Just read Don't Go to Law School (Unless) Forum

[minnbills]

Trust me about the following (and I say this as someone in the top 1% of his class). Some day during torts, it might be when you finish up intentional torts or negligence, you're going to look at what you've learned. You're going to look at the elements of battery (intentionally causing a harmful or offensive contact) and negligence (breach of duty causing harm), and you're going to realize that this crap almost every single person in the room understands. And then some day during contracts, you're going to look at what you've learned, and you're going to realize consideration is extremely easy (bargained for exchange) and offer and acceptance are difficult to define, but easy to argue about. And again, you're going to realize every single person in the room understands it. And in property, you'll learn the elements of adverse possession, easements, covenants, and it's all really straight forward (with the exception of RAP). And you'll again realize how every single person can see what it takes to fulfill those elements.

And at that point, you'll actually understand how hard 1L because of how easy it is. You'll realize that no matter how hard you work, when you sit down at the exam table, all those 90 kids around you will have almost the same understanding of the material. It doesn't matter if you spend 10 hours doing the homework because you took time to understand every turn in logic in every case, you learned every view of the law from multiple hornbooks, or whatever 1Ls do. Because on that exam, there will be a negligence issue, and every single person will see it. Every single person will go through duty (reasonable person) breach, cause (proximate and cause in fact) and see a lot of the issues that a fact pattern brings out.

So yeah, tell yourself that the kids below median just didn't maximize their chances, even though some of them spent 10 hours a day in the library and wanted nothing more than to tell their parents they're on Law Review. And if you could watch over them an entire year, you would have no idea what they're doing wrong to get straight Bs and B+s on every single exam.

Aside from the top 1% part, I could've written this. Should be required reading for the younguns.

And yet the majority of my section is really confused about everything except Conlaw.

[PDaddy]

The smart way to go these days is to go to medical school, get an MBA from one of the top 10-15 or forgo graduate school altogether. There's plenty of opportunity out there without going to law school. Amazon just added 6,000 jobs! I met a couple that just moved to Seattle. The husband landed an entry-level job paying $125K plus bonuses, stock and three weeks paid vacation per year. That's a pretty sweet deal to me. Amazon is known for spoiling its employees. The only downside is that you might like it a little too much and wind up staying.

[prezidentv8]

an entry-level job paying $125K plus bonuses, stock and three weeks paid vacation per year.

[JCougar]

On that note, I've already figured out who will be best and who will be worst in our section. Unfortunately, the rest of the class isn't quite as easy to spot.

(coincidentally, someone whose LSAT was way way way above 75% and someone who got pulled off the waitlist at the end of July)

I don't know...the people that end up sounding totally stupid in class usually end up in the top 10% in my experience. There's a decent amount of exceptions, obviously, but you'd be surprised at the kind of bullshit that some professors will give you points for on a law exam.

[JCougar]

I still disagree with the notion that most people at the same law school are of near-equal intelligence, simply because I don't believe intelligence can be quantified int he ways that adcoms see it because intelligence takes so many more complex forms than the LSAT and GPA. That being said, perhaps it is more work that one must do in understanding oneself and one's strengths before going to law school that make the difference. Those who work furiously and finish in the lower 10% might have realized their skillset was not a perfect fit for law but their dreams blinded them to this. Someone with an immense propensity to reading, writing, oration, critical thinking etc. would seem to be better off. In this way, bending the numbers to your favor is as simply as knowing that you will maximize your potential through having done the due-diligence necessary to know that you will belong, not ensuring success but mitigating some risk of failure.

Does this follow?

Here's what is seriously wrong with your perception. You assume that law school exams are a precise instrument refined by years of validation and study that actually measures some sort of innate intelligence or some ability to practice law. They don't. The number one factor in determining your grade is word count. Whoever types the fastest, as long as they have a modicum of common sense, gets the best grade. Time is a major factor. Difficulty of material is not. They give the same exams at Cooley as they give at Harvard, and yet the students taking the exam at Harvard are many times more intelligent and motivated. Therefore, the curve at Harvard simply flattens out, and the slightest superficial miscues cause one's grade to drop rapidly. Luckily for Harvard students, the school went to a modified pass/fail system. But there's a lot of other schools with 95th %ile LSAT medians out there that suffer the same effect and yet have more granular grading scales. There are other factors that go into your grade, but most of them relate to personality factors that make you good at taking law exams, which is not necessarily related to understanding the law or practicing the law.

