One down...one to go

So I took my first law school final today. And suprisingly, I feel pretty good about it. There was 18 multiple choice questions and 1 essay with 2 questions incorporated. Now this may not seem like a lot, but with a three hour time limit, I only had about 10 minutes to spare. So it was a difficult test. I had studied so much that I feel good about the test now.

The teacher tried to mess everyone up, and she succeeded with some people. See, most teachers post their old exams online where students can look at them. So the study group that I've been working with has gone over the last three exams. The teacher only included the essay portion for everyone to view, not the multiple choice so we spent several hours for each essay from the last three years to get a good answer. All three essays dealt with personal jurisdiction. So, everyone assumed that personal jurisdiction would be on the essay this time. Well, it definitely wasn't. Instead, this essay dealt with subject matter jurisdiction (and while they both deal with jurisdiction--hence the names), the two are really different. Basically, subject matter jurisdiction deals with the issue of whether a federal court can hear a court case while personal jurisdiction is whether a specific state has the authority over the parties in the court case. So they are very different.

I feel good about the essay, though I do know that I messed up one part. In the one section of the US Code (which is needed to determine subject matter jurisdiction), there are three subletters (a, b, & c) that we use. Subletter b is only used in certain instances and the facts we were provided meant we did not need to use this section. However, I still talked about it & included it in my analysis. Is it a big deal? Fortunately, using this subletter did not change my overall answer, so there isn't a huge problem, but I'm sure I will lose points for using a section that I wasn't supposed to.

The multiple choice questions were absolutely brutal. We were allowed to have a rule book (which includes the Federal Rules for Civil Procedure) which meant that the questions were extremely specific and it was one of the tests where you pick the 'best' answer. This means there times where two answers seem right, but there is a 'best' answer. I know of at least 1 question I got wrong, but I still feel pretty good.

Before the exam (yesterday), everyone in my study group was worrying about the exam. I predicted it would be similar to when you were a small child & you did something wrong & you had to tell your parents what you did. Most of the time (at least for me) the anticipation of telling them was a heck of a lot worse than actually telling them. I predicted the test would be the same--the anticipation would be a lot worse than the test itself. And I think I was right.

All this crap about feeling good about the test is subject to change when we receive our grades however...

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