An Open Letter to Anyone Thinking About Going to Law School

DON’T.

The following story has two parts: the first part is a general characterization of what you could expect every one of your semi-annual three week reading and exam periods to be like; the second part is a story about an exam that I recently took. But don’t think for one second that my story is exceptional. It, like the first part of the story, is perfectly reflective of a generic exam experience, but it just works better when it’s told in the first person.

Part One: Buy Sweatpants
You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Jay, I just finished college with two degrees and a minor, and I never stressed over exams.” Hear me now and believe me later: the difference between college exams and law school exams is like the difference between Cancun and Colonial Williamsburg, Disney and Epcot, Diane and Rebecca, a brothel and a convent.

Now pay attention…

During exams, sweatpants become the new black. While comfort is always an issue, waist size controls. You see, during exams you don’t have time to eat normal meals at normal times. You’ll be on a roll, about to break the Erie Doctrine, first year law school’s Da Vinci Code, and won’t want to breaka you stride, so you will study thru dinner and get some pizza around 10 or 11. Just get a pie… that way you can pick at it thru the night and polish it off for breakfast on your way back to school the next morning. Grab some garlic knots, too. And you’ll probably stop at the Chinese place and pick up some egg rolls to snack on while you wait for the pizza. Better grab a coffee on your way back, too. On your way back to school, you can take a moment to bask in your shame for eating like this and promise yourself, that you will go to the gym tomorrow. I know, I know – you said the same thing yesterday when you spent more money on the McDonald’s Dollar Menu, than you would have if you had just gotten 2 Value Meals. But this time you mean it. Think of an excuse now, so you don’t hold up the line in Dunkin’ Donuts tomorrow morning.

By the end of the first week, your sweatpants… the ones you usually only sleep in… the ones you woke up in this morning… the ones you never wash because you put them on when you do the laundry… will be the only pants that fit you. Better pick up some Febreeze, because these pants have to get you thru every day and night for the next two weeks. If you wish you had another pair, but can’t afford it, don’t worry. Pick up a few extra rolls of Tums or bottles of Maalox – with everyone’s new diet, heartburn and indigestion medicines become currency. You can sell them to Professor Chang’s students at the table next to you, who, after three days, have almost figured out the first Commerce Clause question in his practice exam. Alternatively, you could buy stock in a toilet paper company – with the digestive problems that exams inflict on most students, Charmin’ should buy advertising space on our practice exams. Use the money you make from either or both of these investments to buy a second pair of sweatpants.

Another interesting social phenomenon occurs during law school exams: practical and ordinary hygienic practices become socially unwelcome displays of elitism and shameless self-promotion. Expect to hear jeers like:

“Hey, everyone, look who shaved last night! Well la-di-dah.”

Or, “Did you hear about that empty tube of toothpaste they found in the bathroom last night? I hope they catch that bastard.”

Or, “Looks like some one’s gunnin’ for a promotion and changed his socks!”

In this manner, law school exams are appropriately analogous to bulimia, in that you binge and binge and binge on your material for two weeks, and then you walk into each exam and purge into a Selson-Blue-Book. At the end of the exam, you wipe your mouth and hand in the exam, never to be seen again. Afterwards, you're convinced that everybody else is still better than you and that you should have purged some more. Next time you’re gonna use three fingers.

Part Two: Quothe the Clock, "Nevermore..."
In my last New York Practice class, my professor told us that the exam would be three questions with multiple parts. No big surprise there, as most of our exams are pretty much like that.

Exam starts at 9am and ends at 1.

I get the test and give a perfunctory glance over the instructions. I notice that he's even suggested time allotments for each question - 2 hrs for Question 1, 1hr 15 for Question 2, and 45 for Question 3. Short of that I read none of the instructions because apparently I like to be smug and cavalier, and apparently reading the instructions on an exam is beneath me, as a third year student.

