ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness Forum

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by YCrevolution » Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:45 pm

..

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by fonzerelli » Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:48 pm

Without having to read the entire modified thread, can someone summarize for me why OperaS is awesome in a quick sentence?

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by thesealocust » Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:50 pm

fonzerelli wrote:Without having to read the entire modified thread, can someone summarize for me why OperaS is awesome in a quick sentence?
Dude she's like 8 feet tall.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by fonzerelli » Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:51 pm

thesealocust wrote:
fonzerelli wrote:Without having to read the entire modified thread, can someone summarize for me why OperaS is awesome in a quick sentence?
Dude she's like 8 feet tall.
Wow, amazon soprano. Is this self-tar verified? I'm not being skeptical, just motioning for evidence.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by Mal » Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:58 pm

fonzerelli wrote:Without having to read the entire modified thread, can someone summarize for me why OperaS is awesome in a quick sentence?
She is one of the most positive posters in history.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by OperaSoprano » Mon Jan 18, 2010 2:49 pm

thesealocust wrote:
fonzerelli wrote:Without having to read the entire modified thread, can someone summarize for me why OperaS is awesome in a quick sentence?
Dude she's like 8 feet tall.
8 feet tall? Put down the magic mushrooms, mon ami. I'm 5'7".

And FYI, apologies for the curve are usually interpreted as admissions of having beat it. We all acknowledge that a normal curve would be expected to exist among a class of 80 students, but at least for us, the curve is manipulated and thrown off by a very strict cap on the number of As and A-s. This doesn't mean they are impossible to get, but an A in any given class means you were within the top 10%, and sometimes well within it, depending on the professor. What's worse is the mandated curve for our 16 person LRW class. It's just too small a sample for the curve to be natural and organic.

Also, I like giving you grief. :D And I do feel for Lxw. It's hard to imagine how awful he must have felt to start a thread like this.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by thesealocust » Mon Jan 18, 2010 2:55 pm

OperaSoprano wrote:What's worse is the mandated curve for our 16 person LRW class. It's just too small a sample for the curve to be natural and organic.
This is super true. Under roughly 30 students you shouldn't expect a normal distribution, so when the curve is applied to courses like that it's madness.

That being said, if you have no curve for those classes it encourages [strike]forum[/strike] class shopping, which is also bad. The moral of the story is all small seminars should be P/F, or evaluated with grades/remarks that aren't included in GPA.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by cubswin » Mon Jan 18, 2010 2:59 pm

OS, you are pretty awesome.

Perhaps you've discussed this elswhere, but do you get any grief about being a TLS mod (or having 7000 posts) from your fellow Fordham students? It seems like it'd be easy for your classmates to identify you (a pretty distinct story with the fashion major, a self-tar, even if its only about 10 pixels big), and that TLS might not have the greatest reputation with non-TLS law students.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by prezidentv8 » Mon Jan 18, 2010 3:13 pm

thesealocust wrote:
OperaSoprano wrote:What's worse is the mandated curve for our 16 person LRW class. It's just too small a sample for the curve to be natural and organic.
This is super true. Under roughly 30 students you shouldn't expect a normal distribution, so when the curve is applied to courses like that it's madness.

That being said, if you have no curve for those classes it encourages [strike]forum[/strike] class shopping, which is also bad. The moral of the story is all small seminars should be P/F, or evaluated with grades/remarks that aren't included in GPA.
Class shopping can be solved by HP/P/F with a tight cap on HP.

The argument about classes theoretically having normal curves anyway (and from what I've seen, the forced curves tend not to be normal) presupposes that variance is irrelevant.

Additionally, the distribution invariably will not be normal, in reality, in a fair proportion of classes.

There is also what I view to be the problem of everyone (generally) not having a clue how to write a law school exam when they begin, and thus the grading is based on who naturally has the best idea. This creates something of an independence problem in later grades as well, because at that point, only the people who did well know how to write a good exam, while others are forced to adjust to a greater degree. This would be less of a problem if 1st year grades did not weigh so heavily, as the gap should thin out in the end.

As for writing class, I think grading and turning in a few big assignments hinders the development of the actual skills because of the lack of feedback involved. What would be better is constant practice on smaller assignments, with constant feedback. Having two or three big shots over the course of the year to figure out how to be a good legal writer seems counterintuitive, when most mistakes I have seen on writing assignments so far were easily correctable.


