
- In the meantime, some schools already require or at least encourage multiple testing instruments during a semester and some admirable first-year professors voluntarily supplement the final exam with graded midterm exams, papers, quizzes, or class projects. If you have professors who do this, be sure to express your appreciation to them. Additionally, rest assured that most 1L professors offer ungraded practice exams with answer rubrics during the first semester.
- —1L’s “biggest surprise” about law school
- Mandatory Grade Distribution for 1L Courses:
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Chapter 5. The First-Year Curriculum: What to Expect 82 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which are the focus of most 1L courses on the subject, govern lawsuits in the federal courts. Each state has its own set of civil procedure rules to govern civil lawsuits in their respective court systems, but those rules track the federal rules for the most part. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure contain eighty-six rules, but you will closely study only a small number of them.
- Here’s a list of the courses I took as a 1L in 1978:
- Here’s a list of the courses you are likely to take as a 1L:
- Your first assignments in Property may cover cases going back to the 1800s. Unlike the law of most other subjects, which has evolved over time, many of the rules governing property rights were frozen in place centuries ago. Thus, historical context is more important to understanding Property than some other 1L courses.
- But it might be taught in a different fashion. In Chapter 9, I discuss the difference between professors who teach from a primarily practical perspective and those who teach from a primarily theoretical perspective. These divergent approaches can occur in any course, but Criminal Law is a prime candidate for theoretical teaching among 1L courses. Instead of focusing on all the detailed rules and elements, your Criminal Law professor might choose to concentrate (as mine did) on big-picture policy issues, such as the societal policies and theories underlying criminal punishment and sentencing. The difference in these teaching approaches is like night and day for students.
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Chapter 19. The Bleak Side of Law School 55 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Just months before I started law school in 1978, a new book came out: Scott Turow’s tells the story of Turow’s experience as a first-year law student at Harvard Law School. The book scared the heck out of me at the time. I didn’t remember why until I recently reread it and realized that a dominant theme of the book was negative affect. I counted specific references to: anxiety, fear, stress, panic, vulnerability, self-doubt, shame and grief, wounded self-esteem, unhappiness, paranoia, embarrassment, oppression, and insanity. Turow’s 1L story turned out to be my 1L story and the story of many law students since.
- Each year, I talk to my 1Ls about psychological distress, confessing that I suffered from it as a 1L to the point where I almost quit law school. Each time, students contact me afterwards to say that simply having someone acknowledge the issue made them feel less alone. That’s a good thing, but it’s not enough.
- . 1049 (2010) (recounting my rollercoaster 1L experience).
- While research shows that law student psychological dysfunction continues into the third year and even past graduation, the most intense whirly rides of anxiety and emotion occur in the first year, especially the first semester, when there is so much uncertainty. After that, things settle down and life falls into a more or less normal pattern. Stressors undergo a fundamental reprioritizing. Panic over the Socratic method and exams is replaced by external worries about finding a job and paying back student loans. These external pressures are significant, but in terms of day-to-day law school, many 3Ls do in fact seem more bored than afraid.
- While feelings of low self-worth are not recognized as a separate psychological disorder, they have been tied to a host of other disorders, including anxiety and depression. Law school may be the undisputed champion of causing talented people, people who have achieved at a high level their entire lives, to almost instantly begin questioning their self-worth.
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11: Legal Writing Basics (Christine Coughlin) 28 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Another unique part of the spring semester is the oral advocacy component. For many students oral arguments are the most exciting, and also the most terrifying, event of the 1L year. Oral arguments are exciting because it is often the first law school exercise that will make you feel like a real lawyer.
- Usually, the first semester of your 1L year is dedicated to learning objective legal analysis. Objective legal analysis and writing looks at a factual problem, considers the range of results, and then predicts which result is most likely. In doing so, you remain neutral in your analysis, rather than advocating for a particular outcome. Your goal is to analyze, educate, predict, and inform. You will do this by drafting an internal law office memo from an associate (you) to a fictitious senior partner (generally your professor) analyzing the law as applied to a given set of facts.
- During your 1L year, you will be focusing on two types of analysis and writing: objective and persuasive.
- Perhaps the most common complaint from 1L students is that the workload required for legal writing is disproportionately heavy compared to the credit hours allocated.
- The terror aspect comes from a generalized fear of public speaking heightened by the fact that oral arguments can amount to public interrogations. It’s normal to be nervous about public speaking. Surveys show that public speaking ranks higher than death on a list of people’s biggest fears.
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Chapter 6. The First Days: Starting Out Right 107 results (showing 5 best matches)
- You want to get off on the right foot in these first days. Missteps can result in embarrassment, risk branding you in a negative light, facilitate your falling behind, and, in general, create extra stress that can interfere with learning. The advice in this chapter is designed to help you come out of the blocks smoothly and cleanly as you begin the 1L race.
