UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions Forum

A forum for applicants and admitted students to ask law students and graduates about law school and the practice of law.
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poptart123

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by poptart123 » Thu Nov 09, 2017 12:11 am

call-me-bubbles wrote:Hi everyone; 1L here. I've joined a couple of low-key student orgs, but I haven't been active so far due to family commitments and simply trying to keep up with readings and survive cold-calls. I've already accessed some materials from the UChicago outline bank, but they're pretty limited for my courses, and my own outlines up to now look pathetic in comparison, so -- pardon the stupid question -- how do I go about asking the older students if they'd mind sharing their outlines? We just had a whole outlining session with the academic counselors, and they mentioned it repeatedly, so it seems like that's common practice, but I just don't know any 2Ls or 3Ls I feel I could ask . . . but yet it seems like that's what each successive generation of 1Ls is supposed/expected to do?

Signed,

Fucking clueless and worried about winding up at the bottom of my class
I've yet to have anybody tell me I can't use their outline. Quite a few of the student groups have outlines, or if not, there are generally upperclassmen in that group who would be willing to share. The easiest way to ask is to find a connection with that person to get my foot in the door, then bring up school, then classes, then exams, then ask if they have any outlines because it would be really helpful to you as you study and make your own. Nobody is going to tell you no if they have some.

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archipm

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by archipm » Fri Nov 10, 2017 1:03 pm

Has anyone taken Oil & Gas with Helmholz? I'm on the fence for next term.
Last edited by archipm on Sat Jan 27, 2018 12:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Leo

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by Leo » Fri Nov 10, 2017 1:41 pm

archipm wrote:Has anyone taken Oil & Gas with Helmholz? I'm on the fence for next term.
Did you have him for property? If so, I see no reason to subject yourself to his brand of teaching (and grading). He's overrated. Funny? Obviously. Good teacher? Not so much.

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by BlendedUnicorn » Fri Nov 10, 2017 2:31 pm

Leo wrote:
archipm wrote:Has anyone taken Oil & Gas with Helmholz? I'm on the fence for next term.
Did you have him for property? If so, I see no reason to subject yourself to his brand of teaching (and grading). He's overrated. Funny? Obviously. Good teacher? Not so much.
Word on the street is that he's completely different in O&G. I never took it so can't say for sure but to the extent I have any regrets about law school that's kind of one of them.

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archipm

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by archipm » Fri Nov 10, 2017 8:54 pm

BlendedUnicorn wrote:
Leo wrote:
archipm wrote:Has anyone taken Oil & Gas with Helmholz? I'm on the fence for next term.
Did you have him for property? If so, I see no reason to subject yourself to his brand of teaching (and grading). He's overrated. Funny? Obviously. Good teacher? Not so much.
Word on the street is that he's completely different in O&G. I never took it so can't say for sure but to the extent I have any regrets about law school that's kind of one of them.
I did not have him for property and have been somewhat warned away from taking his classes, including by other faculty members. I'd like to take O&G for content reasons but also a) don't want to totally hate my life and b) don't want to tank my GPA. I guess I wondered if the negative parts of his reputation were overblown.
Last edited by archipm on Sat Jan 27, 2018 12:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Jaqen

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by Jaqen » Fri Nov 10, 2017 10:08 pm

archipm wrote:
BlendedUnicorn wrote:
Leo wrote:
archipm wrote:Has anyone taken Oil & Gas with Helmholz? I'm on the fence for next term.
Did you have him for property? If so, I see no reason to subject yourself to his brand of teaching (and grading). He's overrated. Funny? Obviously. Good teacher? Not so much.
Word on the street is that he's completely different in O&G. I never took it so can't say for sure but to the extent I have any regrets about law school that's kind of one of them.
I did not have him for property and have been somewhat warned away from taking his classes, including by other faculty members. I'd like to take O&G for content reasons but also a) don't want to totally hate my life and b) don't want to tank my GPA. I guess I wondered if the negative parts of his reputation were overblown.
I had O&G with him but not Property, so I can't compare. But the grading and workload was totally normal from what I remember.

