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Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2015 1:20 pm
by WeeBey
What part takes up so much time? Are the readings just that long or do you spend alot of time outlining and making summaries?

I thought law school was just an all or none final and no assignments or homework.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2015 1:41 pm
by runinthefront
WeeBey wrote:What part takes up so much time? Are the readings just that long or do you spend alot of time outlining and making summaries?

I thought law school was just an all or none final and no assignments or homework.
I'd rather someone else chime in so you're not just getting one opinion, but yeah, I don't even start outlining until 1.5 months out from finals. The readings just take a while to understand/digest and I still brief everything to help retain it all (and for coldcalls) so yeah. You'll get a Conlaw or CivPro reading that can take up the entire afternoon alone (at least, my friends and I felt that way alot) just to sorta understand it.


You're also forgetting Lawyering assignments

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2015 2:15 pm
by runthetrap1990
WeeBey wrote:What part takes up so much time? Are the readings just that long or do you spend alot of time outlining and making summaries?

I thought law school was just an all or none final and no assignments or homework.
Idk your background but it's most likely a safe assumption that law school is going to be a totally new way of thinking, working, language, etc. So It will take some time to adjust (some quicker than others). And then there is just a lot of material to get through, much of which you can't put off til the very end and expect to do well (I know anecdotally someone who was able to do so but even at the end he/she was pulling off some crazy hours to study....and that's very much the exception not the rule). Reading, and understanding,will take time and patience. You may have 10 pages of reading for civpro but my god that will be the most dense 10 pages ever. But that's how your lay down the ground work ahead of outlining, exam practice, memorizing the law, etc. And then add in getting involved in school (to different degrees of course, ymmv), you end up just getting sucked up on time.

I agree completely with runinthefront through, you gotta put in the time if you want to succeed. I was able to usually skirt by on the minimum and do fine in undergrad but law school does not give anything easily. It's ultimately rewarding (I think) but extremely demanding.

My 2c's

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2015 11:22 pm
by Yea All Right
runthetrap1990 said exactly what I was thinking, 10-15 pages of civpro reading could take 1-2 hours or more and I still wouldn't get what was going on

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2015 11:33 pm
by mt2165
Lol there were some civ pro reading in the beginning of the year that I swear took me like 3-4 hours to get through-but by the middle/end of first semester you kinda figure out what you need to look for and what to skim etc., unfortunately just in time for all the outlining and test prep-where once again you have no clue wtf is going on. I would say that in addition to class, I know people who got away with doing 3-5 hours of work outside of class everyday and did fine, but these people are 1) really efficient in a way most arent and 2) generally pretty sharp. And in response to WeeBey, you would think that having only one final would make things easier but im like 97% sure it makes things ALOT worse. Because now you have an ungodly amount of information to process and apply on one test on a curve against people either as smart of smarter than you. The pressure is real and even if you theoretically wouldn't have to put that much time into prep based purely off the content of the exam, you sure as hell do cause jimmy in the cubicle next to you is going hard as fuck on a supplement two weeks before fall break.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2015 2:38 pm
by redsoxfan1989
When do rising 2Ls sign up for classes and when do they release the course schedule?

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2015 3:14 pm
by Lavitz
redsoxfan1989 wrote:When do rising 2Ls sign up for classes and when do they release the course schedule?
Last year it was June 20th. Probably end of next week.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2015 1:25 am
by WeeBey
So basically you're doing law school til like 9pm every night? Fuck lol. I feel like Hughes is gonna be real depressing.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2015 10:35 am
by runinthefront
WeeBey wrote:So basically you're doing law school til like 9pm every night? Fuck lol. I feel like Hughes is gonna be real depressing.
I would say many are working well past 9pm each day; then again, I'm probably a gunner so idk if that's just my atypical experience

But the library is still pretty full well past 11pm a lot of the time

What were you honestly expecting

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2015 11:03 am
by runthetrap1990
WeeBey wrote:So basically you're doing law school til like 9pm every night? Fuck lol. I feel like Hughes is gonna be real depressing.
Truly depends on your efficiency and also the amount of work you plan to put in each day. How long you work is going to be totally dependent on your style, when you start working, how many breaks you take, how much dicking around on Reddit you do, etc. etc.

