This past Monday I started preparing for my first year in law school. I decided to begin with the book Getting To Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams. At this point my studies have gone well. I am over halfway through the book and have enjoyed reading it. The author assumes that the reader has some legal knowledge so it has been slow going at times.
Dispite my lack of legal knowlege, I feel like I understand a lot of the underlining principles. The gist of the book, as I understand it, is that law professors love to test ambiguities. They test these ambiguities by writing a series of hypothetical scenarios — refered to as “hypos” — where different arguments can be made about how the law is applied.
Sounds simple but, belive me, it can become very complicated. The ambiguities can exist in so many places. There can be ambiguities in the facts, ambiguities in the definitions of critical words or ambiguities in which laws apply to the facts. To further complicate things all the latter ambiguities can be nested inside each other. For instance, there might be a question of which law to apply. Then with each argument that could be made there might be another ambiguity about a definition or law or facts.
GTM uses a clever analogy for this structure of nested ambiguities — forks. Using the fork analogy allows for one to simplify the hypo into various discrete parts. I like the approach because it makes taking a law exam seem more systematic.
Actually performing on the exam doesn’t seem all that difficult now. Could I do it now? No way. I will need to practice spotting ambiguities and making arguments extensively. Thats all that I need — practice. This law business does not seem particularly hard, at least not compared to solving differential equations.
Make no mistake though, law school will be hard. I still belive that. The difficulty will not be in the exam taking. It will be getting to the point where I can practice exam taking. To spot the various ambiguities buried in law exams and then make sound arguments will take an extensive legal knowledge. Not just of the black letter law but also where the law came from and why. To gain the knowledge required to actually start practicing exams will take time, lots of time.
I suppose thats why I am starting my prep early. I want to be able to take practice exams as soon as possible. Before that I will still try to practice. From what I have read examples & explanations are good for this.
My plan now is to build an extensive knowledge of torts (because I have heard it is the easiest). Then while primarily focusing on torts I will also build a basic, high level knowledge of all the other subjects. I will do all this so that by the time school starts — or shortly there after — I will be able to stumble through a general torts exam and do basic hypos for other classes. I want to take one exam from the beginning just to know first hand what a law school exam looks like. If do this I will have a much clearer idea of what and how to study for the rest of the year.
Of course all of this is tentative. As I study more and learn more about law school I will adjust accordingly.
