29th Year! Better Grades, Compete for A’s, B’s Minimum. . . OR YOUR MONEY BACK!
Message(s)/
Advice of the Moment
(The failure of law schools; when to take LEEWS; much more. . .)
“There is a system for
handling the law school essay exam well. It's
the single most important key to law school success.
Its creator is Wentworth Miller, founder of LEEWS. A
friend who made law review discovered that every one of his fellow
editors had taken LEEWS in their first semester of law school,
as had he. Other than this book, LEEWS is the best thing you could
possibly have going for you.”
—PLANET LAW SCHOOL (1998), pp. 83, 89.
(Read our review of this provocative book and the full text of its description of LEEWS, and a review of PLANET LAW SCHOOL II.)
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29th Year • Well Over 100,000 Law Students Instructed BETTER GRADES • COMPETE FOR A's • B's MINIMUM … OR YOUR MONEY BACK!* (Up to 90 percent of first years don't get a single A first year
-- none! Live Program + Book OR equally effective Audio CD Program + Book |
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“It's not often that advice is easy--especially advice on a subject as endlessly distressing as law exams. Here it is easy. (The advice, anyway.) The answer? In a word — LEEWS."
— LAW SCHOOL — GETTING IN, GETTING GOOD, GETTING THE GOLD (2008), p. 302
- Introduction (Why do LEEWS? Many reasons, but here are three. 1) For less than the cost of a case book, you can ensure grades that should result from hard work, including, although many doubt us on this, the A's that many think require a special genius. 2) Law school can be the interesting, stimulating experience it should be, but isn't for most. 3) Apart from a commercial outline, other study aids, including expensive, simulated law school weeks, are ineffective and unnecessary.)
- Do Study Aids Make A Difference?
- More on What Sets LEEWS Apart?
- Money Back Guarantee
Introduction
Again, welcome to our somewhat clunky (amateurish, some say), old school,
but hopefully helpful (and persuasive) website! [It may be noted
that Mr. Miller, LEEWS founder and instructor, uses a whiteboard,
a flipchart, and the LEEWS Primer to instruct programs -- not
power point, videos, etc. --, and this remains more than adequate.
Indeed, students enjoy themselves! Most also enjoy the equally effective
audio CD program.]
You've heard that law school is tough, hard. Perhaps concern brought
you to this website, and/or simply a desire to "cover all the bases." Perhaps
you want to do well, or simply just not do poorly.
Three weeks into law school most law students begin to seriously doubt
that they can compete for "A" grades. (They've been intimidated by
confusion about what is going on in class, and impossibly insightful responses
of some few classmates.) Following the first set of exams, despite briefing
every case, attending every class, studying harder than they ever did
before, 85-90 percent of law students, even at Harvard, don't receive
a single A -- not one! (And almost every HLS student has a soaring LSAT
score, and hasn't seen less than an A grade since kindergarten.)
The real problem is that the great majority of law students now buy into
the idea that they are not capable of getting A's, at least not on time-pressured
"essay hypothetical" type exams, the standard fare in first year and most
other courses. More than hard work and intelligence is felt to be needed.
The belief takes hold that an innate "genius for the law" is required,
and they don't have it. This idea that doing well on law exam requires some
sort of genetic aptitude is omnipresent in law schools. It tends to be
promoted by professors (who typically got A's in law school) and those who
do well.
We say nonsense! Yes, law exams are a challenge. However, lawyering
is a game, law school is a game, law exams are certainly a game! Games
can be played well -- but only IF the rules are known, IF requisite skills
are acquired! Such a person can especially do well, given that almost everyone
else (including those who impress in class!) neither knows the rules,
nor has the skills; and, moreover, have given up, because they think some
sort of innate genius is required.
Yes, law school requires hard work, but it is not rocket science.
The fault for students not performing well enough on essay exams to merit
A's lies not with students (unless they fail to heed our message), but
with omissions, misdirection, intimidation, and ineffective instruction
across the board in law schools -- all of them! LEEWS fills those gaps,
corrects the misdirection and deficiencies in instruction, and restores
confidence. LEEWS even instills eagerness for playing the law school
exam game!
