Warning: Spoiler Alert

People in my class are weird. Maybe that's a bit harsh, but it's the adjective that I keep returning to. No one is sharing their grades. I know that isn't the case at some law schools, and I'm sure it's not true everywhere. I don't understand why it's a state secret with my classmates. We have all seen or been emailed the distribution of grades, and since there is a mandatory B curve, no one really did that badly (no one failed at least - the lowest grade in either Contracts or Torts was a C).

**SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW MY GRADES**



I'm really happy with how I did, although I was very disappointed with Torts. Not just my grade, but the whole distribution. The professor refused to give anyone an A (philosophical opposition, I suppose). He basically told us as much. He worried that for every A he gave, he would have to give a C. So, the highest grade was an A-. He wound up giving Cs anyway (or it may have been C+, but same difference at that point). Five people got an A-. I got a B+. Now, I did "beat the curve," but had he graded fairly, those 5 people that wrote the "best answers" should have by definition, gotten an A. That would have bumped me to an A-. It's three-tenths of a point difference between B+ and A-, but the fact that the deck was stacked against us getting an A in the first place is what pisses me off.

Contracts was another story. The professor emailed us the distribution of grades, along with some feedback on the exam as a whole. Many people misunderstood basic Contract tenets, which surprised him. Didn't surprise me. I could have told him that there were people who "didn't get it." But, he didn't ask.

He did, however, award grades based on merit, and let the curve work itself out. One person got an A+, which was deemed "best exam." He stated that he rarely gives an A+, but this was as good as any he had seen in 30 years of teaching, and was "excellent from start to finish." (Not a bad critique). His lowest grade was a C. Since the awarding of an A+ has created some, let's call them issues, among some of the students, I feel I have to be delicate here because I know who got the A+. I will not name names here, however, since some people from my class may read this blog.

I will say, however, that I have an A average. You work it out.

Yes, but . . .

Well, I'm a chatty one this month, aren't I? I wanted to drop one final post before classes start (this evening) to answer some questions I am sure are burning in the minds of the exactly no people that read this blog (except for you, of course, Adam). Basically, I went back to my original post and found that I do have some preliminary answers to the questions that drove this blog in the first place.

• Can I join Law Review?
• Probably. early on last semester the students received an email congratulating the winners of the write-on competition to one of the school's many journals. At least one of those winners was a comrade-in-arms evening student. It wasn't the Law Review per se, but it is a highly acclaimed journal, and I can't imagine that the workload for it is any different than for Law Review.
• Can I take a clinic?
• Probably. For those who just tuned in, a clinic is a combination seminar/practical class that gives you both "hands-on" experience with clients, and fulfills a writing requirement (at least the latter is true at Rutgers). Clinics will vary from school to school, but they are highly coveted because of the practical experience they provide. Again, students just received an email stating the winners of the lotteries for certain classes and clinics, and there were part-time evening students among them. Note that evening students will not be able to participate in just any clinic; your schedule and the needs of the clinic will determine if you will be available when clients need to see you. For a clinic that deals with Federal Tax law, for example, the work will need to be done when courts are open, so that will likely not work. However, a Domestic Violence clinic or Community Law clinic that has a lot of face-to-face interaction with clients that work during the day would be perfectly suited to an evening student.
  
• Will I ever give a "yes" or "no" answer again?
• Probably not. Studying law, studying anything in depth, for that matter, ensures that people see the world in shades of grey (which may help to explain why post-graduates and doctors are often jaded about political rhetoric). Lawyers need to be especially careful about what they say to people. Advice may be mistaken as legal gospel, but few lawyers ever really "know" the law of any particular subject. Everything is open to interpretation and further review. Just because you have 50 years of precedent and 3 statutes on a subject doesn't mean that your particular case will come out a particular way. I add this as a way of apology to my family and friends who are ready to pull their hair out if I answer one more question with "yes, but . . ."
  

So, lots of things are conceivably open and available to evening students. Whether you or I will be able to participate in any of them has more to do with our own schedule and circumstances than any formal restrictions on our class load (that was a long-winded "yes, but . . .").

The Science of Passing the Bar Exam

I came across this interesting (and relieving) article today in my web-travels: The Science of Passing the Bar Exam.