- Having said all that, I don’t necessarily disagree with your assertion at all. I was not involved in anything outside of school my first semester, and I only really jumped into stuff with PALS [Public Action Law Society] after knowing I was on solid footing grades-wise first semester. I don’t think I ever realized as a 1L how much my grades mattered (as crazy as it is, my employer for the future only ever saw my 1L grades). … Employers don’t care nearly as much about your “outside involvement,” and the best way to distinguish yourself in my experience is to be as competent as possible and as high in your class as possible.
- I would have to say that I agree with your theory of not getting too involved during your 1L year. My first semester I would attend lunchtime meetings for different organizations to determine where I would like to get involved in the future, but that was pretty much the extent of my involvement in anything. The rest of my time was dedicated to studying and preparing for class every single day.
- I said at the beginning I’d offer you the same advice I would give my own kid if she were going to law school. While it’s difficult advice to give because of the significant benefits of outside activities, I emphasize to my 1Ls that “it’s okay to say no” when asked to participate in extra activities and I tell you the same thing here. Don’t feel compelled to take on extra activities as a 1L. If you insist on doing so, don’t overcommit.
- I do not think 1Ls should get involved in student organizations. … I did not become involved in student organizations and focused on preparing for classes, periodically reviewing notes, and outlining. When I wasn’t working on school stuff, I spent my time relaxing with family and friends. I think this was one of the best decisions I made throughout law school. It allowed me to start out OCIs [On-Campus Interviews] with a high rank, which resulted in summer clerkship offers that eventually turned into permanent job offers. This was all from only my first-year grades. Those 1L grades literally defined my career path.
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Chapter 4. What Kind of Student Do You Want to Be? Twenty Law Student Types 54 results (showing 5 best matches)
- As for the Judger, who may also qualify as a Know-It-All, it is presumptuous in the extreme for any 1L student to believe he is qualified to evaluate the knowledge and analytical abilities of his classmates. It probably goes without saying that overt Evaluators/Judgers are not well-liked by their classmates.
- These two closely related types are sometimes the same person, but not always. Both spend a disproportionate amount of time sizing up the competition, the Evaluator by keeping close tabs on everyone’s progress and the Judger by overtly rating his classmates as smart or not smart, often based on their classroom comments. Evaluators are obsessed with knowing everyone’s grades and comparing them to their own. At one school, in the days when grades were still publicly posted on the “wailing wall” or “wall of shame” (as students called it), we had to change the entire anonymous grade-number system because an Evaluator took the time to collect and chart the grades of every 1L by exam number.
- Ideally, everyone in a law school class would participate at a roughly equal level, but that’s just not the reality of group dynamics. Most students never volunteer at all. Someone has to pick up the slack. When in doubt, choose to participate. The benefits of regular class participation, as explained in Chapter 8, are many, and far outweigh the risk of being labeled a gunner.
- No great shock, members of this group usually do well in law school. If you’re already a law student and find yourself getting called on disproportionately for no apparent reason, maybe you’ve been identified by the prof as a Mr./Ms. Reliable. Of course, you might also have been identified as a Slacker whom the professor wants to make an example of, so don’t start patting yourself on the back until you’ve figured it out. Because of their generally quiet demeanor, more Mr./Ms. Reliables exist than are identified by the professors, which is yet another good reason to contribute voluntarily in class. You want the professor to know if you’re a Mr./Ms. Reliable.
- The Socratic method of law teaching involves a lot of question-asking by the professors, including many “What do you think?”-type questions. Most first-year law school class sections include a small number of students who are willing to volunteer answers and comments more And to them I say: Thank you! From a professor’s perspective, a Frequent Participator beats the heck out of the student who sits silently through the course, never engaging. The most interesting, exciting, and memorable parts of law school classes always involve class discussion.
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Chapter 15. Exam Preparation 35 results (showing 5 best matches)
- One benefit of being a 1L is that law schools intentionally schedule first-year exams with at least one free day between exams. In your second and third years, you might have exams on consecutive days.
- failure.” Drug rehab gone bad? Nah. Just another 1L freaking out the night before his first exam, in this case, Scott Turow, writing in his classic book,
- If you’re in a study group, reviewing practice or old exams can be one of the most productive group study activities. A group of students are more likely to spot all the issues on a question than any individual student. Reviewing exams with a group can help you learn from your oversights. If others identify an issue
- Studies show that sleep-deprived students perform substantially worse on tests. “Pulling an all-nighter” is not only ineffective, it impairs performance. Lack of sleep negatively affects attention, concentration, and memory. Cramming is a particularly bad strategy for law school success because of the huge amount of material.
- Students spend tons of time memorizing the law and far too little time learning and practicing the of law school exam-taking. Many students know all the law there is to know, but still don’t excel on exams because they never learned how to take a law school exam. The best way to get a handle on that process is through practice exams.
