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Regulus wrote:

rinkrat19 wrote:Law school exams are absolutely nothing like science and math exams. What the fuck.

I'm not saying they are... I'm just looking for an explanation from you non-0L students about what the aforementioned "reputable" (?) sources imply.

If there’s something in your test-taking background most akin to a law essay exam, it’s not a poli-sci, or English, or history exam; rather, it’s a math or science exam.

Regulus wrote:So, as any diligent gunner would, I've already started my 0L prep for law school ( ); however, I came across something that I found interesting in both LEEWS and Getting to Maybe. Both of these commonly-recommended resources both use an analogy which compares engineering exams to law school exams… Wentworth Miller even goes as far to say that it seems like students with hard math backgrounds do better on law exams.

After hearing / reading this, I had a couple of questions for the knowledgeable TLS community:

1) Is there really any data that shows that students with engineering backgrounds do better in law school?

2) Regardless of whether any such data exists, for those of you who are currently in law school / have already graduated law school, do you believe that engineers typically outperform their non-engineer counterparts? (If so, do you think it is because they've already acquired the "knack" discussed below, or because of some other reason?)

Lastly, just for reference:

Wentworth Miller: Legal Essay Exam Writing System (CD1, Track 6) wrote:The professor’s not really interested in your prediction, so much as your steps of analysis in route to that prediction. This is a different kind of exam, but not an exam you haven’t encountered before. You've gone into exam situations with rules, formulas, theorems firmly fixed in mind, and you had to perform close, analytic problem solving exercises, applying those rules and formulas, and although a certain amount of credit was given for the correct answer, more credit was given for the steps of analysis in route to that answer. Indeed, the grader emphasized that he wanted to see your steps of analysis in route to the answer. What kind of exams am I talking about? When this question is posed in the live program, students fidget and smile; they know the answer, and so do you. I’m talking about math exams. Physics, chemistry, engineering, accounting exams. If there’s something in your test-taking background most akin to a law essay exam, it’s not a poli-sci, or English, or history exam; rather, it’s a math or science exam. Therein perhaps is the source of some of the confusion and unease students feel regarding the hypothetical-type exam. Therein perhaps is the explanation, for the circumstance that the students with math, science, engineering, accounting backgrounds seem to do better on law exams. So much for the idea that doing well on law exams requires that one be a good writer. Math and science majors aren't good writers, are they? Probably not, but they’re accustomed to close analytic thinking, concisely expressed.

Fischl & Paul: Getting to Maybe (Page 4-5) wrote:To get a sense of what we mean, forget about the law for a moment. Assume instead that you are taking a graduate course in engineering and that you have spent the semester studying the properties of various building materials and a host of theories of design. You have dedicated virtually every waking moment to this course. You have read and re-read every assignment and taken copious notes; you have come to each class session meticulously well-prepared; you have taken down almost every word the instructor has uttered; you have saved and annotated every handout; and – during the two weeks just before the final exam – you have organized and reorganized and outlined and committed everything to memory with such success that, in the highly unlikely event that someone besides a classmate were to ask you to explain the differing properties of (say) plastic vs. glass, you could quickly rattle off everything that could possibly be said on the subject.

You enter the room for the final examination, and the proctor presents you with a large box containing a seemingly random assortment of materials of the sort studied in the course. On the blackboard, the proctor writes the following instructions: “Using the materials in the box before you, design and construct a widget according to the principles we studied in the course.” (Unlike law students, engineering students know exactly what widgets look like!) Confused with this daunting task, you would no doubt find the mass of information you have mastered in preparation for the exam helpful – indeed, crucial. But you would obviously be making a serious mistake if you left the contents of the box untouched and proceeded instead to compose an essay on the fundamentals of materials and design and to submit it for the grade. The point of the exercise is not, after all, to regurgitate what you know, but to use what you know on what you happen to find inside the box.

Perhaps the most important lesson we can teach you about law exams is that each question you will encounter is a lot like the engineering student’s box: It’s what you do with what you find inside the question that counts the most. In all likelihood, what distinguished Student X’s performance for everybody else’s on that Torts exam was less what she “knew” coming into the exam – let alone which outline she had or which hornbook she studied – than what she did with the questions she encountered on the exam itself. And the intellectual skills that enabled her to handle the questions so well can be learned and developed by virtually any student who is smart enough to get into law school and diligent enough to put in the time.

rinkrat19 wrote:Law school exams are absolutely nothing like science and math exams. What the fuck.

Randomnumbers wrote:As someone who did hard math in undergrad, I'll say that law school exams are incredibly formulaic. Math (once you get past the rote application that is all most people experience) is entirely about logical thinking and analysis. It's the exact same tool set that you use in law school. As long as you are capable of reducing the fact pattern to the component parts competently, the kind of thinking that is required in law school (applying law to fact) is far easier, yet very similar, to the type of work you do in math (writing proofs).

It doesn't translate entirely, as you still need to be competent with writing and be able to convert the 'story' of the fact pattern into the 'facts' that you apply the law to. But as long as you can do that, and spot the issues, it's incredibly easy to brute-force a law school exam with the same type of analysis that you would use for mathematics.

laxbrah420 wrote:The dude that sits next to me on the seating chart is mechanical engineering, ended up top 3rd, and went to class less than half the time. Nobody can answer your question man. It shouldn't be that surprising that people motivated to study engineering do better than lazy ass poly sci people, but what kind of sample sizes do you think that 1Ls have? Also, I have no idea what engineering exams look like, but economics exams were WAY closer to law school exams than my science/math courses.

RELIC wrote:

Randomnumbers wrote:As someone who did hard math in undergrad, I'll say that law school exams are incredibly formulaic. Math (once you get past the rote application that is all most people experience) is entirely about logical thinking and analysis. It's the exact same tool set that you use in law school. As long as you are capable of reducing the fact pattern to the component parts competently, the kind of thinking that is required in law school (applying law to fact) is far easier, yet very similar, to the type of work you do in math (writing proofs).

It doesn't translate entirely, as you still need to be competent with writing and be able to convert the 'story' of the fact pattern into the 'facts' that you apply the law to. But as long as you can do that, and spot the issues, it's incredibly easy to brute-force a law school exam with the same type of analysis that you would use for mathematics.

Yeah maybe on a torts exams but what about a Constitutional Law test with policy questions?

Your math and organizational skills won't help you at all on that.

Regulus wrote:

RELIC wrote:I just came here to tell you that 0L prep is a waste of time.

Rigorous intellectual stimulation is never a waste of time for a gunner.

But in all seriousness, I'm not studying black-letter law or anything like that; I'm simply reading books about law school that others on TLS have recommended in my free time instead of watching TV or doing something equally as unproductive.