We have achieved our remarkable results for near 30 years not just by making
you a better law student and exam taker, but because the efforts of equally
smart and hardworking, but clueless classmates are so mediocre. You don't
have to be so great on exams, just better than most others who, with few
exceptions (the ones with "lawyering genius," which is more often just a
knack) do so poorly, even at the Harvards, Yales, and Stanfords. ("Honors,"
not A's are awarded at those schools. But they are equally hard to achieve.)
If we seem long winded and at times repetitive, it is because our task
of persuading you that doing LEEWS is worth your small investment of
time and money is difficult. (Note under "Guarantees" that you have
a free trial of either live or audio program!) No one, especially law
professors and upperclassmen, can believe we do something that is so very
different from all other information out there, and therefore that effective.
(Those who know what we instruct, won't tell others. "Only a very close
friend," they say.) We must overcome a very high hurdle of skepticism
over our professing that A's ARE possible, that we are about your getting
A's. We guarantee B's, precisely because we know that you will, in spite
of your doubts, compete for A's. The competition is that weak!
We hope you will muddle through all that is here and be persuaded that
LEEWS is worth trying. There is much useful, free advice amid the efforts
to persuade. Or if you are already persuaded -- because a lawyer, a
judge, an upperclassman, a book, a law professor, etc. simply said, "Do
it! Do LEEWS! --. then click on Order/Registration now.
A simple exercise:
Consider the following exercise, lifted from the seventh edition of the
LEEWS' Law Essay Exam Writing Primer (Primer). It is a relatively
simple exercise. Nevertheless, rarely do more than 10-25 percent
of law students identify certain less obvious possibilities that they
later agree any mediocre lawyer would. They also agree that absent
identification of those possibilities, an "A" grade on the exercise
is unlikely. In the April, 2009 Boston live LEEWS program, despite having
taken torts first term, none of the five Harvard 1Ls in attendance identified
the less obvious possibilities.:
A, driving his car with passenger B, approaches and enters
an intersection with the green light. Although green for A,
the light flickers yellow for C, approaching swiftly from A's
right. The two cars collide in the intersection, injuring the
occupants.
Simultaneously, D drives into the intersection from the
direction opposite A. She swerves to avoid the collision
between A and C, and in doing so strikes pedestrian E,
who had just stepped off the curb with a "walk" signal.
B, meanwhile, leaps from A's car, and in a rage slugs
C, breaking his nose.
--/--
Discuss the rights and liabilities of all parties.
This is what is known in law school (and on bar exams) as a "law essay
hypothetical" fact pattern, because it is made up or imaginary.
It is sometimes called a "hypothetical," or "hypo" for short, or
an "essay." Law professors also call it a "question," and the instruction
at the end the "call of the question." But this is a misnomer that
confuses matters. If the above instruction were changed to "What are
the rights and liabilities of all parties?," you would have a question
at the end of the question, no? So let's call the thing a hypo or essay
or fact pattern.
Enough semantics. (Although such nitpicking and nuancing is characteristic
of "lawyerlike" thinking.) Hypotheticals are the staple exam
format in all law schools and on all bar exams. The above -- longer,
more complex -- is the sort of exercise that might be offered as
part of a torts exam. A "tort" is a wrongful act (not involving a
breach of contract) resulting in an injury, loss, or damage, for which
the injured party can bring civil action, such as trespass, assault,
battery, defamation. "Torts" is a required first year subject in
all law schools, usually offered in the first term.
The above example is designed to test not only a student's mastery of
certain areas of tort law, but, more importantly, her ability to apply that
law to facts in the process known as "lawyerlike analysis." At bottom it
tests a student's progress in becoming a lawyer versed in tort law. You
would be given roughly 30 minutes to address this exercise in the context
of a 3-4 hour exam featuring several such exercises.
Hypotheticals on most torts exams, of course, would be far longer, far
more complicated and confusing than this example. Nevertheless,
as noted previously, in giving this exercise to students in live
LEEWS programs for near 30 years -- nothing changes in law school,
so there is no need to change the example. --, with appropriate introduction
to relevant law, rarely do more than 10-25 percent identify certain
less obvious possibilities that they later agree most any practicing
lawyer would surely identify. Often fewer. Moreover, they agree
that identification of those possibilities is required to even be in the
ballpark of receiving an "A" grade on this exercise.
Why?
