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MORE ON 1L -- COMMENTS FROM THE EXAM HALL

Over at Crime & Federalism, Michael Cernovich agrees that The VC's Orin Kerr has done a public service with his post, "A Few Thoughts on First-Year Law School Grades."

Cernovich offers some of his own advice about law school exams:

"My 1L grades were horrible.  However, I figured out the Law School Exam Writing Game, and obtained wonderful results, earning numerous "A's" and the highest scores in four extremely competitive classes. My advice is..." continue reading here.

Note: Yesterday I attributed this quote to David Giacalone, one of Crime & Federalism's contributors. Turns out his advice about exams can be found here at Legal Underground.--LS

Meanwhile, students (former and current) are beefing up professor Kerr's post with some great comments. Here are some excerpts:

jkh, nom de plume:
...I spent my first year at GW trying to write well, trying to really "learn" the material, and I didn't get a single "A." My second year, in contrast, I didn't do much reading and I approached the exam with a "get more points" mentality -- before the exam, I would go over old exams and construct detailed lists of "points" to hit on for each topic, and would try my best to find a case to cite for each. During the exam, I was barely thinking at all -- instead, I was simply copying down items from my note sheet. The result: My grades dramatically improved, and I scored lower than A- in only 2 classes the entire year ... Ironic, really, since I feel like I know a lot more from my first-year classes than I do from my second.
Jen:
.... Although I’ve got the class rank and the mega firm job (which I suspect I’ll leave for business school in a few years if firms are susceptible to the same inefficient B.S.), I'm becoming increasingly bitter toward this whole "game." A $30,000/year game. Prestige whoring is a whole other problem. Within my group of college friends, I the sociology and English majors with 4.0s like me went to Stanford while the chemical engineers and economists with 3.0s ended up at Santa Clara, even though our LSATs only differed by 1-2 points. When will lawyers stop being so blind...
Both Kerr and Giacalone are accepting comments.

Posted by Laurel Newby on January 28, 2005 at 05:38 PM | Permalink

 
 
 
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