Steve Palmer [00:00:01]:
Here we are. Lawyer Talk Podcast. They don't teach you that in law school. And what's this series all about? Well, it's about the stuff they don't teach you in law school. You can check us out LawyerTalkPodcast.com if you got a question you want us to cover here at the they Don't Teach that in Law School series. Shoot it there or go to the social media platforms. We're on all the big ones, I promise. Leave us a comment, we'll get to it.
Steve Palmer [00:00:21]:
Our fearless law student, Troy Hendriksen, back at the roundtable talking about what they don't teach you in law school. But I think today we're gonna do something a little bit different. We're gonna flip it around. We're gonna talk about something they do. You do learn in law school.
Steve Palmer [00:00:32]:
Yeah.
Steve Palmer [00:00:32]:
And we're gonna tell everybody else who may be thinking about law school what exams are like and why. We bring this up because you just finished exams for your second year.
Troy Hendrickson [00:00:40]:
Yes. So I got one year left, and so I'm on the home stretch here. I'm excited.
Steve Palmer [00:00:44]:
One year left of law school. So exams in law school, like, I, you know, I can't. It's like bringing back. It's like trying to remember a root canal going through, going through, like, law school exams. But, you know, looking back, it's always never that bad. But when you're living it, it absolutely sucks.
Steve Palmer [00:00:59]:
Yeah, it's terrible. Like, up every single night, like, for 12 hours, just chugging down like six Red Bulls. It's.
Steve Palmer [00:01:05]:
It's.
Steve Palmer [00:01:05]:
It's terrible. But I do agree with you, after it's over, you're like, oh, that, like, wasn't terrible.
Steve Palmer [00:01:10]:
That wasn't so bad.
Steve Palmer [00:01:10]:
Yeah, yeah, it's. The caffeine took a toll on my body. But besides that, like, I should be fine now.
Steve Palmer [00:01:15]:
When I went to law school and I think that the traditional structure was. And this surprised people who are in other areas of academics. You have one grade. I mean, sometimes for the year or at least for the semester, you get one grade. And tell us about how that works.
Steve Palmer [00:01:32]:
So it's the grade scaling. So most, at least in undergrad, how it worked was like, you had. Your final exam was 25%. This paper was 10%. This. Your attendance was 20. And then now for most of law school, your midterm is usually about 10 to 20%. And then your final exam is either 90, 80.
Steve Palmer [00:01:51]:
I think this was the first year I ever had 100%. And that was Smith's class, and that was the first time that was 100%. So if you fail this exam, that's your grade. Yeah. You fail the class. So it's very stressful because they teach you so much and you have no idea. They'll be like, oh, it'll just be one essay. And you're like, what is the topic?
Steve Palmer [00:02:11]:
And how long does a typical exam last?
Steve Palmer [00:02:14]:
3 hours to 4 hours.
Steve Palmer [00:02:15]:
Right. You go in after all year, showing up, going to class, being a good student, reading the material, and it comes down to a three to four hour session where you've got to regurgitate your knowledge in response to an essay question.
Steve Palmer [00:02:29]:
Yeah. And it's stressful because you have to know everything. Because if it's that one essay, it's just that one topic you didn't spend a lot of time on, you're done.
Steve Palmer [00:02:36]:
But they usually chalk in, like the essays are artfully drafted. So they chalk in or they insert all sorts of different issues to cover.
Steve Palmer [00:02:43]:
Yes, yeah, it's usually that way. That's how they do it. But it's just interesting hearing people who miss sections because they just didn't know. I think our Crimpro, like the last section was Strickland v. Washington and like none of them studied that at all. And I was like, I didn't either. But luckily here it's like all I do.
Steve Palmer [00:02:59]:
Let's translate the law school slang. So Crimpro is criminal procedure.
Steve Palmer [00:03:03]:
Yes, yes.
Steve Palmer [00:03:04]:
And Strickland vs. Washington is the seminal. We use that fancy term. But the lead case on ineffective assistance of counsel. And you know that of course, from working upstairs.