Why the essay hypothetical-type exercise is so problematic:
First, because this exercise is different from anything experienced in
college or graduate school. For an apt analogy, imagine a math, chemistry,
physics, economics, or accounting exam, where not only are you expected
to apply certain formulas committed to memory, but you first have
to figure out the problems to be solved (!!). So much for the idea
that being a "good writer" is the key to doing well on law essay exams.
[Most exams in law school will be typed.] You have to first discern
what "issues" to discuss.
Second, because they have yet to make the transition from law student/academic to practical, goal-oriented lawyer in their thinking. Moreover, as a result of the intimidation factor of law school and such unfamiliar exercises, they come to the exercise with too passive an attitude. Finally, because their approach to the exercise -- instructed by professors, their law school, other exam writing/preparation programs, or devised themselves -- is haphazard, unstructured, ineffective.
This points up some very good news in law school, and probably the primary
reason that LEEWS is so effective in enabling even average LSAT/college
gpa law students to do well.
Because "case method" law school instruction does
a poor job counteracting the overly academic orientation of law students,
because it fails to instruct what, exactly, lawyers do and how they
do it -- apply relevant legal precepts to relevant facts to persuade
on behalf of client objectives! --, and because all legal problem
solving, including law exam exercises, tests ability to perform "as
a lawyer" (what else would it test?), even the smartest and most
diligent law students produce mediocre exams.
LEEWS shows you how to handle any and all exams
as a reasonably competent lawyer. This impresses in comparison with other
exams, and explains why so many LEEWS grads not only make law review (top
ten percent), but am jur classes (earn the top grade in the class).
You needn't write a great exam (although many LEEWS grads do, as reflected
in earning rare A+ grades). You need only write an exam that by reason of
its comparative lawyerly competence will vault from the great pile of mediocre
efforts and impress.
Welcome again!:
Again, wellcome to our website! Please know this. Everything
you read here is true, the result of over 30 years of experience
and focus on a single aim -- enabling law students to excel in law
school. The simple fact is that we cannot adequately convey in
words what a difference our program makes for law students (and law
grads preparing for the bar). As attendees of the live program often
say, "You have to experience [LEEWS]."
The only thing that really counts in law school is grades.
Not membership in organizations or on sports teams, as in college.
Grades are everything in law school, and first year grades are
most important. Grades largely determine who makes law review
(top ten percent), who gets choice jobs (now, more than ever!), who
gets prized judicial clerkships. Across the board, in every one
of the 200+ law schools, grades are almost exclusively based on a
final exam at the end of term.
No papers or quizzes, no homework turned in. The feared Socratic
give and take between student and professor normally counts
nothing toward the grade. (Well, perhaps a half grade bump for
those who participate frequently, and who typically don't excel
on the final exam.) If there is a midterm exam, it will count
-- 10%, 20%, 30% -- only if it can boost the final grade. It will
not detract from a good performance on the all-important final exam.
What you need to know to compete for (rare) A's:
Law schools and all others fail to instruct many things you need to know
to compete for top grades. For example, you'll want to know how, methodically
and efficiently, to pull apart confusing hypos into manageable components.
You'll want to know how to analyze issues and present that analysis
in concise paragraphs "as a lawyer." (Then you will understand and
be able to implement "IRAC.") More immediately, as you begin law school,
you'll want to know how to brief a case in 2-4 lines, while getting
more out of it. You'll want to take far fewer notes in class than the
10-15 pages per week in each subject that other students typically take
-- because they haven't prepared adequately for class, and don't understand
what is going on. How about 2-3 pages per week -- max! --, which you will
then incorporate each weekend into the 30-50 page course outline that
others will begin too late in the term?
FOR LESS THAN THE COST OF A NEW CASE BOOK (often
much less), YOU WILL COMPETE FOR RARE LAW SCHOOL "A" GRADES.
There is a lot here.
The problem of successfully handling law school and
especially preparing for and taking all-important law school
exams is complex. (Yet, as suggested by GGG above,
simple -- LEEWS.) The aids/advice competing for your attention
are many, including what law schools and law professors offer.
Year after year, generation after generation, the majority coming into law school ignore what we offer. (Good news for those who invest in LEEWS!) Indeed, often it is those who didn't do so well in college, or who are somewhat older and mature who make the effort and minor investment to do LEEWS. OR, and this is the majority, a friend in another law school, an upperclassman, a lawyer or judge, or a law professor says, "DO LEEWS!" We have had former students, now partners in major firms, pay for their interns to do LEEWS(!!).
