LEEWS The Good and the Bad

We Learned About LEEWS From Planet Law School

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Planet Law School introduced us to the LEEWS methods for the first time as we read about LEEWS in Planet Law School. We purchased the materials and sat through a lecture. Overall we rate the course as acceptable. We do have reservations about the usage of some of the LEEWS exam writing methods and we have serious reservations about the course because they refused to verify their results to Planet Law School, their main cheerleader.

First, LEEWS and Planet Law School are practically kissing cousins related to the issue of how class relates to exams. Our advice is that you need to brief the entire case and not some edited version in the casebook. While we agree with LEEWS that case briefing is not the sole way to prepare for law school exams we believe strongly that you must read and brief cases in order to understand the application of the law. LEEWS has good advice about the relevance of much of the class discussions and they have good advice relevant to preparation for class.

Second, much of the advice given begs a large number of questions and gives a lot of theory and advice but no practical examples. LEEWS assumes that each student is different and each should have a custom outline of what they think is relevant that might be on their law school exams. We disagree with LEEWS on that point. Black Letter Law is the same for everyone, either you know it or you don’t. Much of the advice given related to memorization is too tertiary to be of any good. Much of the advice on the usage of commercial outlines misses the point about using resources and materials to prepare for law school exam writing. LEEWS relies totally on class discussions to flush out the outline that you will need but supplies no other relevant sources for getting information on black letter law nor any gauge for a student to know if they do in fact know the law.

LEEWS has some really bad advice for taking Law School Exams Writing

Third, Some of the advice is of no use at all. LEEWS tells you to walk into the exam room and immediately begin to write down your course outline in a skeletal fashion. That advice is just insane and plain stupid. If you can write it down from memory why write it down just to look at it during the exam. Case in point, if you have an open book exam any time spent looking in the book will drive your grades much lower. Either you know the law or you don't. Writing down the law in such a fashion when the exam just starts will help freak you out more than you already are and you may lose your cool and that is the worst thing that can happen. Discipline is the number one ally you have on any exam and you get discipline from practice, practice and more practice. LEEWS also recommends that law students outline their exam answers which we agree with but not in the fashion LEEWS recommends.

At times we seriously began to wonder if LEEWS has every actually taken a real exam. There are some good tips for day to day advice on how to prepare for a law school exam writing. What is also significant in a bad way is we haven't seen any major changes in the product to improve the results for students. Much of the good advice LEEWS gives is advice that the MP3 Exam lecture from Study Partner gave in the late 80's and early 90's. We see none of the clear indicia of good feedback mechanisms to enhance the product to produce better results and better methodologies. LEEWS is a broken record.

Fourth, LEEWS does not have a large enough bank of practice exams for you to learn the skill of law school exam writing. While the few exams they present are excellent there are not enough for you to practice.

Fifth LEEWS gives many of his exam lectures too late in the school year to really be of a significant help. While any help is always productive, taking the lecture a month or less before actual exams will produce marginal results. You must take the LEEWS course as early as you can in September if at all possible. If that is not possible it will still produce a benefit but not a great as you really want.

With all this being said, LEEWS is an ok course with some useful advice in some areas of exam writing. But we find it strange that they would not take the opportunity to verify their results with their main cheerleader, Planet Law School. See that link on the left column. This course is ok but there are more comphrensive courses. See the MP3 Exam Writing link on the left.