Spring is here at last and that means longer days, hanging outside and…oh yeah, law school exams are just a few months away. Our new podcast, Law School Exam Prep: Advice to Help You Make the Grade, has some great advice for 1Ls about to gear up for Round II of those challenging first year exams.
We asked our guests about the most common mistakes 1Ls make in preparing for law school exams. The answer will sound familiar to a lot of 1Ls struggling to put it all together. Most students get caught up in individual cases, and they don’t organize properly.
Ursula Furi-Perry is the Director of Academic Support and the Director of the Bar Essay Writing Program at Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. She explains how seeing the big picture during your first year is a skill to hone to get you through the rest of law school. “I think that one mistake is not recognizing the amount of work that’s going to be required when one starts law school or perhaps just not having a seriousness or purpose about it that one is really required to have in order to approach the curriculum and the learning style, the differences in terms of learning environment that a student may be used to from the undergraduate degree. And all of that, I think, goes into some of these mistakes that they make. I believe that students, as soon as you figure out basically what you’re doing in terms of briefing and reading cases and trying to call the rule of law from a case and figuring out what that case really stands for and why you’re reading it, as soon as you figure that out in your first semester, at that point, it is time to start thinking about putting together the information. Basically, it’s being able to see the forest from the trees. It’s being able to put the information together in a way that makes sense to you that is comprehensive and yet concise enough.”
This podcast is produced in collaboration with Ms. JD and features guests Ursula Furi-Perry, the Director of Academic Support and the Director of the Bar Essay Writing Program at Massachusetts School of Law at Andover and one of Ms. JD’s 2010 Writers in Residence. Guests also include Nicolle Kownacki, 3L at UCLA School of Law and Epiphanie Marquez, 3L at The University of Texas at Austin School of Law, both 2010 Ms. JD Fellowship winners.
Also on the show is Barbara Lasoff, Senior Series Editor for Wolters Kluwer Law and Business (Emanuel Outlines).