As noted, it is not easy to convey the depth and effectiveness of our
instruction, the uniqueness of our insights, and how very
different and how much more effective LEEWS is compared with
ALL other study aids. Read the attested remarks from students
at your school. Read the Message(s) of the Moment. Read the
Basic Truths.
Knowing full well that the transformative instruction and experience that is LEEWS cannot be grasped until it is experienced, we nevertheless want to provide as much information about what we offer as possible. We also want to provide you with useful free information and advice. Here's something else you should know:
Sure, law school requires hard work. However, . . . law school need not be mysterious, confusing, intimidating. It should and can be stimulating intellectually, even fun. Certainly, success in law school is within the reach of any person of reasonable intelligence. As Mr. Miller likes to say to classes, "If you can find your way to this program in a room in a hotel in this city/[suburb], you're capable of 'lawyerlike analysis'" — the key to impressing professors and doing well on law exams. What is necessary is to work hard, but also smart, …to acquire the necessary new and unfamiliar skills needed as soon as possible.
!! Want a thumbnail sketch of how in depth and comprehensive LEEWS instruction is? Click Regis/Order/Cost to view the track headings on the back cover of our audio CD program. You'll have to peer closely; but you'll understand why an entire day is required to grasp our system and why it's worth it. You'll save so much more than a day when you avoid the wasted motion most law students engage in.
Do Study Aids Make A Difference?
Perhaps you're wondering whether any of the many study aids for law students
can make a difference. The simple answer is that
for the most part others don't (not any more than
the "IRAC"-based standard advice you'll get from professors),
but LEEWS does – dramatically so. A recent review of online law exam
advice reveals more repackaging of the same do's and don'ts -- helpful tips!
-- what we at LEEWS call "Conventional Wisdom." It is moderately helpful,
but has not proved effective in our 30 years of experience. To posit, as
one regimen of nine steps or whatever does, that "your professor is your
best source of advice," indicates not only that there is nothing approaching
a true science of exam writing that puts YOU in the drivers seat. It fails
to understand that "case method" instruction, which virtually all law professor's
subscribe to, and which doesn't begin to train a "lawyer," while then offering
an exercise that says, in effect, "show me that you are a lawyer well versed
in my subject," is at the heart of the problem. This non sequitor, ipso
facto (the thing speaks for itself), disqualifies law professors as
the best source of exam writing advice. (However, once LEEWS is in place,
you will naturally pay attention to a particular professor's quirks, interests,
instructions.) If anything, the exam of a LEEWS grad impresses by exceeding
professors' notions of what is possible.
No matter. It is precisely the confusion sown by law professors and case
method instruction that LEEWS takes advantage of.
We at LEEWS are gratified at the recognition of our effectiveness by such reputable sources as Planet Law School, Getting the Gold, and The Princeton Review (see quote on right). However, much more than either of these sources, word-of-mouth from satisfied former students has long been our best advertising. It continues to be. Former students are law professors, judges, lawyers, upperclassmen. Some are parents of law students (!!). Often loathe to share the LEEWS advantage with classmates, they tell friends and underclassmen, "If you do nothing else, do LEEWS!" It is not uncommon for former students, now lawyers, to pay for their interns to attend LEEWS.
Simple. It is difficult to excel in law school -- to get A's. We make A's attainable, even probable (because you'll write far better exams than clueless classmates). Our cost is less than a new textbook (!!). B's are guaranteed (and a top 1/3 finish first term!). You have a free trial of either the one-day live program or the equally effective audio CD program.
More on What Sets LEEWS Apart?
What makes LEEWS uniquely effective? Why spend valuable time and very little money (no more than you would spend on a new textbook!) on LEEWS, as opposed to simply studying hard (or harder) and/or employing some other law study aid?
Quite simply, Wentworth Miller -- attorney, Yale Law graduate ('77), Rhodes scholar -- has developed and polished for over 30 years a comprehensive system of day-to-day, week-to-week preparation and exam taking, applicable to any essay-type exam in any legal subject, that is remarkably effective. The scheme is sophisticated overall ("ingenious," most say), yet readily comprehensible in its individual facets.
