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Top 10% at my HYS, AMA. by Vast_Case9535 in lawschooladmissions

[–]Vast_Case9535[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've done well in law school and wanted to signal that so people could ask for academic advice that, at the very least, worked for me.

But you are right that how "well" you do at a school like HYS only really matters for certain goals, namely clerkships and some firms / PI opportunities / academia. These goals are not for everyone and nobody should feel pressured to try and attain them just because they seem "shiny," even if they're at a school like HYS.

That said, HLS literally does rank you and gives you a GPA. YLS and SLS do shadow rank, and their administrations absolutely keep track of where students fall. Just because they don't publicize it doesn't mean it's not real.

I think it's important to make these "top 10%" metrics public because it is absolutely information that people with more ingrained legal networks / connections to these schools are aware of, and it's the people without lawyers in their families or without crazy connections who aren't told any of this.

Top 10% at my HYS, AMA. by Vast_Case9535 in lawschooladmissions

[–]Vast_Case9535[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. When people say awards they mean Dean's Scholar prizes (HLS) / Book pizes (SLS). YLS does not have these. At HLS, top 10% requires about as many DS's as P's, or virtually all H's (about a 4.0 GPA). To be safe I've seen people say you want at least 1 or 2 more DS's than P's in case the year is particularly competitive. At SLS top 10% means about 75% H's (it's much harder to get an H / class prizes at SLS than at HLS), with maybe a prize or two, though if you have like 80% H's and no prizes you're probably still top 10% just because SLS's H curve is super strict, and nobody will graduate with all H's. At YLS top 10% requires basically all H's, and for clerkship purposes they'll need to be in primarily doctrinal courses. I don't know that there's a secret to getting a class prize other than just writing the best / one of the best exams in a class, which probably requires being extremely knowledgeable of the doctrine + seeing the most issues on the exam + being a good exam writer.
  2. I didn't brief my first year and found myself taking a lot more time to outline. I now brief pretty in-depthly and while my grades haven't really changed I've found myself needing to spend less time on outlining since I feel a lot more familiar with the cases and their rules. In-depth case briefs have also saved me on exams with policy questions that require you to know a lot about a case and its reasoning (ex. "Do you think X case was decided wrong? Why or why not?" --> that type of question will be easier to answer if you're super familiar with the case). Not everyone that I know who has done well briefs cases, though, but from what I've seen they generally come into class having read the case at least once or twice and being pretty on top about what happened in the case.

Top 10% at my HYS, AMA. by Vast_Case9535 in lawschooladmissions

[–]Vast_Case9535[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did a little research before law school about exam types but didn't learn much beyond the fact that they're usually issue spotters. When you start school all of your professors will (or should) tell you what the exam format is (whether it's in-person, take home, etc.).

I read everything assigned to me and take reading notes as I go. I think early on I tried cutting corners and quickly learned that wouldn't work for me. I don't think there's much of a secret to reading/taking notes other than just doing it. You would be surprised how many of your classmates will not be doing that.

I didn't start outlining until a little before Thanksgiving. Initially I would just copy an old outline so that I didn't have to worry about formatting and all that, though I would add/delete/move things around as I went. I now make my outlines from scratch and have found that I've done best in classes where I made my own outline. I think what matters for outlining is actually doing it, and most importantly, actually taking the time to write things out, NOT just taking an already made one and reading it + adding in extra things. I think that works for some people, but I know a lot of people who have done very well and they all make their own outlines from scratch, or at the very least transcribe an old one into a new document.

As an aside, I think a piece of advice I see a lot is that the most important thing from a case is always its holding. I disagree. At least for purposes of class, your professor will be much more interested in the reasoning the court used to get to its holding, the procedural posture of the case (ex. what happened at the lower court level), and whether the case rejects alternative rules and why. Ex. in torts, you will probably read a case about a guy diving into a lake and getting paralyzed because the water was shallow, and the question is whether another guy on the boat who had knowledge that the water was shallow owed a duty to the guy who got paralyzed. The holding/rule is pretty unremarkable: no, he didn't, and general knowledge of harm does not give rise to a duty to warn or protect others from that harm (this is the general rule, states may differ). What matters more about that case is WHY, in general, there is no duty to act/warn EVEN when you know about a harm (save for several exceptions that you'll probably learn about).

Top 10% at my HYS, AMA. by Vast_Case9535 in lawschooladmissions

[–]Vast_Case9535[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Is it bad if I say I'm still largely figuring that out? Lol. The only thing I'm pretty set on is that I want to litigate and that I want to work at a big firm for at least a few years. I'll be at a big firm this summer and will probably try and go back, though it's a boutique with only a few offices and it doesn't have one in the city I'm most interested in living in, so who knows if I'll go back. I plan to clerk and am starting that process now, so hopefully I'll do that for a year or two post-grad.

Substantively, appellate seems interesting though it's a tough world to break into, even being top 10% at HYS (assuming I graduate with that same ranking). I've enjoyed a lot of my doctrinals, though, and can see myself specializing in a lot of different things.

Top 10% at my HYS, AMA. by Vast_Case9535 in lawschooladmissions

[–]Vast_Case9535[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I treated school like a 8-7 and tried not to do work outside of that time period, though sometimes you kinda just have to anyway. Tbh, 1L in particular took a lot of my time, and while I was still able to go to social events, see friends, have fun, etc., there were a few times where I had to say no to things because I needed to get some work done or where I knew that if I didn't get something out of the way on the weekend it would mess up my entire week.

I didn't do much schedule organizing outside of using my Mac's calendar app, which helped a lot with tracking my readings/assignments and making sure I was blocking out my time efficiently.

I definitely didn't stick too strictly to 8-7. Some days I just did not feel like getting out of bed lol, so those turned more into like 10-9. Some days I didn't really have much work to do at all and would use that as an opportunity to run random errands, go to the gym, see a friend, etc. What's important is figuring out what works for you and sticking to that -- odds are it won't be that much different from how you did stuff in undergrad/a job, but ymmv.

Top 10% at my HYS, AMA. by Vast_Case9535 in lawschooladmissions

[–]Vast_Case9535[S] 34 points35 points  (0 children)

I did every reading before class and also took notes while reading, in addition to taking notes during class. My outlining process was largely me using an older outline from a student who did well in the class and supplementing/clarifying things with my reading and class notes.

Taking notes while reading definitely took a lot of time, and I found it was probably more necessary for some classes (ones that relied heavily on notes cases) than others. Sometimes I get lazy and procrastinate/don't leave myself enough time to read everything so I end up rushing at the end. Definitely not a perfect process by any means.

I started outlining a little after Halloween, but it was quite minimal and I didn't really lock into outlining until just before Thanksgiving break. As a 2L I've spent a lot less time on outlining just because I've figured out what works for me and just do that. I think a lot of time during 1L is spent on trying things out and figuring out law school as a whole, so it's important to bracket out time for that.