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Chapter 13. Outlining 75 results (showing 5 best matches)
- One week into a fall semester, a 1L came to my office and said, “Professor, everyone kept telling me I’ll be working day and night in law school, but this Saturday I was sitting there looking for something else to do. Am I missing something?” I told her to enjoy it while she could because the pace would start quickening soon.
- —1L’s lament about what he would do differently if starting over
- Some students attempt to rely solely on outlines prepared by students who took the course in earlier years. These are abundantly available. It sounds like a good plan on the surface. Why go through all the work to prepare an outline if someone else has already done it for the same course taught by the same professor? Especially if you can lay your hands on a really great outline composed by a top student, it seems like a no-brainer. And, in fact, you probably can obtain great outlines prepared by top students. Every law school has its share of famous, ridiculously thorough student outlines for particular courses that get passed down from class to class. Back at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, for example, every 1L coveted a copy of “Bob’s Bible,” a student outline for the late legendary Professor Robert R. Wright’s Property course that was so complete it even included Professor Wright’s jokes.
- 1. 11-year-old girl’s thumb cut off while riding behind snowmobile.
- Within a few weeks, the reading assignments get longer. The concepts get harder. Professors begin covering material at a faster pace. The demands of Legal Research and Writing kick in with a vengeance. It all comes at students relentlessly, without a break. Before they know it, students are mired up to their ankles, knees, and finally necks in a quicksand of dense material.
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7: How to Read and Brief a Case (Christine Coughlin) 29 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Now that you’ve had the chance to learn about case briefing, let’s take a look at the case Robinson v. Lindsay, a Washington state case from 1979 that many law students read during their 1L year. You can find this case reprinted in Chapter 11.
- A case brief is a synopsis of a judicial opinion that captures its key elements. In non-law school language, a case brief is a set of notes outlining the major details of a case that you read for class.
- For example, a casebook section on “Intentional Torts” may contain chapters on intent, basic kinds of intentional torts, and different defenses against intentional torts. So, one way to finding out how a case fits into the grand scheme of a subject is to look at the table or contents or class syllabus.
- Hello, I’m Professor Christine Coughlin. As you dive into the first weeks of law school, you’ll have to adapt to a level of academic rigor and challenges that you haven’t faced before. As you heard earlier from Professor McClurg, many professors use the Socratic or Case Method to ask challenging questions in class about a case or legal concept.
- While commercial briefs and outlines can certainly help in your studies, they can’t replace the extra time and effort spent by students who have prepared briefs for themselves. For instance, you engage in the analytical process by identifying and categorizing the important aspects of a case. When you dissect that information from the case and summarize it in your own words, you recount the thought processes you had when you originally read the case. This prepares you for the challenging questions your professors will ask you in class to determine whether you have a grasp of the legal principles at the core of the case. Your class preparation and the professor’s challenging questions hone your ability to think like a lawyer.
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Chapter 7. The Socratic and Case Methods 107 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The difference in the way 1Ls think about legal problems at the beginning and end of the first year is dramatic. Even the Socratic-haters would be hard-pressed to deny that they really did arrive at law school with “skulls full of mush,” yet exited the Socratic arena as facile thinkers and astute legal problem-solvers. Look at this comment from a 1L two weeks away from finishing his first year:
- Trust me. While surviving the entirety of the first year is difficult, surviving the Socratic method is not. I’ve taught at several law schools and am acquainted with many law professors. I do not know a single professor who uses the Socratic method to bully or break down students. My experience is consistent with Professor Paul Brest’s that “[t]he terrorist version of the Socratic method has almost disappeared.” Asked in a survey to name the biggest surprise about law school, a 1L wrote: “What is the big deal about the Socratic method? It is written about like it’s some kind of torture. I have yet to see anyone really crucified.”
- Professors don’t do this to embarrass students or because they’re too lazy to answer questions. Remember, a goal of the Socratic method is to force students to learn by doing. So, for example, if we were discussing the defense to negligence known as “implied assumption of risk” and a student asked me to clarify a point of law involving the defense, I’d happily do it. But if the student asked, “Would it be implied assumption of risk for a person to accept a ride from a drunk driver?”, I’d say “What do you think?” because I would want the student to try to reason through the puzzle by applying the rules we learned.
- 1. The Socratic method strikes fear in the hearts and minds of 1Ls. FACT.
- Reading this Socratic excerpt, one of my research assistants noted that my Socratic dialoguing at the beginning of Torts was “far less laidback” than at the end of the course, which is when the discussion below took place. As previously mentioned, many professors tend to be tougher, for lack of a better word, at the beginning of a course than at the end.