First semester I wasn't sure what i was doing so I'd work til like 11pm five days a week, lighter load during weekends. Second semester I had a better idea of what I was doing and though I was able to leave earlier on average I was also putting in more work each week on average, but even then I noticed my hours got later and later as the weeks went on. Things just pile on.

1L is definitely not a year-long models and bottles party, though...or anything remotely close to college.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2015 12:16 pm
by WeeBey
runinthefront wrote:
WeeBey wrote:So basically you're doing law school til like 9pm every night? Fuck lol. I feel like Hughes is gonna be real depressing.
I would say many are working well past 9pm each day; then again, I'm probably a gunner so idk if that's just my atypical experience

But the library is still pretty full well past 11pm a lot of the time

What were you honestly expecting
TBH, I knew it would be more work than undergrad, but I was hoping it would just be undergrad with 7-8 courses a semester as opposed to 5.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2015 2:43 pm
by newbienew
Allow me to provide a contrary perspective.

Everyone's experience is going to vary, but I don't understand why it would be necessary to spend more than 2-3 hours out of class per day, five days a week, on school-related work during the semester. It's important to do 100% of the assigned reading, and to engage with it seriously and try to understand it, but it's impossible to get it completely at first, and spending hours spinning your wheels isn't particularly useful. It's much more important to give it a good-faith effort, think about it some, and then pay attention in class. (This is one of the biggest mistakes people make, in my opinion -- the hour you spend in class listening to your professor talk can be far more valuable than 2 hours spent on your own outside of class. Don't waste that time.) If you do all the reading, spend a little time thinking about the material, pay attention in class, and are lucky enough to find a decent percentage of it interesting, you'll be doing just fine.

People freak out and kill themselves over-studying for two basic reasons: (1) because they have no indication of how they're doing at any point during the semester and therefore feel the need to over-prepare for the lone assessment; and (2) because they're worried about precisely what was said above: that someone else is going to be studying at any given time, so they'll necessarily be falling behind if they don't. The flaw in that logic is that the sheer amount of time you spend studying is not the key to success on law school exams. Exams are partially about knowing the material, but they're about far more than that, too. They're also about your ability to: read and process fact patterns; apply the law you learned to those facts; be comfortable expressing and exploring hypotheticals and alternative possibilities; type quickly; avoid nerves; write in a way that's easy to read; etc. Some of those skills can be aided by studying, but some can't. Spending 8-10 hours a day on law school might make you feel like you're in control of your own success, but it's largely a myth. Studying with an eye toward analyzing the material in the way your professors do and then being able to produce that during a timed exam doesn't have to take that long, and it's a much smarter way to go.

Long story short: if you want to study for 10 hours a day, more power to you. But if you don't, you don't have to. If you're doing the things I described above, you're likely to do just as well studying 3 hours a day as you would with 10. That's especially true if the 3-hour-per-day plan allows you to enjoy your life more and stay less stressed. You don't have to be miserable to succeed in law school, and in fact it's probably counter-productive.

Finally, I would recommend studying more than 3 hours per day when exam period rolls around, but I think spending 2-3 days per exam, studying for 5-6 hours per day, is plenty even then.

Hope this helps.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2015 4:52 pm
by WeeBey
newbienew wrote:Allow me to provide a contrary perspective.