The reality is that students admitted to a top school are for the most part all intelligent enough to solve the legal issues that appear on a law school exam. The material is really not very complex, and most exams are open note, so even if you don't get it, you can just copy off your notes...most of which are garnered from successful students who took the class the year before. It ends up being a very subjective outline copying contest that turns into who types the fastest and who reads the professor's mind the best as to what he or she wants to hear.

I've studied for three hours total the entire semester for an exam and gotten a better grade than ones I've studied for months on. My highest two grades are classes I totally blew off and realized the night before in desperation that I needed to find a great outline quickly. I ended up finding such outlines and basically copying straight from them for the exam and nearly acing them. But it all varies by professor. If 90% of your class has the black letter law memorized and 80% has the mental ability to synthesize and apply it to the point of near perfection, it ends up being the totally superficial qualities that end up determining the curve.

The curve in law school isn't implemented to weed out those with actual ability and work ethic from those who don't have it. It is implemented for the sole reason that it gives the illusion that it does so. It doesn't matter what your actual abilities are--as long as the curve gives the illusion of "sorting," Biglaw firms can then turn around and market the "prestige" the curve creates.

You have no idea how sloppy, superficial, and irrational this entire process is. If you think blue-collar work ethic or intelligence is going to save you from the twisted morass that lies ahead of you, you're in for a sad ride, unless you are one of those naturally gifted at law exams--but even then, you get survivor's guilt because you have friends you study with that know the law just as well if not better than you that get fucked by the same irrational system that saved you.

[PDaddy]

an entry-level job paying $125K plus bonuses, stock and three weeks paid vacation per year.

Go to the website dude! It's like that! Amazon has added 6,000 new jobs, and some other companies may follow suit.

In 2011, Amazon added 5,000-6,000 jobs in Texas. I have a close friend who works in real estate, and Capital Hill, the neighborhood adjacent to Beacon Hill, where Amazon's Seattle campus is located, has been flooded with apartment and house hunters.

Some of the jobs are specialized, but some are entry-level and learn-as-you-go.

[JCougar]

Trust me about the following (and I say this as someone in the top 1% of his class). Some day during torts, it might be when you finish up intentional torts or negligence, you're going to look at what you've learned. You're going to look at the elements of battery (intentionally causing a harmful or offensive contact) and negligence (breach of duty causing harm), and you're going to realize that this crap almost every single person in the room understands. And then some day during contracts, you're going to look at what you've learned, and you're going to realize consideration is extremely easy (bargained for exchange) and offer and acceptance are difficult to define, but easy to argue about. And again, you're going to realize every single person in the room understands it. And in property, you'll learn the elements of adverse possession, easements, covenants, and it's all really straight forward (with the exception of RAP). And you'll again realize how every single person can see what it takes to fulfill those elements.

And at that point, you'll actually understand how hard 1L because of how easy it is. You'll realize that no matter how hard you work, when you sit down at the exam table, all those 90 kids around you will have almost the same understanding of the material. It doesn't matter if you spend 10 hours doing the homework because you took time to understand every turn in logic in every case, you learned every view of the law from multiple hornbooks, or whatever 1Ls do. Because on that exam, there will be a negligence issue, and every single person will see it. Every single person will go through duty (reasonable person) breach, cause (proximate and cause in fact) and see a lot of the issues that a fact pattern brings out.

So yeah, tell yourself that the kids below median just didn't maximize their chances, even though some of them spent 10 hours a day in the library and wanted nothing more than to tell their parents they're on Law Review. And if you could watch over them an entire year, you would have no idea what they're doing wrong to get straight Bs and B+s on every single exam.

This is one of the most intelligent posts ever on this board.

[megagnarley]

I still disagree with the notion that most people at the same law school are of near-equal intelligence, simply because I don't believe intelligence can be quantified int he ways that adcoms see it because intelligence takes so many more complex forms than the LSAT and GPA. That being said, perhaps it is more work that one must do in understanding oneself and one's strengths before going to law school that make the difference. Those who work furiously and finish in the lower 10% might have realized their skillset was not a perfect fit for law but their dreams blinded them to this. Someone with an immense propensity to reading, writing, oration, critical thinking etc. would seem to be better off. In this way, bending the numbers to your favor is as simply as knowing that you will maximize your potential through having done the due-diligence necessary to know that you will belong, not ensuring success but mitigating some risk of failure.

