Few of the Important Study Aids Used in Law Schools

Canned Briefs

In our opinion, canned briefs are definitely something to avoid. These notoriously inaccurate study aids purport to summarize and brief the cases in your law school textbooks so that you will not have to. (As discussed in this article on studying, after a certain point it becomes a waste of time to fully and formally brief all such cases, but you should do so until you have mastered the art.) Your assigned cases, however, are already specially edited for law students and therefore are not more readily understandable in canned-brief form than when set forth in full.


Further, the holdings or central points of law of most of the cases you will read are stated accurately in reputable commercial outlines, all of which contain "Table of Cases" indices to help you locate the cases in the respective outlines. Thus, if you are using a commercial outline for a course, packages of canned briefs (even if accurate) will add nothing to your preparation except a loss of time and money.

Additionally, reliance on these "study aids" may lull you into a false sense of security, detract from your responses in class, and deprive you of practicing your own briefing and case-analysis skills. If you feel you absolutely must read summaries of cases, read those that appear at the front of each published opinion in most legal reporters found in your law school library. This is a cheaper and more accurate way of doing it than buying the packages of canned briefs in your local bookstore.

Black's Law Dictionary

During the first year of law school especially, you will encounter a multitude of unfamiliar terms in the course of your assigned reading. Words like demurrer, estoppel, waiver, deposition, mandamus, or ju-risdiction may be crucial to your full understanding of a particular case or passage, even though they are not defined in your assigned reading. Since such terms (and many others like them) are integral parts of the language used by lawyers, it is imperative that you understand them in all their senses, and the sooner the better. Black's Law Dictionary is traditionally recognized as the leading dictionary of legal terms, and in our view it is a must for any serious student. First-year students should buy or borrow a copy of Black's to keep beside them at all times when reading assigned cases and materials. They should also immediately look up the definitions of legal terms they do not know. Though it may be somewhat expensive to purchase Blacks, it is an investment in your legal career that will never stop paying off.

Law Professors

A law professor is a rich source of help and information that is typically underutilized by students. This may be because many law professors are perceived, whether accurately or not, as a little unapproachable. Even so, it behooves you to visit your professors at least a few times during the semester. After all, these professors will draft your final exams based in part on their own personal observations about the subjects they teach-observations that probably are not contained in any study aid or extracurricular source (except, perhaps, one written by them or a former student). Contrary to the popular myth, not all law professors are pompous old blowhards interested only in humiliating you. A great many are dedicated scholars and teachers who are genuinely interested in helping their students learn.

When you need help from a professor, do not put off visiting her until a few days before finals. If you do, you will find yourself in a tiny office surrounded by countless other half-crazed law students scrambling around trying to get a semester s worth of their questions asked and answered. (Many of these questions will, incidentally, be so bizarre and unrelated to the upcoming test that you will wonder whether you or the asker accidentally stumbled into the wrong office!)

This is not to say that visiting a professor a day or two before a final is never helpful, but by that stage there are probably more efficient uses of your time. As a general matter, it is also a good idea, psychologically speaking, to stay away from the law school entirely during finals, except to take the exams themselves. This will help you avoid the nervous tension and anxiety floating around all law schools during exam time.

Exam Files

Exams, like professors, evoke some unavoidable anxiety. One effective way of combating this anxiety while fruitfully preparing for the exam is through the use of another underutilized study aid-the exam file. In all law school libraries, you will find an exam file whose contents are organized by courses and professors. These files contain old law school exams, often written by your professors for the same courses you are taking. Such old exams will allow you to see the real thing-to glimpse, perhaps for the first time, how professors weave legal concepts into absolutely unbelievable factual settings (see App. E for some sample law school exams and answers).

By reviewing these exams prior to finals, you can avoid the nightmarish shock of trying to analyze in a few minutes the legal issues presented by a set of facts that probably took the professor days to dream up and that could not actually happen in a million years.

While exactly how and when to use old exams is discussed in the later chapter on studying, it is worthwhile to emphasize here that you should definitely make use of exam files as well as other study aids containing practice exams. What better way to get to know your professor s quirks and predilections than to familiarize yourself with tests he has deemed important enough to spring on earlier students? And although you should certainly not depend on it ever happening, professors have even been known to mistakenly reuse an exam already in the exam file.

Subject to these caveats, using study aids judiciously is a big part of playing the law school game. At some point, one or more of your professors will probably warn you not to use any study aids whatsoever-an injunction probably stemming from an unreasonable fear that they will cause your legal reasoning abilities to atrophy. You should ignore any such warning, however well-intentioned-your professor is simply being overprotective. If you wisely use the previously discussed and recommended study aids, you will most likely find yourself better organized, informed, and prepared for finals than would otherwise be the case. Also, just as importantly, you will have more free time to enjoy your law school years.