Everyone's experience is going to vary, but I don't understand why it would be necessary to spend more than 2-3 hours out of class per day, five days a week, on school-related work during the semester. It's important to do 100% of the assigned reading, and to engage with it seriously and try to understand it, but it's impossible to get it completely at first, and spending hours spinning your wheels isn't particularly useful. It's much more important to give it a good-faith effort, think about it some, and then pay attention in class. (This is one of the biggest mistakes people make, in my opinion -- the hour you spend in class listening to your professor talk can be far more valuable than 2 hours spent on your own outside of class. Don't waste that time.) If you do all the reading, spend a little time thinking about the material, pay attention in class, and are lucky enough to find a decent percentage of it interesting, you'll be doing just fine.

People freak out and kill themselves over-studying for two basic reasons: (1) because they have no indication of how they're doing at any point during the semester and therefore feel the need to over-prepare for the lone assessment; and (2) because they're worried about precisely what was said above: that someone else is going to be studying at any given time, so they'll necessarily be falling behind if they don't. The flaw in that logic is that the sheer amount of time you spend studying is not the key to success on law school exams. Exams are partially about knowing the material, but they're about far more than that, too. They're also about your ability to: read and process fact patterns; apply the law you learned to those facts; be comfortable expressing and exploring hypotheticals and alternative possibilities; type quickly; avoid nerves; write in a way that's easy to read; etc. Some of those skills can be aided by studying, but some can't. Spending 8-10 hours a day on law school might make you feel like you're in control of your own success, but it's largely a myth. Studying with an eye toward analyzing the material in the way your professors do and then being able to produce that during a timed exam doesn't have to take that long, and it's a much smarter way to go.

Long story short: if you want to study for 10 hours a day, more power to you. But if you don't, you don't have to. If you're doing the things I described above, you're likely to do just as well studying 3 hours a day as you would with 10. That's especially true if the 3-hour-per-day plan allows you to enjoy your life more and stay less stressed. You don't have to be miserable to succeed in law school, and in fact it's probably counter-productive.

Finally, I would recommend studying more than 3 hours per day when exam period rolls around, but I think spending 2-3 days per exam, studying for 5-6 hours per day, is plenty even then.

Hope this helps.
That's a relief! I never really spent that much time studying in UG. I was a STEM major and I found success by just paying attention in class in to understand a concept and by doing a few practice questions come exam time.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 11:41 am
by Yea All Right
Would it be reasonable work-wise to take 3 of the core upperclassmen courses (specifically Admin. Law, Biz Orgs, and Evidence) in the fall semester? Also, should I take Professional Responsibility during 2L or 3L?

Thanks in advance.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 12:19 pm
by Lavitz
Yea All Right wrote:Would it be reasonable work-wise to take 3 of the core upperclassmen courses (specifically Admin. Law, Biz Orgs, and Evidence) in the fall semester? Also, should I take Professional Responsibility during 2L or 3L?

Thanks in advance.
Admin and Evidence are at the same time, so I don't see how you have that option (yet). Also, depends on what the last class is, because that's only 11 credits.

Doesn't really matter. Do you want a 9am class, or wait and see if you get a non-9am class in a different semester?

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 2:38 pm
by Yea All Right
Lavitz wrote:
Yea All Right wrote:Would it be reasonable work-wise to take 3 of the core upperclassmen courses (specifically Admin. Law, Biz Orgs, and Evidence) in the fall semester? Also, should I take Professional Responsibility during 2L or 3L?

Thanks in advance.
Admin and Evidence are at the same time, so I don't see how you have that option (yet). Also, depends on what the last class is, because that's only 11 credits.

Doesn't really matter. Do you want a 9am class, or wait and see if you get a non-9am class in a different semester?
Ah you're right, just saw that. Guess I'm taking one of them during 3L (don't want to take in spring), and same with Professional Responsibility. Thanks man!

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 10:35 pm
by hephaestus
Yea All Right wrote:
Lavitz wrote:
Yea All Right wrote:Would it be reasonable work-wise to take 3 of the core upperclassmen courses (specifically Admin. Law, Biz Orgs, and Evidence) in the fall semester? Also, should I take Professional Responsibility during 2L or 3L?