The program of instruction encompasses all aspects of the law exam process – pulling apart complex essay fact patterns (known as "hypos," short for "hypothetical") to identify "issues" -- performing "lawyerlike analysis" -- concise presentation of analysis -- use of "hornbooks" and commercial outlines -- introducing "policy" aspects to analysis -- abbreviated (2-4 line) exam-focused briefing and (20-50 page) course outlining -- etc. –, and is more in depth, more insightful, and goes far beyond the standard, rather obvious and incomplete "IRAC"-centered advice offered by ALL others, including law professors (e.g., "know the law;" "read the facts [of hypos] carefully," "argue both sides of issues" [assuming you can find issues and know how to fashion lawyerly arguments], "follow IRAC," etc.). As a consequence, our students enjoy a significant advantage over typically clueless classmates. Indeed, virtually all of our students (over 98 percent!) improve exam performance.
To cite two examples of LEEWS’ effectiveness, it is no accident that in 2000-2001 40 percent of members of law review (top ten percent) at Washington University School of Law (including the editor-in-chief) and 25 percent of members of law review at Duke took LEEWS as 1Ls.
We wish you could just take our word for it -- or the word of the many, many former students whose remarks and letters are reproduced (with names!) throughout this website. Beyond (used) textbooks, (used) commercial outlines, and sometimes a treatise or "hornbook" (use the library copy!), LEEWS is all you need. You don't need resources that purport to teach or review substantive law. (You'll be able to learn the law from your casebook and [commercial] outline.) You don't need the many study aids recommended in Planet Law School. You especially don't need the expensive, hand-holding, one and two-week simulated law school programs. They offer nothing new. Our students who have taken them typically lament the waste of money.
You may not even need LEEWS. We estimate that 5-7 percent of law students have a knack for handling law essay exams. Problem is, other than the circumstance that science types tend to do better on law exams than literary types (again, so much for the myth that being a "good writer" is key), that 5-7 percent cannot be predicted by college gpa, LSAT score, library hours, etc. Moreover, the knack of that 5-7 percent brings success only because it raises their effort somewhat above the mediocre level of most classmates. Their exams still tend to fall short of a truly lawyerlike effort. They would prepare far more efficiently and do even better with LEEWS.
If you are comparing law school study aids, just consider the most obvious difference – only LEEWS guarantees results. Only LEEWS offers a free trial of both its products – the one-day live program ($125 or less in a group, including book), and the equally effective audio version ($160 including book and shipping). (Click Guarantees.)
The reason is that no other program or aid offers much beyond "IRAC" and the standard advice presented free at this website. (Click Standard Advice – Free) Thus, they don’t impart much of an advantage. By the end of first term most 1Ls know what they instruct.
Click How LEEWS is Different for comparisons between LEEWS and exam writing/study instruction offered by professors and student groups, LEEWS vs. Fleming’s, LEEWS vs. Getting to Maybe, LEEWS vs. the free, 45 minute Bar-Bri-sponsored session, formerly with professor Charles Whitebread (now deceased), LEEWS vs. prelaw, simulated law school programs (e.g., Law Preview, Bar-Bri/NILE), etc.]
Again, there is a lot at this website. That's because there is a lot to know about us, law school exams, law school itself. Unless there is something you want to go to immediately, you might want to begin with Law School Basic Truths and Message(s)/Advice of the Moment. (Click Message(s)/Advice of the Moment. Click Basic Truths.)
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* Click Guarantees.
Reactions to
LEEWS…
... (and results) ... Mr. Miller: I want to thank you for the help I received by way of the CD program I ordered. My GPA was about 2.49 after my first year. I saw more C's than I care to enumerate. I listened to the program, utilized the strategy, and my grades this last semester [fall 2008] were much better -- A, A-, B+, B. B. Put simply, it worked. Thanks.
— Joseph T. Moore, Pepperdine '10
(More results under "Reviews" and "Results" sections.)
LEEWS takes the old IRAC approach and vastly improves on it. LEEWS is a Godsend ...It is truly disgraceful that a LEEWS-type program is not part-and-parcel of every law school's pedagogy.
— PLANET LAW SCHOOL II (2003), pp. 164, 165
There are lots of commercial programs and aids designed to assist law students in studying for and writing exams, but—trust us—Wentworth Miller's ["LEEWS"] is the best of the bunch. [LEEWS] is the secret behind the success of more law review members than you can shake a stick at. You really should check it out.
— THE PRINCETON REVIEW 2001 Guide to Law Schools, pp. 80, 83