Not that these are determinative (or necessarily valid) arguments against the curve, but just some thoughts and things to consider. Like I mentioned earlier, there are some good arguments for a curve as well.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by OperaSoprano » Mon Jan 18, 2010 3:22 pm

cubswin wrote:OS, you are pretty awesome.

Perhaps you've discussed this elswhere, but do you get any grief about being a TLS mod (or having 7000 posts) from your fellow Fordham students? It seems like it'd be easy for your classmates to identify you (a pretty distinct story with the fashion major, a self-tar, even if its only about 10 pixels big), and that TLS might not have the greatest reputation with non-TLS law students.
Nah, my classmates know the score by now. I'm better known for my in class antics, actually; I'm favored to be the most consistently freaked out person in my LRW section. :oops: Because I never hid my identity, there was never any drive to betray my secret. I don't think I've ever given my classmates reasons to dislike me, and in truth, many of them don't even know what TLS is. Shocking, right?

Being on here has been a gigantic net positive for me. I came to Fordham already knowing everyone here who had used the boards, and in my first week people actually sought me out to talk about the admissions process. It was really touching and sweet. Of course I also got to meet people around the country, and now have friends at more than a dozen law schools, from my nearest neighbors to far flung places like UVA, Chicago and Berkeley. If I ever found myself in trouble, I know I would never lack for advice or help. The people of TLS guided me and helped me study, and I was able to bring their advice to my own classmates. I owe them a tremendous debt. It is highly unlikely I would even be at Fordham if not for TLS.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by OperaSoprano » Mon Jan 18, 2010 3:24 pm

prezidentv8 wrote:
thesealocust wrote:
OperaSoprano wrote:What's worse is the mandated curve for our 16 person LRW class. It's just too small a sample for the curve to be natural and organic.
This is super true. Under roughly 30 students you shouldn't expect a normal distribution, so when the curve is applied to courses like that it's madness.

That being said, if you have no curve for those classes it encourages [strike]forum[/strike] class shopping, which is also bad. The moral of the story is all small seminars should be P/F, or evaluated with grades/remarks that aren't included in GPA.
Class shopping can be solved by HP/P/F with a tight cap on HP.

The argument about classes theoretically having normal curves anyway (and from what I've seen, the forced curves tend not to be normal) presupposes that variance is irrelevant.

Additionally, the distribution invariably will not be normal, in reality, in a fair proportion of classes.
This stuff, right here.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by fonzerelli » Mon Jan 18, 2010 3:25 pm

OperaSoprano wrote:
cubswin wrote:OS, you are pretty awesome.

Perhaps you've discussed this elswhere, but do you get any grief about being a TLS mod (or having 7000 posts) from your fellow Fordham students? It seems like it'd be easy for your classmates to identify you (a pretty distinct story with the fashion major, a self-tar, even if its only about 10 pixels big), and that TLS might not have the greatest reputation with non-TLS law students.
Nah, my classmates know the score by now. I'm better known for my in class antics, actually; I'm favored to be the most consistently freaked out person in my LRW section. :oops: Because I never hid my identity, there was never any drive to betray my secret. I don't think I've ever given my classmates reasons to dislike me, and in truth, many of them don't even know what TLS is. Shocking, right?

Being on here has been a gigantic net positive for me. I came to Fordham already knowing everyone here who had used the boards, and in my first week people actually sought me out to talk about the admissions process. It was really touching and sweet. Of course I also got to meet people around the country, and now have friends at more than a dozen law schools, from my nearest neighbors to far flung places like UVA, Chicago and Berkeley. If I ever found myself in trouble, I know I would never lack for advice or help. The people of TLS guided me and helped me study, and I was able to bring their advice to my own classmates. I owe them a tremendous debt. It is highly unlikely I would even be at Fordham if not for TLS.
Name change suggestion: AwesomeSoprano

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by GATORTIM » Mon Jan 18, 2010 7:42 pm

is OS hott?

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by OperaSoprano » Mon Jan 18, 2010 8:28 pm

You guys are too much. :oops:

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by frost » Mon Jan 18, 2010 8:47 pm

fonzerelli wrote:
OperaSoprano wrote:
cubswin wrote:OS, you are pretty awesome.

