1L Exam Prep and Motivation Thread Forum

[ph14]

You guys are freaking me out. I have to teach myself Civ Pro in 6 days. Have no idea what any of the above means lol

6 days is plenty of time

+1. SF how many finals do you have left?

Torts on Tuesday! I swear, the last is the hardest to study for, I have absolutely zero motivation. I'd rather look at fake pic whoring on tls than study right now.. it's sad.

Jealous you're almost done...i'll just be starting by the time you're finished.

[ilovesf]

Jealous you're almost done...i'll just be starting by the time you're finished.

Yeah it will be awesome to be done, but you're way ahead of where I was when I was gearing up for exams.. you're lucky you had more time to prepare.

[rocon7383]

looking for advice/encouragement!

Civ Pro on Monday-- I have an outline on all of the material but for some, (particularly discovery/pleadings/the real basic but dense stuff I feel extremely shaky, in that I don't have it all memorized. (its open book but I know I will run out of time if I have to keep looking at the outline. In fact, I really don't feel comfortable with my auto-memory with all of the material. Does any one have any advice to fine tune this in the two full days I have left? I have the E&E and Emanual Crunchtime at my disposal.

To use a bad analogy, I feel like i'm going into a knife fight with a dull blade.

[ph14]

Jealous you're almost done...i'll just be starting by the time you're finished.

Yeah it will be awesome to be done, but you're way ahead of where I was when I was gearing up for exams.. you're lucky you had more time to prepare TLS, watch football, and surf the internet.

[ph14]

looking for advice/encouragement!

Civ Pro on Monday-- I have an outline on all of the material but for some, (particularly discovery/pleadings/the real basic but dense stuff I feel extremely shaky, in that I don't have it all memorized. (its open book but I know I will run out of time if I have to keep looking at the outline. In fact, I really don't feel comfortable with my auto-memory with all of the material. Does any one have any advice to fine tune this in the two full days I have left? I have the E&E and Emanual Crunchtime at my disposal.

To use a bad analogy, I feel like i'm going into a knife fight with a dull blade.

Have you taken any practice exams?

[rocon7383]

looking for advice/encouragement!

Civ Pro on Monday-- I have an outline on all of the material but for some, (particularly discovery/pleadings/the real basic but dense stuff I feel extremely shaky, in that I don't have it all memorized. (its open book but I know I will run out of time if I have to keep looking at the outline. In fact, I really don't feel comfortable with my auto-memory with all of the material. Does any one have any advice to fine tune this in the two full days I have left? I have the E&E and Emanual Crunchtime at my disposal.

To use a bad analogy, I feel like i'm going into a knife fight with a dull blade.

Have you taken any practice exams?

yeah took one today, wasn't happy with my results, taking another one tomorrow

[ph14]

looking for advice/encouragement!

Civ Pro on Monday-- I have an outline on all of the material but for some, (particularly discovery/pleadings/the real basic but dense stuff I feel extremely shaky, in that I don't have it all memorized. (its open book but I know I will run out of time if I have to keep looking at the outline. In fact, I really don't feel comfortable with my auto-memory with all of the material. Does any one have any advice to fine tune this in the two full days I have left? I have the E&E and Emanual Crunchtime at my disposal.

To use a bad analogy, I feel like i'm going into a knife fight with a dull blade.

Have you taken any practice exams?

yeah took one today, wasn't happy with my results, taking another one tomorrow

Take at least 2 more, write down everything you had to look up, put in outline.

[LeDique]

Take some more practice exams, note which questions and type of questions you have trouble writing. Know the stuff you can write well off of memory or just looking at your outline. Don't worry as much about that stuff.

For example, I had a lot of trouble writing answers to discovery questions. I knew the basic principles of discovery stuff, but I had a ton of problems writing a good exam answer and taking it from multiple angles. I knew this from a practice exam. I didn't put in extra work to focus on discovery to be able to write a better discovery answer, and I'm kicking myself for it. I just kept studying Erie and personal jurisdiction.

[piccolittle]

Aaaaand... zero motivation to study for torts. I have no idea how to distinguish myself on this exam either, as pretty much everyone knows the material from all directions and all find it pretty easy.

Any general suggestions for rocking a torts exam?

[istara]

1 to go: closed-book, closed-note contracts with 1/3 multiple choice and no available past exams, AND the professor won't talk about it at all... blech..

Anyone know anywhere there are multiple choice contracts exams available to look at, or other advice for this?

[istara]

Aaaaand... zero motivation to study for torts. I have no idea how to distinguish myself on this exam either, as pretty much everyone knows the material from all directions and all find it pretty easy.

Any general suggestions for rocking a torts exam?

Focus on the areas the professor seems to find important or the areas that he/she mentions that students get confused on the most. My professor likes to note that there can be multiple factual causes and emphasizes the difference between factual and proximate cause a lot. At least on the midterm, it helped that I emphasized those points (or so she said..).

That said, I feel like I did no where near as well on the final... so my advice may be useless.

Also: don't run out of time. A lot of students at the end of my torts final yesterday said they didn't get to the last 2-3 parts of the last question. That will make a lot of difference.