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Chapter 23. Law School and Outside Relationships 83 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Think I’m exaggerating? Check out the below comment, which made me laugh out loud, from a 1L explaining what she likes to talk about to her boyfriend:
- Skillful arguing is one of the most valuable tools of a lawyer’s trade, but it does not rank highly on lists of traits considered helpful to successful relationships. To a law student, the simplest assertion may be an invitation to a challenging response. If a mate complains, “You don’t give me enough attention,” a law student might reply:
- I polled significant others of law students as to ways they managed to “get away from law school” with their student. They replied with a long list of great ideas, everything from go-carting to let off steam to “no computer days” to spending a night in a nearby hotel as a type of fantasy vacation. Most of their strategies did not involve or require expensive or excitement-filled vacations or other excursions. Often the simplest pleasures of together-time are the most fulfilling.
- No research exists specific to law students, but whether you are a male or female student, if division of household labor is or becomes an issue in your relationships, the obvious solution is to discuss it and have each party agree to bear his or her fair share of the load. Of course, concurring on the definition of “fair share” can be a sticking point, in part because of what I call the “Who Has It Worse?” syndrome, a situation in which both the law student and the gainfully employed partner each think the other has the easier life.
- • In general, I am on a very short fuse now, so a comment or suggestion that I would otherwise consider with a grain of salt can set me off or piss me off. There have been two instances where my emotional intelligence decreased to that of a shrieking three-year-old and a normal conversation with my boyfriend turned into an outlandish fight. I transformed from a normal person into a scary, scary beast.
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5: The 1L Curriculum (Meredith J. Duncan) 12 results (showing 5 best matches)
- So far we've discussed your Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, Contracts, and Property courses. Rounding out the "Big Five" 1L courses is Torts. You may not have ever heard the word "tort" before (or may confuse it with the dessert, which is "torte," which has an e on the end, but I digress). You may be wondering what a tort is, but I would guess that this is another area of the law that you have some familiarity with, whether you realize it or not. Torts are everywhere! And this course, much like your contracts course, will make you see torts everywhere! When a person is physically or emotionally injured or her property is damaged through the wrongful conduct of another, the potential for a tort suit arises. So if you have ever heard of the McDonald's hot coffee case, you have heard of a tort case. Or if you've ever heard of a patient suing a doctor for medical malpractice, you've heard of a tort case. A tort is a civil wrong, other than a breach of contract, for which the law allows...
- MODULE 5: The 1L Curriculum
- Students often find Civil Procedure to be one of the most difficult first year courses for a number of reasons. First of all, the subject matter is unfamiliar. The need for persnickety rules of procedure is not as intuitive as the need for homicide law, for example. Second, the rules can be quite technical and filled with unfamiliar terminology. (For instance, I remember reading the word "interrogatories" for the first time and wondering how in the world to even pronounce that word!) An additional difficulty is that the rules of civil procedure usually have to be interpreted in the context of litigation involving other areas of law. So you may be studying cases concerning contract disputes or tort disputes in your civil procedure class while, at the very same time in another class, you are just learning what a contract or a tort is! A challenge indeed!
- So here's my handy, dandy explanation of the courses you are likely to take your first year. These courses are Legal Research and Writing, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, Contracts, Property, and Torts. Of these six courses, Legal Research and Writing is unique in that it is a "skills" course in which you will learn how to conduct legal research and compose legal writing. Because it is such a different type of first year course, in this video series it gets its very own module, which will be presented by Professor Coughlin a bit later. In this module, I will provide a brief discussion of the remaining five courses (or the "Big Five," as I like to call them). The Big Five are typically "doctrinal" courses - courses whose primary purpose is to teach the particular substantive body of law.
- So moving on to the first of those civil action courses - let's talk about your Civil Procedure course. All civil lawsuits are controlled by a set of procedural rules. Although each state has its own set of civil procedure rules, in your first year you are most likely to study the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This makes sense because most state civil procedure rules closely follow the federal rules. In your Civil Procedure course, you will spend a lot of time studying the text of the rules themselves. But you will also study cases that developed the key concepts, such as which court has jurisdiction to hear a particular case? Does the court have jurisdiction over the parties before it? And which court system's rules of substantive law should apply?
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Chapter 10. Top Five Habits of Successful Students: A C.R.E.D.O. 107 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Students should try to get a sense of what each professor is looking for from the class discussions, and modify their case-briefing style by professor accordingly. For example, Professor X would often want details on the parties, while Professor Y only cared about the rules. Professor Y case. Figuring these things out was very helpful, not only as a 1L, but in upper-level courses with the same professors. I knew that when I had X for Evidence, I’d better know a lot more about the facts than I would for Y’s Biz Org class. In short, students can save a lot of time preparing for class by getting to know their professors.
