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Paul Owen here for Law School Success Frequently Asked Questions and Questions You Should Ask.
I am writing this series of lectures for the simple purpose of giving you a solid foundation
for what you need to do in law school to become successful. You will save time, money, and
effort and I always promise to be completely truthful with you in everything that I convey
to you and the information and secrets that we talk about.
Law school can be difficult, law school can be hard work, or law school can be very easy.
Do not make it *** yourself.
You are in the right place to become a law school success.
Questions You Should Ask #9
What is superior legal analysis?
In this lecture I will address the following:
* Application of the rule of law. * Analysis of all the given facts.
* Always look at the other side. * Analogy.
* New theory or approach. * No one cares how you conclude so long as
it is based on good legal analysis.
What is superior legal analysis for law students?
Application to the rule law. Ninety% of law students who never take any of our courses
make an idiot mistake. They only talk about the key issue that they're familiar with or
that strikes their mind and they forget that it you need to find all the elements in the
rule of law for you make a legal conclusion. If burglary is the breaking and entering of
the dwelling house in the nighttime with intent to commit a felony therein or larceny, you
have to find all those elements. Even though the braking element might be the key point
to discuss, unless you find all those elements you can't find if there was a burglary. What
do most students do that don't take our courses, real simple, they just argue the breaking
element because that was the big issue in the fact pattern. They then conclude that
there is a burglary. If you have a professors that is half-awake when she grades your exam
you're in trouble because they are going to conclusory. You didn’t argue all the elements.
You didn’t find everything. You didn’t find there was a dwelling house, in the nighttime,
with intent to commit a felony therein…. on and on. You have to apply all the law to
the facts.
Analysis of all the facts given. As I told you before in prior lectures there’s a guy
in California that gives some really great exam writing advice. His name is Flemings.
He makes his living on the fact that students follow the Socratic method right into their
exam writing. They start changing facts right on the exam. You can't change the facts. Imagine
going in front of a judge and talking about a case, “But judge, the facts should be
this!” You change the fact and then the judge will look at you and get out the straitjacket
and put you in the loony bin. It's just unbelievable what students do and how bastardized the process
has become. You don't change the facts.
You have to analyze all the facts given. The only way to do that is to become sensitive
to every single thing that's written, every single thing that you read. You need to think
in terms of reading things, reading facts and if you have internalized the law, the
law will actually pop out at you as to what legal issue that will be. That doesn't mean
you can't question the facts. Don't change them like a law students do.
But you can look at the weakness in facts. The classic example we always use that is
constantly tested on the California bar; Joe Schmuckatella spent all night at the ***
saloon. That’s a fact. What law is in that fact? The fact is the possibility of drunkenness.
That's the fact. Is Joe Schmuckatella drunk or not? For you to point that out to the professor
when the professor did not write a model answer and no one else points that out, guess whose
exam goes to the top of the pile? That's all you need to do. You need to score relatively
better than everybody else and when you question the weakness in that fact (drunkenness would
be a defense to all the future crimes that Joe Schmuckatella committed after he left
the *** saloon) but the point is we don't know whether he is drunk or not. A one-liner
is all it takes to show that you have superior knowledge of fact pattern that was given.
That's superior legal analysis for a law student.
Always look at the other side. In many instances there's multiple sides but in a time constraint
exam generally it's one or the other. You look at both sides. In past lectures I’ve
t talked about how you make this a mechanical process. There's always majority minority
law on the vast areas that you look at. There's always a majority position. There's always
a minority position. If you automatically get into the habit of giving the majority
to one party, the minority law to the other, (and a lot of times the facts fit perfectly
into those areas), when you do, you show that you see both sides of the equation. This is
entirely a mechanical process. It’s real simple to do. It's impossible to do unless
you memorize the law.
Analogy. By far the most powerful legal analysis and legal suasion tool is analogy. We call
this crossover. What does it mean? They do this in contract so therefore they should
do it in real property. They do this under the UCC so therefore they should do this under
the common-law for the question that you are answering. so for you to bring in analogy
from the outside is superior legal analysis and suasion. They do this in a criminal law
and therefore they should do this in tort. They do this in tort therefore they should
do this in real property. Analogy is extremely powerful any time you can use it to your advantage
do so. But, it requires true knowledge. You bring in your analogy on your conclusions.
You usually put a line or two in their if you are going to make an analogic a comparison
or an analogical argument. You always bring it in near the conclusion.
New theory or approach. This is synthesis. New series or approaches you again bring them
in your conclusions where you argue that a new approach should be taken and perhaps this
would be better. Obviously you are going to give that argument to one side or the other.
The beauty of it is that this shows that you are engaged in the process. If you do all
the other things and you apply the rule of law, you analyze all the facts, you look at
both sides, if there is analogy areas that you can deal with you deal with it, and perhaps
the losing side would sit there and say now generally if Joe Schmuckatella’s gonna lose
his side might take this approach and argue a new theory of law. That’s part of your
conclusion. That’s synthesis. That's beautiful. That gets the professors all excited.
No one cares how you conclude so long as it is based on good legal analysis.
To recap.
* Application of the rule of law. * Analysis of all the given facts.
* Always look at the other side. * Using analogy if you can.
* Creating new theories or approaches. * If you do all the first three things, no
one cares how you conclude so long as it is based on good legal analysis.
There are no right answers. Anytime you use the word were reasonable in a definition,
what does that mean? It's what a jury of 12 people would think. That's what reasonable
means. What's reasonable to one person in a group of people might be completely unreasonable
to another group. It is subjectiveness even though it's quote allegedly objective theory.
The point being is there are no right answers. There's just good legal analysis with looking
at the weaknesses that everybody has, looking at positions from both sides and applying
the full rule of law looking at all the facts given. That’s it.
Paul Owen here for law school success. Frequently asked questions and questions you should ask.
Thanks for reading. Hope I conveyed some valuable information to you, to save you time, money,
and effort.
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