Vale of Tears is the Most Horrifying Thread on TLS Forum

[Desert Fox]

That leads me to:

If I were going to do it again. I'd prewrite my exams 1L year. You can essentially pre-write teh IR part of IRAC before the exam even starts. Would save you an egregious amount of time.

[utahraptor]

That leads me to:

If I were going to do it again. I'd prewrite my exams 1L year. You can essentially pre-write teh IR part of IRAC before the exam even starts. Would save you an egregious amount of time.

seems like a lot of unnecessary effort

[ymmv]

That leads me to:

If I were going to do it again. I'd prewrite my exams 1L year. You can essentially pre-write teh IR part of IRAC before the exam even starts. Would save you an egregious amount of time.

Yeah. This should pretty much be your attack outline anyway.

[LeDique]

the one group who seemed to consistently beat the curve is debaters. probably because that teaches most of the same bullshit skills required to excel at stupid law exams.

also all sociopaths. that seems to help

i think this was why i was good but who knows really

[Desert Fox]

That leads me to:

If I were going to do it again. I'd prewrite my exams 1L year. You can essentially pre-write teh IR part of IRAC before the exam even starts. Would save you an egregious amount of time.

seems like a lot of unnecessary effort

the guy I knew who did it, would just take a practice exam and then copy that.

[Mal Reynolds]

One of the more perverse, but advantageous, aspects to law school grading is that after 1L, and maybe even during, if you know how to take a law school exam you can fuck around all semester and study two days prior to the test date and get median or above with little worry. Hell you can get a really good grade with somewhere between two days and two week's worth of work.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I know that lawyers aren't math people, but can't we use a chi square test to determine how random law school grades are in actual fact?

ETA: I don't know what course grade breakdowns look like on a law school curve (I'm a 0L) but someone who does, and took stats should be able to do this. Could be interesting since there seem to be intense anecdotal opinions on the subject, and everyone here is always talking about the data in other contexts.

The distribution isn't going to be random - schools work out what it should look like - how many As, A-s, etc. are given out in each class, and which exam grade falls where on that curve. What's random (which really means not random, but impossible to predict) is where any given person falls in that distribution. Can you even do a chi square test (lol at me understanding what that is) on the student, not the course breakdown? How would you evaluate one person getting all As is vs another getting all Bs as random/not random?

No, of course no one can know whether they will do well going in, which is the main point of contention here. But you can determine how, given a certain school mandated breakdown of letter grades per course, grades should result in the overall GPA breakdown that follows in the student body. You'd be comparing the expected GPA breakdown (that which would result from a random distributions of letter grades among students) vs the actual GPA breakdown in the student body. As another poster pointed out above, the existence of 4.0s in the student body is going to happen even if grades were drawn from a hat in each class, but you'd see a specific frequency. If, as the other side of that debate contends, some other factor (hard work, more aptitude) was also acting on the data for a subset of students, you'd be able to detect that with a statistical test.

Oh, I get it. But this goes back to, it's not random, you just can't predict it going in. Of course students who do well on exams will have more As than students who don't. But what makes you good at exams isn't necessarily what makes you get a good GPA/LSAT. And some people will be better at some kinds of exams (issue spotters) than others (policy), and you can't control that going in, either.

[thisone2014]

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[star fox]

The amount of content in a course is what, maybe 30 cases. Less?

is that an exaggeration or is it actually only ~30? wowza

Depends on class but it's more. My class had 72 property cases for instance.

[ymmv]

The amount of content in a course is what, maybe 30 cases. Less?

is that an exaggeration or is it actually only ~30? wowza

Really depends. CL courses, Admin, and Civ Pro, sure - probably less. But more in IP and a lot more, like 50+, in Corporations and Con Law.
Still rarely need more than a one sentence summary of each for exam purposes though.

[baal hadad]

I think my con law exam was based on like 15 cases

We read a bunch of old commerce clause shit which would have made it about 25 cases all yr but none of that shit was tested lol

[LeDique]

30 cases that matter seems about right. 15 week semesters, 2 classes per week = 30 classes. Assume 1 case that matters, 1 or 2 cases that are historical expositions of the idea or whatever per class.

