Am I studying enough?

[highball]

So,
All I do is write down the outline headings for my reading, skim the books and jot a note or two, and then copy the casebriefs from Legalines into my notes so I'll be ok for class.  That's like an hour tops for each class.  Essentially, I'm studying 1 to 2 hours a night depending on what's on the following day schedule.  I feel pretty comfortable being able to apply the blackletter so far in the scenerios that are brought up in class.  We've had one quiz and I'm in the top 5% of my class by the score.  I realize that counts for nothing in the big picture, but it's the only reference point I have so far 2 weeks in.  I also think that the additional time I have is another reason why I'm doing better than my peers in our legal writing class.

Question:  Is utilizing Legalines for the cases + class notes enough in terms of covering the necessary blackletter that you might need on hand as a reference for a final exam?  i just don't want to spend the semester aceing these quizes (25% of our grade 2 of the 3 classes) and then all of a sudden finding myself short of information on a closed book, outline only final.

[lawgirl]

No

[jeffjoe]

Do you understand the law involved in each case after you've done this?

If you do, you're brilliant.  I'm spending a lot more time on each case than that.

[highball]

Do you understand the law involved in each case after you've done this?

If you do, you're brilliant.  I'm spending a lot more time on each case than that.

As far as I know, yes.  I mean, I feel like I do, and after that quiz I had the #4 score out of 67 in our class, so apparantly I'm answering the questions right I suppose.  I'll see how that end of things holds up.  I guess I mostly want to know is if cases + class notes is pretty much it.  There seems to be a ton of unnecessary reading to get to the cases in each book, which I just gloss over.  I see everyone in else coming in with all that stuff in pages of notes.  And then in class they're all like secretaries banging away on their keyboards like total freaks.

I'm just trying to ascertain if the cases + taking notes on what the professor says in class is pretty much going to cover typically would be on an exam.

Like, when you say it's taking you several hours to 'get it' so to speak, can you give me an example of something, or some concept that held you up for a while?

[jeffjoe]

Assuming that the quizzes accurately measure your understanding.

It seems very likely that the quizzes are meant to check whether you read the material, not necessarily whether you understand the law.

It doesn't seem to me that a quizz can accurately measure your understanding of the law.

But what do I know.  I've been a law student for less than two weeks.

Do you understand the law involved in each case after you've done this?

If you do, you're brilliant.  I'm spending a lot more time on each case than that.

As far as I know, yes.  I mean, I feel like I do, and after that quiz I had the #4 score out of 67 in our class, so apparantly I'm answering the questions right I suppose.  I'll see how that end of things holds up.  I guess I mostly want to know is if cases + class notes is pretty much it.  There seems to be a ton of unnecessary reading to get to the cases in each book, which I just gloss over.  I see everyone in else coming in with all that stuff in pages of notes.  And then in class they're all like secretaries banging away on their keyboards like total freaks.

I'm just trying to ascertain if the cases + taking notes on what the professor says in class is pretty much going to cover typically would be on an exam.

Like, when you say it's taking you several hours to 'get it' so to speak, can you give me an example of something, or some concept that held you up for a while?

[eee]

If you are among the 0.01% of people who can put in no time studying and still do great in school, then wonderful. But you arent in law school to pass a class. you are in law school to learn a profession. How much more capable a lawyer could you become if you put in 5hrs a day of studying? how much better could you represent the interests of your client?

If you are paying the $150k to attend school... why not get your money's worth?

If someone else is paying for you, then you have been given an all-expense-paid trip to hawaii... why waste the gift by spending all your time in the hotel room watching tv? get out there and study!

[highball]

Well, I downloaded his final exam from '97.  It's pretty much the same format as the quiz, just longer.  Like, read this one pargraph scenerio and answer 2 to 3 questions or hypothetical changes of fact for each.  The cool thing is that he limits the # of words the response should be.  They're all like 120 or 250 word max responses.  It looked to me was that the only difference was that he had a whole semesters worth of case law, so he jumbled up multiple issues from various sections into each question.

Maybe our legal writing assignment is a better indication.  It is one of those 'pretend to be a lawyer' deals where you write a memo to an associate.  Client comes in, had to use 5 previous cases to draft an opinion to send to the partner, etc.  25% of the grade for the class this term.  After we got the 1st draft back mine had like 1/5th of the red marks as everyone else and she said that when we have our 1-on-1 scheduled to talk before the final version that she wanted to talk to me about law review.

All I did for the memo was look over a couple of examples on law memorandums I found with Google, looked up the case briefs in Westlaw, used common sense to apply the law to the facts, threw in a 'from the other side' perspective, and wrote in active v. passive like she said to.  I made an outline of the paper I was going to write, so it was sorta like filling in the blanks at that point.  It seemed like the rest of my class lost massive amounts of time actually reading each case  

[jeffjoe]

One question.  When you are a lawyer, how will you determine what law applies and how to use it?  In other words, how will you as a lawyer learn the law?

[highball]

If you are among the 0.01% of people who can put in no time studying and still do great in school, then wonderful. But you arent in law school to pass a class. you are in law school to learn a profession. How much more capable a lawyer could you become if you put in 5hrs a day of studying? how much better could you represent the interests of your client?

Well, I'm doing some work.  I just am not wasting my time reinventing the wheel.  I did the briefs by hand the 1st week and they turned out fine.  Then I got a Legalines the second week and using that resource was no different in result for me in terms of content for my outline + understanding, so I started using that because it knocks off a ton of time each night.

What I'd like to know is that is the scope of what I'm putting in my outline (casebriefs + prof. notes + little tabs in my federal rules book) pretty much covers things.

I get the whole "if you brief your own cases you'll learn it better", but assume for a second learning it isn't the issue, outline content is, am I getting enough content in?

[jeffjoe]

I think what we are to learn is how to research and understand the law, keeping in mind the law changes constantly.

If you were a lawyer, would you use Legallines to research your clients case? 

I think our briefs among other things are practice in researching and understanding the law from the original source documents.