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My family law "exam"

The exam is in quotes because it was more like a series of trick questions. Rather than give an essay exam about how we would advise a client who came in with a certain issue, the exam asked us to pick the best answer out of 4. We had 150 minutes to answer 40 questions. That's not even 4 minutes a question. Each question had a long paragraph of facts and then four two or three sentence answers to choose from. Just reading each question took a couple minutes. That left no time to ponder an answer or think through anything.

What does this teach us?

In practice, if a man comes in for a divorce, I am not just going to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. I will consider carefully his options and maybe look at the statute. Why wouldn't our exam encourage us to do just that?

While I don't intend to practice Family Law, I do intend to practice a kind of law that involves me and a client. I don't intend to practice "dartboard law" and I don't enjoy being tested that way.

I have started totally not caring about grades and wanting to just be a good lawyer. What a novelty, huh?

Full post as published by Improvilaw on December 14, 2007 (boomark / email).