Perhaps you've discussed this elswhere, but do you get any grief about being a TLS mod (or having 7000 posts) from your fellow Fordham students? It seems like it'd be easy for your classmates to identify you (a pretty distinct story with the fashion major, a self-tar, even if its only about 10 pixels big), and that TLS might not have the greatest reputation with non-TLS law students.
Nah, my classmates know the score by now. I'm better known for my in class antics, actually; I'm favored to be the most consistently freaked out person in my LRW section. :oops: Because I never hid my identity, there was never any drive to betray my secret. I don't think I've ever given my classmates reasons to dislike me, and in truth, many of them don't even know what TLS is. Shocking, right?

Being on here has been a gigantic net positive for me. I came to Fordham already knowing everyone here who had used the boards, and in my first week people actually sought me out to talk about the admissions process. It was really touching and sweet. Of course I also got to meet people around the country, and now have friends at more than a dozen law schools, from my nearest neighbors to far flung places like UVA, Chicago and Berkeley. If I ever found myself in trouble, I know I would never lack for advice or help. The people of TLS guided me and helped me study, and I was able to bring their advice to my own classmates. I owe them a tremendous debt. It is highly unlikely I would even be at Fordham if not for TLS.
Name change suggestion: AwesomeSoprano
It's probably because I'm also a TLS user, but as a Fordham student, I would never give OS any grief for being a mod. In fact, I took it as a testament to her commitment and willingness to help anyone on the board, and she/her positive spirit has been nothing less than encouragement for me.

+100 for OS's awesomeness

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by 98234872348 » Mon Jan 18, 2010 9:15 pm

While I concur with OS and company in regards to the notion of reducing the amount of options available to professors to HP/P/F in the sense that it would reduce stress, I don't think that implementing such a strategy is plausible or practical.

Employers need a metric of distinguishing between candidates; while it may be feasible to abrogate grades at the finest legal institutions in the country, who attract the brightest and most talented aspiring attorneys, implementing such a measure at other schools would prove problematic for employers. It is clearly possible for someone with an abysmally low undergraduate gpa with a high lsat score - now, I'm not trying to ignite a debate on the correlation between lsat success and intelligence, or to take a crack at splitters, who can clearly have much success in LS (Jazzone comes to mind), but performing well in the lsat is not predictive of competence as a practicing attorney. Grades, graded on a tight curve that ranks students, are probably the best way an employer can evaluate a potential employee; it is the best tool an employer has to distinguish what candidate can best handle the rigors of a legal career (arguably, obviously). In addition, we live in a capitalist society; competition is, by definition, a integral part of such a society; if we distinguish the impact of grades, employers will find a way to evaluate students on some other basis that will inevitably evoke stress and anxiety in law school students.

While I can see why people complain of the stress that law school delivers, we are going into a career where everything we do will be subject to review by a judge. We're not all going to be litigators, but, ultimately, we're going to be competing against other lawyers to either win a case, or just to do a better job completing a due diligence report. Competition is the driving force of our profession; it is at the very heart of our society and there is no way to avoid it. Capitalists strive to rank, organize, and evaluate; I mean, we do it every day, just in our preferences and tastes. If I chose to go to McDonalds over Burger King tomorrow, granted, it's not going to stress out the upper echelons of corporate management at BK; however, if I were the only consumer, they would be devastated, ripping their hair out, working tirelessly to attempt to attract my business. It's the same with law; not only do employers want to distinguish the best candidates from the masses, but the customers of these businesses are also striving to do the same. Therefore, someone who graduated Summa Cum Laude from Vanderbilt will inevitably attract more business than someone who graduated at median from UF. So, really, grades serve a dual purpose, both attracting business to employers and allowing those employers to evaluate the best candidates. Certainly, the difference between a 3.5 and a 3.7 is a superficial, probably inaccurate indication of how much better of an employee one student will be, or how smart and competent they are; however, I believe that such differences are a consequence of the society that we live in, and they don't really bother me too much.

I think the real way to approach this law school experience is to try to minimize stress; if you're attending a school that you wouldn't feel comfortable graduating at median from, you should probably not be at that school. Granted, I went to my TTT hoping and praying that I would never succumb to such a fate, and thankfully I have not. But I never stressed, at least, not too much; sure, waiting for grades was excruciating and I had dreams about getting straight Cs and dropping out, but at the end of the day I just accepted the inevitability that I would be ranked among my peers and focused on doing the best job that I could, regardless of those around me. And I turned out alright.