The results of this study by Dean Douglas Rush and Hisako Matsuo reveal little relationship between taking classes in law school that cover bar material and bar passage rates. Good enough for me!

"To test this theory, Rush and Matsuo documented every student’s courseload for five different graduating classes at the St. Louis Law School, analyzing the number of bar topic courses taken against bar passage rates the first time the students sat for the exam. Their results were unequivocal: no relationship existed between law school courseloads and the passage rate of students ranked in the first, second or fourth quarters of their law school class, while only a weak relationship existed for students who ranked in the third quarter. Overall, Rush writes, “students in the upper two quartiles passed the exam at an extremely high rate and those in the fourth quartile failed at a high rate, regardless of which classes they took in law school.” The researchers repeated the test in 2007 using data from the Hofstra University School of Law, with identical results (which do not appear in the study)."

Finals are never just that

It has been a while since my last post, but there are many reasons/excuses for the delay. One is the cold I got for Christmas (it wasn't even on my list!), and the other is that once finals ended for me on December 15th I needed some down time to not think about law school for a while. That didn't really ever happen, since I had to buy books and begin my reading assignments for next semester. So, just because finals are over, nothing about law school is "final."

I have yet to get my grades back, but I think (hope) I did really well on them. My Contracts final consisted of 4 long-answer questions, which meant about a solid hour of writing for each question. My final turned our to be about 20 typed pages long. For Torts, there were two inter-related questions that took 4 hours, and that was another 20 pager. So, although we all want our grades back yesterday, I have to remember that the poor professors have to slug through 70+ 20 page papers. It will be a while.

I do have some tips for evening students to prepare for finals (this blog is never far from my mind, although at times it is far from my to-do list). Here goes:

1. Keep going to school - Once classes are over, there will be a "reading period" when there is no class. Doesn't matter - go anyway. Now is NOT the time to break from your school routine. Even if you just sit in the library for two hours each night, you will get far more done than if you go straight home after work (which will make you feel like you're on vacation). As an added bonus, you will bump into other classmates and be able to bounce questions off of them (which is especially helpful since you won't have the ear of the professor anymore).
   
2. Form a dedicated study group - Many different books will tell you many different things about study groups. I know, because I have read them. Some will say they are the only way to survive, and others warn against them because they turn into gripe sessions. Both of these opinions are true. As an evening student, you do not have the luxury of time to pour over and reflect on the material all semester long, and you usually won't be able to get to the professor's office hours. Study groups are essential for our kind. Yes, you get a group of law students together at night into the wee hours, the conversation will drift off sometimes (and people get downright punchy), but it always gets back on track. You'll be amazed at how much your classmates know. Best advice - form a group EARLY in the semester, so that you know who to "weed out" if they aren't dedicated to studying in your group.
   
3. Take past exams - Most old exams are available in your school library, or on its website. Take them, and do not cheat!! Take them in quiet conditions under the allotted time, to make sure that you can pace yourself properly. This is what we did in my study groups, and then we shared our answers afterwards. At first you will panic because you all spot different issues, but once you realized you missed Parol Evidence, you will never forget it again!
4. Start your outline one month in - Whether fall or spring semester, begin a rough outline (even if it is just copying and pasting your notes). You will NOT have time during the exam to refer to any materials (at least, you won't if you're on the right track), so start your class outline early enough that you have it memorized by the time your final rolls around.
   
5. Take the Professor, not the Class - This is a piece of advice handed down to a classmate from an upperclassman, and it is so true. Relying too much on commercial outlines or other sources than your class notes will be certain death. Each professor has his own "baby" that you should pay special attention to (for example, my torts professor was a products liability guru and is very big on public policy - things the casebook and outlines hardly went into).
   

This isn't all-inclusive, of course, but this is what worked for me my first semester in, and I think I will stick with it. I left both finals completely calm and confident. I may get Cs in both classes (thanks mandatory curve!!), but I know I did my best, and felt good about the semester's work.

Spring will be hell. I'm taking Civ Pro and Crim Law, which I am looking forward to, but they also have us taking Legal Research and Writing!! Don't let the one measly credit fool you - LRW is what separates the future attorneys from the future eBay power sellers. It's extremely time and labor intensive, and as such, you may not see another new post for a while.

If you do, it means I have gone to cooking school.