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Law School & Lawyer GAF
- Thread starter SD-Ness
- Start date
Congrats man; I'm the opposite haha, I neveerrrr wanna see my grades.
Paper Chase that shit.
See, I can't wrap my mind around to the point where I can call it crafty. Not in criminal law and not from the prosecution. I love me some Jack McCoy, but I find it despicable to use the death penalty as a lever to force someone to plead to a lesser charge for a crime they may not be guilty of committing in the first place.
Our first semester grades all posted at once in the middle of Property. The room was filled with the complete gamut of emotions as you can imagine.
Shit. For my LL.M. at Florida, I had 5 exams in the fall, 4 of which were given by the individual who had written the damn textbook for the class. And not just the textbook, but the textbook that was like THE textbook for the subject. Talk about intimidating. Oh, and the 5th class was also written by one of my other professors.
I wish! It wasn't so bad except for international tax. International Tax and I... we just don't speak anymore.
Godspeed. Is tax law something you're interested in, or did you key in the wrong class code into the computer?
Bboy AJ
My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
Hah, nice!
Here is a small aside because having Glannon as your professor reminded me of a professor I had who had written his own guide that was "recommended":
The worst professor I ever had was a visiting professor from UNLV who taught second semester contracts. He was a condescending prick--and to be called out on this as a law professor you know he had to be bad--who thought he was the end all be all authority on contract law because he had been on the group that had consulted when the restatement revised. First thing out of his mouth second semester is that the book we were using and had all purchased was crap and how we didn't learn anything first semester. How he had made that value judgment before talking to us I'm not sure. As the semester went on he continued to be an insufferable prig, but the icing on the cake was when he announced during the last week of class that (1) we would be tested on all of the particular points of law we studied during first semester, including cases and UCC sections; and (2) it was a completely closed book, no outline exam. Both of these things would have been fine had they been communicated sometime prior to the last week of class.
Fucker would have probably been run over by one of my classmates (you know how high strung law students are), but the administration stepped in on the second point as he hadn't stated it on his syllabus. However we still had to do a crash, bar-prep-level review of first semester contracts in order to answer his questions on the subject that were on the exam, which was about 50% of the material covered on the exam.
Man. I still hate that man and I ended up with a B+ in his course. We got our revenge, however. He applied for a position teaching at UA, and the word that came out from some of the professors the next year was that student evaluations from his semester as a visiting professor had sunk him. Universally negative from all ~60 of the students in my section.
ZackieChan
Member
Waiting around school for Entertainment Law exam to start. Last one, baby! Can't wait for break.
brucewaynegretzky
Member
Last final tomorrow, employment discrimination, should be easy. Finished Corps an hour and half early because I got in everything I wanted to say and was 100 words over the limit and had to cut down.... we'll see how that went. Don't feel bad, but the curve will be interesting in there. This semester needs to end though.
Congrats mre! Employment sounds awesome!
EDIT: O and to the person saying they feel like everyone else is studying more, don't sweat it. You'll all get grades and EVERYONE will be experiencing varying levels of "WTF!?!" In my experience hours studied was not nearly as good an indicator as people who seemed to "get" the tests. Also, some people just get certain classes better than others. Can't control for that.
Congrats mre! Employment sounds awesome!
EDIT: O and to the person saying they feel like everyone else is studying more, don't sweat it. You'll all get grades and EVERYONE will be experiencing varying levels of "WTF!?!" In my experience hours studied was not nearly as good an indicator as people who seemed to "get" the tests. Also, some people just get certain classes better than others. Can't control for that.
Character and fitness interview was, oh, about 5 minutes long, extremely basic and really just a formality unless you've killed someone. Then we were sworn in an hour or two later. The swearing in takes about 10 minutes, depending on the size.
Bboy AJ
My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
When do we get our certificate of good standing? Right after swearing in?
RandomDancing
Member
Congrats to those who finished their exams (not that I expect you to be reading this at 10am - if you're finished and not still asleep or incredibly hungover, I am disappoint).
I've still got four finals to go.
