Preparing For Your First Year Of Law School: Study Tips

New students should follow these forthright study tips. Law school is unnerving and can be intimidating if you allow it to overawe you. Just ensure that you use your class time wisely, don't lag behind in your assignments and follow a rigid study schedule.




Make sure you have all the study aids as they are going to prove extremely valuable throughout your time at the law school. For example you can have a law dictionary, because you need to understand the legal terms. Words are the lawyers main weapon and understanding them is of prime importance.

There are many other study aids you should consider acquiring.

Casebooks (Red, Blue, and Brown):

Publishing companies seem to favor the colors red, blue, and brown for their case-book covers. Maybe these colors are favored for the same reason that hospitals are fond of them: they hide blood well. You will spill blood twice over your casebooks. First, you will rapidly become pale when you learn of the costs involved in purchasing the required texts, and secondly, over a much longer time period, you will give your essence to the casebooks as you pore over them night after night.

The casebook is your only official guide through a course in law school; there is usually only one required per course, with the potential inclusion of an updated paperback supplement. From this casebook will come hours and hours of seemingly endless reading in preparation for class discussion.

A casebook is literally a book full of court cases on a given subject. Each case-book is divided into sections, with each section emphasizing a particular legal concept. You will be asked to compare and distinguish cases within each section to determine how courts reached their decisions. It can be quite confusing because often the differences injudicial rationale, used to support the court's conclusions, are difficult to compare and correlate. Some cases are included solely to provide a historical perspective to more recent court decisions. At times, cases depicting decisions are included in the textbook even though they have since been overruled. Through this muddled analysis of the cases, and by using the Socratic method, the law school hopes to teach you to "think like a lawyer." Thinking like a lawyer usually refers to the ability to dissect, analyze, summarize, and reach a conclusion in a professional manner.

It is your casebook, and you should feel free to write in the book, outlining important segments, or even book briefing. However, beware of overemphasizing the entire casebook; not everything in the book should be highlighted.

It is probably a good idea to always bring your book to class. No matter how good your notes may be, there is always an issue brought up in class that either you cannot recall or did not consider important enough at the time to warrant an in-depth understanding. Having your book handy can get you up to speed rapidly and avoid embarrassment if you are called on.

Study Aids:

Besides your casebook, you will find a wide array of additional materials available. Some of these materials are helpful and, therefore, worth purchasing. However, there are a lot of supplemental guides that are not worth your time. Sifting through to find the better study aids is not a complex task but it can be time-consuming during a period when you have little time to spare. Look for those study aids that outline the area of study and clarify important issues while emphasizing "black letter law." Remember that it's issue spotting and application of the law itself that is of utmost importance on law exams. It is also important to select material that is thorough, yet brief. You already have ample reading material to keep you up until dawn without adding to the stack. A brief description of the numerous types of materials available along with some comments on their application may prove helpful.

Hornbooks:

Hornbooks are scholarly treatises, normally authored by law professors and experts and they are truly great research tools.Hard cover treatises or "hornbooks" are offered at most law schools at the time the casebook is purchased, so many students get the idea that the "hornbook" is some sort of officially sanctioned study aid. However, the hard cover treatise is too detailed to be used as a study guide. It will often be as thick as the casebook and written more as a scholarly work (footnoted lo death) than as a help to students. The treatises are often on reserve at the law library so save your cash and check them out as needed for research projects.

Commercial Outlines:

Commercial outlines can be quite helpful when you want an overview of the material covered in a course. Besides serving as study guides, these outlines also constitute good orientation tools prior to the commencement of a course. No outline, however, can encompass and track each professor's progress through a subject. Any generic outline requires substantial editing to make it useful for a given situation.

Besides commercial outlines based on a particular subject, there are outlines of specific casebooks that are available for purchase. In general, these outlines are lengthy and full of errors. The abundance of spelling errors and awkward phraseology makes one wonder whether the outlines are little more than copies of a law student's notes. You will have enough notes of your own to guide you through without having to translate the interpretations of someone else.

Why You Should Not Use Canned Briefs:

Reading and briefing cases soon becomes very routine and often boring. There is a great temptation to buy "canned" briefs to use as a shortcut to escape hours of reading. By using the commercially prepared briefs, however, you really circumvent the very process one should go through to acquire a legal education. It is the process of wading through a case and deciding for yourself which facts are relevant, what the main issue is, and how the court reasoned its conclusion that really constitutes the dues one pays to learn to "think like a lawyer."

Besides keeping you from doing the work yourself, commercial briefs are not of very high quality; they are usually full of small errors and sometimes are just plain wrong. Imagine that you are relying on the work of someone else and you are called on in class. Now imagine that the relied-upon information is wrong or that you cannot understand the information written, now that you are under the gun.

It is not a pleasant thought, and many professors are very aggressive when they suspect that you are relying on "canned" briefs. You will see your share of individuals hiding the commercial briefs in note-books for use in class. Let those people take the chances and risk losing the opportunity for a quality legal education. When you begin to practice law, you soon realize that there is no one who can really do the work for you. You need to be able to apply a situational legal analysis tailored to you. It is for this reason; don't start your legal career by buying and depending on the efforts of someone else.

Bar Review Courses :

The absolute best reference/outline material available is from companies that prepare students to take the bar exam. These companies offer brief outlines of specific legal topics, in-depth manuals of the "black letter law," tapes, and work-books, all of which are frequently updated to maintain a current overview of the law. As a first-year law student, generally all of your courses are topics covered on the bar exam and, thus, are covered in the review material. You can often obtain a discount rate by signing up early for one of these bar review courses. This early application allows you to obtain the review materials for immediate use with updates each year as you move toward graduation and the bar exam.

The Bluebook (For Research Purposes):

The Harvard Law Review Association publishes a guide called A Uniform System of Citation. This guide, commonly called "The Bluebook," has gone through numerous editions, and serves as a tool for proper research citation form. Having a unified standard for citation form enables others to readily find the references you make in articles, briefs, and other documents. Although the guide is extensive and fairly comprehensive, you will certainly encounter some situations that are not covered by "The Bluebook." Under these circumstances, you simply do the best you can or ask someone more knowledgeable. "The Bluebook" will be your constant companion through your legal education, especially during courses dealing with legal research and writing. A dog-eared copy of "The Bluebook" is a sure indication of someone who has done time in the library.