poor first semester performance + struck out at 1L recruit. What now? How screwed am I?

[concernedut]

Hi everyone, I'm a 1L UofT student and I have so far received straight P's in my classes (and even an LP on an assignment). I also messed up the recruit and haven't found any summer gigs either. I'm becoming increasingly concerned about my ability to find a good job in the 2L recruit, and even after I graduate. I've done all the readings, created notes and outlines from them, attended the vast majority of my classes, gone to office hours and even reviewed all returned assignments/exams. 

Yet it's as though something isn't clicking. Every assignment or exam I do small things I didn't foresee being an issue, or like 1 or 2 legal issues that I glazed over always end up tanking my grades. Or one misphrasal of a legal doctrine, or a improperly done citation. In a few classes my profs have openly told me that I was close to H, but someone had to get a P, and it just happened to be me. 

It's not as though I'm new to dense reading or writing either. My major was in a comparatively difficult and writing-heavy program at one of Canada's best schools. My GPA and LSAT were both well above the median for incoming 1Ls this year. So I'm confused as to why I feel near-incapacitated at discovering a means to break the P/H barrier. 

So my questions are this. 1: Just how bad will this first semester look on my resume all else equal? I know it's pretty damn bad and I've shut the door at many places by now, but the scope of the severity is something I've been unable to find any statistics/discussion on other than this UV article here. 2: What advice do people have for getting my grades up? I seriously feel like there's some meta-strategy about law school generally I'm missing. 3:  Anyone willing to share personal anecdotes/stories from navigating the recruit with comparatively poor grades or significantly improving their grades from first year onwards. 

Well I'm aware there are a bazillion threads on getting a job with poor grades, UofT has an eccentric grading system, and allegedly has a very good reputation among legal employers in Canada, so I thought a UofT-specific thread would be appropriate. 

 

[CleanHands]

6 minutes ago, concernedut said:

Yet it's as though something isn't clicking. Every assignment or exam I do small things I didn't foresee being an issue, or like 1 or 2 legal issues that I glazed over always end up tanking my grades. Or one misphrasal of a legal doctrine, or a improperly done citation. In a few classes my profs have openly told me that I was close to H, but someone had to get a P, and it just happened to be me. 

I'm going to leave the advice and info about the recruit to others, since I never attended UofT and you're right that that matters, so I'm not the best placed to weigh in.

But what I will say is that your profs probably aren't just saying that to make you feel better, and that the unfortunate reality is that the minor issues you point to really do make the difference between above and below average grades. The thing to keep in mind is that you're being graded on a curve against the rest of your class all writing virtually identical answers, and profs have to seize upon minor omissions or poor articulations of concepts or tests in order to distinguish grades.

The good news is that you seem to have done a good job of identifying what the issue is. Did you write practice exams using the exam bank under timed conditions and then go over them with your profs? If not, that would be my first suggestion. These are the kind of issues that you could potentially improve by simply writing more law exams.

[WiseGhost]

@CleanHands speaks the truth. 

My understanding is that striking out at the 1L recruit is normal, and that P grades + an LP grade will not be insurmountable, especially if you do well this term. I would focus on studying towards the exam, rather than trying to concentrate on all of the material. 

I have also found that focusing on writing quality has improved my marks. Good content is one thing, but if you wrap it with a pretty bow and structure it nicely, your profs will love it. Ross Garner's Point Made provides many examples of great legal writing and strategies that you can use for improving your own texts. Once you implement those strategies for your assignments, you will end up reflexively writing in a clearer and more attractive style during exams. 

[concernedut]

7 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

I'm going to leave the advice and info about the recruit to others, since I never attended UofT and you're right that that matters, so I'm not the best placed to weigh in.

But what I will say is that your profs probably aren't just saying that to make you feel better, and that the unfortunate reality is that the minor issues you point to really do make the difference between above and below average grades. The thing to keep in mind is that you're being graded on a curve against the rest of your class all writing virtually identical answers, and profs have to seize upon minor omissions or poor articulations of concepts or tests in order to distinguish grades.

The good news is that you seem to have done a good job of identifying what the issue is. Did you write practice exams using the exam bank under timed conditions and then go over them with your profs? If not, that would be my first suggestion. These are the kind of issues that you could potentially improve by simply writing more law exams.

I have done a few timed tests in the past. But no more than around 2-3 for a class. While I felt as though I could always retrospectively identify weak-spots in my PTs, areas to improve, places to manage time etc, I would always miss a few things on each one I did. IE, there was always one case the HH answer managed to connect that I did not, or I applied a similar but not quite relevant doctrine. I could never quite get the strictly correct answer, or an answer of exactly the same quality as the previous-year HH responses available on the SLS dropbox.

For what it's worth I also do think I managed test anxiety pretty badly last semester, but I don't know if there's an easy way around this in law school. 

Some of our classes also give take home exams with a ton of time and strangely short word limits (like 1000-2000 words). So timed exams are obviously not particularly useful there. I really was stumped figuring out how to prepare for those.

[GoatDuck]

Have you used the free tutoring services available at the faculty? If you have not, you should really consider booking a few sessions asap. At the beginning of the last term I really struggled with knowing what to do and how to approach law school, and by the third meeting with a tutor I felt confident going into the exams. Feel free to PM me if you want to chat about it more, and all the best on your exam prep!