In law school, what laws do they focus on when teaching?

Excellent question, star for you.

The emphasis is on general legal doctrines, not state-specific law. A law school graduate won't be able to cite the state ordinance against drunk driving, but she may be able to tell you about the holding in Palsgraf.

Textbooks consist entirely of appellate court cases handed down by state supreme courts and federal circuit courts. They're often followed by commentary and footnotes from some of the brightest legal minds.

Law school in America, for the most part, is theory based. As a result, there are many law graduates who lack the necessary experience to try a DWI or fender bender.

There is a focus on general law not state specific. You learn case law, BUT there is also a great amount of statutory law as well, along with cases to interpret those statutes.

You learn about the difficult laws and how to think in a different way. You don't learn about DUI's as the previous poster points out because once you know how to do legal research you can find that statute in your state in 5 minutes. You do however take criminal law which teaches you how to analyze criminal elements and to attack them. You also learn in crim pro how proper arrests, warrants and confessions work. Then there is evidence and all kinds of rules that apply for what evidence is admissible. Basically you learn a lot of basic skills that can apply to many situations. The skills from these three courses will apply to every criminal situation. the skills you learn in Civil procedure and Evidence will apply to every civil case you could ever try, whether you cover that exact legal topic in law school or not.

In short you learn things that apply to just about everything and learn how to apply it to a multitude of situations.