So I turn to the first question and see parts 'A' thru 'D' for it, take a look at them and think "Yeah, this should take about 2 hrs, just like he suggested." So I read this fact pattern he's given us and start Question 1A. He had requested a "RA RA" approach to answering his question, which simply means answer each question by first stating the "R"ule and then the "A"nalysis, repeat. So since he's grading the exam, it behooves me to comply.

2hrs and 15 minutes later I finally finish 1D, turn the page and move on to Question 2. Mind you that I actually know this stuff really well, and the 15 minutes that I went over in Question 1 was completely the result of me including gratuitous stuff in my answer just to kiss his ass (and to impress myself) - and that it was NOT because I was slow recalling the material or anything. Basically I'm just bragging to him because I am actually delusional enough to think that this kinda stuff impresses professors.

I actually finish Question two and all five parts of it ahead of his suggested 1 hr 15 minutes.

I take a minute to emotionally pat myself on the back and wallow in my own pride and sense of self satisfaction. Back on schedule with his suggested time allotments, and the last question looks easy. Relax, Jay. Put the pen down for a second and stretch… in fact, yawn as if you’re bored with the exam… other people in the room will be impressed by you.

I turn the page and start the last question and its 4 parts. Everything is going great. Not only am I accurately stating the law and relating to the facts he gives us, I’m actually bringing up my own legal arguments because the taste of my professors asshole is slowly starting to fade from my lips.

And then about half way thru Question 3 it happens...

Before I continue, let me characterize to you the type of shock I was about to face by putting this shock in a more readily understandable context...

You know how when you're little and you have that dream where you're in front of your math class or something and you're in your underwear? Remember how that dream is like terrifying when you're young? but do you ever notice that now when you have it, even in the dream youactually know it’s not really happening… even in your dream, common sense, alone, tells you that this is too ridiculous a situation to be a reality.

That’s what happened to me.

I looked at the bottom of the page and saw in bold black, large font "TURN THE PAGE AND BEGIN QUESTION 2."

The thought that I may, in fact, have been just about to finish Question One of three, with less than an hour to go, was so terrifying that common sense told me it couldn't possibly be so... can't be real cuz it's so bad. I spent about a minute trying to prove to myself that I had been right since the beginning, that I was, in fact about to finish the exam with some time left to read over my exam BECAUSE THERE IS NO WAY THAT ALL THIS TIME I'VE ACTUALLY ONLY BEEN WORKING ON QUESTION 1. It’s too frightening to be real.

But it is.

The exam does not only consist of three questions with multiple parts... it consists of three questions, each with three multiple parts, EACH MUTIPLE PART OF WHICH HAS IT'S OWN MULTIPLE PARTS.

At this point I start looking for my "yipes" sign... like the one that Wiley Coyote always pulled out of nowhere when he hovered in the air for a second, just off the edge of the cliff, right before he plunged to the canyon floor.

So where do I stand? How far from the edge am I? I’ve been working a question that my professor has supposed will take me 2 hrs to complete, for 3 hours and 15 minutes and now I have 45 minutes to answer the last two questions - each with their own unrelated factpatterns - and all their formidable parts, which the same professor has supposed should take me a combined 2 hrs.

I’ve finally accepted the situation as reality...

... so I begin to look for similarities in the facial features of my exam proctor and Ashton Kutcher.

No sign of Ashton.

So what do I do?

First, it's clearly time for me to throw caution to the "RA RA" form and just start cheering for me to write as fast as I can. No more careful attention to the fact patterns. Read the question, start writing the rule while I look for what I need from the fact pattern to answer his question. two things happen as a result of this: 1) my answer lacks any coherence because I’m writing one thought, while I’m simultaneously looking for something specific in the fact pattern and simultaneously trying to relate that thing to my answer... also punctuation becomes a luxury that I cannot afford... as far as I’m concerned my professor will know it's a new sentence when he sees a capital letter; and 2) I realize that I can write hieroglyphics.

That’s right... hieroglyphics... well either that, or my hand writing has gone completely to hell since I’m reading from one paper while I’m writing on another. What I’m writing is substantively pretty good. That is to say, that I know all the rules real well, and I can apply facts to those rules... I just hope that my professor knows that when he's reading my paper, the man with a fish on the spear means "statute of limitations has not accrued until discovery of the injury, except in limited circumstances, causes of action involving toxic torts."