[LeDique]

Does anyone have a Torts supplement recommendation? I already did the E&E and didn't find it that helpful.

[crossarmant]

Does anyone have a Torts supplement recommendation? I already did the E&E and didn't find it that helpful.

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Torts-S ... 159460035X

Mastering Torts by Vincent Johnson.

My professor liked that book and it's only about 250 pages, so you should be able to blow through it quickly enough. Also, see if your library has a Speigel's Torts Exam book, helps to have some small hypos and MC questions to run through.

[shock259]

I am having real problems motivating myself for Torts too. I feel pretty good about it. I guess I'll review class notes and do a few practice tests, and that will probably do it.

After Torts, I only have one left. It's not until later in the week, so I have a few days in between to study. Definitely going to be soooo burnt out by then, though.

[AlexanderSupertramp]

My last exam starts in an hour. I feel too studied out to do any last minute review but I guess nobody here at school has the same feeling because they keep glaring at me when I try to talk to them.

[piccolittle]

My last exam starts in an hour. I feel too studied out to do any last minute review but I guess nobody here at school has the same feeling because they keep glaring at me when I try to talk to them.

Good luck!!!

[sundance95]

Anyone read Walker and Shady Grove in CivPro? Our professor said that Walker made clear that Rule 3 does not conflict with state rules for tolling the statute of limitations and so the state rule should be applied by citing Walker, if such a situation comes up on the exam. What I'm wondering is whether Shady Grove similarly held that Rule 23 is procedural, within the REA, and constitutional, such that any Rule 23/state law conflict should be resolved in favor of the rule simply by citing Shady Grove. Thoughts?

[Hannibal]

Anyone read Walker and Shady Grove in CivPro? Our professor said that Walker made clear that Rule 3 does not conflict with state rules for tolling the statute of limitations and so the state rule should be applied by citing Walker, if such a situation comes up on the exam. What I'm wondering is whether Shady Grove similarly held that Rule 23 is procedural, within the REA, and constitutional, such that any Rule 23/state law conflict should be resolved in favor of the rule simply by citing Shady Grove. Thoughts?

There was actually no rule you could take away from Shady Grove in that way. Four votes said you only have to look at the federal rule in the test, while the concurrence said you have to look at whether the state rule of procedure is bound up with substantive rights.

[sundance95]

There was actually no rule you could take away from Shady Grove in that way. Four votes said you only have to look at the federal rule in the test, while the concurrence said you have to look at whether the state rule of procedure is bound up with substantive rights.

Hmm. I was reading II-A which I thought is the majority opinion? I'll have to think about this some more, but it seems to me that if II-A has five votes then Rule 23 could not be abridged by any state law.

[ilovesf]

for those of you taking con law now - which e&e did you buy? I see that there are two, I wanted to buy them before the next semester starts so I can scope it out a bit, but I'm not sure which one to buy.

[Helmholtz]

for those of you taking con law now - which e&e did you buy? I see that there are two, I wanted to buy them before the next semester starts so I can scope it out a bit, but I'm not sure which one to buy.

I think that the ConLaw E&E is universally seen as the absolute worst E&E of the series and generally pretty worthless. FWIW.

[TheFutureLawyer]

Made a separate thread for this, but would like to post it here as well if anyone can help/is interested:

Anyone have a good Civ Pro outline?

A recent one. Plenty out their on the net, but I'd like to see something as updated as possible.

We're split into two semesters, so this is what we've done:

Pleadings
Personal/Territorial Jurisdiction
Subject Matter Jurisdiction
Joinder
Class Actions


Any help would be appreciated.


http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3&t=173574

[Judge Philip Banks]

for those of you taking con law now - which e&e did you buy? I see that there are two, I wanted to buy them before the next semester starts so I can scope it out a bit, but I'm not sure which one to buy.

I think that the ConLaw E&E is universally seen as the absolute worst E&E of the series and generally pretty worthless. FWIW.

It's worse than the Crim Law one?

[ahduth]

There was actually no rule you could take away from Shady Grove in that way. Four votes said you only have to look at the federal rule in the test, while the concurrence said you have to look at whether the state rule of procedure is bound up with substantive rights.

Hmm. I was reading II-A which I thought is the majority opinion? I'll have to think about this some more, but it seems to me that if II-A has five votes then Rule 23 could not be abridged by any state law.

Ya, II-A has five votes, and is riddled with FRCP-supremacy language:

Rule 23 unambiguously authorizes any plaintiff, in any federal civil proceeding, to maintain a class action if the Rule's prerequisites are met. We cannot contort its text, even to avert a collision with state law that might render it invalid.

at 130 S.Ct. 1431, 1442 (their emphasis).

[Hannibal]

There was actually no rule you could take away from Shady Grove in that way. Four votes said you only have to look at the federal rule in the test, while the concurrence said you have to look at whether the state rule of procedure is bound up with substantive rights.

Hmm. I was reading II-A which I thought is the majority opinion? I'll have to think about this some more, but it seems to me that if II-A has five votes then Rule 23 could not be abridged by any state law.

II-A was the majority I think, but didn't that only address whether or not Rule 23 and the local law were in direct conflict?