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BlendedUnicorn

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by BlendedUnicorn » Sat Nov 11, 2017 2:02 am

Jaqen wrote:
archipm wrote:
BlendedUnicorn wrote:
Leo wrote:
archipm wrote:Has anyone taken Oil & Gas with Helmholz? I'm on the fence for next term.
Did you have him for property? If so, I see no reason to subject yourself to his brand of teaching (and grading). He's overrated. Funny? Obviously. Good teacher? Not so much.
Word on the street is that he's completely different in O&G. I never took it so can't say for sure but to the extent I have any regrets about law school that's kind of one of them.
I did not have him for property and have been somewhat warned away from taking his classes, including by other faculty members. I'd like to take O&G for content reasons but also a) don't want to totally hate my life and b) don't want to tank my GPA. I guess I wondered if the negative parts of his reputation were overblown.
I had O&G with him but not Property, so I can't compare. But the grading and workload was totally normal from what I remember.
FWIW I enjoyed the shit out of hemoltz’s class and got a fine grade. My understanding is that there’s a second layer of curving th registrar does basically because of him.

But mostly who gives a shit. If you’re a 2 or 3 aL grades really don’t matter.

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landshoes

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by landshoes » Sat Nov 11, 2017 10:02 am

call-me-bubbles wrote:Hi everyone; 1L here. I've joined a couple of low-key student orgs, but I haven't been active so far due to family commitments and simply trying to keep up with readings and survive cold-calls. I've already accessed some materials from the UChicago outline bank, but they're pretty limited for my courses, and my own outlines up to now look pathetic in comparison, so -- pardon the stupid question -- how do I go about asking the older students if they'd mind sharing their outlines? We just had a whole outlining session with the academic counselors, and they mentioned it repeatedly, so it seems like that's common practice, but I just don't know any 2Ls or 3Ls I feel I could ask . . . but yet it seems like that's what each successive generation of 1Ls is supposed/expected to do?

Signed,

Fucking clueless and worried about winding up at the bottom of my class
What outlines do you need? I'll hook you up if I can

I never outlined for shit and was NOT at the bottom of my class.

Remember: learn the material. Practice applying it. Everything else is noise.

Also I'm sorry my classmates freaked you out about outlining. It's really just rewriting your notes so you can review them.

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landshoes

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by landshoes » Sat Nov 11, 2017 10:06 am

Also I sometimes refuse to share personal outlines because I think they're misleading, super short, or so disorganized that they won't help. If that happens don't worry. Some people don't outline as much. I sometimes just ctrl+f my notes during a test.

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beepboopbeep

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by beepboopbeep » Sat Nov 11, 2017 11:22 am

landshoes wrote:
call-me-bubbles wrote:Hi everyone; 1L here. I've joined a couple of low-key student orgs, but I haven't been active so far due to family commitments and simply trying to keep up with readings and survive cold-calls. I've already accessed some materials from the UChicago outline bank, but they're pretty limited for my courses, and my own outlines up to now look pathetic in comparison, so -- pardon the stupid question -- how do I go about asking the older students if they'd mind sharing their outlines? We just had a whole outlining session with the academic counselors, and they mentioned it repeatedly, so it seems like that's common practice, but I just don't know any 2Ls or 3Ls I feel I could ask . . . but yet it seems like that's what each successive generation of 1Ls is supposed/expected to do?

Signed,

Fucking clueless and worried about winding up at the bottom of my class
What outlines do you need? I'll hook you up if I can

I never outlined for shit and was NOT at the bottom of my class.

Remember: learn the material. Practice applying it. Everything else is noise.