Steve Palmer [00:03:15]:
Yeah, yeah, we use it a ton. So it was just, it was interesting that that was like the end of it. And you're right, somebody's only going to miss 10% of their exam because they didn't know that section of the essay. But it just shows you, like, know as much as you possibly can because you have no idea when this little area of law is just going to come into play.
Steve Palmer [00:03:35]:
And I found anyway, by the time I figured out law school, somewhere in the midst of my first year, maybe after my first semester, when you have mastered the material, that means you can talk about these things and insert. Even if it's not necessarily asked in the question or it's not maybe not expressly asked in the question, you can insert little asides into your answer to show the teacher that you know the material. And that's the trick. And I always tell. I used to probably. I still do tell people because the professors will tell you you don't need to remember the case names. And I always tell law students, look, you don't have to remember the case names because they're telling you don't have to. But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't, and it doesn't mean that it won't help you if you do, because I always believed.
Steve Palmer [00:04:18]:
All right, so look, in contracts, if you're talking about whether somebody is competent or whether it's a valid offer in acceptance of a contract, and you throw in Lucy vs. Amer, which is the old law school Seminole case. If somebody's too high or too drunk to enter into a contract, as I recall, the case was like, they were as high as the Georgia Pines. They were drunk when they entered into the contract. And I still remember that. But I remember the case name because when I wrote out that part of my essay, I wrote Lucy vs. Amer, I didn't have to spell it correctly, but I'm telling that professor, darn it. That I know.
Steve Palmer [00:04:51]:
And that shows that you have mastered the material, and it doesn't really feel like you have. I just, you know, what's the difference if you remember the rule? And at the same time, you also take the extra. Whatever step in your head to say, all right, that's that Lucy vs. Amer case that was about this, this, and this and this. And you give it context. It doesn't take much more to remember that stuff. And that's the difference between a B and an A. I always thought another.
Steve Palmer [00:05:16]:
Thing about knowing the cases, though, is really important is a lot of times these fact patterns, these professors aren't, like, making up stuff. They're usually just little twisting on, like, side cases that weren't really important. But, like, they then know if this person really read into the footnotes and then actually went out of their way to look at this case, they're going to know these fact patterns immediately.
Steve Palmer [00:05:36]:
And the point it sounds like maybe it sounds like there's more to it, but there's really not the extra work to do that is marginally not that significant. No, it really isn't. And here's the other thing I found. And maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm alone, but I don't think so. If you take the extra. When I used to take the extra steps to do that kind of stuff and then actually sit down and give it half a second of thought about what's going on in this case, a couple things happen. You've done the work, so you know it, but then you memorize it because you've given it a context beyond just reading black and white.
Steve Palmer [00:06:14]:
And that's how law school, it's not even memorizing. You've learned the material.
Steve Palmer [00:06:19]:
Yeah, I think our first year, my big thing for the exams was memorizing the rules. And then my second year I focused a lot more on the case. But your first year, they tell you, well, so please don't try to focus that because they're just trying to. It's new to everybody. Everybody's trying to learn. Then second year, I did start learning the case law a lot more. And it does make it a lot easier. You start to comprehend it just a lot better.
Steve Palmer [00:06:37]:
Yeah, I don't agree with them on the first year. Look, it's sort of like as a first year law student, you're inserted into this environment. Maybe it's like showing up in, you know, Mexico somewhere and everybody's speaking a different language. You have to learn it. One way or another, you have to learn it. And it's like the immersion level or the immersion theory of learning. And I'm sure there's smarter people than I am and psychologists that know this stuff, but you have to learn it. So you just start doing it.
Steve Palmer [00:07:06]:
And I always found the best way to learn it was my first year I kept a Black's Law dictionary. This is like the, like the handbook for law terms. You know, it's like, it's a big book called Black's Law Dictionary. And there's all these terms that you learn or that you read and you're like, I don't know what that is. And most of them, and I do mean this, most of them in a case don't matter to what's going on in the case. But I just thought, all right, I'm going to try to figure out what does that mean? What does mandamus mean? So I would look it up and I'd be like, all right, so that's interesting. And it made no difference for the case, but it helped me understand a little bit better. And the more you do that up front, the less you have to do it later and the better understanding you have.
