I have one exam left to take, coming up this Saturday, in Evidence. Like most other classes I have taken in law school, I am faced with an impending exam and only have a very shaky grasp of the material. But I'm not too worried. Like with all of my other exams, I have a good outline from someone who took it last year, and a few days to learn the material. This combination always seems to land me somewhere above the curve.
Unfortunately, this approach doesn't really leave me with much knowledge about the material once the class is over. It is sort of a bulimic method of exam taking. I binge all the information right before the exam, and then purge it out during the exam. But unlike a bulimic, a little bit of information from each class stays with me. What I remember from particular courses is random and often useless.
This got me to thinking...I see all of the 1Ls so worried about their exams, trying to know every little detail, and I realize that I have retained next to nothing from my 1L year. It is supposedly the hardest year of law school, and what I recall about it is so fuzzy that it seems like a huge waste to me. So without further ado (and to delay my looming binge of the Federal Rules of Evidence), here is what I can recall from my first year courses:
* Torts- I could probably make a prima facie case for negligence, so long as there weren't any tricky issues. (Duty, breach, actual cause, proximate cause, damages)...Also, I remember the case Hackbart vs. Cincinnati Bengals, which I think illustrated the rule that people playing a particular sport assume the risks inherent in the normal context of that sport, but not risks that go beyond that. See, I told you it was random.
* Property- For some reason, property is a huge haze for me. All I remember are a few of those estates with needlessly complicated names, that there is a strong public policy against perpetuities, and that possession is 9/10ths of the law (although I knew that coming in, so I don't know if that counts.)
* Civ Pro- Civ Pro was the bane of my existence. I don't know anything about the actual rules of procedure (except for Rule 56, Summary Judgment, but that is because I worked for a judge and all I did was read SJ motions...and I am not even sure that it is rule 56). For jurisdiction, I remember silly case names like International Shoe, and Pennoyer vs. Neff, but I couldn't begin to tell you what they were about. I also remember phrases such as "minimum contacts" and "long-arm statute" and "in rem", but I couldn't give you a solid explanation of them.
* Con Law- Con Law was from 10:00-10:50, MWF. Our Con Law professor used to show up a few minutes late, take a few more minutes to take attendance, and then keep us until 10:58, despite the fact that we had Civ Pro at 11. Our Civ Pro prof used to come into the room at like 10:54, give him a death stare, which he would ignore until he stopped talking. Also, the 14th Amendment applies the Bill of Rights to the states, or something like that.
* Contracts- Of all the classes I took my first year, I remember the most about contracts. A valid contract includes an offer, acceptance, and consideration. There is stuff about it being a promise for a promise, or a promise for performance, etc. And it must be a "meeting of the minds", or something. Damages are hazy, except that the goal is to put the injured party in a position as if the contract had been performed. And I remember the Shirley McLain case, something about mitigating damages and the work you accept must be substantially similar...God, I am boring myself.
* Legislation- We had to take a silly course about statutory interpretation and what not. It was really boring, and I tuned out most of the time. I don't remember what we talked about, what we covered, what kind of cases we read, or really, where I even sat in the room. All I recall is this little tidbit of trivia that our professor gave to us: Learned Hand is considered by many to be the greatest judicial mind never to sit on the Supreme Court. Him, and Harriet Miers.
Okay, that's it, I need to go start to learn evidence, so that in two years I will be able to tell you that an excited utterance is an exception to the hearsay rule.
