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Prepare for Law School: A Hacker's Free Tips on How to Study Law and Succeed
Use 7Sage Law School Prep To Get Top Grades in Law School and Your Dream Job.
So here it is. My advice is based on received wisdom from friends (especially one friend, who talked with me for just one hour about a month before I started law school) and personal trial and error. I was first in my section first semester (three As and one B+--damn you, Eleanor Fox). I used the methods below to prepare for law school and excel--I graduated in the top 10 percent at a top 5 school without devoting all of my time to studying. Even my first semester, I drank heavily, worked out, and did many extra-curricular activities (later, I did way too much work on Law Review.) I have confirmed the wisdom of this advice on how to prepare for law school and study law during the first year with other students who did well, and I have given these tips to other friends for free, and I currently use these tips to tutor students who want to get better grades in law school. Most who actually followed my advice on how to prepare for law school and study law got much better grades than they did before. One last note: To be clear, by "succeed" I mean "get the best grades with the least effort possible." My definition of success does not include "graduating first from Yale Law School" because I didn't do that. I am friends with at least two valedictorians from my law school, I learned that they (a) really are smarter than everyone else (b) worked harder than everyone else and (c) were still a little lucky (that luck separated them from #2 and #3) I may yet interview these valedictorian friends who were Supreme Court clerks "How did you prepare for law school?" If they happen to give me their special sauce, I will publish these interviews for members of the law-school-hacker.com community. But use these free tips for now. (Or sign up for my newsletter to the right to get a comprehensive, free 70 page e-book full of advice). My definition of success also does not include "becoming an awesome lawyer" because, perhaps oddly, law school does not necessarily prepare you to be a good lawyer--practicing law makes you a good lawyer. But more on this later. You want tips on how to prepare for law school now, and how to be a good lawyer later.
3/31/2014
Prepare for Law School: A Hacker's Free Tips on How to Study Law and Succeed
Use 7Sage Law School Prep To Get Top Grades in Law School and Your Dream Job.
Part II: A Hacker's guide on how to prepare for law school and
http://www.law-school-hacker.com/prepare-for-law-school.html 2/4
3/31/2014
Prepare for Law School: A Hacker's Free Tips on How to Study Law and Succeed
study law
What follow is a list, which is highly generalized but (in my mind) complete) on how to prepare for law school. What I write is based, as I said, not just on personal experience, but anecdotal evidence and research (i.e., classmates who got As generally followed this approach) and testing (i.e., I teach these techniques to the students I tutor to get them to study in a way that will get them As). Prepare for law school 1: pre-law school preparation by course or self-study That is, read commercial outlines or hornbooks for each of your classes before you start law school. To understand what your professor is talking about and what you need to write down, since he or she will not be clear about it, you need to be somewhat familiar with the basic rules of each substantive area of law before you start law school. You don't need to be an expert, but you do need to have read a short treatise or commercial outline (I'll point you to some in my section on law school books) on all of the first-year subjects: contracts, torts, property, civil procedure, criminal law, and sometimes constitutional law. Prepare for law school 2: Look at old final exams. The first week of law school or even earlier, find a copy of previous final exams given by each of your professors in the subjects they are teaching you. I suggest some helpful law school books here. During the Semester 1: do not write case briefs, just write notes in the margins of your case book. As you prepare for law school, you will hear something about briefing cases, or maybe you will even be taught this. Basically, it involves identifying all the operative parts of a case (facts, procedural posture, holding, dicta, etc.). Do not waste time writing one for each case that you read. Now, I have heard of exceptions--you will hear of people who briefed their cases and got straight As--but this is the exception and not the rule. I do know two people personally who did very well briefing cases. But more on this on my separate page on law school case briefs. During the Semester 2: Do not let fear of humiliation in class push you to over prepare for class by briefing cases (see above) or re-reading cases. Just focus on taking notes. It does not matter at all to your grade if the professor makes a fool of you while subjecting you to the Socratic Method because you can't answer her questions when called on. Class participation can sometimes give you a half-grade bump (B to B+ for instance), but usually nothing more. During the Semester 3: Listen carefully and take careful, meticulous notes on what the professor says. Do not volunteer to talk to much to class, even if there is someone incredibly goodlooking you want to impress. Because that's a pretty lame way to impress someone. And when you talk, you don't listen: you mentally prepare your comment and tune out the professor. Also, a corollary to taking careful notes: do not supplement your notes with outside materials, like a hornbook, etc. Your professor is giving the exam at the end of the semester, not the author of a hornbook you happen to buy. During the Semester 4: Meet with a study group, but only for fixed periods and for specific purposes. You should have a study group of 3-4 other people to discuss three things (1) specific concepts one or more of you did not understand in class; (2) your outlines, when you crate them; and (3) your answers to practice exams just before finals. Anything more and you risk becoming a coffee klatch or talking shop that wastes time. Exam Prep 1: Do your outlining early. Start any time but no later than 6 weeks before exams start.
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3/31/2014
Prepare for Law School: A Hacker's Free Tips on How to Study Law and Succeed
If you start too late, you won't finish everything in time before finals. If this is too terse, read more about law school outlines here. Exam Prep 2: Create law school outlines the right way: condense your class notes and creating a network of rules that you can apply to a set of facts you've never seen; compare the results with your study group. "Outline" is a terrible name for what should be called "creating a useful combination of checklists and list of rules organized by subject so that you can easily look at a set of facts and figure out how to apply laws to facts. Actually, I am positive that this is too terse, so go read more about creating an outline here. Exam Prep 3: Take practice law school exams and compare the results with your study group. That is, find old exams for your class, set a timer, and take exams under exam-like conditions. This is what you prepare for: outline so you can take a practice exam and see how you do in spotting issues and organizing your thoughts in a limited amount of time. After you finish, compare answers with your study group so you can see what issues you might have missed, or how your friends approached the exams. While I already included some "do-nots" in my awesome list on how to prepare for law school, I think it worth reiterating these points: Do not waste your time writing up case briefs. Some of my students have done this and, in retrospect, diagnosed this as the single thing that killed their semesters. They were smart, super diligent students, but it was so much work that they did not outline or do practice exams before finals. Do not let your study group become a coffee klatch or knitting circle or MMA arena. Use your time effectively, and limit your time to 2 hours once a week during the semester and no more than twice that during the 6 weeks you spend outlining and taking practice exams. Do not read too many outside hornbooks, supplements, commercial outlines, etc. One reliable outside source per class is enough. You won't have time for more, frankly. You need to understand the black letter law well, but this alone is not sufficient to do well on exams. Again, pick one commercial outline or supplement per class, and move on. Above all, do not panic. I have seen many people intimidate themselves and lose a lot of energy just worrying. Follow my advice on how to prepare for law school and how to work during the semester, and you should be fine--largely because you know you are following a tried and true method. If you don't do fine, life goes on: there are other ways to get to where you want to be, and I discuss them elsewhere. For instance, if you don't get great grades your first year in law school, you can still get great jobs by getting on law review or law journal. Or you can drop out of law school for a while (I am not kidding) and think about what to do.
http://www.law-school-hacker.com/prepare-for-law-school.html
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