Study Habits and Their Effectiveness in Legal Education.

Abstract

In Dean Douglass G. Boshkoffs Seminar in Legal Education at Indiana University School of Law in the fall semester of 1973, questions were raised concerning both the effectiveness of law school teaching and the level of interest law students manifest concerning their studies. The fascinating article by Robert Stevens, Law Schools and Law Students, 59 Virginia Law Review 551 (1973), lends strong statistical support to the widely held belief that levels of interest and. involvement in law school undergo a drastic decline in the student's second and third years.1 Stevens posits as likely explanations that students learn so much of the overall legal matter in their first year that the latter two are redundant and therefore boring,2 or that changes in perspective and motivation alter behavior as professionalization proceeds.3 While these seemed like reasonable explanations, it appeared there might be value in investigating an alternate hypothesis: Law students find that the completion of assignments made by the professor, entailing a tremendous volume of work, does not lead to success in law school as measured by grades. Reliance on such sources as hornbooks and even commercial outlines such as Gilbert Law Summaries generally yields about the same result in terms of grades as the hard work of assignment completion. As a result students believe that assignments and the day-to-day law school experience based thereon are not worthwhile.4 If established such student perceptions would lower interest in law school and might bode ill for developing a sense of careful attention to required

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