Steve Palmer [00:07:46]:
It sort of becomes that you're immersed into the language and you've learned it. And I think in exams, if you demonstrate in your writing of an essay that you know that material, that way you get the A. Because talk about the curves. I mean, how's that work? Because really you're competing against other people.
Steve Palmer [00:08:05]:
Yeah. So there's a curve. And I'm trying to remember exactly how it Works. It's kind of confusing. They try to teach you this in law school, and they, like. They're terrible at it. What happens is, I think they want to make the average a C. At Kappa.
Steve Palmer [00:08:22]:
When I was there, they had the average like an 84.
Steve Palmer [00:08:23]:
Yeah, I think it's a C. They want to make the average that. So I remember it pissed me off so bad because I did so well on one of my essays or one of my papers last year, and they dropped my grade down to, like, curve us out. And I was just furious. I was like, that's insane that you can bring my grade down. But then also, sometimes when you're doing a little bad in a class, you can get curved up. So your grade always moves, but you're competing against everybody in your class. And it's a big class ranking thing.
Steve Palmer [00:08:52]:
Everybody around you is going against each other. Some people treat it pretty cutthroat. Some people are pretty friendly about it. I've always been just nice about it because at the end of the day, if you want to be the top of your class, you're going the big law. It's never something I ever wanted to do. I always wanted to do criminal defense, so I don't have to be that aggressive on it. But that's like. It's kind of weird.
Steve Palmer [00:09:14]:
Your grade can just magically change like that.
Steve Palmer [00:09:16]:
Well, it's sort of like when it's the old joke, I don't have to outrun the bear, I have to outrun you.
Steve Palmer [00:09:21]:
Yeah.
Steve Palmer [00:09:22]:
And there is. There is a component to that, because when I remember, it didn't even dawn on me what was going on. But when it did click to me, it sort of created my philosophy on how to get A's in law school. And that is put the case name down there. Because guess what? They've told everybody else, you don't have to do that. But if you do that, it's not that you're just. This is a great point. I'm glad we brought this up, because it's not just that you're showing that you've mastered the material, but the next guy's not doing that, so you're separating yourself from the others.
Steve Palmer [00:09:54]:
And with the. You know, I don't know how they stack up exams and say, this one's the best and this one's the worst and then curve it out. But you want to be on the top. You want to be the best.
Steve Palmer [00:10:03]:
We showed you. So they don't know. Also, nothing is. They don't know who's Who?
Steve Palmer [00:10:07]:
It's all anonymous.
Steve Palmer [00:10:08]:
Yeah, yeah, it's. We all have random numbers. Yes. And then the numbers get sent to the dean's office, and the dean's office is the one who knows it. So then the professors grade the numbers, and then they send the numbers to the dean, and the dean's actually one who makes the grade. So your professors never know who it is. I understand there's probably ways to get around it. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [00:10:26]:
But, like, for the most part, it is.
Steve Palmer [00:10:29]:
There's always the stories, like, I know that asshole, he. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But. And now it's probably even more generic because there's no handwriting.
Steve Palmer [00:10:39]:
Yeah, it's all typed up.
Steve Palmer [00:10:41]:
Yeah.
Steve Palmer [00:10:41]:
Yeah. That's, like, really hard to figure out. And the typing is nice. I mean, you can just do it a lot faster than writing. But even though you get three to four hours, everybody's there slamming their keyboard. The last five minutes is like ear. Not like you just hear. Because everybody's just trying to get everything last minute in.
Steve Palmer [00:11:01]:
I remember. I don't remember who this was. I wouldn't even drop the name if I did. But I remember this dude, like, our first semester, it's going into Christmas time. So everybody's like, all right, we made through the first. And did you really learn it? I think it was a contracts or property exam or something, or Con Law maybe. And he's up there going, people are totally flipped out, man. I mean, it is like, nuts.
Steve Palmer [00:11:25]:
And you think about it. I mean, you've put all your eggs into this basket. You've invested your time, you've invested your money. Your parents maybe are like, counting. You've got so much going on and you don't even. You don't have a grade yet. You don't. Like, your first year, first semester, there is a zero next to your name.
Steve Palmer [00:11:47]:
You don't have a grade. And then you take the test. How long did it take to get the grades?
