Why do people say 1L performance is unpredictable? Forum

[star fox]

Exams are about applying law to facts. If you don't know the facts I can't see how you would apply them. do you have an example of what a pre-written exam answer looks?

[kcdc1]

So were you number 1 in your class? Cuz if not I don't see how much of a point you can prove.

My point is only that law school exams can be gamed. With strategic prep, you can mechanically hit 6k words of analysis without really thinking. This alone won't get you #1. But it should put you above median.

And honestly, pre-writing exams strikes me as dishonorable. I'd prefer if exams were closed book. But then I read A+ exams with verbatim case quotations, dates, and more words than one can possibly write if one has to think while they write. And I realized that those people are probably smarter than me, but they are definitely preparing better.

[fats provolone]

i guess that would save you time at a school where you can copy/paste from outlines but i think most schools you have to print your outlines right

[A. Nony Mouse]

yeah, we couldn't cut/paste.

[fats provolone]

gamesmanship in general is a good approach though so i'd say it's on the right track at least

[kcdc1]

i guess that would save you time at a school where you can copy/paste from outlines but i think most schools you have to print your outlines right

Don't have to copy/paste. Just retype. It's way faster to retype well-written sentences than it is to actually write well-written sentences. Also, retyping lets you get the facts in more smoothly, so it's often better than copy/paste even when copy/paste is allowed.

[BigZuck]

Honest question for the "Grades Are Random" crowd:

How often have you devoted a solid 40 hours purely to pre-writing an exam answer, complete with rule statements and pivots to sub-issues, and still scored below median on a timed issue-spotter?

wut

(1) Assume every issue covered in the class will be in the exam
(2) Write out the rules governing issue #1
(3) Write out how Plaintiff argues issue #1 with blanks for relevant facts
(4) Write out how Defendant argues issue #1 with blanks for relevant facts
(5) Leave a space for retort and conclusion
(6) Repeat steps (2)-(5) until you've written an argument shell for every issue in the class
(7) Read exam fact pattern carefully, insert relevant facts while retyping argument shell from outline

That's basically just an inefficient way to make an outline. Every outline should hit all the major issues and sub-issues anyway. I don't see the value-added from pre-writing stuff you're going to have to sub out anyway.

I will admit, some issues lend themselves to this approach. In contracts, you know you're going to have a battle of the forms question. Makes sense to queue up your arguments. Still, no reason you can't do that in the context of an outline.

I took contracts.

I don't know what battle of the forms is. I'm pretty sure that term was never used all semester.

My contracts exam had extremely strict word limits. No issue spotters.

This stuff is random as hell.

[chuckbass]

Battle of the Forms was 80% of what we went over in the class

... Not on the exam at all

[fats provolone]

i guess that would save you time at a school where you can copy/paste from outlines but i think most schools you have to print your outlines right

Don't have to copy/paste. Just retype. It's way faster to retype well-written sentences than it is to actually write well-written sentences. Also, retyping lets you get the facts in more smoothly, so it's often better than copy/paste even when copy/paste is allowed.

i guess. i think i would find it hard to type verbatim from a sheet of paper while also thinking about the facts and how to weave them in. easier to just go think->type than read->think->type. but that's just me

[romothesavior]

Some of you are fucking the corpse of a long-dead straw man ITT.

[star fox]

So.. flow charts in sentence form? It's good that you found something that works for you I suppose.

[utahraptor]

@romo, does that mean I can post galtse in this thread as well?

[romothesavior]

Here's some more fun anecdotes:

I had a 1L law school exam that had five questions. Open book exam. I got to one question, and didn't know what the question was talking about. I mean I literally didn't even recall the subect matter being discussed in class. I had to go to the book's index, find the chapter on the topic, and skim the entire thing during the exam. I called my then-girlfriend after the exam almost in tears, thinking I had bombed.

I got the second highest grade out of two sections. (90+ students total) Highest grade I ever got on a law school exam.

That same semester, I had a con law exam. I knew con law like the back of my hand. I studied my ass off and was ready to crush it. I thought (and still think) I nailed the fuck out of every question.

Got median.

The next year, I took evidence. Literally didn't even know the definition of "hearsay" at thanksgiving break. A friend of mine taught me most of the concepts in that class during the two or three weeks leading up the th exam.

I beat my friend by four or five points on the exam, which is probably 30%iles.