I also second the idea that OS is awesome.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by OperaSoprano » Mon Jan 18, 2010 9:52 pm

frost wrote:
fonzerelli wrote:
OperaSoprano wrote:
cubswin wrote:OS, you are pretty awesome.

Perhaps you've discussed this elswhere, but do you get any grief about being a TLS mod (or having 7000 posts) from your fellow Fordham students? It seems like it'd be easy for your classmates to identify you (a pretty distinct story with the fashion major, a self-tar, even if its only about 10 pixels big), and that TLS might not have the greatest reputation with non-TLS law students.
Nah, my classmates know the score by now. I'm better known for my in class antics, actually; I'm favored to be the most consistently freaked out person in my LRW section. :oops: Because I never hid my identity, there was never any drive to betray my secret. I don't think I've ever given my classmates reasons to dislike me, and in truth, many of them don't even know what TLS is. Shocking, right?

Being on here has been a gigantic net positive for me. I came to Fordham already knowing everyone here who had used the boards, and in my first week people actually sought me out to talk about the admissions process. It was really touching and sweet. Of course I also got to meet people around the country, and now have friends at more than a dozen law schools, from my nearest neighbors to far flung places like UVA, Chicago and Berkeley. If I ever found myself in trouble, I know I would never lack for advice or help. The people of TLS guided me and helped me study, and I was able to bring their advice to my own classmates. I owe them a tremendous debt. It is highly unlikely I would even be at Fordham if not for TLS.
Name change suggestion: AwesomeSoprano
It's probably because I'm also a TLS user, but as a Fordham student, I would never give OS any grief for being a mod. In fact, I took it as a testament to her commitment and willingness to help anyone on the board, and she/her positive spirit has been nothing less than encouragement for me.

+100 for OS's awesomeness
You are really sweet. Thank you.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by observationalist » Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:23 pm

Well I for one am happy someone finally found a way to put "Vanderbilt" into a post so that I would search and stumble upon this thread so I can cosign the OS = awesome. OS, here's to your first semester down, and to many consecutively less stressful semesters to follow! Same to the rest of you 1L kidos. I feel old.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by OperaSoprano » Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:25 pm

mistergoft wrote:While I concur with OS and company in regards to the notion of reducing the amount of options available to professors to HP/P/F in the sense that it would reduce stress, I don't think that implementing such a strategy is plausible or practical.

Employers need a metric of distinguishing between candidates; while it may be feasible to abrogate grades at the finest legal institutions in the country, who attract the brightest and most talented aspiring attorneys, implementing such a measure at other schools would prove problematic for employers. It is clearly possible for someone with an abysmally low undergraduate gpa with a high lsat score - now, I'm not trying to ignite a debate on the correlation between lsat success and intelligence, or to take a crack at splitters, who can clearly have much success in LS (Jazzone comes to mind), but performing well in the lsat is not predictive of competence as a practicing attorney. Grades, graded on a tight curve that ranks students, are probably the best way an employer can evaluate a potential employee; it is the best tool an employer has to distinguish what candidate can best handle the rigors of a legal career (arguably, obviously). In addition, we live in a capitalist society; competition is, by definition, a integral part of such a society; if we distinguish the impact of grades, employers will find a way to evaluate students on some other basis that will inevitably evoke stress and anxiety in law school students.

While I can see why people complain of the stress that law school delivers, we are going into a career where everything we do will be subject to review by a judge. We're not all going to be litigators, but, ultimately, we're going to be competing against other lawyers to either win a case, or just to do a better job completing a due diligence report. Competition is the driving force of our profession; it is at the very heart of our society and there is no way to avoid it. Capitalists strive to rank, organize, and evaluate; I mean, we do it every day, just in our preferences and tastes. If I chose to go to McDonalds over Burger King tomorrow, granted, it's not going to stress out the upper echelons of corporate management at BK; however, if I were the only consumer, they would be devastated, ripping their hair out, working tirelessly to attempt to attract my business. It's the same with law; not only do employers want to distinguish the best candidates from the masses, but the customers of these businesses are also striving to do the same. Therefore, someone who graduated Summa Cum Laude from Vanderbilt will inevitably attract more business than someone who graduated at median from UF. So, really, grades serve a dual purpose, both attracting business to employers and allowing those employers to evaluate the best candidates. Certainly, the difference between a 3.5 and a 3.7 is a superficial, probably inaccurate indication of how much better of an employee one student will be, or how smart and competent they are; however, I believe that such differences are a consequence of the society that we live in, and they don't really bother me too much.