Steve Palmer [00:11:53]:
I remember it was my first year was the funniest because we finished first week of December and we got our grades back, I think mid, late January. So you go like, almost. Almost two months not knowing. But we were in the middle of class when they dropped them. I remember just seeing people get up, cry, walk out. I was like, holy shit. I was like, they couldn't at least wait until the evening?
Steve Palmer [00:12:13]:
See, we didn't have. You had to go pick them up. Back in my day, it didn't get posted anywhere. You had to go pick it up. But you see that. You see who you perceive as the really smart ones that are gonna do great. They're not there next semester and it's like, what happened? You know, where are they? And you know the thing about law school, it's not med school. And I never went to medical school.
Steve Palmer [00:12:34]:
But I've talked to docs, I've talked to people who have done both, in fact. And it's not the same like law school. You have to learn the material and master it. Memorizing it will not get you there. In med school, I think there's a lot of rote memorization that you have to do. So you can have a photographic memory and it will serve you. Not unless you can employ it somehow, meaning actually use it and be, be analytical behind it. It's not going to help you.
Steve Palmer [00:12:57]:
You have to learn it and then you have to be able to apply it. And I guess the only other thing. I think I told you this too. Well, you're lucky enough. We're fortunate. I don't know what the right word is, but you're working upstairs, so that means you read lots and lots of real world cases, not just stuff in a book. And I used to tell, I still tell law students, look, here's the trick. You've read now how many cases by the time you get to your first semester, first year, like hundreds of.
Steve Palmer [00:13:22]:
Yeah, there's a rhythm to how they write cases. You know, they talk about the facts, sometimes they talk about procedure, if that's relevant. Then they talk about facts, Then they talk about what one side argues, what the other side argues, what the rule is. And then they give you a little analysis of what it is. And they teach that as irac. Issue, rule, analysis, whatever it is, conclusion. But that doesn't put. That didn't paint the picture for me.
Steve Palmer [00:13:49]:
What painted the picture for me is if I write my law school essays as if I'm a judge writing a decision, then I realize that I can do that. And if I cite the cases as I go, and I'm not talking like the actual site, some of them I used to remember, but I'm talking about the actual sites, I'm just talking about the names, then it automatically, it almost always resulted in better results or better grades for me because it forces you into. Of a structure that works and you already know it. That's the trick, because you've read hundreds of them. But people, they lose sight of that and they see these essays like, holy crap, what do I write? Take a step back. Treat this like you're a judge in one of these Decisions that you've written and write it that way, or one of these decisions that you've read and write it that way. So your second year or exam's easier or were they more difficult or harder?
Steve Palmer [00:14:47]:
I think your second year is supposed to be your hardest. At least this is at Capital. So other schools structure their classes differently. So our second year, we do Evidence and Con Law, which those are supposed to be the harder ones. Evidence supposed to be the harder. And Crimpro also. But I didn't find Crimpro hard because fortunately I work here. But most students say Crinpro is one of the hardest classes.
Steve Palmer [00:15:09]:
Really? See, I always found that sort of a breeze.
Steve Palmer [00:15:11]:
Yeah.
Steve Palmer [00:15:11]:
But I was doing the same thing you're doing at the time.
Steve Palmer [00:15:13]:
Yeah. So, like, we were like, different. We were in different situations than all them. Cause I remember going to that exam, everybody was sweating bullets, and I was just like, I'm good to go. Easy peasy. Yeah. So that's your second year. And then also a lot of people, they never had a job in their life.
Steve Palmer [00:15:29]:
And then their first job was their second year of law school, clerking somewhere. So they didn't know how to juggle school and work. So then they get hit with this culture shock of how am I supposed to juggle these two with the hardest class I'm taking law school. So second year is usually your hardest. And then third year is like, you just kind of have to show up with a pulse and you should be fine.
Steve Palmer [00:15:49]:
Yeah, third year got sort of. They used to say, work you to death, bore you to death. Or what was it scary? To death, work you to death, bore you to death. So the first year they scare you. The second year they work you, and third year they bore you. But. Well, look, you finished your. Your second year.