[bjsesq]

I think my con law exam was based on like 15 cases

We read a bunch of old commerce clause shit which would have made it about 25 cases all yr but none of that shit was tested lol

The fact that you still remember your con law exam baffles me.

[ymmv]

30 cases that matter seems about right. 15 week semesters, 2 classes per week = 30 classes. Assume 1 case that matters, 1 or 2 cases that are historical expositions of the idea or whatever per class.

1 case that matters per class and only 1-2 supp cases? With only 2 class days a week? That's a pretty glacial pace IME.

[Mal Reynolds]

I think my con law exam was based on like 15 cases

We read a bunch of old commerce clause shit which would have made it about 25 cases all yr but none of that shit was tested lol

The fact that you still remember your con law exam baffles me.

I remember my crim exam because the main villain was a 3L who made the crim professor mad by posting an instagram photo of the professor and a bunch of other students hanging out together.

[thisone2014]

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[A. Nony Mouse]

Lots. I took con law, advanced con law, admin, and a higher ed seminar, and I read some cases in 3 of the four courses.

[bjsesq]

out of curiosity, how many of those ~30 cases are taught in the analogous classes in other schools/sections? for example, if a con law class w one prof covers a certain set of 30 cases, how many of those cases are "standards" that most other con law classes elsewhere will also cover/teach?

Landmark cases are landmark cases, dude. You'll see them quite often.

[RZ5646]

To what extent is personality a deciding factor in legal hiring? I understand no one wants to work with a complete weirdo but I thought there were many introverts in law, and some of the comments here make it seems like only brociopaths have any chance of being hired.

[Mal Reynolds]

To what extent is personality a deciding factor in legal hiring? I understand no one wants to work with a complete weirdo but I thought there were many introverts in law, and some of the comments here make it seems like only brociopaths have any chance of being hired.

Personality absolutely factors in to the hiring process. Even though there are plenty introverts who get hired every year, you are much better served if you make up for your personality flaws with high grades or work experience. I don't think "brociopath" is the right idea to have about the people who get hired, though. Firms look for people who can demonstrate enthusiasm in the face of boring work and ubiquitous law firm options. They are also screening for people they want to work with, so the personality types firms look for vary by firm and culture, to the extent there is a thing like firm culture.

[romothesavior]

To what extent is personality a deciding factor in legal hiring? I understand no one wants to work with a complete weirdo but I thought there were many introverts in law, and some of the comments here make it seems like only brociopaths have any chance of being hired.

Varies a lot by firm. At some of the big firms you can get away with being sort of a d-bag or socially awkward. Smaller firms, mid law, etc, not so much. But I obviously generalize.

Being sociable and likeable helps in an interview, but don't bank on your charming personality overcoming shitty grades. Grades can trump a lot of personality issues. I know some positively awful people from the top of my law school class with kick ass jobs.

[jk148706]

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[UnderTheLaw]

five pages... can I get a summary?

[A. Nony Mouse]

five pages... can I get a summary?

Dude. You can read 5 pages.

[andythefir]

This thread took a bit of a strange turn, but I have some comments about the OP.

I did go to ND, although on a scholarship, and it worked out very well for me. I'm an ADA in a small town, and I've done 20 trials in the 4 months since I've been sworn in. I make very decent money ($50) in a very cheap area, and ND pays almost all of my loans through its LRAP (not PAYE, either-I'm actually paying back the full amount so that I can jump to the private side if I want). What's probably most relevant to this thread is that my office has multiple openings literally anyone with a bar card can get. We've hired <3.0 GPAs from Cooley and Thomas Jefferson just since I started. I posted the jobs and my boss' contact info in the Vale of Tears, but my boss didn't get a single resume.

The hype of the Vale of Tears is real if you won't do some jobs. I know, I was no-offered from my summer firm and sent hundreds of applications before I found anything. But if you're willing to work in small towns there are jobs.