prepare for law school_ a hacker's free tips on how to study law and succeed

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3/31/2014 Prepare for Law School: A Hacker' s Free Tips on How to Study Law and Succeed

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Prepare fo r Law School:How to Study Law to SucceedThere are many terrible guides out the re on how to prepare for law schoo l.

They are either written by people who never taught stude nts, who never did we ll in law school, or who

wa nt you to wo rk all the time.

This is not s uch a guide: I did well in law school, I teach students, and I don't wan t you to w ork all thetime. (After a ll, this s ite is called Law School Hacker for a reason.)

In fact, this is the best free, concise guide on how to prepare for law school and how to study law tosucceed that you find anywhere.

If this is not the best free, concise guide to law school success, I will eat a sho e.

That is how much I care a bout you, or how little I care about my digestive tract.

Use 7Sage Law School Prep To GetTop Grades in Law School andYour Dream Job.

So here it is. My advice is bas ed on received w isdom from friends (especially one friend, w ho ta lked withme for just one hour about a month before I sta rted law school) and perso nal trial and e rror. I was first inmy section first semes ter (three As and one B+--damn you, Eleanor Fox) . I used the methods be low toprepare for law schoo l and excel--I graduate d in the top 10 pe rcent at a top 5 school without devoting allof my time to studying. Even my first semes ter, I drank heavily, worked out, and did many extra-curricularactivities (later, I did wa y too much work on La w Review .)

I have confirmed the wisdo m of this advice on how to prepa re for law schoo l and study law during the firstyear with othe r students who did we ll, and I have given these tips to other friends for free, and I currentlyuse these tips to tutor students who want to get better grades in law school. Most w ho actually followedmy advice on ho w to prepare for law school a nd study law got much bette r grade s than they did before.

One last note: To be clea r, by "succee d" I mean "get the bes t grades with the least effort possible."

My definition o f success do es not include "graduating first from Yale Law School" be cause I didn't do that.

I am friends with at least two valedictorians from my law school, I learned that they (a) really are smarterthan everyone else (b) wo rked harder than e veryone else and (c) we re still a little lucky (that luck

separated them from #2 and #3) I may yet interview these valedictorian friends w ho w ere Supreme Courtclerks "How did you prepare for law school?" If they happen to give me their special sauce, I will publishthese interviews for members o f the law -school-hacker.com community. But use these free tips for now .(Or sign up for my new sletter to the right to get a comprehens ive, free 70 page e-book full of advice).

My definition of success also does no t include "be coming an awe some lawyer" because, perhaps o ddly,law schoo l does no t necessa rily prepare you to be a goo d lawyer--practicing law makes you a goodlawyer. But more on this later. You want tips on how to prepare for law school now , and how to be a goodlawyer later.

Use 7Sage Law School Prep To Get
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3/31/2014 Prepare for Law School: A Hacker's Free Tips on How to Study Law and Succeed

http://www.law-school-hacker.com/pr epare-for-law-school.html

Top Grades in Law School andYour Dream Jo b.

Part I: Law school is a giant bait and switch

Before I tell you how to prepa re for law school the right way, you have to really understand what lawschool is rea lly about. Law school is a game in which no one tells you the rules before o r during the ga me.Some pe ople w ill mysteriously "get it" and othe rs will not ever.

In other words , law schoo l is a giant bait and sw itch. Wha t you read in your case boo ks and wha t yourprofessor lectures or grills you on us ing the Socratic Method bea rs little resemblance to wha t you areactually graded on.

That is, you spend most o f your time o utside o f class (less if you follow my advice below ) reading casesand a ll of your time in class listening to a professo r grill a stude nt abou t these cases using the so -called Socratic Method . What are the facts of the case ? Was this de cided correctly in light of previouscases ? Does judge 's internal reasoning make se nse? Is the judge's de cision principled or driven by ades ire to reach a certain result? Does the case a ccomplish the po licy purpose o f the law tha t it isinterpreting? How would you decide the case if you we re the judge? And so on.

Of course, none of these questions have anything to do with what you're tested on. You ge t none o f theseques tions on your final exam.

Instead , your given a fact pattern full of strange occurrences ("Cain drinks five pints of scotch, gets in a carwith a gun, and starts s hooting at w hat looks like Abel, but is really his mother, and then hits a do g,narrowly missing a pe des trian w ho dies of a heart attack.") and asked a question like "Identify all of thepote ntial crimes and defens es raised."

Huh? you ask yourse lf after your finals are over. What just happened? Did I not take this class ? I dideverything that the professor sa id: read a ll the case s, go to class, outline. Why did I get straight Bs? I

tried to prep are for law school, wha t did I do w rong?

Here is the key: Law school is not like college or undergrad .

At least the w ay most pe ople w ho studied social science or humanities treated college: you do all of theass igned reading, you w rite do wn everything the professor says, and if you memorize all of this, you'll getan A on the final exam. The exam tes ts precisely what you were asked to rea d and listen to during thesemester.

This approach does not work in law schoo l. You need to prepare for law s chool exams differently than youwo uld for college exams. A law school final exam is like nothing you've ever seen during the year becausethe profess or wants you to apply the law to a se t of facts that will not be know n to you before. You can

memorize a ll of the cases and a ll of the professor's lectures, and this alone w on't help you on the exam.

So what are you suppos ed to do? Not read? Not listen to the professo r? That is where w e ge t into partII...

Use 7Sage Law School Prep To GetTop Grades in Law School and

Your Dream Job.