Also I'm sorry my classmates freaked you out about outlining. It's really just rewriting your notes so you can review them.
^^^
good advice

am graduated person
my experience was that two things mattered way more than outlining:
1- internalizing how shit worked enough to apply it - for me this came more through practice tests than outlining
2- not being a fucking basket case during exams, if you are relaxed and confident you'll do better even if you don't know the material as well

i know it is hard to do 2 if you don't feel like you can do 1, but these things are actually decouple-able and spending some time just relaxing and getting your mindset right, especially the night before/morning of but honestly just throughout because stress can pile up, is going to do a lot more for you in most cases than cramming. if you are furiously outlining right now you definitely don't need to be and can spare a couple nights a week doing fun non-law-school shit.

subpoint to 1: having a study group can be legit too if you aren't ready for practice tests. just answering other peoples' questions about stuff / explaining things that you get that they don't get / asking similar questions to them when the roles are reversed helps get you there where you can take cases/rules/fact patterns and apply them to other fact patterns. ask each other hypos and talk through them and i think preferably be comfortable enough to not just agree with everything people say because they're your friends or w/e

point 3, maybe? is that like, say right now you are panicking because your previous notes are worthless, they spend too much time on unimportant stuff and you can't easily pull out the important stuff now that you have an idea of what that is. notice that and change it going forward. better to have half a class's worth of good notes than a full quarter's of bad notes that are self-consistent. i felt like a lot of people just kinda stuck to what they were doing regardless of whether it worked for them and that was frustrating to observe.
landshoes wrote:Also I sometimes refuse to share personal outlines because I think they're misleading, super short, or so disorganized that they won't help. If that happens don't worry. Some people don't outline as much. I sometimes just ctrl+f my notes during a test.
This happened to me a few times and I just said I didn't outline for whatever class, which was true (seems different than refusing to share?)

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landshoes

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by landshoes » Sat Nov 11, 2017 12:02 pm

beepboopbeep wrote:
landshoes wrote:
call-me-bubbles wrote:Hi everyone; 1L here. I've joined a couple of low-key student orgs, but I haven't been active so far due to family commitments and simply trying to keep up with readings and survive cold-calls. I've already accessed some materials from the UChicago outline bank, but they're pretty limited for my courses, and my own outlines up to now look pathetic in comparison, so -- pardon the stupid question -- how do I go about asking the older students if they'd mind sharing their outlines? We just had a whole outlining session with the academic counselors, and they mentioned it repeatedly, so it seems like that's common practice, but I just don't know any 2Ls or 3Ls I feel I could ask . . . but yet it seems like that's what each successive generation of 1Ls is supposed/expected to do?

Signed,

Fucking clueless and worried about winding up at the bottom of my class
What outlines do you need? I'll hook you up if I can

I never outlined for shit and was NOT at the bottom of my class.

Remember: learn the material. Practice applying it. Everything else is noise.

Also I'm sorry my classmates freaked you out about outlining. It's really just rewriting your notes so you can review them.
^^^
good advice

am graduated person
my experience was that two things mattered way more than outlining:
1- internalizing how shit worked enough to apply it - for me this came more through practice tests than outlining
2- not being a fucking basket case during exams, if you are relaxed and confident you'll do better even if you don't know the material as well

i know it is hard to do 2 if you don't feel like you can do 1, but these things are actually decouple-able and spending some time just relaxing and getting your mindset right, especially the night before/morning of but honestly just throughout because stress can pile up, is going to do a lot more for you in most cases than cramming. if you are furiously outlining right now you definitely don't need to be and can spare a couple nights a week doing fun non-law-school shit.

subpoint to 1: having a study group can be legit too if you aren't ready for practice tests. just answering other peoples' questions about stuff / explaining things that you get that they don't get / asking similar questions to them when the roles are reversed helps get you there where you can take cases/rules/fact patterns and apply them to other fact patterns. ask each other hypos and talk through them and i think preferably be comfortable enough to not just agree with everything people say because they're your friends or w/e