- Suppose the professor is defining the tort of assault in class. She explains that “an assault is a volitional act intended to cause imminent apprehension of a harmful or offensive bodily contact to another person, and such apprehension results, directly or indirectly.” This one sentence contains several important words and phrases constituting what we call “operative language.” They include the elements of a “volitional act” (as opposed to an involuntary act), “intent” (specifically a subjective intent to cause an imminent apprehension of a harmful or offensive bodily contact), and the requisite consequence (i.e., imminent apprehension of a harmful or offensive bodily contact results, directly or indirectly). Within these elements, all of the following words have legal significance: “volitional,” “intended,” “imminent,” “apprehension,” “harmful,” “offensive,” and “directly or indirectly.”
- If one were attempting to define the tort of assault on an exam, leaving out or mischaracterizing any of the above terminology would result in a non-rigorous—i.e., wrong—statement of the law. As an example, students often equate “apprehension” with “fear,” but they are not technically the same thing under the law. A person can apprehend a bodily contact from another without being in fear of it, in which case an assault would still occur. Suppose a 98-pound weakling came up to former basketball star Shaquille O’Neal on the street, shook his fist and said, “I’m going to sock you, Shaq!” Shaq is more than seven feet tall and weighs more than 300 pounds. It is unlikely he would be afraid of the 98-pound weakling, yet he could still apprehend that a harmful or offensive bodily contact was imminent. Thus, the elements of the tort of assault would be satisfied.
- Suppose you had a Torts essay exam question involving a child who was injured trespassing on the site of a chemical factory located three blocks from an elementary school when she went swimming in an unguarded, unfenced pool of sulfuric acid that looked like clear water. Which of the five factors from section 339 would you need to apply on the exam to analyze the problem fully and correctly?
- (As an aside, note that it is unlikely all of the factors of section 339 or any other multifactor legal test will be in an exam question or require equal discussion. In the hypothetical given, for example, factor (b) would not require extensive discussion because it’s fairly obvious that an unguarded, unfenced pool of sulfuric acid that looks like clear water is a condition a landowner should realize involves an unreasonable risk of death or serious bodily harm to trespassing children. Factor (b) could be addressed and dispensed with in a single sentence, but it have to be addressed, because it’s part of the test.)
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Chapter 8. Reasons to Participate in Class and Ten Tips for Doing It Well 47 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Second, you will better remember the classes in which you participate and feel more satisfaction about your law school experience. I sat through the first half of my 1L year in silence, except when I got called on. Part of me wanted to participate, but I was afraid. The second half I started to open up a bit, raising my hand here and there, and immediately felt better about myself and my law school career. Instead of sitting in class thinking, “I wish I could be one of those brave people who volunteer,” I thought, “Hey, now one of those brave people.”
- Finally, class participation brings the possibility of the tangible benefit of a grade raise, although this should be at the bottom of your list of reasons to participate. Many professors raise grades for class participation. In a system where class ranks often depend on hundredths of a grade point, even modest grade raises can have an effect.
- Commit yourself to being a participant in class discussion. You don’t have to participate every day to make a lasting, good impression in class. Just commit to doing it on a semi-regular basis. Here’s my challenge to you: make a vow (and keep track of it) that at a minimum you will voluntarily participate at least during your first semester of law school. I’m not even talking about once a week in each class, although that would be great. Just once a week total, ideally mixing up your participation among different courses. The typical semester is fourteen weeks long, which means that following this vow will commit you to speak in class voluntarily only fourteen times during the entire semester. Even this modest level of participation will gain you many of the benefits of class participation.
- 4. Approach the Socratic method as a game or sport.
- A colleague at another school told me of a brazen incident in which a professor made a legal point in class, and a student took it on himself to email the author of the casebook class, questioning the professor’s interpretation of the law. The author apparently wrote back saying the student had it right and the professor was wrong. The student then used the email to show up the professor in class. Now, there’s a case for banning computers.
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3: Structure & Role of U.S. Courts (Meredith J. Duncan) 13 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Trial courts are to be contrasted with appellate courts. Appellate courts operate much differently than the trial courts I just described. The job of a court of appeal is to review the decision of a trial court (or a lower appellate court) for errors. These courts are typically comprised of a panel of judges or justices. Appellate courts (sometimes referred to as higher courts) review the lower courts’ application of law and, in rare cases, their findings of fact. The federal system and most state systems have two levels of appellate courts’ an intermediate appellate court and a higher appellate court whose job it is to review the decisions of the intermediate court. (Accordingly, these appellate courts are sometimes called reviewing courts. The highest appellate court is typically the Supreme Court and has final authority over all matters within its jurisdiction. After an appellate court has reviewed a lower court, the court issues an opinion, which is typically a detailed... ...of...
