FLOUNDER ON EXAMS JUST PAST? ... Of course you did! All 1Ls do, even at Yale, Harvard, Stanford. However, not to worry! ... Despite intense study, diligent briefing, IRAC, outlining, etc., you were confused and intimidated. (Everyone was.) You flailed about. Instructions such as, Imagine you are a lawyer, Draft an opinion, ... You werent sure what the professor wanted. You spewed whatever popped into your head that seemed legal, tangentially relevant. You were behind the eight ball at all times. The exam was in control, never you! Responses were hardly lawyerlike. Now you now fear the worst. You hope, merely, that you passed. There is no thought of As. Cs are what your responses deserve, if not worse. However, no worries! You will get at least B-s, probably Bs. At top 25 law schools the median grade, despite lackluster, mediocre performance across the board will be B+. ... A gift indeed! THE PROBLEM GOING FORWARD You are now cowed. Confidence in abilities is severely eroded. (And law school is boring.) Even those for whom curved grading mandates As (mostly A-s, actually), who will now be deemed geniuses of the law, who will garner the lions share of awards and job offers next fall (as they head for Law Review), did not score half the points possible. (On any exam! Not even close.) Their exams were not great, hardly brilliant. They were merely good in comparison with the floundering, mediocre responses of most classmates, including you. Going forward, youll blame yourself for not having lawyerlike aptitude. Youll blame yourself for not having ...The Right Stuff!—mystical, innate something required to be a great lawyer (at least a decent test taker), that law professors and students believe is necessary for mastery of the essay hypothetical-type law exam. YOULL BE GRATEFUL FOR YOUR Bs (very!), EXTREMELY RELIEVED. You will not imagine yourself capable of writing an A law essay exam! Nonsense! ... Youve been duped, same as countless generations of beaten down, befuddled first year law students. You are the victim of a scam! (Yes, I—Wentworth Miller, LEEWS founder/instructor—say scam!) Read the free, downloadable 2012 book at the LEEWS website—leews. As explored and explained therein, American law schools—all of them!—and case method instruction do a poor job transforming academic thinker/learners—virtually all entering law students (YOU!)—into anything approaching a practicing lawyer thinker/learner. Certainly not in first term or first year. (The year, perversely, that counts for everything in terms of job opportunities.) BTW Most who did LEEWS were among those who had a measure of control over exams and got As. Those who did not are neither cowed, nor discouraged. They got at least Bs. They know exactly what needs to be done to compete for As next round. Namely, jettison competing ineffective advice of professors and other sources that watered down grasp and implementation of the proven effective (30+ years!) LEEWS science of preparation and exam writing. Time to go back to the drawing board, time to bend to the task of writing out practice paragraphs of concise analysis, time to master briefing cases in 2-4 lines (as a lawyer would!), outlining courses in 10-30 pages, ... Time to approach law school, studying, exams as a reasonable facsimile of a competent, practicing lawyer!
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 19:03:41 +0000
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