Five minutes left in the exam and I have finished the "real" Question 2... Not that "fake" Question two that just low-balled me about an hour ago.

And it was at this time that I made one of the greatest "grace under pressure" decisions in the history of mankind. I figure to myself that I can't even read the fact pattern to Question 3 in 5 minutes, let alone start an answer. So I take out my magic eight-ball, shake it, and ask it "what have we covered this semester that hasn't been on the exam yet, that is probably gonna be in the last question?"

"Looks like 'attachment.'"

Than “attachment” I shall write

I put my exam away, and just wrote everything that I knew about "attachment." No analysis cuz I didn't read any fact pattern (or question for that matter)... just every rule and procedure and burden and standard and time limit I know about attachment.

Our proctor announces "time" literally as I put a period at the end of the last thing I knew about attachment.

I take a second to look thru all I’ve written and realize something. while my entire answer for the first question is written nicely and looks like I actually applied the pen to the paper, everything after my first answer looks like I was writing so fast, that physics began to work against me and the speed with which my pen crossed each page forced my pen to hover just slightly above the page, enough to make the ink obviously more faint for the last two questions than for the first one.

I wish I could be a fly in the room when he grades this. My first answer was so well thought out, neatly written, precisely organized. he's gonna think either my medicine wore off after the first question, or that "a la [insert any Olsen twins movie here]," I left after the first question, under the guise of going to the bathroom, where unbeknownst to the exam proctor, my goofball twin brother was waiting to take my place for the second half of the exam.

Holy crap – I think that horse just moved! I better hit it one more time: while my first answer looks like David Bruce banner when he meets the nice lady who picks him up on the dirt road and gives him a ride in her pickup truck, to the nearest town which happens to also be her town, my second answer looks like David Bruce banner after he 1) walks in on her abusive husband while he’s beating her, tries to stop him, and starts to get beat up by the husband and his misfit friends 2) turns into the hulk, 3) beats up her abusive husband and his misfit friends, and manages to aid the police in catching the international drug dealer that the misfits were somehow tied to and 4) wakes up as David Bruce banner again.

What makes this so unbearable isn't even stress over the grade... I’m pretty sure I did fine... not as well as I’d have liked, but fine. This is what sucks: I DON'T DO SHIT IN THIS CLASS. No reading, no notes, no attention span in class. The only way I could be less productive in this class is if I was a hindrance to other people who were actually trying to learn...

...oh, wait... I WAS A HINDRANCE to those people because I watch DVD’s with subtitles everyday on my lap top in class and distract everyone around me with them. Here’s the thing though... I’m kinda like that in most of my classes and I’ve always been. and every semester 1/2 dozen nay-sayers tell me I’m never gonna be ready for the exam in time, that there's too much reading, and too many notes and that they don't wanna hear me cry when I finally reap what I’ve sewn. And every semester I defy them and heckle them to no end when I do fine. Well this semester, the harassment from my more studious friends has been near intolerable... especially for this class. I busted my ass and taught myself this shit in just a few days not so I could do well in the class, but so that I could heckle my friends when I did better than them.

And instead what happened? I got greedy. I put all this extra fancy-pants shit in my first answer that wasn't relevant, lost all kindsa time doing it, and now have compromised my chances of drunken gloat-ery when grades come out, not because I couldn't learn it, but because I tried to hot dog the exam.

In fact, Wiley Coyote is perfect analogy, because up until the end of question one, I had been cruising thru this exam on Acme rocket skates, and then suddenly I just crashed, top speed, into the brick wall THAT I PAINTED A TUNNEL ON!!!

So what have I learned? Probably nothing. I accepted a long time ago that I may not be great at everything I like, but I’ll ONLY be good at those things. Next semester I’ll just have to get better DVD’s.

The good news outta the story is that attachment actually was a crucial part of the third question. So thank you, magic eight-ball. Thank you.