Ask Noah About First Year of Law School, Getting inTop 10%, Law Review

[Dave D]

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Noah,

I was hoping you could expand a little bit more on the topic of preparing for the exam and not for class.

You've alluded to it a few times in other responses. For example, if the profesor says he's not interested in policy, then don't bother reading anything about the case that deals with the policy issues.

But are there other aspects that you could possibly expand on, or is it all just a variation of what was previously stated?

TIA

-Deac

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no answer?

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I'll try to answer it, although I didn't really take Noah's attitude about it per se. Basically the difference between college and your previous acedemic experiance and law school is that it's assumed you know the material, so called "black letter" law, the facts. They're going to throw stuff on there that you've probably never seen before. So spewing the facts back doesn't really help because that's not really getting asked. I haven't read "getting to maybe" but I can see why it's a good title for a book. You're taking A+B that you know, and trying to get to an answer, which is often maybe, and often depends on the particular situation. A lot of the best answers on tests in general were probably along the lines of "if the court follows this theory, it will do this", and also "assuming this, then this, however if not that then this".

I think that's why the LSAT is a pretty good indicator of how people do in law school. The LSAT (and the bar) is a lot like how law school is in that you're always trying to get to C and it tests a lot of really hard to teach ability. I think thats why some people never study for the LSAT and get 172s (and it seems to be waaay more common than for the SATs), and some people can study years and not break 160. Hope this makes sense.