Completed: One 3-hour Corporations exam. I wouldn't say the test itself was difficult, but it was sure as hell difficult to take. First of all, the first 2-hour question was 13 pages of facts. Second of all, unlike other fact patterns, there were 4 different people with the same name (the father Olivier Olives and his three children - Olivier Olives Jr, Olivier Olives III, and their sister Olivia).
I was definitely pretty relaxed last year about exams, especially compared to my fellow classmates. That said, I took a week off from work to cram and get up to speed with everything. I'm not sure if it's just a matter of workload - I'm taking only 2 classes this semester as opposed to 5 last year - but I'm especially relaxed right now.
Part of that is probably justified. I certainly have a better understanding of the material than I did last year. There is less unknown in the law school exam itself. On the other hand, I can't tell if I've just really given up - because no matter how well or poorly I think I did, I seem to be firmly entrenched in the B group.
As I've said in the past, it's virtually impossible to know if you did well on a law school exam. The subjective grading and ordinal curve alone make any prediction worthless. More importantly, law school exams test issue-spotting - that is, they give you a fact pattern and tell you to find all relevant legal issues in there. The problem, of course, is that it's virtually impossible to say with confidence that you spotted all the issues. (Conversely, you can know if you did bad - if you realized that issues were there but you never wrote about them). That said, I felt pretty good coming out of this first exam - and the fact that most people seemed to think it was a difficult exam was promising.
One thing I learned in the process is that I really, really love being able to take exams on my laptop. While I may own a tablet, like most people, I still type a hell of a lot faster than I write. It also fits my thought process better - being able to lay out a framework and then go back and revise.
Still to go: One closed-book Constitutional Law exam, tomorrow night.
Sorry for the relative silence here lately. I know I say this every time I have exams and I rarely follow through, but I have a number of posts I've been meaning to get to. In fact, there are about 30 things I've flagged in Outlook to blog about - whether any will still be relevant by the time I get around to writing them is another story).
I plan on starting on these as soon as I complete my Fear and Loathing-style binge, substituting alcohol and football for the mescaline and a fellow law student for my lawyer. Speaking of football, I did make the playoffs in a few leagues, including the Geek Bowl. Unfortunately, my place place finish in the Blawger Bowl didn't earn me 1) respect or 2) a playoff spot.