Wondering what it takes to improve your grades and move from the middle to the
top of the class.
It's not magic but rather changing how you prepare for your
classes and exams.
Rather than telling you how to do this I'm instead going to
interview one of my former students who made the jump.
He will share his story, including the steps he took to earn high marks.
Hello Lawlings, this is Professor Beau Baez.
Today I'm interviewing Mr. Salim Jabali, a student who ended up at the top of his 1L class.
After getting his grade back from my Tort midterm exam,
he made significant changes and within two months earned one of the highest
grades in my class.
After his interview today's bonus legal fact discusses the
time when the government had a financial incentive to convict you for treason.
Hi this is Professor Beau Baez and today I'm interviewing Salim Jabali, one
of my former students from Northern Illinois University.
So welcome Salim thank you for coming on and being willing to be interviewed.
Hi Professor Baez, thanks for having me.
I'm an avid viewer of Learn Law Better and I admire
and respect you as a professor so I'm excited for this chance to talk about my journey.
Great well thank you.
Well, so what we're doing today this past year of ...
Salim was one of my Tort students and during that time got to know him.
He sat right on the front row.
By the way that's great, I recommend to every person out there to, if you can, if you're willing to sit in the front.
I think it really helps.
Do you normally sit in the front row?
Is that something you've always done or how did you end up in the front row in my class?
That's a funny story actually.
Um, I was peer pressured into it and by a fellow student.
So I sat in the front row not exactly thinking I was going to.
I usually sit closer to the front but right in the front row, right. in front of you was not exactly my forte.
But I don't regret it for a second because it did help a lot and then I sat
in the front row for all of my other classes as well.
I think it helps.
The students who sit in the back it's just easier to stay ...
to disengage a little bit more, not to pay attention, you start seeing the room,
you know, kind of below you when you're at the top.
And, by the way, for those who were not in a traditional ... haven't been to law school yet oftentimes law
schools we have tiered seating.
So you have the first row and then it kind
of moves its way up like a theater style seating.
So the challenge is if you
sit in the back is you just see everything so people are on
their laptops, they're watching sports or something.
It's just a distraction.
I think it helps to be on the front row.
What I want to do that with this interview Salim is sort of ... it's really about you,
and I think what my audience wants to know is sort of a little bit about your journey.
So I want to have them know a little bit about where you started and I think that means undergrad.
So tell me a little bit about your undergraduate experience, maybe major ...
you know whatever you want to share about where you came from on your academic journey.
Okay yeah great.
Mine was a little unorthodox for a law student
because I majored in biology pursuing a the pre-med track.
So I had a family divided.
Half in the medical field half on the law side so my initial instinct was to go medical.
Then I decided I can't learn about the cell any longer.
So, um, I took a job after undergrad in a law firm and that's what jump-started my law school journey.
How interesting, so how much time did you spend out of
law ... out of college before you decided to go to law school.
It was about two years
Alright, so you were a little bit older okay that makes a little bit different.
But I think that's also valuable.
One of the things that I've mentioned to my audience and to other students is
the human brain doesn't fully develop till you're age 25 so if you can wait a little bit, not everybody can.
In your case it just happened to work out well, you were just a little bit older, a little bit more mature
coming to law school that's great.
So alright, so biology major and then you decided you liked it,
so you took the LSAT and you came to law school.
All right so tell me a little bit ... so let's just jump into law school.
So I think a good way of dividing this is, because this is your academic journey,
before midterms and after midterms.
So some law schools, not many, but more
and more law schools are offering midterm exams.
By the way in the vast majority of law schools out there you get one final exam at the end of the year.
So at Northern Illinois, as in some other Law Schools, it's nice to get some feedback.
So tell me a little bit about what you were doing before midterms,
sort of maybe your daily routine, how you were preparing for classes.
Right so like any other student I went into law school very ambitious, motivated, wanting to do well,
but not knowing what to expect.
I ... before ... before the midterm you know, I paid
attention in class, took great notes, thought I was doing great studying outside of class.
Like how many hours?
So if you had to like ... maybe you're your day in review.
So like on a typical weekday when you had a class what was your routine?
Normally I just review my notes and read the cases and case brief them as well.
For most, I would say all cases, prior to the midterm still I was case briefing.
Not as much using the textbook as I should have but definitely
reviewing notes and case briefing everything.
If you had to say how many hours per week?
So excluding class time about how many hours you think you were spending on your academic study?
That's a tough one but definitely not enough.
I would say maybe, you know some days an hour a day, on a day.
Total outside of class.
Total outside of class an hour.
So then we had midterms.
How would you describe your performance on, overall, all your midterms?
Overall the first one ... originally the first one we got back was your midterm.
And had high expectations ... was very disappointed in myself for the grade I received.