Does this follow?

Here's what is seriously wrong with your perception. You assume that law school exams are a precise instrument refined by years of validation and study that actually measures some sort of innate intelligence or some ability to practice law. They don't. The number one factor in determining your grade is word count. Whoever types the fastest, as long as they have a modicum of common sense, gets the best grade. Time is a major factor. Difficulty of material is not. They give the same exams at Cooley as they give at Harvard, and yet the students taking the exam at Harvard are many times more intelligent and motivated. Therefore, the curve at Harvard simply flattens out, and the slightest superficial miscues cause one's grade to drop rapidly. Luckily for Harvard students, the school went to a modified pass/fail system. But there's a lot of other schools with 95th %ile LSAT medians out there that suffer the same effect and yet have more granular grading scales. There are other factors that go into your grade, but most of them relate to personality factors that make you good at taking law exams, which is not necessarily related to understanding the law or practicing the law.

The reality is that students admitted to a top school are for the most part all intelligent enough to solve the legal issues that appear on a law school exam. The material is really not very complex, and most exams are open note, so even if you don't get it, you can just copy off your notes...most of which are garnered from successful students who took the class the year before. It ends up being a very subjective outline copying contest that turns into who types the fastest and who reads the professor's mind the best as to what he or she wants to hear.

I've studied for three hours total the entire semester for an exam and gotten a better grade than ones I've studied for months on. My highest two grades are classes I totally blew off and realized the night before in desperation that I needed to find a great outline quickly. I ended up finding such outlines and basically copying straight from them for the exam and nearly acing them. But it all varies by professor. If 90% of your class has the black letter law memorized and 80% has the mental ability to synthesize and apply it to the point of near perfection, it ends up being the totally superficial qualities that end up determining the curve.

The curve in law school isn't implemented to weed out those with actual ability and work ethic from those who don't have it. It is implemented for the sole reason that it gives the illusion that it does so. It doesn't matter what your actual abilities are--as long as the curve gives the illusion of "sorting," Biglaw firms can then turn around and market the "prestige" the curve creates.

You have no idea how sloppy, superficial, and irrational this entire process is. If you think blue-collar work ethic or intelligence is going to save you from the twisted morass that lies ahead of you, you're in for a sad ride, unless you are one of those naturally gifted at law exams--but even then, you get survivor's guilt because you have friends you study with that know the law just as well if not better than you that get fucked by the same irrational system that saved you.

Not that I need further convincing. If you read the posts following your quote you'll see that I deferred to more experienced minds.

But you did put some time into this so I though I should acknowledge it.

Well written. Thank you for clarifying.

[roranoa]

I didn't go through the whole 11 pages but

what do you guys think of Cornell?

"If" I can make it to Cornell should I go? (paying full tuition that is.)

Does Cornell place well in terms of Biglaw?

[tfer2222]

On that note, I've already figured out who will be best and who will be worst in our section. Unfortunately, the rest of the class isn't quite as easy to spot.

(coincidentally, someone whose LSAT was way way way above 75% and someone who got pulled off the waitlist at the end of July)

this is so, so, so wrong and presumptuous. I was on the very very low-end of my 1L LSAT spread, and ended up top ~5% after 1L. One of our highest LSAT students dropped out after 1L. Anyone on TLS will tell you that LSAT scores aren't really good predictors of 1L success.

sorry if someone already addressed this. too lazy to read through the thread.

edit: I also always sounded stupid in class when called on because I usually hadn't read the cases thoroughly or was outlining during class instead of listening. Moral of the story - you probably don't have it figured out.

[Paul Campos]

I didn't go through the whole 11 pages but

what do you guys think of Cornell?

"If" I can make it to Cornell should I go? (paying full tuition that is.)

Does Cornell place well in terms of Biglaw?

And the punch line.

Depressing thread, but excellent contributions from those who have achieved Buddha nature. Kudos especially to JCougar and RPK34.

[hume85]

I didn't go through the whole 11 pages but

what do you guys think of Cornell?

"If" I can make it to Cornell should I go? (paying full tuition that is.)

Does Cornell place well in terms of Biglaw?

And the punch line.

Depressing thread, but excellent contributions from those who have achieved Buddha nature. Kudos especially to JCougar and RPK34.

