Brownadam26 wrote:
what sort of assignments do you get? What's class like? How would you say you've adjusted to law school? Do you grades reflect the amount of work you put in? How long do you study everyday? What are your teachers like? What are the other students like? (any kids that are genius? or really close)
Had a 2006 Yale grad as a constitutional law professor but my god was he amazing. Never cold-called. He basically was devil's advocate in class and would let students respond to his arguments and debate each other. Almost every day each student would participate multiple times because of how interesting he made it. On top of all that the professor was as nice and down to earth as you can imagine. Probably the best professor I've ever had. For Civil Proceedure we had a professor who co-wrote many of the federal rules of civil procedure. Turns out he was a classmate of Scott Turrow (wrote "1L") and Emmanuel. Super nice guy and had high expectations for the class.
I think i've adjusted pretty well. Between bowling, basketball, section-wide social events, I have had an opportunity to hang out with a lot of different people and enjoy myself. The students here are very smart and capable so if you're used to being one of the smartest people in the class room be prepared to be normal here. Overall, people are pretty relaxed about things, even during exams. Genious? Eh, that's a pretty high threshold. There may be a few close calls but I think the only one i've met so far was my con law professor. He defines genious.
I can't say much about grades yet since I don't have any, but I can say the exams seemed to fairly test what we learned during the semester.
My days start a few hours before my first class (8:45am) and end at 4pm. I do all my reading during the day right before my classes so that I remember the material. This way my weekends are free for me to update my outline, read supplements, work on legal writing class papers, or just relax. Also, this means I basically do nothing after 4pm most of the semester (excepting the month before exams).
I worked very hard studying for my exams. I spent about 6 weeks straight studying for 4-9 hours a day. One thing I am very thankful about Duke law is that the legal writing class ends in the middle of the semester rather than at the end of the semester like other schools do. This means we dont have to worry about a legal memo being due at the same time as exams, which is a HUGE stress releif. Also, we only have 3 total substantive classes as opposed to 4 or even 6 that some other schools have. I can't imagine trying to study for 6 different finals when studying for 3 was hard enough.
Hope that answers some of your questions.