A few weeks back, I was in a car with some of my fellow CIS interns and we were discussing law school for the alleged benefit of the undergraduate / pre-law / 0L preparing for law school. As we all spewed off our suggestions about how to write a brief, whether to join a journal / law review, how to make yourself known to your professors (in a good way), etc. The sheer range of responses was amusing.
Is it a bad thing that many of you are combing blogs trying to figure out what law school is like and how you should prepare for it? No, definitely not. You should seek out as many opinions as possible and figure out what works for you. Unfortunately, you won’t learn what works for you until you put it into practice.
To give you an example, I know many students who studiously transferred their class notes into an outline every single day for the entire semester, and all it ended up doing was burning them out before finals rolled around. Just to go on the record here, my opinion is that outlining before you have at a minimum discussed every single section of a given topic is a terrible idea because you probably haven’t had that “eureka moment” where the puzzle pieces start to fit together — but that’s just my opinion.
As for briefing, orientation is a good time to explore the different techniques. If you’re a super-overachiever like I was, you may have a complex system worked out for briefs in OneNote or via a wiki, or what-have-you. You’ll generally have 2-3 cases to brief for orientation, so what better time to test out your brief system than when you’re not getting graded on it? Time how long it takes you to brief one case with your selected method. Now multiply that by 9-10 and thats how much time you’re looking at spending per night — at least until you get accustomed to briefing. With my insane system, I was briefing / reading for about 7-8 hours per night during 1L. It did pay off, but I’m convinced that I could have done just as well by book briefing.
If you’re briefing via a less thorough method, you’re probably doing better on time, but you should be concerned with retention. While Socratic Method doesn’t directly correlate with how well you’re going to do in the class, it’s a pretty decent gauge for what you know and what you don’t know. If you’re lucky, you won’t get cold called at orientation, so you can sit back and figure out whether you can answer the questions posed. If you can answer most of them through a less vigorous briefing method, congratulations. Just make sure that your notes are good enough to eventually turn into an outline.
You should keep in mind that just because you can answer random tort or pro rep question when cold called doesn’t mean that you’re prepared to take a final exam. Preparing for exams is a whole other topic with many, many viewpoints. Stay tuned to LG for one more opinion in the near future.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
As simple as it sounds, I tell every incoming law student I meet to get their typing skills in order. I am a truly mediocre typist, and it was a hindrance to me throughout law school. Not a major obstacle, but something that added to my stress a bit during exams. My husband is a killer typist, and his ability to churn out exam answers as fast as he could think them was quite impressive. Seriously, I would advise anyone starting law school in the fall to spend a few weeks with Mavis Beacon (or your other typing program of choice) getting the kinks ironed out. Much more useful than any advance reading.
I still think the best advice is: DON’T DO IT! GET OUT NOW! SAVE YOURSELF!
But that’s just me.
@Bria, Great point. I’ve had some professors who graded in such a way that you could only gain points (you couldn’t lose them). For those kinds of exams, it really is a race to see how much you can type.
We still have a few people in every class who hand write. Boggles my mind.
@Molly, Mine too, but no one ever listens to that advice. :\
That was good advice.