Does Law School Work Correspond w/ LSAT Skills? Forum

[gyarados]

There's some overlap, but there's a lot of things that are completely different. Being able to hold complex abstract thoughts in your head and bounce more ideas off of them is a big part of doing well on the LSAT, and it's a big part of law school. And as others have said, being able to read is important.

On the other hand, a lot of legal thinking is based either on non-intuitive rules or on mushy-squishy policy stuff. For that, it's more about memory for the first and bullshitting skill for the second. Neither of which is important on the LSAT.

[PDaddy]

How much do LSAT skills correspond with the work and what's required in law school? (Made this one a simply stated question rather than the novels I've sometimes written here!)

LSAT = lots of work so you don't end up going to a horrible school and having a horrible life
Law School = lots of work so you don't end up getting a horrible job and having a horrible life
Lawyer = lots of work so you don't end up getting a horrible severance package and having a horrible life
Marriage = lots of work so you don't end up single and having horrible tax rates

It all goes together.

So we need an L.L.L.M. degree to be truly successful? Lol.

[MarcusAurelius]

How much do LSAT skills correspond with the work and what's required in law school? (Made this one a simply stated question rather than the novels I've sometimes written here!)

LSAT = lots of work so you don't end up going to a horrible school and having a horrible life
Law School = lots of work so you don't end up getting a horrible job and having a horrible life
Lawyer = lots of work so you don't end up getting a horrible severance package and having a horrible life
Marriage = lots of work so you don't end up single and having horrible tax rates

It all goes together.

So we need an L.L.L.M. degree to be truly successful? Lol.

hehehehe thats GULD!!!

[Nightsideclipse]

F*** no.

Seriously.

You can take that statement to the bank from someone who had a 132 LSAT score on the first go, and then a 154 after the second test.

Graduated in top 10% of a 40ish ranked school, good clerkships, law review, and published article.

Law school success is all about knowing what to study, how to study it in an effective way, and then vomiting it down with fast typing on the final in a way that will please the individual professor.

All of this esoteric nonsense about "oh lsat tests your ability to read and reason" is ridiculous. Law school is about knowing black letter law, applying it to facts, and spewing down several memorized case names.

[ksllaw]

F*** no.

Seriously.

You can take that statement to the bank from someone who had a 132 LSAT score on the first go, and then a 154 after the second test.

Graduated in top 10% of a 40ish ranked school, good clerkships, law review, and published article.

Law school success is all about knowing what to study, how to study it in an effective way, and then vomiting it down with fast typing on the final in a way that will please the individual professor.

All of this esoteric nonsense about "oh lsat tests your ability to read and reason" is ridiculous. Law school is about knowing black letter law, applying it to facts, and spewing down several memorized case names.

What do you mean by "black letter law" in your last sentence?

Your story is an interesting one. Did you put much prep into taking the LSAT? Did you take any of those prep courses from PowerScore...TestMasters..etc.?

If not, was that perhaps the reason you didn't "ace" the LSAT, but later rose to the top of your law school class. Could it be because you got "help" in law school? By help I mean that your professor guides you through the material and teaches you how to "do law." (I'm assuming here that's what happens in law school, since I'm an OL and don't have actual LS experience.) ...Whereas, I can see how the LSAT could be quite foreign to someone trying to learn it on their own without "help" (e.g., without taking an LSAT course or reading a bunch of guide/prep books, etc.).

[Scotusnerd]

I agree with most of Nightsideclipse says, except (and in a big way) with the 'black letter law' statement.

Black letter law is statutes, administrative law, restatements and so on. Basically, if the teacher relies on it and it is a codification of the law, it is black letter law. Don't worry too much about this now, you'll learn what it is in the first week or so.

Unfortunately, a lot of what we study is case law, rather than black letter law. Torts in particular seems to be nasty for this. If you just looked at the 'black letter law' for Torts (restatement of torts, second), there wouldn't be that much, and it sure wouldn't help you on an exam. You have to know important cases and how the courts applies the law, not just what the black letter law is. I don't know about other people's torts classes, but we're having to make policy arguments on proximate cause, so it is definitely NOT all black letter law.

Also: Legal Writing. Applying law is just the starting point. Unless you have previous experience, learning how to write legally is gonna trip you up at first. (At least, if you have a good teacher it will. Ours is merciless, and I appreciate it after having read some of the crap in the casebook. You'll quickly learn that not all judges can write well.)

In other words, Night has some good points, but do NOT take it to be all of what law school is. It's more complex than that.

[ksllaw]

What about the writing sample portion?

I've been reading what law school exams are like in the other thread I started on whether or not law school grading is arbitrary. And it sounds like the writing sample has a lot of similarities between it and the way law exams are desribed.

[Scotusnerd]

Don't worry too much about it. I know I just said there was similarities, but that thing is not graded, and you don't need to work hard on it. Save that energy for later on when you read and do actual practice tests. No practice you do now on the writing sample will help you that much in law school.