What do you think about attending a top 14 school other than Georgetown with a minimum of $50K in family support a year?

[JCougar]

Not that I need further convincing. If you read the posts following your quote you'll see that I deferred to more experienced minds.

But you did put some time into this so I though I should acknowledge it.

Well written. Thank you for clarifying.

No problem. Sorry if that came off as jaded. I was in your position once, too, and I couldn't believe it when people were telling me that some of our most reputable educational institutions in this country would bascally be as FOS as they are. I realized the bimodal salary distribution and that each school finessed their placement stats, so I was kind of prepared for what lay ahead job-wise. But I was taken by surprise at the randomness of law school grading and how truly bizarre it is. You really don't know how well you will do. Understanding the law inside and out isn't enough to do anything but keep you above the bottom 10-20% or so.

[IAFG]

And yet the majority of my section is really confused about everything except Conlaw.

I promise you that when you start to hear about who did really well, there will be surprises, including people who you believed were "confused."

As for cocky 0Ls and 1Ls who just know they will or are crushing it, lol just lol and more lol. IME doing well is highly correlated with being scared and assuming median-pwnd-ness.

[hume85]

And yet the majority of my section is really confused about everything except Conlaw.

I promise you that when you start to hear about who did really well, there will be surprises, including people who you believed were "confused."

As for cocky 0Ls and 1Ls who just know they will or are crushing it, lol just lol and more lol. IME doing well is highly correlated with being scared and assuming median-pwnd-ness.

Do you have an explanation for this?

[IAFG]

And yet the majority of my section is really confused about everything except Conlaw.

I promise you that when you start to hear about who did really well, there will be surprises, including people who you believed were "confused."

As for cocky 0Ls and 1Ls who just know they will or are crushing it, lol just lol and more lol. IME doing well is highly correlated with being scared and assuming median-pwnd-ness.

Do you have an explanation for this?

I guess that being a cocky motherfucker hurts you but I don't really know. The correlation is very strong though, in what I've seen. I only know of one person who landed in the top 10% who wasn't a scurred little 1L,* and that person ultimately got OCI pwnd.

Note: this applies to 1st semester only.

[Theopliske8711]

And yet the majority of my section is really confused about everything except Conlaw.

I promise you that when you start to hear about who did really well, there will be surprises, including people who you believed were "confused."

As for cocky 0Ls and 1Ls who just know they will or are crushing it, lol just lol and more lol. IME doing well is highly correlated with being scared and assuming median-pwnd-ness.

Do you have an explanation for this?

I guess that being a cocky motherfucker hurts you but I don't really know. The correlation is very strong though, in what I've seen. I only know of one person who landed in the top 10% who wasn't a scurred little 1L, and that person ultimately got OCI pwnd.

This must mean I will do great then, I am riddled with anxiety and self-doubt. No doubt I will just kill it in Law School now.

Uh oh!

[IAFG]

This must mean I will do great then, I am riddled with anxiety and self-doubt. No doubt I will just kill it in Law School now.

Uh oh!

lol didn't do so hot on the LSAT did you

[hume85]

And yet the majority of my section is really confused about everything except Conlaw.

I promise you that when you start to hear about who did really well, there will be surprises, including people who you believed were "confused."

As for cocky 0Ls and 1Ls who just know they will or are crushing it, lol just lol and more lol. IME doing well is highly correlated with being scared and assuming median-pwnd-ness.

Do you have an explanation for this?

I guess that being a cocky motherfucker hurts you but I don't really know. The correlation is very strong though, in what I've seen. I only know of one person who landed in the top 10% who wasn't a scurred little 1L, and that person ultimately got OCI pwnd.

This is one of the things I suspected. Will you answer my question for Campos a few posts ago on this thread? You and Rayiner seem to be a couple of the more helpful posters in the past couple of years.

[nickb285]

.

[Chupavida]

,

[Theopliske8711]

This must mean I will do great then, I am riddled with anxiety and self-doubt. No doubt I will just kill it in Law School now.

Uh oh!

lol didn't do so hot on the LSAT did you

Sometimes, you gotta stretch reality to make chit funny. And sometimes, logic is the victims.

[Tiago Splitter]

On the correlation between grades and "intelligence" and the spread of ability in the average law school, I can't say I agree with the people asserting that 80% of the class "gets it" and that grades come down to luck or raw typing speed or the length of your middle finger (or whatever). I think that assertions of near-universal comprehension are overly optimistic, even at T1 schools.