I got beaten out in law school by people who are smarter and harder working than I am, and I beat out people who are smarter and harder working than I am. The opposite is also true. Virtually everyone on TLS who went to law school has experienced similar situations.

Law school grades are in no way predictable from the standpoint of a 0L. The only people who think they are are naive dipshit of a 0Ls trying to convince themselves they are making the right decision.

[fats provolone]

ok sure every 0L thinks they're gonna be top 10%. but what you're forgetting is that 10% of them are right

[Kimikho]

Some of you are fucking the corpse of a long-dead straw man ITT. there sure are a lot of law students ITT!

[Instinctive]

Do you just go around asking how people did last quarter?

Sometimes people ask me. Some hearsay. One guy posted on facebook. What can I say, #gunnersection

HAHAHAHA.

Sometimes I love our section, sometimes I hate it. Se la vie.

[utahraptor]

Do you just go around asking how people did last quarter?

Sometimes people ask me. Some hearsay. One guy posted on facebook. What can I say, #gunnersection

HAHAHAHA.

Sometimes I love our section, sometimes I hate it. Se la vie.

#gunnersection

Se la vie.

#gunnersection

Se la vie.

just fucking lol

[Instinctive]

I don't think I've been through enough yet to have a well-developed opinion, but anecdotally...

The people I thought would do well seem to have done well. The people who i didn't think would do that well don't seem to have done that well.

I experimented with not really studying at all for the whole quarter (God I love quarters and the H/P system and not gunning for biglaw or clerkships), and my grades came back exactly as one would expect. I did well in the classes i liked the most and paid the most attention to inclass, and i did worse in the classes I was bored in or disliked.

#HotTake for the TLS-UberPosters who will surely flame at this...most of the people who talk about grades being "random" and "unpredictable" are the people with shitty grades. The rest of them are the people who either actually are or want to appear very humble.


ETA; "c'est la vie." Damn phone.

[Instinctive]

ETA; "c'est la vie." Damn phone.

That appears to have been too late. Nice catch TLSUberPoster :thumbup:

[utahraptor]

it's what sort of goon are you supposed to be

#HotTake for the TLS-UberPosters who will surely flame at this...most of the people who talk about grades being "random" and "unpredictable" are the people with shitty grades. The rest of them are the people who either actually are or want to appear very humble.

you didn't actually read this thread where a number of students were like "I got good grades and this is totally random"

you strike me as brilliant and well adjusted

you'll go far in this field

[A. Nony Mouse]

I don't think I've been through enough yet to have a well-developed opinion, but anecdotally...

The people I thought would do well seem to have done well. The people who i didn't think would do that well don't seem to have done that well.

I experimented with not really studying at all for the whole quarter (God I love quarters and the H/P system and not gunning for biglaw or clerkships), and my grades came back exactly as one would expect. I did well in the classes i liked the most and paid the most attention to inclass, and i did worse in the classes I was bored in or disliked.

#HotTake for the TLS-UberPosters who will surely flame at this...most of the people who talk about grades being "random" and "unpredictable" are the people with shitty grades. The rest of them are the people who either actually are or want to appear very humble.


ETA; "c'est la vie." Damn phone.

I love how people keep saying the bolded and it keeps getting disproved.

Also, the "seem" in your first sentence don't really inspire confidence. Unless you know everyone's grades, this just looks like confirmation bias.

Doesn't getting the same grades regardless of studying support what many of us have said in this thread, which is that grades don't correlate neatly with effort or particular study methods?

Finally, random =/= unpredictable, and the unpredictable we're talking about is an 0L predicting how well they'll do before they start law school.

[Instinctive]

it's what sort of goon are you supposed to be

#HotTake for the TLS-UberPosters who will surely flame at this...most of the people who talk about grades being "random" and "unpredictable" are the people with shitty grades. The rest of them are the people who either actually are or want to appear very humble.

you didn't actually read this thread where a number of students were like "I got good grades and this is totally random"

you strike me as brilliant and well adjusted

you'll go far in this field

Helped out there


And thanks for the recommendation, but I won't be in this field. Part of the beauty of being at the best school.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Well, that was three years well spent, then.

[utahraptor]

you do you! some of us went to law school to become lawyers

we're pretty dumb

[chuckbass]

I didn't know Yale was in Palo Alto