Author: admin

First-Year Outlines

~ admin

Outline Obsession

First year of law school offers some significant challenges.  Many students find this year to be one of the most difficult years of their academic lives.

One common—if not near-universal—response is that of outline obsession:  first-year (1L) students tend to get lured into a never-ending attempt to create the perfect outline.  This obsession gets fueled by several different players in the first-year scene, including:

  • well-meaning law professors who remember obsessing over their own outlines and reason that, since they did it, it must be the thing to do
  • commercial publishers of law outlines (e.g., Gilbert’s, Emmanuel’s) who have a profit motive for fueling the frenzy
  • second-year (2L) and third-year (3L) law students who, like their professors, subscribe to the it’s-right-because-I-did-it theory
  • other first-year students who are daunted by the amount of material they need to know and grasp onto the notion of outline omnipotence as a way to manage the stress and anxiety of first year of law school

Benefits and Drawbacks

Not surprisingly, there are both benefits and drawbacks relating to obsessing over one’s outline.  More to come on both the good and the bad of first-year outlines….

(Original publication date:  August 16, 2011 (LEX))

Grammar: It’s Not Just for 8th Grade

~ admin

Good Writing Is Good

Law school research and writing courses rarely focus on the mechanics of writing.  Instead, these courses generally devote time to discussion of law-specific material, such as legal citations and legal research tools.

Unfortunately, this approach leaves some important—very important—matters to chance.

The basics of good writing, which are (hopefully!) covered before and during one’s high school years, do not simply go away on graduation day.  These basics remain fundamental to effective written communication, and, therefore, remain fundamental to law school and bar exam essays.

If It’s Not Covered, Do It Yourself

For students who do not get a basic review of good writing in their legal research and writing classes—and that means most law students—, self-help is mandatory.  Self-help approaches include:

  • undertake a serious review of basic English mechanics and style on one’s own
  • hire a writing tutor
  • take a class on good writing, either through the university associated with one’s law school or through a third-party provider

But skipping the basics is not the right choice—even if law schools often choose that approach.

Original publication date:  August 15, 2011 (LEX))

Occlumency for LSAT, Law School, and the Bar Exam

~ admin

Test-Taking Distractions Don’t Always Come from the Outside

In recent articles, the external distractions that can from from a testing center facility or a proctor have been discussed.  But these distractions can be relatively easy to handle compared to the distractions that come from within one’s own mind.

Clearing and Closing Your Mind:  Occlumency for LSAT, Law School, and the Bar Exam

Internal sources of distractions include several different types of worry, such as:

  • loose ends: the test-taker can’t concentrate during a part of the test because anxieties about not having paid the rent, not watered the plants, or not made travel or lodging arrangments
  • underpreparation remorse: as the test begins, the test-taker is overcome with regret about not having practiced and studied more
  • personal baggage:  the test-taker has under-performed on some previous test and believes that there’s something inherently “wrong” with him or her that will doom him or her to failure on the present test
  • habitual self-denigration: some test-takers have a more generalized form of baggage in which they have become perpetual—and vicious—critics of themselves, telling themselves they are dumb, a failure, a loser almost constantly; these antagonistic voices and messages can reach a debilitating pitch when a difficult task requiring a lot of concentration—such as the LSAT, a law school essay, or the MBE—is at hand

One part of the solution to all of the above distractions is essentially a real-world version of  “occlumency,” a form of magic resistance from the Harry Potter fantasy book and movie series.  Wizards in the Harry Potter world are taught to block others out of their minds rather than let their thoughts be meddles with.  Test-takers need to do the same, i.e., to treat all of the above distracting thoughts as though they were just little “curses” or “spells” that are being cast against you in order to take you away from your work.  Dispense with them accordingly.

Not Easy, But Worth It

Building up this mental resistance to distraction is easier said than done.  But the first step is recognizing that each of the above mental distractions is counter-productive.

Each one of these thoughts takes points out of final score by burning up your time and diluting your focus.  These thoughts are not friends, not teaching you valuable lessons, not helping you to develop a stronger character or to be responsible.  They’re just undermining your abilities and hurting your scores.  They are, in short, point stealers.

As such, they are not worth one moment of your time or one heartbeat’s worth of emotional energy on test day.