Steve Palmer [00:16:05]:
Do you have your grades yet?
Steve Palmer [00:16:07]:
No. Oh, sorry. No, we do have our grades. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [00:16:09]:
So you survived. You're going to have a third year. I survived, yes, you're going to have a third year.
Steve Palmer [00:16:12]:
The main goal is they start to your second year, though, the grades start coming out like a waterfall. Almost like, here's this professor got done. This one got done your first year. It's like here, they all at once, you just get slammed with them. So I was waiting on a couple, but now I have everything. But the main thing is keeping the scholarship. And we did that. So that's.
Steve Palmer [00:16:30]:
That's what's important. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [00:16:32]:
There you go. So any advice to those who are. Well, nobody's going to be preparing for exams right now, but they will Be and I'm sure they'll be watching this. What's your advice?
Steve Palmer [00:16:40]:
It's called space repetition. They'll tell you that up and down, that's the best way to do it. And that really is the best way to do it. One thing I did for evidence this semester was as we're doing class by class, I made the flashcards. If you want to make the flashcards, that's going to take you dozens of hours just to make them. But if you make them as a semester's going exam time, you don't have to spend three days just building the deck. You can just. The deck's ready to go.
Steve Palmer [00:17:08]:
So I, I made sure with Evidence this semester that if this is the class we have this day, I'm gonna have the flashcards done. And so then by the time I got studying for exams, I didn't have to make cards, I just had them ready to flip. And they have, they have like the electrical cards like Anki or I can't think of the other services. There's like a big one everybody uses, but writing them down is like so much more important. Of course you can use the digital ones and the pre made decks and all that, that's fine.
Steve Palmer [00:17:37]:
Well, those were review for me. But you have to create your own or your own outline or whatever. Even if you're just copying what somebody else has created. There's some magic to that and there's psychology behind it. My dad used to tell me when I was a kid, you learned through the end of your pencil, meaning somehow the act of reorganizing the material and writing it ingrains it and you learn it. And if in law school they talk about outlines. So if you're able to take this sort of mess of material and put it into an outline format, it's not that, just that you created the outline, which is a neat looking cool project, but the act of reorganizing that material in your head and placing it in some semblance of order on an outline and then drafting it, either writing it or typing it, you have learned the material like you have learned it. You've immersed yourself into it, you've jumbled it around your head and now you've put it where it belongs.
Steve Palmer [00:18:27]:
And it always gave me like you learn it and then I could actually visualize in my outline where that answer was. I mean I could see it, I could say, oh, I know where that is. That's in the first Amendment. Time, place and manner restrictions. Here are the elements. And you could, you could just see it in. You don't have to freak out.
Steve Palmer [00:18:45]:
Yeah, outlines. How big were outlines when you were in school? Like, what was the page count? Probably you remember?
Steve Palmer [00:18:53]:
I don't know.
Steve Palmer [00:18:54]:
I mean, were you guys on paper and pen then? Or was that like the tablet and stone? What were you.
Steve Palmer [00:18:58]:
Tablet and stone? It was more like, you know, pictographs on walls, on cave walls. Our big outlines. There were two big commercial outlines. One was legal lines, and the other was Gilbert's. Okay, I always like Gilbert's. But look, my method of learning, law school is not the preferred method because I'll tell you what I did. I'm a daydreamer. I have adhd.
Steve Palmer [00:19:25]:
I just cannot. And I put every. You adhd, folks. You understand? You put everything off to the end. You figure you got it. I would get to the. Sometimes on some of these classes, I get to the end, I'd be like, I don't even know what we covered. Like, I showed up and I got through or whatever, but I'd be like, it was like that nightmare that we all have where you wake up in the middle of the night and you're in the middle of exams.
Steve Palmer [00:19:47]:
That's how I felt going into all the exams. So I would take. It was awful. And it created lots of success because as a result of that, I would just go to the beginning of the case book at the little outline and be like, I don't remember if we actually did anything on this topic, or not topic or whatever it was. So I learned it all. And I did that by. I'd start with Gilbert's, and I would take Gilbert's, and I would summarize that in my own words. I would type.
