Section Three Confusion, intimidation, case method instruction lay a foundation for mediocre exam performance in Emperor Law School It is an axiom that confidence promotes success in all endeavors. The student who goes into a law exam nervous (which pumps adrenalin and provides energy!), but also confident, will normally perform better than a student who is nervous (often to the point of paralysis) and lacking in confidence. Most who choose to attend law school are confident, many extremely so. They have been highly successful in college, graduate school, their lives prior to law school. However, even months before entering law school the confidence of many begins to wane. Fear of law school is capitalized upon by programs offering 1-2 week simulations of the law school experience prior to the start of law school.1 Such programs are expensive. Curiously, complicit in this exploitation are law professors, who participate in such programs for a hefty recompense. Indeed, that actual law professors will conduct classes is a major selling point. If students manage to maintain an optimistic outlook prior to entering law school, for reasons that will be explored in this section, enthusiasm and confidence quickly ebb once the term starts. Nor do professors or law school administration do anything to stem the erosion of zest. Indeed, ubiquitous case method instruction, coupled with the Socratic method, is very much at the root of the problem. By the end of first term, as exams approach, virtually all who take exams in Emperor Law School lack confidence. This is as much so at YHS as at any other law school. All are intimidated, all are confused, most have been persuaded of their inadequacy. The only difference among students is one of degree. Many would charge that law professors enjoy confusing and intimidating law students. At the very least, they profit from confusion and intimidation. They are less likely to be challenged in class. Mediocre exam results, and the instruction that makes such results predictable, are unlikely to be questioned. Law students typically fault themselves for shortcomings in handling exams. If the foregoing is the case in Emperor Law School, and we shall see that, inevitably, it must be, then a student who can pierce the veil of confusion, who can yet approach exams with confidence and belief in herself, will enjoy a significant advantage. As noted, one needn’t perform with excellence to do well on all-important law school exams. Mere competence suffices to score 35, 45, and more out of a possible 100. 35 competes for an A. 45 or 55 competes for the top exam award! LEEWS provides such assurance and confidence. A student who approaches exams not as an academic, but as a lawyer, at least a reasonable facsimile of a lawyer, will enjoy a significant advantage. For such a student, it’s game on! * * * * 1. Simulated law school programs: One and two-week programs, purporting to simulate what a student will encounter in law school, are one facet of an array of aids designed to ease the difficulty of law school. As noted, such programs are expensive. ($2,000 and more!) Often conducted in actual law school classrooms rented for the purpose, albeit in a much more relaxed atmosphere, such programs introduce students to cases drawn from first year subjects. Simulated law classes are conducted by actual law professors, some of them quite reknowned. (Who are handsomely compensated!) At the end of the week or two weeks, students take a mini exam in each subject. They Gaming Emperor Law School Copyright Wentworth Miller 2012/All Rights Reserved – 47 – thereby experience law school in truncated form. Such programs are essentially hand-holding operations. They prey upon the fear and unease many students experience at the prospect of attanding law school. (As, admittedly, this book and your author’s program do, albeit at much less expense.) While they indeed ease student fears (perhaps falsely, as the collegial relationship with professors is unlikely to be duplicated in law school), there is no empirical evidence that such programs assist all-important exam performance. Predictably, whatever advantage is gained dissipates a few weeks into the first term of actual law school. Indeed, the problem with such programs is that, conducted as they are by law professors, they precisely mimic ineffective teaching methods in law school. Quite a few years ago a simulation program called “Law Preview” was just getting off the ground. (It may be called something else today.) Your author was invited by Law Preview’s founder to instruct the exam writing segment. I asked “Don” (we were on a first name basis) to send me the syllabus of his program. I wanted to know what would precede my day of instruction. When I noted the page-long, conventional case briefing format students would be taught, and the typical case method instructional format -- the same as students encounter in any law school --, I declined his offer. I said to him, more or less verbatim, “At the end of my program, students will wonder why they wasted their money on the previous week.” Indeed. Over the years I have had many graduates of law school simulation programs in my classes. Some of their (attested) remarks can be found at the LEEWS website -- leews.com. Invariably, they lament wasting money on such programs. A salient, perhaps telling question raised by such programs is why, if they are indeed beneficial, law professors who hire themselves out to such programs don’t introduce such instruction at their schools? In point of fact, Pace University School of Law, just north and east of New York City, introduced such a program years ago. Pace conducts it prior to the actual start of fall term. Taking a page from commercial offerings, Pace charged participating students some $700 over and above normal tuition and fees in the initial year. Week-long orientation programs, increasingly the norm in Emperor Law School, often feature a mini version of the simulation experience. Gaming Emperor Law School Copyright Wentworth Miller 2012/All Rights Reserved – 48 – Section Three, Chapter 1 The awesome prospect of the law and Emperor Law School as both a barrier to success and a key to taking advantage Res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself). Becoming a lawyer is a pretty big deal for most. This is so whether young or older, whether one comes from a family of lawyers. or one is the first in the family to attend college. In the first nation completely subject to the rule of law, lawyers as a collective are king. Lawyers make the laws, interpret the laws, occupy the highest seats of power in local municipalities, state and federal government, and private industry. Neighbors and the populace at large will not want to “mess with” the most modest, ambulance-chasing attorney . It is likely for this reason that many Americans of all ages flock to law school. It is for this reason, also the forbidding, arcane nature of the profession, that law school and law professors inspire awe in entering students. By the late nineteen sixties, suspicion and irreverence for authority had taken hold among collegians, certainly your author. Nevertheless, fresh off a successful college career (Yale ‘69), I was cautious, very impressed upon entering the stone, carved wood, gargoyle-festooned gothic cathedral that is the Yale Law School building. I observed the gilt-framed portraits of dignified-looking past professors along the walls of tiered classrooms. They denoted seriousness of purpose. Second and third year students were earnest. They debated whether arch-conservative Yale law professor, Robert Bork, would be confirmed to the Supreme Court. (He was not, thanks in part to Yale Law-led opposition.) And, if not Bork, who among the illustrious faculty might be deserving of such an appointment? The place was impressive! I was a confident young man in the fall of 1969. However, similar to most entering the hallowed precincts of Emperor Law School, I was poised to have my bubble of confidence burst. As will be made evident in Chapter 5 of this section, “Day one of law school -- The ringmaster cracks the whip!,” such bursting comes quickly for most new law students. The musty old legal cases, containing Latin phrases that have to be looked up every other line of text, the confident, even smug air of the professor who knows so much that you don’t, the nervous aggressiveness of type-A, fellow students, seeking to disguise their unease,... Starting law school is a situation fraught with ego-damaging possibilities. What entering law students don’t know about the law, courts, the legal process, etc., and are not taught, can and does hurt them. Inadequacies of conventional case briefing and case method instruction leave students vulnerable to exams. Mediocre exam performance is almost inevitable in Emperor Law School. Moreover, as noted, students blame themselves! Indeed, such is the confusion and intimidation engendered in confident, life-long “A” students, that they are grateful for the B’s given to most following first term. There is much light at the end of this tunnel of ego diminution for any who can maintain confidence, who can pierce the veil of confusion and intimidation, who can successfully overcome hurdles and difficulties that cause most at even YHS to falter. Understanding and mastering law, especially the craft of a lawyer, is a painstaking endeavor. Law school Gaming Emperor Law School Copyright Wentworth Miller 2012/All Rights Reserved – 49 – presents a significant challenge. However, as with most complex, outwardly forbidding processes and systems, taken apart, their components and workings examined and properly understood, the process, the system becomes manageable and doable.