The primary reason is that a 1L con law class is maybe covering 400-500 pages worth of stuff, you won't need to do the whole thing.

a lot of my class stopped reading the actual book and just reads this.

kind of dumb to make a confusing text and then a book which is roughly the same size but explains stuff/makes sense. right?

According to an e-mail from administration, my sweat should end within 24 hours. Said everything should be in by Saturday morning. Here's hoping to close this report card out strong. 60% of my 1L GPA will be determined once these grades are all out.

UPDATE: Less than 10 minutes later, I get an e-mail saying that one of my classes will not have their grade in until next week either. Awesome.

And...the exam that I thought I aced more clearly than any of the others...I got a B-. WTF. B- is as low as this prof ever goes, and he basically assured us that it's almost impossible to get down below B- on his exams. So, I landed at the bottom of this class. Top 10% just flew out the window at warp speed.

Beat: my last remaining grade to find out about...also judged by this same professor. I'm bracing myself for the worst.

Since it's show and tell, I got a C in Civpro, thought I had done well on final but tanked midterm. I also got a C in legal writing. That was just desserts for mentioning on the initial personal essay that me being a former English teacher made me a really good writer.

My team was co-ed, still sucked. The girls were cool but the guys were toolbags. Took themselves far too seriously. It seems like I shouldn't play this year b/c I'll probably have a terrible time.

Anyone else get inconsistent grades?

I got:
A in Contracts(4 credits)
A in Torts(4 credits)
S+ in Legal Writing (2 credits)
B- in Criminal Law(3 credits)
B- in Professional Responsibility (3 credits)

Based on the way my school curves, my A's were likely in the top 10% of each class, and my B-'s somewhere in the bottom 15%. My A classes had traditional essay spotter exams, whereas my B- classes were multiple choice, and short answer, respectively. Fortunately, I think my classes this semester will, for the most part, be traditional essay spotter exams.

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On a side note, does anyone have good advice for Con Law? My Con Law class has a pretty different feel to than all my other first year classes. The professor is really more of a property expert, but he does have a lot of expertise in American history. Consquently, he has spent a lot of time discussing the history and personalities surrounding the drafting of the constitution, as well as significant background/historical information of the cases we've covered so far. All of this is interesting, but probably has little relevance to the final.

Anyways, does anyone have advice besides read Chemerinsky's treatise? I used E&E and CALI with Torts and Contracts last semester, which really worked out well for me, but it seems with Con Law that most people recommend simply reading Chemerinsky's treatise. Which is fine, I guess, but I think I grasp material better when I learn it actively(eg E&E and CALI) as opposed to passively reading. Which has me even more concerned is that my professor doesn't seem to have any old exams available. The other reason I did very well in Contracts and Torts was I spent a lot of time working with old exams. Normally, I guess I would just use another professor's old exams, but this professor's exam is going to be a 7 hour take home, which makes me think it will be fairly different from most other exams. If anyone has advice, it would be much appreciated.

Is this a trick question? I got two A's and a B-. And a B+. Yes, you have company in the "inconsistent grades" department.

Some 1L that is in the same section as a friend of mine got every single letter grade: an A, B, C+, D+, F.

I believe that may be as inconsistent as you can get.....

I usually rank my classes in terms of effort, then rank them in terms of grade, and they are often the exact opposite. I made an A in a class where I literally missed the maximum number of allowed classes and when I did go, I sat in the back row and played Contra on the internet.

+1. I got an A in contracts, which is the class I deliberately skipped the most times. I got a B- in crim law, which is the only class I had perfect attendance in.

lol professional responsibility, what a joke of a class

in OH a supreme court judge got pulled over for DUI on her way to oral arguments, said "do you know who I am" and got NO PUNISHMENT AT ALL. Meanwhile defense attorneys get year suspensions for evidence withholding nonsense that prosecutors do all the ****ing time.

admissions question: if sitting on a waitlist, can it be helpful to visit the school? if so, what are you supposed to do to let them know you dropped by? i know you're supposed to write a letter to them to demonstrate continued interest, so just mention the visit in the letter? or is there any chance a school would bother with scheduling an interview with a waitlisted candidate?

Yes. And while you're there ask a bunch of questions about law review and the alumni network.

According to Dean Pless of University of Illinois and the thread he ran on Top Law Schools, it doesn't make a big difference...at least, if you're to assume that he's representative of other deans of admissions.

Essentially he said he's had at least as many people come off as douchebags and talk their way out of any chance as he's had people impress him and improve their chances, but that in most cases it just doesn't matter...once you're waitlisted, you're going to have to have the luck of others withdrawing and the gaps in their class being best filled by your numbers (so if they're more concerned about their LSAT index based on who's committed so far, and your LSAT is the better part of your numbers, your odds are better, etc).

Visits, etc., probably are more helpful if a school truly wonders whether you'd care about going there because they're sometimes protecting their yield by WL'ing you, but if I remember right you're probably talking about some top 10 schools, right? I doubt that any of them yield protect, so that's probably no issue here.

Story of my (academic) life. Law school's funny that way, and part of the reason why I'm in favor of no grades situations.

FWIW, I was waitlisted. I scheduled an interview/visit/tour with the director of admissions and was admitted.

Got a call from my boss at 7:30 on Sunday night. He was at work. Awesome.

Did anyone here do a study abroad summer semester after their 1L year? As of now I'll be picking up 4 credits in a program the first half of the summer and I'm looking to stay in Europe as a guest student during the second half.

Any good recommendations or experiences would be welcome. Also... is this a solid plan or am I not doing it (law school) right?

I went abroad after my 1L year. It was a good time. I went to the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, with side trips to Edinburgh and Sardinia. Very nice to get out of the country for five weeks. I went to London and Paris afterwards. You'll probably love it, but a lot of it depends on the other people on the trip with you.

fyp

fwiw i just spoke with a friend who is a 3rd or 4th year associate at a top vault firm who told me biglaw people look down on study abroad during 2L OCI. he highly, highly recommended i do not do it.

Mr Mike Schecket used the same Criminal Law book as us, Dressler. Is there no better supplement?

I run so good.

I'm considering doing this, but I'm also very interested in international law. I have a German major, and my school does a program in Germany. Seems like a no brainer with the job market, yes?

I've heard that too; apparently study abroad looks like a vacation. At my school, there's a bulletin board where all the study abroads advertise. I recently saw a bunch of flyers for study abroad in Hawaii. Talk about dropping pretensions of academic seriousness. On the other hand, outside of biglaw, I have a feeling most lower level employers don't care that much about what you did your 1L summer, as long as it appears somewhat serious and law related. If you aren't aiming for biglaw, study abroad in Europe is probably okay.