Steve Palmer [00:20:17]:
So I would start by typing it, creating my own version of Gilbert's, summarizing it in my own words. So I would just use. Even if it's just using different language. And I get picky about things. Like, sometimes they had an A without a B, and I'm like, you can't have an A without a B. You got to have an A and a B. So I'd reorganize it a little bit. And then I would take that summary, which is probably, what, 100 pages or whatever.
Steve Palmer [00:20:37]:
And then I would make it 50 pages. Sometimes I would type that. Sometimes I would handwrite it. And then by the end, it was, like, on one page, handwritten, and I would have learned it all. And that was my technique. It would have been a lot easier to do it incrementally like you did. But I learned it and I had to do it all sort of at the end. I didn't do that with every class, but a few I did.
Steve Palmer [00:20:59]:
I think the average outline, if I could just pick an average, be like probably 80 pages. And there's a lot of people who have all 80 pages completely memorized, which, that's not something you can do in like a day. Like the space repetition helps out a ton. But it's, it's like, it's a different beast though. It's not like, well, people who did really well in undergrad and think they can just come in here.
Steve Palmer [00:21:20]:
It's not the same.
Steve Palmer [00:21:21]:
No, it's not.
Steve Palmer [00:21:22]:
Look, to do well in undergrad and to do well in high school, all, all you gotta do is show up with a pause, turn your work in on time and be neat and tidy about it. That's it.
Steve Palmer [00:21:29]:
Yeah, that's it.
Steve Palmer [00:21:30]:
That's it. You know that really, I mean, I'm. Math may be a little bit different because there's a certain understanding you have to have, but a lot of math was just making sure you got your homework turned Right.
Steve Palmer [00:21:38]:
Yeah.
Steve Palmer [00:21:39]:
10 points. 10 points. 10 points.10 points. And if you got a C on the exam, you still get a B plus, whatever. You know, it's not the same. It is not. So you would. People are probably thinking, how do you memorize an 80 page outline?
Steve Palmer [00:21:51]:
You just got to take a lot of time. I think just people think of undergrad and high school where they're like, oh, I stayed the night before crammed it all good. If you think you're going to pull that off, you are so, so wrong.
Steve Palmer [00:22:03]:
Well, my answer to that is you can't. You can't memorize an 80 page outline. But you can learn it. You can learn it. And within that 80 pages, there might be a little bit of memorization. Like there's a three part test for this.
Steve Palmer [00:22:15]:
Yeah.
Steve Palmer [00:22:16]:
But like on time, place, manner restrictions, there's like a little three part test I'd probably come up with if I had to because at one point I had to memorize those things. But I learned the issues, so I learned the material. I didn't memorize it. And what's the difference? I guess you know it when you're there.
Steve Palmer [00:22:33]:
Yeah.
Steve Palmer [00:22:34]:
You know, you can tell I've learned the material because I can regurgitate it to you 30 years later or 35 years later, whatever it is. And I can, I had an understanding. But this is the difference. This is like the photographic memory guys. They fail because memorizing that outline is not going to help you. You have to learn it and be able to apply it and be able to recognize facts and plug those in and talk about it. And you can't get there by just simply memorizing. You have to learn it, which is why what we're doing here is so valuable.
Steve Palmer [00:23:08]:
When you and I, or maybe upstairs when you and I talk about. We do this, folks, so law school is not a total waste. You and I sit down and we're going to talk about a case. We just had one in the high Supreme Court. And the first thing we always do is sit in the conference room and start talking about the issues. And I will say, look, I think there's some law out there that talks about xyz. And maybe even while we're sitting there, you'll pull it up and, yeah, this is the rule, and be like, all right, how can we make this apply to that or what else is out there? So we talk about it, and in the process of talking about it, we verbalize it. And in the process of verbalizing it, we sort it out into a cogent argument that makes sense.
Steve Palmer [00:23:46]:
And as I always tell you, if you can't tell me your argument, you sure as hell can't write it. Yes, right.
Steve Palmer [00:23:53]:
You've said that plenty of times.
Steve Palmer [00:23:55]:
If you think you're going to go into a law school exam and you can't talk about all the stuff that you've learned and. And explain it over coffee to somebody and make it simple, you're not gonna be able to write it down effectively. So you have to learn the material, and you do that. Do you guys still have study groups?