point 3, maybe? is that like, say right now you are panicking because your previous notes are worthless, they spend too much time on unimportant stuff and you can't easily pull out the important stuff now that you have an idea of what that is. notice that and change it going forward. better to have half a class's worth of good notes than a full quarter's of bad notes that are self-consistent. i felt like a lot of people just kinda stuck to what they were doing regardless of whether it worked for them and that was frustrating to observe.
landshoes wrote:Also I sometimes refuse to share personal outlines because I think they're misleading, super short, or so disorganized that they won't help. If that happens don't worry. Some people don't outline as much. I sometimes just ctrl+f my notes during a test.
This happened to me a few times and I just said I didn't outline for whatever class, which was true (seems different than refusing to share?)
That is prob what I will say in the future. I always get them an outline from elsewhere which hopefully indicates that I'm not just being a asshole, but you never know

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by courtneylove » Sat Nov 11, 2017 10:28 pm

archipm wrote:Has anyone taken Oil & Gas with Helmholz? I'm on the fence for next term.
I didn't have him for Property but I took two different classes with him during 2L and 3L, including OIl and Gas. Highly recommended... it's a great class. My grades were fine in both.

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archipm

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by archipm » Sun Nov 12, 2017 1:43 am

courtneylove wrote:
archipm wrote:Has anyone taken Oil & Gas with Helmholz? I'm on the fence for next term.
I didn't have him for Property but I took two different classes with him during 2L and 3L, including OIl and Gas. Highly recommended... it's a great class. My grades were fine in both.
Thanks! This is helpful to hear.
Last edited by archipm on Sat Jan 27, 2018 12:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

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trramic

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by trramic » Mon Dec 04, 2017 4:15 pm

Anyone willing to share any outlines they've found for Con Law II with Professor Weinrib, and/or MPR with Professor Marshall? Many thanks in advance.

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call-me-bubbles

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by call-me-bubbles » Sun Dec 10, 2017 12:31 am

.
Last edited by call-me-bubbles on Tue Jan 16, 2018 12:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

Necho2

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by Necho2 » Sun Dec 10, 2017 12:57 am

call-me-bubbles wrote:Anyone who had Buss for Civ Pro got any last-minute tips for surviving her eight-hour exam?
this is late- but make sure you've taken past ones. She has a ton online and they're very similar, since the Civ Pro 1 issues are always the same, it's just seeing them and making the right calls.

Stop freaking out about your outline being perfect since it's 8 hours long, you won't need an attack one unless it helps you not omit checking for a particular issue.

Take some time to edit your work in the last hour or so- I've done well on take-homes and I think that's part of it. Adding on to that- use it to work in as much analysis as possible- a big part of law school exams in general is showing that you know the law well enough to see both sides of an issue, and I think she particularly favors that.

Enjoy her sense of whimsy (if you can).

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skers

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by skers » Sun Dec 10, 2017 11:10 am

Necho2 wrote:
call-me-bubbles wrote:Anyone who had Buss for Civ Pro got any last-minute tips for surviving her eight-hour exam?
this is late- but make sure you've taken past ones. She has a ton online and they're very similar, since the Civ Pro 1 issues are always the same, it's just seeing them and making the right calls.

Stop freaking out about your outline being perfect since it's 8 hours long, you won't need an attack one unless it helps you not omit checking for a particular issue.

Take some time to edit your work in the last hour or so- I've done well on take-homes and I think that's part of it. Adding on to that- use it to work in as much analysis as possible- a big part of law school exams in general is showing that you know the law well enough to see BOTH SIDES of an issue, and I think she particularly favors that.

Enjoy her sense of whimsy (if you can).
Re the bold above, this is the whole point of pretty much every law school exam. It's not really that different based on take home or no. You are presented ostensibly gray area situations and you argue why they're x because of certain analogous precedent or why they're more y because of other precedent or facts differing from precedent.

W/ civ pro there will be questions about timing for filling, but since it's take home there no reason to know that cold.

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Necho2

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by Necho2 » Sun Dec 10, 2017 12:29 pm

skers wrote:
Necho2 wrote:
call-me-bubbles wrote:Anyone who had Buss for Civ Pro got any last-minute tips for surviving her eight-hour exam?
this is late- but make sure you've taken past ones. She has a ton online and they're very similar, since the Civ Pro 1 issues are always the same, it's just seeing them and making the right calls.

