LEEWS- helpful?

[likewise]

Reading the cases, talking to profs in office hours, reviewing / taking old exams, writing outlines, study groups...NOT LEEWS

[jacy85]

Reading the cases, talking to profs in office hours, reviewing / taking old exams, writing outlines, study groups...NOT LEEWS

This is the problem with people who say LEEWS can hurt your grades.  You still have to do all of this to understand the substance of the law, and what your professor specifically looks for in exams. 

LEEWS doesn't do it for you, but for some reason some people apparently get complacent and think this is all they have to do aside from outlining.  But if you don't know how to organize your exam answers in a way that enables you to cover all the points in a coherent manner, you're not going to get As no matter how well you know the substantive law from office hours, reading, study groups, etc.  LEEWS helps you organize that substance into a systematic method to write an exam answer effectively.   

Reviewing and taking old exams is great, but if you have 2 exams w/ the EXACT same information, but one is sort of all over the place, and vaguely using IRAC, and the other is clearly organized issue by issue, addressing each side and forking answers so as to leave no possibility uncovered re: outcomes, I'd be willing to bet good money which one would get the better grade.

[aman49]

No its not helpful, and may give you a bad grade.

Do you have any proof? I didn't think so. On the contrary there is tons of evidence that LEEWS works, on this board and elsewhere. They even give a money back guarantee if you aren't in the 1/3 of your class after 1L exams.

With this in mind, Just read "The 8 Secretes of Top Exam Performance" by Yale Professor Whitebread, it costs 10 dollars, and 1/100 of the time, and ia 1,000 times more effective.

It gives you key general tips on preparing and writing an exam, not some specific formula that all-too-often goes against the grain of what the professor has taught, or style of exam. LEEWS may be helpful but can also f* up ur grades, the risk is urs.--M.

Wow, so you recommend what is widely regarded as one of the crappiest exam prep books on the market? The reason LEEWS is so successful is that blowhards like Whitebread spew generalities that don't really help anyone. In the internet era you can find out everything in his book by just surfing the web.

I'm inclined to believe the large percentage of people who took LEEWS and kicked ass over one person who claims it can f**k up your grades. If you want to tell me why it can ruin my grades, I'd love to hear it.

[broken]

I just don't think the information in LEEWS is worth $150. There's good advice in there--match up all the conflict pairings, don't get bogged down in the question, learn how to write concise legal principles in an outline, do lots of practice exams--but c'mon. So much of that is common sense.

If it were $25 or $50, I would say go ahead and do it. But $150 is way too much money.

[aman49]

I just don't think the information in LEEWS is worth $150. There's good advice in there--match up all the conflict pairings, don't get bogged down in the question, learn how to write concise legal principles in an outline, do lots of practice exams--but c'mon. So much of that is common sense.

If it were $25 or $50, I would say go ahead and do it. But $150 is way too much money.

FWIW I got LEEWS on eBay for $35.

[Mina]

LEEWS didn't f-up my grades (I did pretty well), but it could have, its a complex system that degrades exam-taking, giving the appearance of craftiness, when in reality, you can really back-urself into corner by wasting away precious minutes spotting issues that u think are there but do not exist, and instilling urself foolhardy confidence.

"Blender" "UBE" the man has taken turds and dressed them in radiance. Really, conflict-parring is OK, but its bull, all of it really is a waste of time on the exam & outside of it, I much rather read my notes practice exams & make my own free-flowing outline--instead o thinking so linearly, everything that man says is simply know the law & apply it, and if u did well using lEEWS, you could have done much better w/out it, that is, ur A- could have been an A+ if u didn't waste those minutes on minsucile issues like LEEWS says so.
He just took IRAC, and made it five-times as complex as it needs to be. Sentence at a time, and basic outlines & thinking before each one, i really didn't need to pay $100 for that nonsense.     

[jacy85]

if u did well using lEEWS, you could have done much better w/out it, that is, ur A- could have been an A+ if u didn't waste those minutes on minsucile issues like LEEWS says so.     

Not so much in my case, since I got a 4.0 the second semester of 1L (when I really got LEEWS down pat).  Hard to do much better than that.     

That's fine that LEEWS didn't work great for you; perhaps you're just not a linear thinker and the system wasn't the best for how your brain processes problems.  But this blanket statement is a bit much.

[Mina]

Well thats really nice that you got a 4.0, but I reasonably doubt it was due to LEEWS. The technique is a waste of valuable time, it can cause you to overlook key-facts and see the test not wholistically, paying too much attention to possibly made-up issues and too little focus on writing. 

Don't get me wrong, if the teacher wants to see dialectic then may-be LEEWS is helpful, but it seems to me, all he is saying is to Look at both points of view, outline, and see what issue you think are applicable. --> His whole superiority complex thing, not feeling it.  If one get A's with LEEWS one surely can them w/out it, its a question of degree & the "right stuff."

[jacy85]

Well thats really nice that you got a 4.0, but I reasonably doubt it was due to LEEWS. The technique is a waste of valuable time, it can cause you to overlook key-facts and see the test not wholistically, paying too much attention to possibly made-up issues and too little focus on writing. 

Don't get me wrong, if the teacher wants to see dialectic then may-be LEEWS is helpful, but it seems to me, all he is saying is to Look at both points of view, outline, and see what issue you think are applicable. --> His whole superiority complex thing, not feeling it.  If one get A's with LEEWS one surely can them w/out it, its a question of degree & the "right stuff."

Uh...and who the hell are you to say why I did or did not get a 4.0 second semester 1L?  You know nothing about me, my study habits, etc., and I'm in a much better position to make "reasonable" judgments on the reasons behind my success. If the LEEWS method is used appropriately, it does NOT waste time and does not cause you to overlook key facts.  If you're making up issues, overlooking key facts, etc., then you're doing a poor job taking your exam.  That's not LEEWS's problem, or any other exam "system's problem, it's the student's.

Again, I stand by what I said before.  LEEWS may not work well for people who think completely nonlinearly; not every method absolutely works for everyone.  I never said it did.  But it's AN effective method when applied with proper preparation and proper application, like everything else in law school.

[DuckHuntinLawyer]

I think it would be good for a 1L and for a lot of 1L exams. But I have taken some courses where LEEWS just couldn't be applied. I know they say it can be applied on every exam, but I don't think it can. Especially when the essay doesn't just give you a fact pattern and say "Discuss."

I have had a couple of exams where the professor wanted us to answer the problem in a very specific, methodical fashion. Had I applied LEEWS, I would have been bouncing around all over the place, which is not what the professor wanted.

Overall, I think its a pretty cool system, but know when to use it and when not to.