The guy saying it finished in the top 1%, which kind of ruined his point right from the start.

[JCougar]

On the correlation between grades and "intelligence" and the spread of ability in the average law school, I can't say I agree with the people asserting that 80% of the class "gets it" and that grades come down to luck or raw typing speed or the length of your middle finger (or whatever). I think that assertions of near-universal comprehension are overly optimistic, even at T1 schools. I've heard enough knowledge fail being tossed around during exam season to falsify (in my mind) statements like "everybody understands [insert assertedly simple legal principle]." Even accepting that everybody understands everything, the harsh reality is that it takes a certain amount of mental horsepower to process and respond competently to a law school exam under time constraints. I've talked to professors about grade distributions and have generally been surprised at the spread of exam scores; it's just not the case that everybody is effectively tied and grades come down to the nuances of a 91 versus a 90.

I've actually heard the exact opposite from almost every professor I've talked to.

You simply can't put any stock in what "knowledge fail" people are passing around before the exam, because by the time the exam comes, almost everyone does, in fact, get it. Even if you don't, there's plenty of E&E stuff out there that simplifies something that's already simple for you.

Because of fundamental attribution error, many people who do well on exams are naturally going to attribute it to some sort of innate greatness within themselves, even if they can't explain or pinpoint exactly what that is. And people who do not as well as they'd hoped are going to attribute it all to randomness, the curve, and just about every other explaination they can think of that doesn't involve themsleves. The reality is somewhere in between, but I believe it leans very heavily towards the randomness/typing speed aspect.

The bottom line is that research on assessment testing shows that when the main constraint is time--as opposed to difficulty of material--tests become an incredibly poor to worthless assessment of innate ability. Time is a huge factor in a law school exam, and even the people who book the class run out of time to say everything they want to say. It's not hard to understand how typing speed helps greatly in this regard. There have actually been studies done and law review articles written on these exams showing that word count is a large predictor of your grade.

The thing with law practice is that precision is far more important than how many words you can churn out in a huge time crunch. You're far better off spending 6 hours getting things precisely correct rather than 3 hours spitting out whatever theories might come to your mind.

[Theopliske8711]

On the correlation between grades and "intelligence" and the spread of ability in the average law school, I can't say I agree with the people asserting that 80% of the class "gets it" and that grades come down to luck or raw typing speed or the length of your middle finger (or whatever). I think that assertions of near-universal comprehension are overly optimistic, even at T1 schools. I've heard enough knowledge fail being tossed around during exam season to falsify (in my mind) statements like "everybody understands [insert assertedly simple legal principle]." Even accepting that everybody understands everything, the harsh reality is that it takes a certain amount of mental horsepower to process and respond competently to a law school exam under time constraints. I've talked to professors about grade distributions and have generally been surprised at the spread of exam scores; it's just not the case that everybody is effectively tied and grades come down to the nuances of a 91 versus a 90.

I've actually heard the exact opposite from almost every professor I've talked to.

You simply can't put any stock in what "knowledge fail" people are passing around before the exam, because by the time the exam comes, almost everyone does, in fact, get it. Even if you don't, there's plenty of E&E stuff out there that simplifies something that's already simple for you.

Because of fundamental attribution error, many people who do well on exams are naturally going to attribute it to some sort of innate greatness within themselves, even if they can't explain or pinpoint exactly what that is. And people who do not as well as they'd hoped are going to attribute it all to randomness, the curve, and just about every other explaination they can think of that doesn't involve themsleves. The reality is somewhere in between, but I believe it leans very heavily towards the randomness/typing speed aspect.

The bottom line is that research on assessment testing shows that when the main constraint is time--as opposed to difficulty of material--tests become an incredibly poor to worthless assessment of innate ability. Time is a huge factor in a law school exam, and even the people who book the class run out of time to say everything they want to say. It's not hard to understand how typing speed helps greatly in this regard. There have actually been studies done and law review articles written on these exams showing that word count is a large predictor of your grade.

The thing with law practice is that precision is far more important than how many words you can churn out in a huge time crunch. You're far better off spending 6 hours getting things precisely correct rather than 3 hours spitting out whatever theories might come to your mind.

Ugh! It all just seems to damn arbitrary and counter-intuitive.