Normal to feel "cheated" by a law exam? Forum

[IrishLaw1989]

Took my first law school exam and I feel somewhat cheated. 3 questions 4500 word limit. The first question was a normal issue spotter and worth 1/2 the points. However it purely had to do with negligence (I tried fit in assault also) and nothing else, probably used a full 1/4 of what I learned in class on it. The next 2 questions were open ended "...does this further the goal of tort law." type question. No issue spotting just steam of conscience dump garbage, literally nothing outside the first hour of class was relevant to the question. Everyone is class I talked to said they used or cited absolutely nothing from class to answer the question.

...and now Im here studying for my next exam, feeling a bit cheated. 1/2 of my torts grade will be determined by how I used 1/4 of what we learned in class, and the other 1/2 absolutely nothing. I seriously could have skipped most of the semester.

[DrSpaceman]

Well... right, but you didn't know until you got there which quarter of the material you'd need. So in preparing for the exam, you reinforce all of the skills.

[ManoftheHour]

Well... right, but you didn't know until you got there which quarter of the material you'd need. So in preparing for the exam, you reinforce all of the skills.

lol, this.

My torts exam last year was like 40% products liability, 40% negligence (specifically proximate cause), and 20% other shit.

[AReasonableMan]

It's always likelier that the stuff a professor focuses their scholarship on will be tested, but there's always a fair amount of luck involved.

[EzraFitz]

My entire 3 hour torts exam was negligence. One 3 page fact pattern, issue spotter, go. That was it. Bits and pieces of other stuff were relevant enough to cite, but that was the brunt of it, literally writing out every possible lawsuit, pretty much all based on negligence. Was more of an exercise in creative thinking than tort law, but I'm ok with that haha. Beats a closed book crim pro exam any day.

[barkschool]

Nah there were more issues in there

[Desert Fox]

[A. Nony Mouse]

Because the profs have to come up with some way of creating a curve in a class full of people with pretty similar credentials.

[n1o2c3a4c5h6e7t]

Whether or not it's normal to feel "cheated" (however you define it), it's pointless. Get drunk and check grades in a few weeks with the consolation that you are graded against your peers, many of whom suck at taking exams. I felt badly after every single exam that I actually did well in.

[Johann]

welcome to law kiddo. youre going to feel cheated a lot, and 95% of the time you will feel so rightfully.

[Clearly]

You feel cheated now, wait till the grade comes out!

[EzraFitz]

1. Some of you probably just missed the issue for intentional torts. For example "Bits and pieces of other stuff were relevant enough to cite" sounds like a missed issue.

2. This is BS when it really happens because it makes the test more random. Sure you should study everything, but why randomly benefit portios of the class who studied neg more than intentional torts or vice versa.

I thought the same thing, but I got the third highest A in the class. And that's not to say I didn't throw in a bit about intentional torts (i.e. WERE this intentional, here's something quick, blah blah blah), but it really was at least 90% negligence.

[pancakes3]

op, u mad?

[White Dwarf]

My torts final was almost entirely negligence as well, with a bit of products liability. No property torts other than ultra-hazardous activities, and only a weak case for reckless IIED for intentional torts.

My professor also discouraged us from getting overly creative. So even if some gunner wackjob could have pulled a property tort out of their ass, it wasn't going to be worth mentioning.

[RaceJudicata]

Bro, hate to tell you... you definitely missed a bunch of issues in the first question...

[BVest]

Did you have no inkling that the prof likes policy questions? If not, did you look at old exams or talk to upperclassmen? Did the prof talk policy issues in class? The only exams I had that tried to cover the entire semester's worth of material were worthless outline dumps that didn't allow for any real depth of analysis.

Those that required deeper analysis tended to skip over some topics (e.g. we spent 2 or 2-1/2 weeks on Twiqbal in Civ Pro and it was nowhere on the exam, not even as something one could mention in another answer). Those were also the classes that tended to put word limits on questions so you wouldn't waste the prof's time with irrelevant outline-dumping erudition (e.g. "There's no claim for trespass to land here. The elements for trespass are X, Y, and Z, and here there's no X, Y or Z. There's also no claim for conversion here. The elements of conversion are A, B, and C. . . .")

The only time I felt like there might be a legit claim of feeling cheated by an exam (before knowing how it was actually graded, anyway) was one exam where the essay question seemed too remote from the course, only because a curve on that question alone would have been very heavy at the bottom end... but the essay was only like 35-40% of the exam, with bar-type MC questions for the rest of the exam, so there was plenty of other data to curve on.

[PeanutsNJam]

1. Some of you probably just missed the issue for intentional torts. For example "Bits and pieces of other stuff were relevant enough to cite" sounds like a missed issue.

2. This is BS when it really happens because it makes the test more random. Sure you should study everything, but why randomly benefit portios of the class who studied neg more than intentional torts or vice versa.

I thought the same thing, but I got the third highest A in the class. And that's not to say I didn't throw in a bit about intentional torts (i.e. WERE this intentional, here's something quick, blah blah blah), but it really was at least 90% negligence.

You have your grades back already?

[BigZuck]

This is kinda your fault for A) attending law school in the first place and B) putting your fate in the hands of a law prof. Universal consensus is law school is the worst and law profs are the worst part about it.

So yeah, this is standard issue stuff.

[pancakes3]

I thought it was common knowledge that torts exams are negligence-heavy.

[EzraFitz]

1. Some of you probably just missed the issue for intentional torts. For example "Bits and pieces of other stuff were relevant enough to cite" sounds like a missed issue.

2. This is BS when it really happens because it makes the test more random. Sure you should study everything, but why randomly benefit portios of the class who studied neg more than intentional torts or vice versa.

I thought the same thing, but I got the third highest A in the class. And that's not to say I didn't throw in a bit about intentional torts (i.e. WERE this intentional, here's something quick, blah blah blah), but it really was at least 90% negligence.

You have your grades back already?

This was a year ago.

[Triconderoga]

Well I just had an exam where a couple of the questions were on material that the professor literally did not cover in class. So there's that. They weren't worth many points, but it's still rather frustrating.

[White Dwarf]

I guess it makes sense, though. If you're going to go with the one-of-every-concept approach, it's easy for students to just tease out each issue.

[kaiser]

This is common. I remember how, during exam prep time, my Civ Pro professor spent tons of time covering Erie doctrine and its all that students were asking about during review sessions. And then there was no Erie issue on the exam.

Exam prep is always a gamble. They aren't going to cover anything, so you need to guess what will be covered. And the safest way to cover your bases is to be well-prepared for anything. The fact that they only asked about 50% of your class material shouldn't make you feel cheated in any way since you ideally prepped for that 50%, just as you would have been prepped for the other 50%.

[wolfie_m.]

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[rcharter1978]

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