- State court systems are often set up similarly to that of the federal government. So whether one is considering the federal or a state court system, there are generally two kinds of courts: courts of original jurisdiction (which are commonly referred to as trial or district courts) and courts of appellate jurisdiction (which are sometimes called courts of appeal). Most of the time, trial courts are the only courts that have the authority to have cases tried before them. These trial courts are similar to what is commonly portrayed on TV or in movies. There is one judge, several lawyers representing their respective parties, and typically a jury, whose job it is to determine the facts in the case. After the facts are determined, the judge instructs the jury regarding the applicable law and asks it to make a decision by applying the law to the facts. The decision in a trial court is known as a verdict. For a civil action, a verdict might be, for example, a ruling in favor of the... ...a...
- Hi, I'm Meredith Duncan and in this module, I will provide an overview of the structure and role of the courts throughout the United States. Some of what I will be explaining to you will likely just be a refresher from a U.S. history course or civics course. However, I am also hoping that you will learn more than a new thing or two from this talk. My goal is to provide you with important and fundamental foundational information as you embark upon your study of law.
- New law students arrive expecting the law to be a neat and tidy catalog of rules that they can memorize and clearly understand when the need arises. Unfortunately, that is often not the case. Part of the uncertainty of the law stems from the fact that the U.S. is primarily based upon a "common law" legal system. Let me take a moment to explain a common law system. Although most of the rest of the world follows what is known as the civil law tradition, the United States does not. In civil law systems, the law is derived primarily from codes - for example, books of neatly organized statutes promulgated by legislators. In theory, judges in civil law systems have no power to make or create law. Their job merely is to follow the rules set forth in the codes. (The civil law system does not really work quite that simply in practice, as all legal language requires interpretation and courts must do the interpreting, but this is a good enough explanation of a civil law system for now.)
- Our common law system is beneficial because it allows courts to respond to new problems arising out of ongoing social and technological change. However, one of the downsides of this common law system is that it can lead to confusion as to what the law actually is when applied to a brand new set of facts, a situation that arises frequently, as there are rarely ever two factual situations that are completely identical.
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Appendix. Sample Essay Question 28 results (showing 5 best matches)
- As to the fault element, section 46(1) of the
- Sheldon’s threat was real should prevail in an assault claim against him. An assault occurs where there is a volitional act intended to cause imminent apprehension of a harmful or offensive bodily contact, and such imminent apprehension results. Sheldon volitionally pointed the gun and expressly threatened to shoot audience members. His intent to create an apprehension could be inferred from his conduct. Any audience member who experienced imminent apprehension of a shooting should prevail. Of course, those audience members who believed it was simply a stage antic would not have sound claims because they were not in imminent apprehension of a harmful contact. Thus, an essential element of assault—the result element—would be missing.
- Self-defense and defense of others (0–15).
- Below is an authentic “issue-spotting/problem-solving” law school exam essay question from my course in Torts. Following the question is the model answer I used to grade the exam. The question addresses a handful of issues in the area of intentional torts, a subject most students will study early on and from which most of the examples in the book were drawn.
- As it turned out, Sheldon was not just engaging in theatrics. Many years of abusing controlled substances had finally caught up with him. He was suffering from an insane delusion in which he believed he was on the front line of a war and that the audience was a wave of terrorists about to attack and kill him. He aimed the gun into the crowd and pulled the trigger.
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Chapter 17. Tackling Law School Multiple-Choice Questions 39 results (showing 5 best matches)
- • If two opposite answers exist, one of them usually is right. For example, suppose a question included these two answers: “(a) Dinkle will lose because of the doctrine of modified comparative negligence; (b) Dinkle will win because of the doctrine of modified comparative negligence.” These are opposite answers and there’s a good chance one of them would be the correct answer.
- For example, a question may raise what appears to be an intentional tort issue, such as battery, but then the call of the question will ask about a negligence claim, as in “If Bob sues Jill for negligence … .” Students will be reading along thinking , and wrongly pick an answer involving battery or intent (battery is an intentional tort), overlooking the call of the question. Or the question may refer to multiple parties, one of whom is clearly a tortfeasor or contract breaker or other wrongdoer, but who is not part of the call of the question. It’s not a bad idea to glance at the call of the question before studying the entire question so you’ll know what to look for as you read.
- To give you a taste of what to expect, here is a sample Torts multiple-choice question used on a recent exam, along with an analysis of the answer in case you’re curious:
- A couple of good reasons exist for including a multiple-choice component on a law school exam. As previously explained, the use of multiple-choice questions allows for broader course coverage than essay questions only. A practical benefit of multiple-choice questions is that, depending on the format the professor uses, they can provide good practice for the bar exam, which is dominated by multiple-choice questions. The Multistate Bar Examination (MBE), administered in forty-nine states and the District of Columbia, is a six-hour marathon of 200 multiple-choice questions focusing mostly on first-year subjects. The MBE covers Civil Procedure, Contracts, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Real Property, and Torts. The state portion of the bar exam also often includes multiple-choice questions.