Steve Palmer [00:24:11]:
Yeah, Study groups are a dangerous thing. It's more like your social groups nowadays. Your first year, it's probably more valuable. Everybody's actually talking about stuff. And then now I go into my study group, and it's usually like, here are the plans this weekend. This is what we're like. We're drinking. It goes downhill.
Steve Palmer [00:24:29]:
So you need to find your study group, and then you need to start, like, dipping in the door on other study groups, because that's when you actually get more.
Steve Palmer [00:24:36]:
Look, there's a movie out there called the Paper Chase. Have I made you watch the Paper Chase?
Steve Palmer [00:24:40]:
No, no, not yet. We'll add it to the.
Steve Palmer [00:24:42]:
Who's the old guy? I'll have to look his name up. The old actor. He died. Let me look it up. Sorry, folks. Now we're just having fun. Jon Houseman in the Paper Chase. You earn it, but you Know, the idea of the paper, one of the things.
Steve Palmer [00:25:05]:
It was a law. It was about a guy doing his first year in law school at Harvard, I think. And Housman taught Contracts, and he was a pure Socratic guy, but they had study groups, and I think the. And it blew up on, like, one of the. Like you had the geek who just totally freaked out at the end. And then you had this. The main character, sort of like he and his buddy went and checked into a hotel and they just went and they talked about the material. I didn't understand when I watched it because I wasn't in law school, but it was.
Steve Palmer [00:25:28]:
It's exactly what you and I do upstairs when we're figuring out an issue, we talk it through. So if this situation is going on, what about this scenario? What if this guy was doing this and this guy's doing this? How would we argue it? And if you can come up with an argument, you've learned the material. You've learned the material, and it becomes sort of second nature that you know the law behind it. Now you're going to that next level where you get A's in law school. So study groups to me are about that, but they tend to be people don't know how to do it. They don't know what it's about. It could be just go having a beer and saying, let's talk about what we learned in contracts. I know it sounds geeky and nobody wants to do it, but that's how you learn the material.
Steve Palmer [00:26:02]:
Yeah, no, I totally agree. It's just you have to find people who are willing to have that conversation. Like, socially, you can do it over drinks. I mean, my neighbor, we do it all the time. I think it was the last night I worked at the Ohio Supreme Court. We were having drinks. We're pregame or something, and we're just talking about cases. That's it.
Steve Palmer [00:26:18]:
Just talking about law.
Steve Palmer [00:26:19]:
You will learn it that way. When I got. When you and I both appeared, they didn't let you sit at a council table. But we were in the high Supreme Court and I had to go argue that case. I didn't go. I don't think I even took a note up to the bench with me or to the podium with me. But you know what? You and I spent what, over three weeks, maybe even three months? Every now and then I'd be like, yeah, but the argument is really this. They're going to say this, and I'm going to say that.
Steve Palmer [00:26:45]:
And by the time I got there, the morning of the argument. We had discussed it. So. And all I needed to do is just tell you, because by telling you, I was able to sort it out in my head and verbalize it. And if I can do that, I've learned it. So we had discussed it and gone through it so much that I knew it. There was nothing they could have asked me that I didn't have an answer for or at least could have faked an answer for or shifted somewhere else because I thought about it and I've been able to verbalize the material to you. So I still do it, folks.
Steve Palmer [00:27:19]:
I still all the and same thing with cross examinations, closing arguments. We talk about what the argument's going to be, not simply write it down. Yeah, that's the difference between maybe C or C minus and A. So all right, final wisdom for folks going along other than don't do it.
Steve Palmer [00:27:40]:
That's pretty much everything I've been told is not to do it. But it's not as terrible as everybody makes it sound, including myself. You can just make it through. You can tough it out.
Steve Palmer [00:27:48]:
So we learned something from law school. So he taught what they don't teach me anymore in the real practice. I learned here from Troy and vice versa. So check us out lawyertalkpodcast.com they don't teach you that in law school series. Lots of other good stuff, too, if you're interested in that. Leave us a comment, shoot us a question off the record, on the air. Tell now.