Legal Concepts and Skills

CALI's Director of Curriculum Development, Deb Quentel, spoke with six law professors about outlines, studying for class, preparing for exams, time management, and how professors grade exams. The conversations were recorded as podcasts. While these podcasts are not intended to take the place of a conversation with your professor, the professors hope that these podcasts give law students additional insight into the exam process.

Panel 1: Professors Ron Eades, John Farago, Patrick Wiseman

CALI's Director of Curriculum Development, Deb Quentel, spoke with six law professors about outlines, studying for class, preparing for exams, time management, and how professors grade exams. The conversations were recorded as podcasts. While these podcasts are not intended to take the place of a conversation with your professor, the professors hope that these podcasts give law students additional insight into the exam process.

Panel 2: Professors Ron Brown and Joe Grohman

CALI's Director of Curriculum Development, Deb Quentel, spoke with six law professors about outlines, studying for class, preparing for exams, time management, and how professors grade exams. The conversations were recorded as podcasts. While these podcasts are not intended to take the place of a conversation with your professor, the professors hope that these podcasts give law students additional insight into the exam process.

Panel 3: Professor Darryl Wilson

A Question and Answer session with Prof. McFarland, author of several of CALI's lessons in Tort Law and Civil Procedure. Prof. McFarland has been teaching for over 30 years. His comments in this podcast about the first semester of law school focus on the Socratic method, preparing for class, note-taking during class, class participation, "riding out" that "lost at sea" feel common during the first few weeks of law school, the appropriate use of study aids, advice about law school exams, and general advice on doing well in law school.

In this podcast, Prof. Jennifer Martin discusses the top ten mistakes law students make in law school examinations. These are poor issue spotting, poor knowledge and understanding of the law, poor application of the law to the facts, giving only conclusory answers, lack of organization, errors in the facts, failure to understand the role you are given in the examination, padding, fact inventing, and question begging.

Prof. Burnham, author of a number of CALI lessons and podcasts provides students with advice on multiple choice exam questions. Prof. Burnham goes into the different aspects of a multiple choice question: the stimulus, options, key, and distracters. Additionally, Prof. Burnham discusses the different types of multiple choice questions such as questions that test a student’s ability to recall information, those that draw on materials discussed in class, and those that require analysis.

Professors Brown and Grohman, are the authors of many CALI lessons. Additionally, both teach 1L courses. In this podcast they share their experiences and insights on time management issues for law school students, preparing for class, how to brief a case, research tips applicable for 1L writing assignments (and the eventual practice of law), how to develop an understanding of the law, and techniques and tips for studying and preparing for the final exam.