(Original publication date:  August 12, 2011 (LEX))

Testing Centers: Some Warnings

~ admin

Things Go Wrong that Are Not within a Student’s Control

As discussed in a recent article about LSAT time warnings and bar exam time warnings, test preparation companies have a commercial incentive to ensure that things go smoothly for students.  But this admirable work by test prep companies can be misleading for LSAT students, bar exam students, and other people preparing for standardized tests. Many things can and do go wrong on test day that have nothing to do with the test-takers themselves, and shielding students from these difficulties may give students a false sense of security.

Test Centers

Just as proctors can have issues, the physical testing facilities and the providers of these facilities can also give rise to extra-test problems.  Such difficulties include:

  • test center is too hot, too cold
  • test center has bad desks or chairs (e.g., unstable, too small)
  • test center has to change rooms and relocate students at last minute
  • test center is very close to an external noise source (e.g., nearby construction, a noisy convention event)
  • test center causes other ambient distractions and discomforts (e.g., mildewy)

The Answer:  Practice Being Unflappable

Taking the bar exam, LSAT, MPRE, or a law school exam is tough enough without the addition of such external obstacles.  Such obstacles are particularly disturbing when they are unique to one test-taker or a small group of test-takers rather than presented to everyone.

But getting upset doesn’t do any good.  No one gets extra credit for having had to endure unfortunate testing conditions.

Part of effective preparation is, therefore, developing an unflappable mindset.  Resolve that, no matter what surprises come your way on test day, you will waste no mental cycles on or offer any emotional resistance to these difficulties.  Treat all such distractions as part of the test itself.

(Original publication date:  August 11, 2011 (LEX))

More about Exam / Test Proctors

~ admin

More Dangers of Practicing with Good Proctors

Practice and diagnostic testing is an important part of preparation for the LSAT, bar exam, and other standardized tests.  Being able to perform during test-day conditions is, of course, crucial, and experiencing multiple rounds of “dress rehearsal” helps to improve such performance.

Test preparation companies, meanwhile, naturally want to impress their students by hiring proctors for practice tests who are dependably punctual, friendly, and otherwise professional.

Unfortunately, this habit may be good for a test preparation company’s image, but it’s not good for students.

Test-Day Troubles

The reality is that, on the day of the actual test, the proctor you get may not be at all like the proctor with whom you practiced.  LEX students routinely report proctor-related disruptions on the day of the actual LSAT or bar exam.  Some such problems include:

  • hostile proctor who had a verbal argument during or immediately before the time the LSAT or bar exam clock was running
  • late proctor who kept students waiting for the start of or return to the test
  • proctor who smelled like smoke
  • disorganized proctor who bumbled logistics of the test
  • forgetful proctor who did not provide one (or more) of the time warnings upon which students tend to rely

At LEX, we half-jokingly tell students that test preparation companies should instruct their proctors to do everything wrong—or should simply hire people who are not able to handle the basic tasks of proctors, thereby ensuring that one or more of the above problems will arise.  Such a practicing environment would prepare students more fully than does an atmosphere in which everything runs smoothly.

(Original publication date:  August 8, 2011 (LEX))

Test-Taking Mandatory “Tip”: Do Not Count on Time Warnings

~ admin

The Dangers of Time Warnings

Many test preparation companies—whether for the LSAT, bar exam, or other standardized test—provide proctors who call out or write on the board how much time is left in a given section of the test.  These proctors are a pretty standard part of the landscape for diagnostic tests and timed practice exams. Unfortunately, students tend to learn to rely on these warnings, and that’s dangerous, because there might be no such warning on test day.

Thus, while professionalism may argue in favor of test prep companies providing this service, students must heed the following advice.

On the actual day of the test—LSAT, bar exam, MPRE, SAT, or whatever—, you cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot rely upon the test proctors to keep track of time for you.

If these employees of the given test-maker make a mistake and forget to warn you that there are “five minutes remaining” or “thirty seconds remaining,” you will get no sympathy from the test-makers themselves.  In other words, you will not be able to get additional points on the test for this oversight.

The Bottom Line

If you lose points that you could have gotten if you’d been apprised of the time remaining, those points are lost for good.  Don’t take that risk.  ALWAYS keep track of the time yourself, and be sure to get in the habit of doing so by practicing accordingly.

(Original publication date:  August 3, 2011 (LEX))

LSAT Intensity

~ admin

While the SAT, GRE, MPRE, bar exam and numerous other standardized tests are difficult in their own ways, the LSAT offers some challenges that set it apart from most standardized tests.

