Friday, December 09, 2005

Civil Procedure Midterm

The Civil Procedure midterm was today, and, while not nearly as stressful as the Torts midtern, it was still quite a bit of stress. There were so many rules to remember for personal procedure alone that I pretty much threw up my hands and decided to wing it.

We were given a fact pattern, and were asked to do both the PJ and SMJ analyses. The PJ analysis took me quite a while, so that I ended up with only 5-7 minutes to write up the SMJ analysis. In the end, I was short of finishing that by two words: "establish SMJ". I'm a little nervous about that, although I'm sure Professor Willis will be able to see what I was driving at.

What I am more concerned about, however, is whether or not I stated the rules well enough. It is all too easy for a law student, particularly a first year, and particularly where, as here, the statutes are laid out in an exam supplement, to forget that to tell the reader about the rule. What I ended up doing, I think, was mostly comparing and contrasting fact patterns between precedents and the case at hand.

I found it somehow amusing that the "6 Step Analysis" which we formally learned in Legal Writing was now flowing from my keyboard very naturally. I would, in essence, discuss the precedent, maybe paraphrase the rule that governs that portion of the facts, and do a compare and contrast. I think it's safe to say that I'm still a weak on stating the rule, but I think I did okay with the analysis.

Anyway, it was nice to be done. I ended up coming home and watching the Les Misérables 10th Anniversay DVD, since I've been finding myself singing songs from that musical lately. I didn't get much else done. Oh well.

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