Going to get Corporations out of the way tomorrow. I've actually stopped worrying about it because while it's the most credits of my classes this semester, I studied with a friend yesterday who literally knows every single piece of information about the class. He works at a corporate law firm and pretty much knew everything before the class even started. People like that are obviously going to get the A's, there will inevitably be people who won't study enough/won't spot a major issue and will get the C's, and hopefully I'll just fall somewhere in the cushy middle.
For my admin exam later this week, on the other hand, I am most definitely assuming I'm going to come in at the bottom of that curve unless some of these concepts magically start clicking.
I've still got four finals to go.
Going to get Corporations out of the way tomorrow. I've actually stopped worrying about it because while it's the most credits of my classes this semester, I studied with a friend yesterday who literally knows every single piece of information about the class. He works at a corporate law firm and pretty much knew everything before the class even started. People like that are obviously going to get the A's, there will inevitably be people who won't study enough/won't spot a major issue and will get the C's, and hopefully I'll just fall somewhere in the cushy middle.For my admin exam later this week, on the other hand, I am most definitely assuming I'm going to come in at the bottom of that curve unless some of these concepts magically start clicking.
Just don't be this guy during your admin law exam:
I used the whole 3 and a half hours of my Administrative Law exam (100%) to study for some Commerce exam (60%) that I had immediately after. I submitted a booklet of Commerce revision and an apology note punctuated with a "
SouSouRocket
Member
Finished with all my exams for the year, I just have a White Collar Crime project left to do in place of my exam. I'm making a cartoon about public welfare offenses. Should be interesting...
Yes very easy though I guess it depends. My guy we just chatted for 5m. Completing the package is by far the hardest part of the whole thing.
3 exams here haha... So how does having glannon work btw- does everyone just study from the e and e?
An old man talks to you for 90 seconds, and in my case, wrote down a restaurant recommendation on a stickie pad.
Swearing in was a few days (weeks?) later, IIRC.
Haha honestly that kinda sucks- our civ pro teacher was kinda out of it, so glannon basically taught me and much of our class civ pro. He came and did a lecture for us a few weeks ago, was pretty cool to see him in person- such a smart dude.
Smart folks aren't always the best professors.
Dude Abides
Banned
IIRC they mail it to you. You can also write and ask for one, it's 15 bucks or so.
Don't tell them that!
Byakuya769
Member
Whoo. Feels good to be done. Now I have to wait and work on hail mary 1L job applications.
We got to have outlines for our exams unless the professor stated otherwise in his syllabus. A lot of professors opted for the closed book exam, but many didn't. Most of the time you knew the material cold if you wanted to do really well because you simply wouldn't have time to flip through and find the answer in your outline during the exam and still have time to regurgitate the answer in a comprehensible manner. Still, when you're preparing for an exam to be one way and the professor changes it the last week of class, it induces a certain level of panic, especially for those who had planned on coasting through with Cs on their way to a degree.
brucewaynegretzky
Member
Yeah, the changing it is what makes it really dick move. Most of my exams are actually open book. Generally what that means is that I Ctrl+F through my outline to get case names when I reference them on my exam, or look up the one obscure case that I remember is really on point but we only talked about for like 5 minutes.
EDIT: Actually, my worst experience have been two 8 hour open book, note, and internet take-home exams. The prof basically just gave us the equivalent of 2.5 exams. Those came out to 30 and and 24 pages. Awful, awful experiences.
Byakuya769
Member
Three out of four of my exams were completely open book, including the internet. Doesn't make that much of a difference though; like mre said, no time for looking stuff up that you have no clue about.
RandomDancing
Member
Two out of my five this semester are open book. I've only ever really used my outline beyond double checking black letter law or finding a specific case name once: I pretty much literally typed entire sections of my outline with some analysis for the Chevron/Mead/Skidmore parts of my environmental law exam because I had no idea what I was doing, but knew the frameworks were important. I ended up with a B. I hope the same result will occur when I do this with Admin.
Take homes did suck.
For our in class exams we could never use an electronic version of our outlines because we had to use Examsoft.
