Thanks everyone.
LockBox wrote:
So what do you think made the difference? What did you change up and what did you keep the same. Congrats, Peg
Honestly, my study routine was still a little unorthodox. Two big criticisms came out of my fall study method, which were 1) not reading for class and 2) not knowing how to take an exam. This time I did the reading, but very sporadically, and most of the time I still relied on supplement + copying professor's words verbatim. I used supplements that were keyed to my casebook or that 2Ls/3Ls told me matched my professor's take on the subject. I also heavily used old outlines.
The biggest difference was my approach to taking practice exams. Incoming 1Ls, take this with a grain of salt just like you would take all the other advice threads out here: what works for me may not work for you, and it also depends on your professor. For exam practice, I did not once open Getting to Maybe, LEEWS, etc. I used all those exam guides last time and they either hurt me or I just didn't absorb anything from them. Instead, I studied the model answers from last semester and then went over my answers in excruciating detail. It was a painful process, not because of the work involved but because it hurts to see how stupid mistakes really cost you points.
I started taking practice exams early and the difference this time is that I reflected thoughtfully on everything I wrote.
Organization: Should I organize this by party or by cause of action? Which looks neater/cleaner and which is faster to write? This changed for different subjects, whereas last semester I used the same organization (everything by party) for every exam last time and on at least one of them, I realized that it slowed me down and made me get repetitive in my analysis.
Include Everything: Did I forget to discuss everything that is dispositive, to make sure I'm not losing easy points? For example, if you're analyzing a personal jurisdiction question then you need to mention that Shaffer and Burnham leave open the possibility that all PJ questions require minimum contact/fair play analysis...but then even if the fact pattern isn't a stream of commerce case, you can't just ignore the stream of commerce analysis, you have to say Asahi doesn't apply and why.
And apply the policy stuff each time. If the professor told an anecdote to express his take on the issue, include that.
I continued one thing that I did last semester, and that was read the professor's articles - not just law review stuff, but his blog, his articles for newspapers/magazines, etc. So I flattered him by including tidbits from all of that even if it applied to the issue only tangentially.
State All Your Assumptions: I also checked if I made "common sense" jumps in my reasoning, which is another way to easily lose points. Also, just like the LSAT, sometimes your assumptions will trip you up. Read the facts very carefully, because you might assume something that has actually no basis in the facts. For example, in a criminal law fact pattern you might read about how Ben shot Apple Blossom 7 times at close range and then fled as she lay bleeding in the dirt with her intestines coming out. That might be written in a way that strongly suggests Apple Blossom died, but read the facts again: does it explicitly say that Apple Blossom died, or does it just bring her so close to death that it
looks like death is guaranteed? Unless the death is explicitly stated, you need to remember to mention attempted murder as well as murder, and state your assumptions clearly.
Figure Out What Matters: Which of these are red herrings and which are the issues that are really central to the fact pattern? Fact patterns are just a minefield of possible issues, of course, that's the nature of a race-horse exam, and picking up the issues that matter the most and analyzing them first is essential because those are the issues with the most points attached to them. Sometimes the fact pattern will include a group of facts that seem to support an inference at first glance, and you'll get excited and waste time reading them more closely to see if they really do support that inference, but then it will turn out that they don't and it was just a red herring put in there to distract you and waste your time. Practice exams help you get good at spotting the red herrings. This is especially true if your professor likes to do it a lot.
Pre-Write Your Answers: Pre-writing an answer isn't about helping you apply the facts so much as helping you improve the way your application is presented. I learned that memorizing the law cold wasn't enough to help me write my analysis the way I wanted to. To do well on an exam you have to 1) get all the issues and 2) WRITE WELL. Some people and some study aids will say you don't have to write well, but this advice, though it has some truth in it, is misleading. This is why: you're not the only one who will spot the most number of issues and analyze them well. Lots of people will manage that. They might even have read the same law review articles and blog posts that you did and included that in
their exam answers as well. So how do you distinguish yourself from them?
What I realized, after taking a practice exam, was that although I recalled all the information perfectly, I stumbled on some basic things. For example how do I concisely and comprehensively define the issue? In all my studying, I focused way more on analyzing and applying the law than defining the law. And I also didn't focus on the way I would present my analysis either. Your prose doesn't have to be elegant, but it should be
tidy and
high quality. Some people can do this off the cuff on a huge time-cruncher of an exam, but I either start rambling tangentially or get lost in the details - I basically lose focus when I try to write nicely on an exam.
So I wrote out the answer template in my outline. For example, in con law you
know you're going to get a commerce clause question. So in your outline, do this:
STEP 1: Write this. [commerce clause definition]
STEP 2: Write this. [Does commerce clause apply? --> explore Jackson's three categories, etc.]
Credit for this idea goes to another student's outline I pulled up from the internet. This method helped me put in all the little nuances, details and cases into my analysis that I'd run the risk of otherwise either forgetting or not devoting enough time to otherwise.
It's also nice if you're the type who might get nervous during an exam and blank out/freeze. My word count went through the roof when I tried this method.
Use Office Hours Wisely: When I wanted to ask questions, I scheduled individual one-on-one Q&A time with the professor (i.e. I never went with another student) and when I wanted to hear what others had to say, I would go to the TA's office hours. The reason is that unlike in undergraduate programs, the TA will rarely see you alone. If you email the TA the schedule a time to ask questions, out of fairness the TA will email the whole class to either let them know what you asked (leaving your name out, of course) and share the answer with them, or to inform the class that there will be TA office hours and everyone is invited to come. Despite this I still went to the TA - he/she took the class and booked it, after all, and plus your classmates will come up with interesting questions you might not have thought of. But save your own questions for the professor, and ask them privately. And ask really specific questions, as narrow as possible.
Memorize Everything: Even with the pre-written answers method, you still have to know everything cold.
So that's basically what I did. I spent 90% of my time just learning how to write an exam for each subject and each professor, and learning my personal disadvantages (not a super-fast typer, slight exam anxiety) so that I can find solutions to my disadvantages. I became a little obsessive and warped in my viewpoint, until I would headdesk in despair that I could never write the most perfect exam answer. I couldn't stop thinking about the top ten students from the fall semester and how god-like and spiritually awe-inspiring their exam answers would be, and then I'd have to take a break to get that out of my mind.
For me, my own negative thoughts were often my worst enemy, so my 1L advice to incoming 1Ls (and it's general life advice too, now when I come to think of it) is:
don't compare yourself to others. You will be tempted to go down that road more than ever during 1L, but DON'T do it. It will only either make you unnecessarily insecure or give you a false sense of confidence because really, you have absolutely no way of knowing who will succeed and who will not. I gunned harder than a lot of kids in the fall, and still ended up below the curve. One girl who was intimidating, arrogant and an obsessive gunner ended up median-pwned, and a wonderfully airheaded frat boy, who routinely shows how ignorant he is of everything that goes on in the world, ended up in the top 15.
The same advice is even more important in the spring, because the kids who booked exams in the fall might become cockier or more aloof, and it might dishearten you. But remember that their cockiness is your advantage, and besides doing well in one class doesn't mean someone will automatically get all their other classes. Every exam is a fresh slate and there's still an even playing field as far as preparing for that exam goes, so DO NOT ever let yourself despair like I did.
So yeah, that was my technique and my advice. Feel free to ask anything else though.