Stop freaking out about your outline being perfect since it's 8 hours long, you won't need an attack one unless it helps you not omit checking for a particular issue.

Take some time to edit your work in the last hour or so- I've done well on take-homes and I think that's part of it. Adding on to that- use it to work in as much analysis as possible- a big part of law school exams in general is showing that you know the law well enough to see BOTH SIDES of an issue, and I think she particularly favors that.

Enjoy her sense of whimsy (if you can).
Re the bold above, this is the whole point of pretty much every law school exam. It's not really that different based on take home or no. You are presented ostensibly gray area situations and you argue why they're x because of certain analogous precedent or why they're more y because of other precedent or facts differing from precedent.

W/ civ pro there will be questions about timing for filling, but since it's take home there no reason to know that cold.
Sure- I more meant that in terms of take-home exams giving you enough time to go back and review all those issues carefully, maxing out you word count in exploring both sides of those issues, and making it clear what you're trying to do. There are 3 hour exams where you'd love to be able to do the same (and should to the extent possible), but they're often such sprints through the material you just kind of have to go with what you see, then move on.

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beepboopbeep

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by beepboopbeep » Sun Dec 10, 2017 2:40 pm

Buss's take-home is a pretty aggressive word count as I recall, so the point about "get as much analysis in" is a little different than for a typical law school exam

I guess my only addition is that I think civ pro is one of those where building up your understanding is more important for setting off the right alarm bells in your head than actually knowing the material. You can always look the rules up and reason through an answer so long as you see a problem to be solved. But if you don't see an issue you're likely to not see it for the entire 8 hour period. So I would probably focus more heavily on making sure you identify the correct issues in practice exams than necessarily writing out whole answers. To some degree this is broadly true of all law school exams but I felt like it was especially true of civ pro.

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by zhenders » Sun Dec 10, 2017 3:31 pm

beepboopbeep wrote:Buss's take-home is a pretty aggressive word count as I recall, so the point about "get as much analysis in" is a little different than for a typical law school exam

I guess my only addition is that I think civ pro is one of those where building up your understanding is more important for setting off the right alarm bells in your head than actually knowing the material. You can always look the rules up and reason through an answer so long as you see a problem to be solved. But if you don't see an issue you're likely to not see it for the entire 8 hour period. So I would probably focus more heavily on making sure you identify the correct issues in practice exams than necessarily writing out whole answers. To some degree this is broadly true of all law school exams but I felt like it was especially true of civ pro.
I second all of this down to the last word.

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by dasq5511 » Tue Jan 02, 2018 12:54 pm

Anyone have advice/supplement recommendations/outlines on the following?:

Property (Abebe)
Crim. (Lakier)
Contracts (Posner)
Torts (Levmore)

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by call-me-bubbles » Tue Jan 16, 2018 12:52 am

dasq5511 wrote:Anyone have advice/supplement recommendations/outlines on the following?:

Property (Abebe)
Crim. (Lakier)
Contracts (Posner)
Torts (Levmore)
Ditto... :o

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by daedalus2309 » Tue Jan 16, 2018 5:42 pm

Posner wrote his own supplement for contracts. I recommend it.

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by landshoes » Wed Jan 17, 2018 12:12 am

Levmore changes it up all the time, don't bother with supplements for his class.

There is that one book that sometimes gets assigned for Elements, it is a paperback with a guy's leg and briefcase on it. Goes over lots of basic law & econ stuff. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

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Re: UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions

Post by stativus » Wed Jan 17, 2018 12:14 am

landshoes wrote:Levmore changes it up all the time, don't bother with supplements for his class.

There is that one book that sometimes gets assigned for Elements, it is a paperback with a guy's leg and briefcase on it. Goes over lots of basic law & econ stuff. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
The Legal Analyst?

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