One such distinction is that the LSAT does not test your memory, at least not in an overt way.  For instance, the bar exam requires that you memorize many rules of law and then competently reproduce these rules of law when writing your bar exam essays.  The LSAT requires no such recall.

It should be noted, however, that the LSAT does require a great deal of memory in the form of a highly developed command of the English language and vocabulary.  But this reality is true of any exam that has a reading comprehension component.

Instead of testing memory, the LSAT tests one’s ability to reason through problems on the spot in real time.  In other words, the test selects for people who are good at what we might call colloquially “thinking on their feet.”

Given this emphasis on real-time thinking, the LSAT calls for test-takers to prepare in the way that a performing artist or an athlete prepares.  Cultivating the ability to maintain a high level of concentration or intensity of thought for the duration of the test is, in short, a key aspect of effective LSAT prep.

(Original publication date:  August 1, 2011 (LEX))

LSAT Prep | Reading Comprehension

~ admin

Introduction

The law school admission test (LSAT) consists of four scored sections, each section representing one of three section types: (i) logical reasoning, (ii) analytical reasoning, oftentimes called “logic games “, and (iii) reading comprehension or “reading comp”.   This blog entry will focus on the reading comprehension section of the LSAT.

Reading Comprehension Overview

Reading comprehension accounts for approximately 28% of the scored questions on the LSAT, while logical reasoning makes up about 50%, and logic games about 22%.  Reading comprehension is therefore the second most important section of the LSAT in terms of numerical impact on one’s score.

However, reading comprehension seems to have become increasingly difficult in recent years, making it the “haymaker” section of the LSAT for many students, including those who are scoring well into the 170s. This increase in difficulty may be attributable to a heightened recognition by the test makers that reading comprehension is an indispensable and top-value skill for the successful law student.  But whatever the reason, students must be aware that reading comprehension cannot be treated as an afterthought in one’s study regimen—which is all too commonly done as a result of the over-emphasis of the “games” section by most LSAT prep companies.

Check this blog periodically for more information on how you can “Test at Your Best” on actual LSAT day.

Happy reading—and comprehending!

LSAT and Bar Prep | Constructing and Destroying Arguments

~ admin

One key skill tested in the logical reasoning section category of the LSAT is that of building—and tearing down—arguments.  This skill can appear on the test in many ways, including:
__________

  1. Making a statement of facts into an argument, either by drawing an inference or by providing support to an unsupported assertion
  2. Finding an additional premise
  3. Presenting a “counter-premise”, i.e., a statement that would serve as a premise in a counter-argument

__________

This skill also plays a significant role in bar exam essay, performance test, and MBE sections.

Check this blog periodically for discussion of the argument-construction/destruction skill, how to develop it, how to spot questions that test it, and how to separate good from bad answer choices.

(Original publication date:  July 20, 2011 (LEX))

Things that Make Law School Cool

~ admin

Invisible Strings

Experiencing a great novel (I’d recommend Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell) for the first time can be very exciting.  Each plot twist fuels a need to turn the page and find out what happens next.

But once a person has had that first-time experience, he or she may have hard time recapturing that thrill by re-reading the same book.  All those invisible strings that tied the plot together have now been revealed.  The mystery, the illusion, and the naïvete have been stripped away.

One reason why law school is cool is its inherent process of similarly stripping away illusions and revealing how things really work.  The invisible strings that attach to each and every person are made plain, never to be re-concealed to those who have been initiated.

Constitutional rights are a good example.  Before law school, one’s next-door neighbor appears to be just a person who likes to grow tomatoes and to play with her three cats.  But after law school, her appearance has changed:  she wears  plates of armor and carries a sword and a shield wherever she goes.  The law student asks himself or herself, “How did I never notice all that stuff before?”

That formerly invisible armor includes a right to free speech that was designed by some of the brightest thinkers of the last millennium; was embodied in a document that describes one of the longest-running, still-active governmental structures on the planet; has been defended by millions of soldiers, guns, tanks and planes; and is excercised every day of the latest political campaign, protest, demonstration, or debate.

Other such armor includes a right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure by police; to trial by jury; and so on.  These mechanisms—just abstract and theoretical to the student entering law school—have become palpable, real, and unmistakable to the student exiting law school.  He or she can never go back to the way things were, back to viewing his neighbor in the same way, any more than he or she can re-readHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for the first time.

And that’s one thing that makes law school cool.

(Original publication date:  July 19, 2011 (LEX))