What happens if you fail legal writing

As such, students have to self-evaluate in a different way. Here, Alli, Clark, and other lawyers share their best advice for responding smartly to a bad grade and achieving huge improvements the next time around.

Armando Edmiston, a personal injury lawyer who mentors law students and law students to-be and operates his own firm, Ask2Amigo Law Firm, in Tampa, Fla. Get help understanding how to read cases and extract the law and think like a lawyer. Professors make mistakes, too. Upon realizing that, the flustered and apologetic professor bumped that grade up significantly.

I met with her and explained exactly what she could have done better. From that moment on, every one of her papers was either the best in the class or close to it. She ended up with great grades in the class and eventually became a law professor at a highly rated law school. Simeone says this advice also applies when you bomb an entire class. I also explained that she had the talent to get good grades—judging by the final assignments she eventually handed in—but part of being a lawyer was meeting deadlines.

I go to a school that grades Legal Writing, and the grading is done with [seemingly] very little rhyme or reason for ex: Prof. Maybe that's just 'how' it's graded? Either way, it doesn't seem very instructive. I was also 3 points higher than the 'low' end of the range. I don't like to make excuses, and I can see where some of my writing 'sucked', and I could have put more work into it, but Therefore, what kind of grade can be expected from 'below average' results?

I understand that's not 'failing', but to me, that is. I feel pretty solid about my exams maybe 'okay' about my lowest, but confident about one, and 'good' about the others , and especially now am hoping for above average grades to even out this mess. I am wondering how likely this will affect chances for summer internships, and how likely this will affect the possibility of transferring? You may already know some of the areas that need improvement.

Whatever the case, use that knowledge to plan for the spring semester. Most schools have academic success programs, and academic success personnel or your academic adviser can help you prepare a plan to keep you on track in the future. Assuming you still are flummoxed by your grades, ask for a copy of each exam prompt and your answer. Reread the exam prompts and your responses. You may immediately see that you misread the instructions—maybe the prompt instructed you to address only intentional torts and most of your response was devoted to negligence.

Or you might see that you misread or skipped some important facts in the prompt that were crucial to the analysis. While these revelations may be frustrating, you will at least know to look out for these problems when your spring exams roll around. If the professor does, take advantage of this resource. Go through that sample exam answer and make a list of every issue the writer addressed. Then go through your exam answer and list every issue you addressed. Compare the lists—you may see that your list is substantially shorter.

Then compare your exam answer. Or maybe your analysis was simply wrong because, for example, you failed to address the mailbox rule. Make notes. Did I fail to address a major issue?