Torts is my last major hurdle; at noon on Thursday, the hardest part of law school will be over. As I have been doing with reasonable success for all of my finals, I sat down to take a practice test. The first question was scheduled for 50 minutes. There were lots of issues to explore, but I only had enough time to hit the major ones. When time ran out, I had two single-spaced pages. I compared it to the "A" result, the actual answer our TA gave. It was three times as long and gave every little nook and cranny of the fact pattern a thorough treatment.
My stomach dropped to the floor.
Even if I had it memorized, I couldn't physically type all that stuff in 50 minutes. Granted, I don't need to get the sort of score that would make me a TA candidate, but my answer was so woefuly lacking in the sort of details he had that the comparison is just plain embarassing.
The worst part is that I doubt that cramming would help. I knew what he was talking about. I could have done work at his level of detail if I had three hours to write it. Are the other 1Ls writing this fast and producing this sort of volume? If so, it's back to journalism for me.
If your school is like ours, you only need to do as well as most of the people in your class to get a decent grade. The TA probably had unlimited time; none of your fellow students will. If you hit all the major points and one or two of the nuances, you're probably doing really well.
Good luck!!
This was his actual answer from the actual test - he had the same amount of time as everyone else.