Thanks in advance.
Admin and Evidence are at the same time, so I don't see how you have that option (yet). Also, depends on what the last class is, because that's only 11 credits.

Doesn't really matter. Do you want a 9am class, or wait and see if you get a non-9am class in a different semester?
Ah you're right, just saw that. Guess I'm taking one of them during 3L (don't want to take in spring), and same with Professional Responsibility. Thanks man!
I also advise taking PR the semester you take the MPRE, because you'll avoid reteaching everything to yourself.

As far as 2L goes, I think taking 2 "hard" classes a semester (which would include the core courses) is a smart balance between actually learning and being able to explore areas of the law you might be more interested in, as well as opening up some more free time than you are used to as a 1L.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2015 10:30 pm
by rackylo
In what courses are people more likely to opt for S/U? I heard that Sec. Reg. and Fed. Courts are two popular courses to use up the S/U.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 6:16 pm
by runthetrap1990
Dumb question here, but for that first screen of pre-reg, should we be filling all 6 slots up? And if so, should we be taking into account that we may not get into the classes we are registering for? Finally, if we want to take a writing seminar or clinic do we account for those credits on that first screen when making the selections?

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 8:51 pm
by Lavitz
runthetrap1990 wrote:Dumb question here, but for that first screen of pre-reg, should we be filling all 6 slots up? And if so, should we be taking into account that we may not get into the classes we are registering for? Finally, if we want to take a writing seminar or clinic do we account for those credits on that first screen when making the selections?
Yes. It's preregistration, so just sign up for everything you may want and then just drop later when you see what you got into / think about it some more. You can also add more classes as soon as the initial preregistration results come out.

Yes, although you'll probably get into any regular class if you stay on the waitlist long enough. Maybe not certain seminars or the small skills classes though.

? You select seminars on the second screen and clinics on the third screen. I don't know what you mean by "account for credits." I think I was signed up for well over 30 credits for the first week of 2L Spring until I decided what I was dropping.
rackylo wrote:In what courses are people more likely to opt for S/U? I heard that Sec. Reg. and Fed. Courts are two popular courses to use up the S/U.
Those are the two big ones. Sometimes people save them for whatever classes they take in 3L Spring just so they can check out. So a bunch of people used it in CrimPro with Colb, Evidence with Clymer, Financial Institutions with Hockett, etc.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2015 12:32 am
by runthetrap1990
Lavitz wrote:
runthetrap1990 wrote:Dumb question here, but for that first screen of pre-reg, should we be filling all 6 slots up? And if so, should we be taking into account that we may not get into the classes we are registering for? Finally, if we want to take a writing seminar or clinic do we account for those credits on that first screen when making the selections?
Yes. It's preregistration, so just sign up for everything you may want and then just drop later when you see what you got into / think about it some more. You can also add more classes as soon as the initial preregistration results come out.

Yes, although you'll probably get into any regular class if you stay on the waitlist long enough. Maybe not certain seminars or the small skills classes though.

? You select seminars on the second screen and clinics on the third screen. I don't know what you mean by "account for credits." I think I was signed up for well over 30 credits for the first week of 2L Spring until I decided what I was dropping.
last question you basically answered in the first few explanations. Thanks!

Follow up Q. Thoughts on Bankruptcy with Lienau and Public International Law with Ohlin (if you've taken either of them or heard from class mates).

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 7:36 pm
by mt2165
What do most 3l's do when they extern fall semester regarding housing? Do most people just try and sublet out their apartment in the fall? Or sublet an apartment during the spring?

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 7:41 pm
by Lavitz
mt2165 wrote:What do most 3l's do when they extern fall semester regarding housing? Do most people just try and sublet out their apartment in the fall? Or sublet an apartment during the spring?
I've heard of both.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 8:45 pm
by hephaestus
Law school is quite a great place.

Re: Cornell 1L taking questions

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 11:20 pm
by Lavitz
ImNoScar wrote:Law school is quite a great place.
Miss it already, I see.