Law school is unlike most other educational endeavors we have undertaken.  In college it was many times just enough to “cram and regurgitate”.  This may have produced a good exam grade, but it did precious little more.  The reason is that cramming puts information into our short-term memory.  Real study and learning puts information into our long-term memory.  The latter is where you want your information to be stored while you are in law school.

The cram-and-regurgitate method may get you by for now, but when the bar exam rolls around you may be up the creek.  So when you study, study hard and actually learn what you are studying and not merely memorize it.

So why the title of Law School Limerick?  Well, when I was in the third grade one of my assignments was to come up with a limerick to share with the class.  A limerick is a five-line poem with a very strict form.  For a third-grader it was no easy task.  In other words I had to really work at it.  Here is the limerick I came up with:

There once was a hair on my head.
I saw it and said, Oh, it’s dead.
I saw a big pie,
and started to cry,
just maybe my hair wasn’t fed.

The point?  The point is that I still remember that limerick after 25 years.  I worked and worked on it until I had what I thought was an “A” grade, and it was!

If we as law students really want to be great lawyers some day we must dedicate ourselves to really learning the material rather than merely spitting it back out on an exam.  I realize that most of us non traditional law students do not have a lot of time to spare.  But with some hard work and dedication we can still learn the material.  We just need to be creative and find better and more efficient ways to study.

I hope that this lesson on limericks has been helpful and informative.  God bless and have a great day.