Part II: A Hacker's guide on how to prepare for law school and
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study law

Wha t follow is a list, which is highly generalized but (in my mind) complete ) on how to prepare for lawschool.

Wha t I write is base d, as I said, not just on perso nal experience, but anecdota l evidence and research(i.e., classmates w ho go t As gene rally followed this approach) and testing (i.e., I teach thes e techniques tothe students I tutor to ge t them to study in a w ay that will get them As).

Prepare for law school 1: pre- law school preparation by course or self-study That is, readcommercial outlines or ho rnbooks for each of your class es before you start law school. Tounderstand what your professor is talking about and w hat you need to w rite dow n, since he or shewill not be clear about it, you need to be somew hat familiar with the bas ic rules of each substantivearea of law before you start law school. You don't need to be a n expert, but you do ne ed to haveread a short trea tise o r commercial outline (I'll point you to s ome in my section on law school boo ks)on a ll of the first-yea r subjects: contracts, torts, prop erty, civil proced ure, criminal law, andsometimes constitutional law .

Prepare for law school 2: Look at old final exams. The first w ee k of law s chool or even ea rlier, finda copy of previous final exams given by each of your professors in the subjects they are teachingyou. I sugge st so me he lpful law school books here .

During the Semester 1: do not write case briefs , just write notes in the margins of your casebook. As you prepare for law school, you w ill hear something abo ut briefing case s, or maybe you w illeven be taught this. Basically, it involves identifying a ll the ope rative parts o f a case (facts,procedural posture , holding, dicta, etc.). Do not w aste time w riting one for each case that you rea d.Now, I have heard o f exceptions--you w ill hear of peop le who briefed their case s and g ot straightAs--but this is the exception and not the rule. I do know two people pe rsonally who did very we llbriefing 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 classby briefing cases (see above) or re-reading cases. Just focus on taking notes . It does not matterat all to your grade if the profess or makes a fool of you while subjecting you to the SocraticMethod because you can't answ er her ques tions when called on. Class participation can sometimesgive 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 theprofessor says. Do not voluntee r to talk to much to class, even if there is so meone incredibly good-looking you w ant to impress . Because that's a pretty lame w ay to impress someone . And when youtalk, you don't listen: you mentally prepare your comment a nd tune out the professo r. Also, acorollary to taking careful notes: do no t supp lement your note s w ith outside materials, like ahornbook, etc. Your profess or is giving the exam at the end of the s emester, not the a uthor of ahornbook you happe n to buy.

During the Semester 4: Meet with a study group, but only for fixed periods and for specificpurposes. You should have a study group of 3-4 other peo ple to discuss three things (1) specificconcepts one or more o f you did no t understand in class ; (2) your outlines, when you crate them;and (3) your answ ers to practice exams just be fore finals. Anything more and you risk be coming acoffee klatch or talking sho p that w aste s time.

Exam Prep 1: Do your outlining early . Start any time but no later than 6 w eeks before e xams sta rt.
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If you s tart too late, you w on't finish everything in time before finals. If this is too terse , read moreabout law school outlines here .

Exam Prep 2: Create law school outlines the right way: condense your class notes and creatinga network of rules that you can apply to a set of facts you've never seen; compare the resultswith your study group.

"Outline" is a te rrible name for w hat should be called "creating a useful combination of checklists a nd

list of rules o rganized by sub ject so that you can eas ily look at a s et of facts and figure out how toapply laws to facts. Actually, I am positive that this is too terse , so go read more abo ut creating anoutline here .

Exam Prep 3: Take practice law school exams and compare the results with your studygroup. That is, find o ld exams for your class , set a timer, and take e xams under e xam-like conditions.This is wha t you prepare for: outline so you can take a p ractice exam and see how you do inspotting issues and organizing your thoughts in a limited amount o f time. After you finish, compareansw ers w ith your study group so you can see w hat issues you might have missed , or how yourfriends approached the exams.

While I already included some "do-nots" in my awe some list on how to prepare for law s chool, I think itworth reiterating these points:

Do not waste your time w riting up case b riefs . Some of my students have do ne this and, inretrospect, diagnosed this as the single thing that killed their semesters. They were s mart, superdiligent stude nts, but it was so much work that they did not outline o r do practice e xams be forefinals.

Do not let your study group become a coffee klatch or knitting circle or MMA arena. Use your timeeffectively, and limit your time to 2 hours once a we ek during the s emeste r and no more tha n twicethat during the 6 we eks you spe nd outlining and taking practice exams.

Do not read too many outs ide hornbooks, supp lements, commercial outlines, etc. One re liableoutside source pe r class is enough. You w on't have time for more, frankly. You need to understandthe black letter law we ll, but this alone is not s ufficient to do w ell on exams. Again, pick onecommercial outline or s upplement pe r class , and move on.

Above all, do not panic. I have see n many people intimidate themselves and lose a lot of energy just worrying. Follow my advice on how to prepare for law scho ol and how to w ork during thesemeste r, and you sho uld be fine--largely because you know you are following a tried and truemethod. If you don't do fine, life goes on: there are o ther wa ys to get to w here you w ant to be , andI discuss them elsew here.

For instance, if you do n't get grea t grades your first year in law schoo l, you can still get great jobsby getting on law review or law journal.

Or you can drop out o f law school for a while (I am not kidding) and think about w hat to do.
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prepare for law school_ a hacker's free tips on how to study law and succeed

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