I think the real way to approach this law school experience is to try to minimize stress; if you're attending a school that you wouldn't feel comfortable graduating at median from, you should probably not be at that school. Granted, I went to my TTT hoping and praying that I would never succumb to such a fate, and thankfully I have not. But I never stressed, at least, not too much; sure, waiting for grades was excruciating and I had dreams about getting straight Cs and dropping out, but at the end of the day I just accepted the inevitability that I would be ranked among my peers and focused on doing the best job that I could, regardless of those around me. And I turned out alright.


I also second the idea that OS is awesome.
First, you guys all have to stop with this. It's embarrassing!

On to the curve: I think you've hit on the exact reason most schools below the uberelite do this to students. It is for the benefit of employers. GPA is a convenient screen, and that's just the problem; it's too convenient. I suspect that the ability to ace an issue spotting exam does not translate directly to skill as a practicing attorney, and the system as it presently exists is demoralizing to students who don't "get it right" the first time. Moreover, it precludes them forever from even being considered for certain jobs, depending on which school they attend. It's high stakes testing taken to extremes, and this time there are no retakes.

I personally find the concept of ranking students to be quite distasteful, and heartily wish I could have nothing further to do with it. I would as soon line up all my friends and rank them in order of personal merit as human beings. Yes, we internalize our grades that much, and no, it isn't very healthy. But when grades matter this much, it's human nature to be invested in them.

I grant that your points about the adversarial nature of the law, and capitalist elements of our society are true. However, even a professional school ought to be a place that fosters learning and provides a comfortable environment for doing so. The negative effects of a strict curve have been actively demonstrated in this very thread. I believe they are of such magnitude that they outweigh any gain that might accrue to students at the top of the class. Employers know that a Fordham student is a Fordham student, just as a Harvard student is a Harvard student. We were all rigorously screened at entry, and chosen over thousands of other applicants, by our respective schools. If the system were changed to HP/P/F at all schools, employers would be forced to look at other measures of merit, and they would adapt. Law school would then be a far less terrifying and stressful experience for many students, though of course the stress would never disappear completely.

(And for my part, you're right. I enjoy vigorous debate but hate true conflict, and this is something I have to resolve within myself.)

<3 again for all the love. Waiting for my last grade is doing crazy things to me, and I know I'm not alone.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by OperaSoprano » Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:27 pm

observationalist wrote:Well I for one am happy someone finally found a way to put "Vanderbilt" into a post so that I would search and stumble upon this thread so I can cosign the OS = awesome. OS, here's to your first semester down, and to many consecutively less stressful semesters to follow! Same to the rest of you 1L kidos. I feel old.
Observationalist! Oh, we're both guilty of the same thing. I've missed you. YOU are awesome.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by prezidentv8 » Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:43 pm

Yeah...to goft....

I don't even think it's the stress for me. It's more that I looked at my tests (the questions, not the answers/grades...no grades yet) and thought to myself that, sure they measure something...but that something seems to be innate ability to stylistically write a test or predict/brainstorm policy question answers that are worth points, or to choose to write about certain issues or go in depth on other issues, or omit others due to a word limit. From various conversations regarding grades from my memo assignment (fwiw, I did fine on this, so it's not like I'm bitter about it), it seems like most of the variation in grades came down to one or two citations, or perhaps an omission here or there. So far, it appears that the curve seems to magnify slight, even negligible differences that can be attributed to style or problems that can easily be corrected simply through a little bit of targeted practice. Instead of emphasizing improvement and learning, the law school experience seems to emphasize natural ability (so far) at a type of work that nobody has seen, and ranking and competition just for the sake of ranking and competition.