And I convinced myself that's what it was going to be like for the rest of my midterms
and started asking myself is law school not for me and you know kind
of anxious and nervous what was to come.
Then from your's I really buckled down
and the rest of my midterms went fairly well.
So mine was the first one and you weren't happy.
So ... and the other grades then started coming out.
So how did you do overall with ... in your other classes?
Same level of performance or different?
Well I was actually in the top percentile for all the other class midterms that came in,
and that was due to the disappointment I faced from your midterm.
Ahh, so you hadn't had those other exams yet?
No not yet. Yours was very early.
And you were able then to shift gears and then improve your performance.
Good, so tell me a little bit about what you did differently.
So how did you prepare for my exam and then how did you start preparing differently for the others.
For your exam I just went through the cases, kind of briefly.
I tried to understand the material as best as I could, like terms, definitions, things like that.
I tried to just, you know, formulate the general concepts as best as I could.
However the most important thing I did not do was structure of the essay and
how it should be presented.
I think that's the kind of foundation.
Yes well, I use a broken version of it, was the issue.
And I think that was, you know, the main issue because every professor does look for something different.
They are similar in their own ways.
But on their exams they do look for a certain pattern to follow and then you could put every piece
in together from the facts of the case or whatever is presented to you.
Okay. That was definitely a huge thing for me.
So you changed your structure.
Did you start spending any more time...
Well, yeah several hours more.
I started outlining every single day for every lesson we learned.
Okay. And you provided a great resource for that because you
kind of essentially had the outlines on blackboard so I would just pull it down
and add definitions, sit down with the book, and outline every single day.
Add in whatever, you know, I thought was also necessary for me to understand the concept as a whole.
That was, you know, a huge help.
So I would say I tripled, you know, the amount of time I spent studying.
You weren't happy with the midterm grade,
how did you do at the end of the semester on the ... at least on my final exam.
I received an A so I was very happy with the grade.
I did and as I was taking the exam you know it was a feeling of seeing
the material and knowing I knew what you were looking for.
Everything, like issue spotting, every single way down the prompt.
Just so the audience knows, you really had to because you had a relatively low grade on the midterm.
Not only to get to get an A, not only did you have to move your grade up,
you had to then basically move beyond other people in the class.
A lot of people may not understand, in law school I have a limited number of A's I can give.
So most professors are told: you can give X number of A's so many A minuses so many B pluses.
And so in order for somebody to jump from a pretty average grade on the midterm,
it really had to be a really high high A on the final exam.
So that was a really great accomplishment because you not only got a ... one of
the top grades but you did very very well.
One of my goals was actually to have one of the best student answers that you
email out to us and I received that on the I think was a third prompt you gave to us.
Bravo! So I want to go back a little bit from that the midterm.
So you mentioned you started doing outlining, you said you started spending ...
How many more hours ...
on average at least two.
And that was just not class
prep but you started thinking about how you were gonna get ready for the final
several months before.
Exactly. And the quizzes as well, I would study those and study the
previous ones from, you know, potentially the day before, class beforehand.
Make sure I had an understanding of that.
Maybe I got a point off, see why. I worked through it.
So you actually went back, you looked at the old quizzes, you learned from it,
and then you were ready for the next quizzes.
Yeah, I think is a huge help as well was studying multiple choice because that ...
one any multiple choice can be turned into an essay prompt or at least allow you to think the way
of how you would structure an essay based off of it.
And then it also gets the general concept down for each of the terms, you know,
what you're looking for to not catch you by surprise in the final itself that you gave us,
was, I believe half of it was based on multiple choice?
I think grading wise? Right. Yeah.
And that was huge for me because, I believe, I got a 25 out of the 30 on that which was a huge help.
You determined early on, all right, what kind of assessment am I going
to have and then you were able to take that
knowledge and you prepared for that kind of test.
Because, again, a lot of people just sort of wait till two weeks before the final.
Probably a lot of your classmates that are some of them I don't know what percentage and that really
doesn't give you enough time.
But,by the way, do you think you would have scored a
high high grade if you had waited to two weeks or do you think you needed all
that time of class prep or of exam prep.
If I waited I would not have gotten
nearly as high but I don't know if I needed the full two weeks but definitely
studying ahead of time, laying down a foundation.
And something that helped me that I would highly recommend is having a solid group of people
who are as dedicated as you are so you can discuss each of the problems and each of the
concepts even throughout those crazy hypo's that you see regularly in class
with each other and then discuss how you came to each solution.
Ahh, how interesting, so you're part of a study group, excellent because there is sort of the the right kind of
study group and the wrong kind of study group so so about how many people more
or less were in your group?
Yeah, so essentially it was, on an average day, it was me and three other people.
Did you have a dedicated amount of time that you spent?
Well it depends on how close we were to the final exam but as we
approached the exam we were spending about 12 to maybe 14, 15 hours a day studying
in a classroom at the school.
