So you have no idea what super-precedent is? How did you achieve such renown? The kind of renown that allows you to boldly call a U. Of Chicago Law grad a "a constitutional idiot."
Fwiw, I graduated from there.
A few corrections:
- it's called the U of C, which admittedly take some getting used to.
- you only have to take one constitutional law class 1st year which is mandatory for an accredited law school (it doesn't have to be 1st year, but that's become the standardized approach -- that 1st year has all the mandatory classes)
You get only a basic grounding in constitutional law.
If I had started one year later -- I initially deferred a year, but then changed back -- Obama would likely have been my constitutional law prof.
- the U of C Law School, like most top schools, fails nobody. Once accepted, a law student can skate through pretty easily just by showing up to classes and doing some of the basic reading. The school doesn't want its image hurt by having students fail out or receiving low grades. So once in, you come out with a diploma, no matter how little you learned. The grading system was 10-15% A's; 70-80% B's; 10-15% C's. A "B" was the default grade. If someone super-struggled, they might have a talk with them and suggest they withdraw or take a leave of absence -- possibly dangling a refund of the current semester as incentive -- but that's super-rare.
So really the trick is getting accepted. You just need to be a good test taker who practices and learns the LSAT. Have good college grades, in any major. And it helps to have some kind of extra-curricular activity (play the sousaphone, etc) or somesuch (I had taught in Kenya for a year after college). Since something like 10% or less get admitted, some luck plays a role as well, since most applicants are fairly similar in GPA, LSAT score and sousaphone ability.
I found that of my 165 strong class, roughly 10 were pretty damned smart folks. For another 10-15 you wondered just how they got there, as they were decidedly below average. The majority of the rest were upper-middle-class prep school jerks who were reasonably smart. The odd thing is that most of the supersmart and the comparative dummies were the nicest people. I never figured that out.
What's kind of crazy is I had a good friend who went to New York Law School (NYL). It's a marginal law school, yet they actually grade ruthlessly and fail people out. The theory seems to be that if you get A's and finish in the top 10% of their class, then you are highly qualified and can get a good law job. The middle of the pack will become lawyers but never make much money at it. And the bottom 20% should become janitors.
Before I entered the process, I would have expected it to be the complete opposite. That at the top law schools, lots of competition, you'd fight for good grades, danger of failing out if you couldn't cut it, etc. And that at lower level law schools they would just take your money and everyone would skate through and graduate.
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