Now, as I've said before, I don't have too much of a problem playing this game. Of course, that is what I signed up for. But that doesn't mean that the game isn't kinda dumb. While I am aware that the real world can be just as arbitrary and silly, I feel like the law school experience so far can be embodied by the phrase "practicing for the lottery," and see no reason outside of convention and the provision of a luxury to employers why it is done the way it is. It definitely doesn't seem to be the way it is for the sake of either student development or accuracy in grading. So we're stuck with the system. Sure. And again, I'll play the silly game. But I will be happily bitching about it, probably for the rest of my time in law school.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by observationalist » Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:56 pm

OperaSoprano wrote:
observationalist wrote:Well I for one am happy someone finally found a way to put "Vanderbilt" into a post so that I would search and stumble upon this thread so I can cosign the OS = awesome. OS, here's to your first semester down, and to many consecutively less stressful semesters to follow! Same to the rest of you 1L kidos. I feel old.
Observationalist! Oh, we're both guilty of the same thing. I've missed you. YOU are awesome.
Thanks OS. Seriously, all this talk about the curve takes me back to when I was a young and skeptical 1L. Not that my skepticism has changed after two more years of riding up and down the curve... I still have yet to hear anyone from any administration adequately explain why in the world legal writing should be anything besides Pass/Fail. Either you can write well enough to impress an employer or you can't... and if you can't, it's the school's job to assess that early on and then make sure you get the extra training to make sure you can.

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by prezidentv8 » Mon Jan 18, 2010 11:02 pm

observationalist wrote:Either you can write well enough to impress an employer or you can't... and if you can't, it's the school's job to assess that early on and then make sure you get the extra training to make sure you can.
Keen observation, observationalist.


Edit: I'm sure I'll be a skeptic about everything for life. That's the way I am for some reason. Bah...

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98234872348

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by 98234872348 » Mon Jan 18, 2010 11:04 pm

I concur with your sentiments about LRW, Prez; my LRW was graded under the system advocated by OS (i.e. S+, S, F) and I feel that system is appropriate for a class like LRW when grading can be extraordinarily arbitrary.

However, I don't think that exams are quite as arbitrary. They test a student's ability to take a hypothetical legal dilemma and apply the appropriate legal principles to said scenario, ultimately resulting in analyzing that scenario utilizing legal reasoning and predicting an outcome. This is the work lawyers do; maybe not 1st year Biglaw associates, but, ultimately, it's what you're going to be doing in real life. The example from Getting to Maybe comes to mind, when the partner in a firm asks the associate to analyze a situation relating to land use (or something like that, I don't recall exactly what the issue was). Granted, law school grading is ultimately still arbitrary, I concede that point; in addition, I don't warrant that a student that spots one additional issue will necessarily be a better lawyer than another. I do think, though, that the pressure you feel on exams, and the uncertainty, is meant to reflect the type of pressure and uncertainty that an actual practicing lawyer experiences when he or she is litigating a case on a novel issue with confusing, convoluted precedent that could truly be decided either way. While they are not perfect, there are meritorious qualities in the law school examination process, and I don't know if I could deduce a better, more practical way to structure grading.

Leeroy Jenkins

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Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness

Post by Leeroy Jenkins » Mon Jan 18, 2010 11:07 pm

mistergoft wrote:I concur with your sentiments about LRW, Prez; my LRW was graded under the system advocated by OS (i.e. S+, S, F) and I feel that system is appropriate for a class like LRW when grading can be extraordinarily arbitrary.

However, I don't think that exams are quite as arbitrary. They test a student's ability to take a hypothetical legal dilemma and apply the appropriate legal principles to said scenario, ultimately resulting in analyzing that scenario utilizing legal reasoning and predicting an outcome. This is the work lawyers do; maybe not 1st year Biglaw associates, but, ultimately, it's what you're going to be doing in real life. The example from Getting to Maybe comes to mind, when the partner in a firm asks the associate to analyze a situation relating to land use (or something like that, I don't recall exactly what the issue was). Granted, law school grading is ultimately still arbitrary, I concede that point; in addition, I don't warrant that a student that spots one additional issue will necessarily be a better lawyer than another. I do think, though, that the pressure you feel on exams, and the uncertainty, is meant to reflect the type of pressure and uncertainty that an actual practicing lawyer experiences when he or she is litigating a case on a novel issue with confusing, convoluted precedent that could truly be decided either way. While they are not perfect, there are meritorious qualities in the law school examination process, and I don't know if I could deduce a better, more practical way to structure grading.
The biggest difference is that in one situation, you have 3 hours to vomit as much stuff onto a piece of paper after thinking about the situation and in the other, you get to think about it, discuss it with people, research it a little, and then pop out an answer burning the midnight oil.

Seriously? What are you waiting for?

Now there's a charge.
Just kidding ... it's still FREE!


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