- • Answers relating to a different topic area than the question seems to be focused on usually will be wrong. In the sample question at the end of the chapter, answers (a) and (e) are good examples of this. The doctrines of strict liability for harm caused by animals and implied primary assumption of risk are foreign to the question topic and are clear wrong answers.
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10: Legal Research Basics (Christine Coughlin) 33 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Neither image is correct. Because of technological advances, the days of a treasure hunt to find a particular legal source are over. However, because there are so many sources of law and ways to approach legal questions, it’s far more effective to develop good legal research skills than to simply type ideas into a search engine and hope something useful pops up.
- Essentially, this means that courts must follow prior judicial decisions of courts that are further up the hierarchy within that jurisdiction. You will learn about different types of jurisdiction in your civil procedure class, but for right now think of jurisdiction as simply the power of a court to hear a case.
- As if all that weren’t enough, there are even more non-binding sources of law that can help you figure out your legal problem. These are interpretative sources that give an overview or critique of a particular legal area.
- Principle 1 - if you don’t have a solid grasp on the area of law, start with secondary sources such as treatises or restatements to get an overview of the subject.
- Conducting legal research is an integral part of being a legal professional. You need good legal research skills to do just about anything well: succeed in law school, obtain a summer internship, land a job, and represent your future clients.
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8: C.R.E.D.O.—Top 5 Habits for Success (Andrew McClurg) 33 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Next in the CREDO is Efficiency. So much to do, so little time to get it all done. Such is the life of a law student. With a typical load of four doctrinal courses and a time-consuming legal research and writing course, the plates of full-time students quickly fill up and begin overflowing.
- Rigorously capturing and understanding the law will come, in large part, from following the other CREDO components. Going back to consistency, if you miss one day of a two-day discussion of an important doctrine, your understanding of that doctrine is not going to be rigorous.
- A lot of law students enter law school convinced their fate is preordained by their L.S.A.T. score. It’s not true. I’ve seen students with top LSAT scores flunk out and students with below-average scores finish in the top 10 percent of their class.
- For a three-credit course, that's 42 class hours. A four-credit course has 56 class hours. Do the math. How do professors test 42 or 56 hours of material in a three- or four-hour exam? They don't. They can't.
- They don't skip a reading assignment because they were out late the night before. They don't miss a class unless absolutely necessary. They don't stop briefing their cases when they hit "The Wall" of the first semester, which occurs somewhere between the seventh and tenth weeks.
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13: Professionalism (Meredith J. Duncan) 14 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Most everyone enters law school set on being successful, and many of you may want to equate success with earning good grades. That's understandable. Grades are important, but because of most law schools’ mandatory grading systems which impose a forced curve, a healthier measure of success may just be to apply yourself 100%. Just do your best! And in determining what that best may be, may I impress upon you to consider the broader picture: you will be training to enter an esteemed profession. And we all know that for most, a law school education does not come cheap. So in this module, I hope to provide you with a few tips on how to make the most of your law school experience by focusing on what it means to perform at your professional best as you train to become a legal professional.
- Take advantage of your professors' office hours. Stop by during regularly scheduled office hours or make an appointment to visit with your professors outside of class time. Most all professors are required to keep office hours, so be sure to take advantage of them! Whether you are visiting a professor during office hours or you have made an appointment, be prepared to use the time that you have with your professor efficiently. Come prepared with specific course or career related questions, and remember that both your time and your professor's time is a precious commodity.
- The ethics of the legal profession are governed in most jurisdictions by a version of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct. In fact, many law schools have honor codes or other law student behavior guidelines that are in part based upon the ABA's Model Rules. Before graduating from law school, you will be required to take a course devoted in large part to the study of those rules - usually a Professional Responsibility course or a course on Legal Ethics. I mention this to you now because much of my advice presented in this module is to prepare you to enter the profession well equipped to follow our ethical mandates. The very first rule of professional conduct is Model Rule 1.1. It provides that a "lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client." It goes on to define "competent representation" as requiring "the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation." The tips I have provided in this...
- After orientation, put together the final pieces to ensure that you are as well prepared on your first day of classes as possible. Most law professors will expect for you to have read an assignment for that very first day of class. We typically dive right into the course materials from the very first moment of class. So purchase your books, pick up any other course materials that your professors require, and prepare for your first day of classes before they begin. Visit your professors' online course sites. They will be a source of important information throughout the year. Get in the habit of checking your law school email account at least once a day. Your professor might not be able to send emails to your personal email account. So do whatever you need to do to make sure that your law school emails actually get to you.
