Study Time for L1 Classes

[J D]

Yeah, but still, there's always a degree of judgment involved on the part of students: part of writing a good exam is knowing which issues are worth spending a lot of time and analysis on, and which seem to be straightforward enough to dispose of with maybe a sentence or 2 of discussion. 

[philibusters]

typing fast is a advantage, but some classes its huge, others less so.  I thought property and contracts were the two most dense classes, followed by civ pro and con law, with crim law and torts being slightly easier, but its on a curve so you want to spend a lot of time on all your classes.

[@#$%, Fire, and Damnation.]

28 pages is asking for a swift kick in the shin. my god. i type insanely fast and accurately but i dont feel it is advantageous to write down every damn possibility. it just shows you have no guts and cant just pick something and be thorough about it. have a little faith in yourself.

Well AJ says...you're wrong.  It is adventageous and you will be taking full advantage I'm sure.  Think of it as playing the odds without the actual risk. You won't ever be given a fact pattern that you can nail down.  There will always be uncertainty built in.  So you play it safe and discuss all the possibilities.  You play max bet on all the pay lines because you can.  I certainly outperformed people who typed more pages then me.  But it was the students who actually could spot issues and knew the material AND had the typing advantage that really kicked ass.  On a level playing field that doesn't happen.  I had 3 mandatory handwritten exams first year and aced those.  I did fine in the others but I got a couple Bs in classes I should have had higher grades in I believe for that reason.

[BoscoBreaux]

I'm starting at Temple in Fall of '06 (it was also my ugrad school) and am deff looking forward to my return to North Broad.

But I was wondering which classes required the most investment in both reading and prep (for instance is Torts more time consuming then Contracts)? If so is there anything I can do for the last few months of summer to get a leg up on the more time consuming L1 classes?

First, enjoy your summer. Don't read anything, or only enough to fight off boredom. That is exactly what I'd recommend doing the summer before OneL. Soon, you won't even have time to eat much less relax!

Second, One L classes. Each one is different, and all too often which professor you get will determine how much time you will spend. I had a real pill for Civil Procedure. We met twice a week, for a total of three hours, but the depth with which he went into the material, coupled with the volumes of pages he assigned, and "special presentations," which were almost like mini mock trials, demanded probably 16 hours of prep time for each week. So, we're talking 19 hours per week for Civ Pro.
For torts and contracts, it was about 12 hours per week each.
Property was good in that the professor didn't assign much reading, but the cases went on forever and he demanded the most irrelevant facts to be memorized, so it was 13 hours per week for me.
Legal writing was my "blow off" class. I spent probably an average of 10 hours a week, but of course there were weeks where I had to put in 40 just for this class alone which big papers were due.

Total : 66 hours per week average, not including study time for exams.

Note, this doesn't include time for outlining, which is in many ways more important than the above 66 hours. I didn't outline as much as I should have, but 5 hours per week would be a pretty good minimum for me.

[philibusters]

I agree in legal skills when a paper is due you have to put in some time, but I gotta wonder what you were doing for 10 hours a week when nothing was due-usually I had like a 2-3 hours of reading for week for my legal skills (a lot of times I would skim it too, especially if it was technical and they didn't expect us to memorize it)-I can't imagine another school bumping that to ten hours.

[BoscoBreaux]

I agree in legal skills when a paper is due you have to put in some time, but I gotta wonder what you were doing for 10 hours a week when nothing was due-usually I had like a 2-3 hours of reading for week for my legal skills (a lot of times I would skim it too, especially if it was technical and they didn't expect us to memorize it)-I can't imagine another school bumping that to ten hours.

The 10 hours was the average, taking into consideration both the slow and busy weeks. In fact, a couple of weeks, I didn't spent more than an hour.

[J D]

Yeah, but still, there's always a degree of judgment involved on the part of students: part of writing a good exam is knowing which issues are worth spending a lot of time and analysis on, and which seem to be straightforward enough to dispose of with maybe a sentence or 2 of discussion. 

Good point, and a common mistake many make first semester, don't be one of them.

Besides, from what I remember, in his later years, George III came to be known as one of Britain's most beloved monarchs.

it is july, my friend, and time to choose a new dictator.  i recommend george iii since it is independence day tomorrow

Ok, ok, but no George III, I'm a registered Tory ya know...

[slacker]

I think for a question like this, it's time to use the oft' repeated phrase: it depends.

[tacojohn]

Yeah, but still, there's always a degree of judgment involved on the part of students: part of writing a good exam is knowing which issues are worth spending a lot of time and analysis on, and which seem to be straightforward enough to dispose of with maybe a sentence or 2 of discussion. 

Good point, and a common mistake many make first semester, don't be one of them.

It depends on the professor.  All my professors told their classes during an exam review whether they wanted depth or breadth.  Some said explicitly "I would rather you hit on every issue than fully discuss all issues."  Others said "I want you to fully flesh out arguments before moving on to a new one."  If you are expected to hit as many issues as possible, and there's no page limit, then it basically becomes a race to get as many possibilities on paper, especially if the professor says "I look for what's on my grading key and don't penalize for extraneous writing."