We had a guy get nailed on honor code violations for this. He'd copied into his outline information from a commercial outline without noting it and then transposed that onto his exam. The professor recognized the material and the school took no pity. It was harsh.
RandomDancing
Member
Oh man, that sucks if he didn't do that intentionally. I didn't even think to be worried about that kind of thing since I used a self-created outline, and we can only use paper outlines so I couldn't actually copy exactly my outline onto the exam. It was more of just using the outline as a crutch for laying out the frameworks since I didn't have any of it memorized.
He maintained his innocence* and, for whatever it's worth, I believed him. He didn't get to graduate with us because the school stripped him of his banked law review hours and he (obviously) failed the exam in question. Furthermore, the dean sent a letter to the character and fitness committees of the two states he was going to sit for the bar of.
*In that he admitted to doing it, but denied doing it intentionally.
brucewaynegretzky
Member
If you're getting C's at my school you're doing it REALLY REALLY wrong. A lot of people forget how much easier the curves are at some of the higher schools. I feel really bad for some people I've met with way worse curves. I do wonder how employers look at our grades though in comparison to others.
RandomDancing
Member
Right? In my school, if you show up and attempt to take the exam you're pretty much guaranteed at least a C-. It's very seldom I've seen Ds or Fs given, and I assume it's because people flat out didn't take the exam or were caught cheating.
At least where I go to school, basically a C is seen as just doing enough not to fail, B as doing average and A as mastery of the topic.
You have them in your class. They're generally people who either (1) have no real interest in practicing law, but daddy is paying the way or (2) they have a job in daddy's law firm and all they need is the actual degree. And daddy is paying their way. They may not always be there in your first semester of law school, but after you're sorted into your ranks following your first semester 1L year, they will appear.
Where are you in school again?
The only really tricky topic in 1L property is RAP. Know that cold and the rest is a cinch.
Oh sweet Jesus, what a week.
My computer crapped out when trying to use Examsoft earlier in the week for my Evidence exam, so that was pretty demoralizing. But eh, it seems like that exam was an absolute shit-show; more people have been saying "I have never felt so prepared for a test that I didn't actually take/absolutely none of the material was representative of what happened." The problem is that we probably know evidence pretty well, but the actual exam wasn't actually representative of that. Plus, he's the first law school professor to give essentially a "You are going to lose this case and you have conceded to every major thing that would actually help you. Make arguments anyway." And here I thought people would only encounter that actual scenario in real practice.
Employment Law was definitely the marathon runner out of any law school exam I have ever taken. Straight forward, yes. But even after spotting the issues, it takes a ridiculous amount of typing when considering that there were a lot of issues and a lot of competing doctrines + jurisdictional concerns. Closed book outside of a one-page cheat sheet. Wrote 8000~ words and only barely finished at the stopping time.
Take home exams are blah. At least our teacher was essentially honest in saying "Yeah, grading this is going to be completely subjective since all you are able to talk about are your feelings."
Time to knock this last research paper out of the way so I can actually enjoy my break.
My computer crapped out when trying to use Examsoft earlier in the week for my Evidence exam, so that was pretty demoralizing. But eh, it seems like that exam was an absolute shit-show; more people have been saying "I have never felt so prepared for a test that I didn't actually take/absolutely none of the material was representative of what happened." The problem is that we probably know evidence pretty well, but the actual exam wasn't actually representative of that. Plus, he's the first law school professor to give essentially a "You are going to lose this case and you have conceded to every major thing that would actually help you. Make arguments anyway." And here I thought people would only encounter that actual scenario in real practice.
Employment Law was definitely the marathon runner out of any law school exam I have ever taken. Straight forward, yes. But even after spotting the issues, it takes a ridiculous amount of typing when considering that there were a lot of issues and a lot of competing doctrines + jurisdictional concerns. Closed book outside of a one-page cheat sheet. Wrote 8000~ words and only barely finished at the stopping time.
Take home exams are blah. At least our teacher was essentially honest in saying "Yeah, grading this is going to be completely subjective since all you are able to talk about are your feelings."
Time to knock this last research paper out of the way so I can actually enjoy my break.
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