Just the entire day we would go get our energy drinks, maybe a snack.
Was it mainly focusing on content to make sure you had the rules right?
I mean what was your discussion like?
So we would each have our own outline prepared beforehand, something we would do personally.
Then we come in and discuss each of our outlines and fill each other's outlines in,
talk about each concept try, to find a problem on each.
Last couple days, you know, we spend about maybe half the time going through multiple choice
using CALI resources or just any multiple choice we could find.
So you found that it was a productive use of your time?
Most of it, I would say 90% of the time, yeah.
Anything else you think another law student, somebody who's getting ready to start their journey,
would want to know about your experience and
what led you to become a top performer within one semester of law school?
Something I did was, I took it very seriously and I didn't have room for,
you know, other people who thought it might be, you know, cool to not study.
Or not just take it as seriously as possible.
Because you have to treat it as a full-time job.
This is, you know, your future here and set it as your career,
set goals for yourself each time.
I want to be you know top of the class here and
something I did essentially was reach out to my professors a lot.
So I talked to them if I didn't understand a concept ... concept.
After class I just walked right into their office and ask some questions, like can you help me understand this?
And all the professors are extremely helpful all the time in law schools from what I've gathered.
So ... right ... just putting your right foot forward I think.
That's great that you had that experience.
That was not my experience in law school,
and I think for many people the experience
tends to be professors, tend to teach class and then they disappear.
By the way it's something you mentioned and I'm kind of curious.
I'd like to kind of peek behind the curtain because you have a different perspective of the class than I do.
So did you find there were students who weren't taking it seriously,
who weren't spending the time and effort to succeed?
Yeah definitely.
Something that was mind-blowing to me early on in the semester was some students were not
even reading the cases coming into class. Really?
And, I mean, yeah, I couldn't even fathom that at first.
Like how can you come into class.
I mean, being nervous enough if you do read the cases to make sure you get the
right answer if you're called on in class.
I couldn't even imagine if I didn't read the cases or didn't have the concepts or how much work I would have
at the end of the semester for the exam if I, you know, just took it as, you know, undergrad.
Were the people in your study group also as dedicated as you were?
Yeah, a hundred percent.
All of them were great and lots of things.
You know you surround yourself with people who are as focused as you are.
All them did just as well as I did.
What I'm kind of curious about: did you ever do any practice exams and did
you talk about those practice exams with your study buddies.
Yeah definitely. All the ones that you had posted or any professors post we
would each take, you know, at a different table and maybe the same room or
something and then come together and discuss what we got, why we got it,
where we should have what we should have gotten maybe.
Then there'd always be somebody who knew why that was the answer and they could say why they
thought it was and then we just discussed it that way ... so.
And then if we could find any, you know online, whatever resources we found online,
we would, you know, as time permitted we would try to use those as well.
Say for, in Torts, how many practice exams do you think you took prior to the torts final.
Prior to the torts ... so I think you had about, maybe four or five on there yourself?
Right. And then outside of that I would say just as much, so maybe, you know, eight to ten.
And you took them under timed conditions.
You went ahead and said thirty minutes you went ahead took a thirty minute exam.
Yep, exactly.
And did you take them closed book or do you do them open book?
I know my exams are closed book, so how did you ... did you try to mimic exam conditions as well?
Yeah, we tried to make it as similar as possible.
So closed book, timed, we took it in the classroom, the environment.
Yeah so we just tried to make it, you know, least amount of differences as possible.
As to your exam would be, so, focused on the essay less, multiple-choice first,
whatever we could do to reenact the environment.
So anything else that you'd want to share with the internet and potential law students or some who
maybe in law school and kind of figuring out how they can move from the the
middle of the pack to the top of the pack?
I guess I would say it's okay to be nervous.
It's natural to be nervous but use that to work harder to, you know get ... reach your goals,
set goals for yourself and then just work as hard as you can to reach those.
Well thank you so very much.
I appreciate your time and willingness to come and do this and I wish you well as you wrap up the summer
and as you start strong in your second year in law school.
Thank you very much professor Baez, take care.
Now for today's bonus legal fact.
From 1351 till 1870, the law of England held that the
property of those convicted of high treason were to be turned over to the monarch.
This result occurred because England was captured by William the
Conqueror in 1066 and all land is held at the pleasure of the king.
So by committing high treason, a British subject had his right to own property revoked.
To this day high treason includes the five following offences:
one, planning the death of the king, his wife, and his eldest son;
two, violating the king's wife, his eldest daughter, or his heir's wife;
three, levying war against the king;
four; providing aid to the king's enemies;
five, killing the Chancellor, the treasurer, or a judge.
Sorry, members of parliament aren't covered.
Interestingly, this law still applies not only in the United Kingdom but also in
New South Wales and a few other Commonwealth countries.
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