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« on: August 01, 2004, 10:40:41 AM »
Good point about the 3Ls being more efficient with their time. By that time, they definitely know the drill so it takes them less time to brief and outline.
Funny thing is that as a 2L and 3L I actually spent more time studying than I did as a 1L. I did really well my first year so I felt an intense need to preserve my top standing. Sad thing is that even with all the extra effort, my grades remained consistent with my first year performance. So I'm not sure if the classes were harder in my second and third year so I needed to spend more time on them or whether I had reached a point of deminishing returns and didn't realize it.
I actually kept track of the time I spent studying all through law school so I can tell you exactly how much time I spent each semester. I'm an evening student so I work full time (40+ hours) and take 3 classes so the numbers would have been a bit different had I been a full time student with 5 classes. The numbers below are just the hours I spent preparing for class, outlining, etc -- they're averages for the week so some weeks were more or less but it averaged out to these numbers. On top of this time I also spent about 11 hours attending class each week and 40 hours working. The hours for my second and third year do include the hours I spent doing law review work - that may account for some of the differences in time spent each year.
1L: 1st semester: 25 hrs/wk
1L: 2nd semester: 34 hrs/wk
2L: 1st semester: 35 hrs/wk
2L: 2nd semester: 41 hrs/wk
3L: 1st semester: 27 hrs/wk
3L: 2nd semester: 32 hrs/wk
Bottomline is that law school is a lot of work. Some people claim to skate by and do well, but I wasn't willing to risk it. If I performed poorly I didn't want it to be for lack of preparation or anything else that I felt I could have controlled.
Good luck to you all.