- Be respectful of your classmates' (and your professors' time). Remember that you are not the only student in the class. So ask questions and participate in the discussion as appropriate. Classroom time is precious. And your professors will likely have a certain amount of material they would like to cover in each class meeting. So don't be the distracting student who constantly has her hand up with a question. Or worse, don't be the person who unnecessarily slows the pace of the class. If you find yourself raising your hand more than three times or so per class session, you may be over-participating! Of course, this is not a hard and fast rule. Just be cognizant of whether you often dominate classroom conversations. Don't feel as if you must ask all of your questions during class sessions when the entire class's precious time is ticking away. Remain mindful that most professors are happy to answer questions before or after class or during office hours, which leads me to my next point.
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4: The Socratic & Case Methods (Andrew McClurg) 35 results (showing 5 best matches)
- “Mr. Smith! A shoots at B, but misses and hits C, who loses control of her car and crashes into D, driving a school bus full of children—H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O and P—down a winding mountain road.
- Langdell was a dean at Harvard Law School. He believed that true mastery of the law could never be achieved by simply memorizing rules. Rather, students had to develop a facility for applying those rules to the varied fact patterns that lead to legal disputes—what he called "the ever-tangled skein of human affairs."
- A major side benefit of the Socratic Method is that it incentivizes students to be prepared. What percentage of students in your undergraduate program do you think came fully prepared to every class? 50 percent? 25 percent? In first-year law school courses, that figure is above 90 percent, which makes for a better classroom experience for all.
- Imagine your name is Smith. You’re sitting in class minding your own business. The professor is talking a hundred miles an hour when all of a sudden … (scroll next part quickly)
- The bus side-swipes a gas pump at the same second lightning hits the pump. In the explosion, E, a piece of glass, injures F.
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Copyright Page 4 results
- The publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or other professional advice, and this publication is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. If you require legal or other expert advice, you should seek the services of a competent attorney or other professional.
- © 2013 LEG, Inc. d/b/a West Academic Publishing © 2016 LEG, Inc. d/b/a West Academic © 2017 LEG, Inc. d/b/a West Academic
- West, West Academic Publishing, and West Academic are trademarks of West Publishing Corporation, used under license.
- Printed in the United States of America
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Acknowledgments 10 results (showing 5 best matches)
- It’s appropriate that a book written for and about law students was shaped every step of the way with the help of law students. Students who provided direct assistance are thanked below, but I’m indebted to all of my students collectively. Even after thirty years as a law professor, I learn something new from law students nearly every day.
- Thanks to Chad Christensen, a project manager for the Law School Survey of Student Engagement, for providing unpublished data from the 2016 survey. At the University of Memphis, research librarian Jan Stone tracked down hard-to-find sources and faculty assistant Linda Hayes was there to assist at every step. Finally, I’m grateful to all the great folks at West Academic Publishing for their assistance and support. It’s an honor to be part of such a distinguished publishing family.
- One of the many fortunate aspects of being a law professor is working with talented research assistants, all of whom epitomize what it means to be a great law student. Research assistants at the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law who contributed to this book include Kaitlyn Abernathy, Joshua Baker, Shea Barker, Chelsea L. Brown, Quynh-Anh Dang, James Duckworth, Lindsey Gill, Russell Hayes, Sally Joyner, Julia M. Kavanagh, Jane Marie Lewis, Natalie Fox Malone, Taylor Oyaas, Megan McKenzie Reed, Elizabeth Rogers, Meredith Blake Stewart, James Stone, Mary L. Wagner, and Todd V. Williams.
- The comments from law students and their significant others in Chapter 23, addressing the impact of law school on outside relationships, are borrowed from my book,
- Since beginning work on the first edition in 2006, I’ve solicited comments from hundreds of law students, mostly through surveys, but also informally via email, Facebook, and conversations in and out of the classroom. Most of them are current or former students at the University of Memphis, but they also include former students of mine at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Law, Florida International University College of Law, and Golden Gate University School of Law, as well as students from other schools.
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Advisory Board 11 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Robert A. Sullivan Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Michigan
- Professor of Law Emeritus, University of San Diego Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Michigan
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- Professor of Law, Chancellor and Dean Emeritus, University of California, Hastings College of the Law
- Professor of Law, Pepperdine University Professor of Law Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles
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Table of Contents 45 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Publication Date: June 7th, 2017
- ISBN: 9781684679386
- Subject: Academic Success
- Series: Career Guides
- Type: Academic/Prof. Development
- Description: Assigned as required or recommended reading at law schools throughout the country, 1L of a Ride provides a candid, comprehensive roadmap to both academic and emotional success in law school’s crucial first year. Told in an accessible first-person voice, covered topics in the revised and updated third edition include pre-planning, top student fears, first-year curriculum, the Socratic and case methods of teaching, effective class participation, top habits of successful students, essential study techniques, legal research and writing, exam strategies, maintaining well-being, and much more. Combines anecdotes, comments from law students, empirical research, and authentic samples of signature documents from the 1L experience, including exam questions, Socratic dialogue, and student case-briefs, class notes, and course outlines. McClurg is an award-winning professor who has taught at six different law schools.
