School's in

[tranquility]

Obviously, from a few posts I've seen, school is back in session. While each can choose the amount of help or the completeness of response to homework questions, I write to help guide on determining when it is a homework question so you can decide what you want to do. I'm certainly not right all the time, but I bet I guess better than average. Any "tips" other than mine are more than welcome. Smart students will change things a bit to try to make it less obvious due to the majority opinion that we don't do homework.

The basic questions on the law are divided into two categories. Racehorse questions and thinkum questions. Racehorse questions bring up many issues in the law and thinkum questions bring up only a few issues, but in much depth.

To recognize a racehorse, just look at the question and see if many legal issues are presented in a fairly compact format. If a few paragraphs brings up dozens of legal issues, it's pretty obvious a skilled writer created the question. While I'm sure it could be a smart layman with real issues, most times the racehorse is pretty obviously meant to test knowledge of a legal outline. A recent example was a contracts question which pretty much hit the entirety of the first semester of Contracts outline.

To recognize a thinkum, look at the question and see a single issue with myriad facts which implicate a branching of legal theories. A recent example was a premesis liability question which got to the concepts of licensee and invitee and the duties owed to each and which the facts were detailed enough to create an argument for both and an understanding of the differences.

Finally, although it was not the case in either example I mention, be especially suspicious of names starting in "D" or "P". I mean, when Debbie crashes into Paul, you shouldn't have to hurt yourself determining who is going to be the plaintiff and who will be the defendant.