Word to the Wise Forum

[GreenJay]

Today I went to review my Constitutional Law II final with my professor, because it was the lowest grade I have received in law school by a significant margin. As we went over the test he asked me where I had gotten some of my "ideas" from. When I told him Chemerinsky, he asked me who that was, and not to take his ideas at "face value."

The moral of the story for 1Ls and 0Ls is the importance of learning your professor... sometimes they might not know the second most cited legal scholar in the country.

[sheila1s]

Your professor probably knew exactly who Chemerinsky is and he could probably tell by certain things you wrote in your exam that you had used a specific supplement. Professors read tons of exams and they know which supplements students often use to learn the material. This is a good warning, and you definitely have to feel out what each specific professor likes to see in exam answers by doing and reviewing practice tests. Some of them will eat up the stuff that comes from supplements and so they are extremely helpful, but some other professors will dock you points just for sounding like your answer wasn't tailored to their particular opinions and things they focused on in their own lectures. My constitutional law professor did not like Chemerinsky and my criminal law professor was very skeptical of answers that sounded like they came from Dressler. He even knew the specific ways that Dressler worded some particular things and told us to use different language.

[Bildungsroman]

The moral of the story for 1Ls and 0Ls is the importance of learning your professor... sometimes they might not know the second most cited legal scholar in the country.

Learn your professor: the way they teach the material trumps what another professor has written about the material.

[GreenJay]

The moral of the story for 1Ls and 0Ls is the importance of learning your professor... sometimes they might not know the second most cited legal scholar in the country.

Learn your professor: the way they teach the material trumps what another professor has written about the material.

You are certainly right. However, I think learning the professor means more than just learning the law exactly as they see it. Some professors prefer an exam that pushes back against their thinking, others not so much. This professor was very conservative, but does not like pushback. Thus, you should learn the nuances of how they grade too.

[aprasad14]

sounds like a real humdinger