Even without her old exams, I don’t think you will be at much of a disadvantage. If I remember correctly her exams seemed pretty typical except for a few minor quarks. First, she gave us all the conflict pairings that she wanted us to discuss (and perhaps even the individual causes of action…though I can’t remember for sure). Second, one of the hypos was on an unusual area — reproductive rights. I posted about that before, but I think it is worth reiterating here. These two quarks aren’t really huge issues if you’re good at legal analysis. For example, I had zero practice with reproductive rights analysis. Yet, I still got an A.

I think the key is really two fold: 1) make sure you craft a top notch outline that is condensed to the essentials, and 2) practice as much as possible with old exams (preferably ones with answers). The Golden Gate School of Law has a good database of old exams with answers. There are some other good ones online too (like Pepperdine), just search around google. I like the GG database more than any other because it has real student answers and many even have professor comments/check marks. Basically, you can actually see what the professor was looking for. It doesn’t matter that GG is TTT either. You need practice more than anything else…don’t discriminate! And as far as I can tell, good analysis is good analysis no matter what school the student is from.

Good luck!

Another **very important** note: you probably noticed that the “reproductive rights” section was incomplete. I did actually outline this area but I added it to the end of my outline, just for reference, because I didn’t think it would be on the exam. I tell you this because I was so wrong…If I remember correctly, there was at least one part of a question devoted to the subject.

I will go ahead and post the parts of the outline I left off for you. Good luck.

Have you heard of the term ‘shadow belief”; the thought each of us has about ourselves that we are not good enough at X? Because something happened in our childhood that led us to believing so?

I think several of us, especially the introverts have this belief. The OP on TLS seems to be one of them. Although, if they are as smart as they claim to be (from their stats), that should be the least of their worries.

I’ve been going through cycles of emotions waiting for the score and preparing for the worst. In the end, I know that no matter what, my experience going through this the last few months will remain with me for a life time. At least, I can say that I tried. So I made a pact with myself to only think positive for the next few days, until the score arrives. That is when I ran into your blog; I was looking up ’1L experience’ — imagining that I will be going through this myself, having gotten a good score that will get me past the gates of the schools in my reach (both economically and otherwise). I started with your first December entry and made it this far. I must say – I could not agree with you more about starting prep for 1L ahead of time. This is what I said to myself as well — knowing that any chance of scholly I receive (from the T2 schools I plan on applying) will be with GPA stipulations. And, I, like you, do not have a background in law today. And without subsidy, I will not be able afford any school at sticker price.

I have to applaud you on your single-minded goal and focus of getting into law school, while being mindful of debt.

You may not even see this message, but, I wanted to thank you for putting out this blog, in the hopes that someone, someday might run into it and get something useful out of it. And it has!

Good luck in your endeavors.