From: shedevil@vix.com (Anne P. Mitchell JD)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: Advice for first year law student?
Date: 20 Aug 1992 08:40:35 -0700
Organization: Fathers' Rights & Equality Exchange
NNTP-Posting-Host: gw.home.vix.com



In a recent missive thf2@midway.uchicago.edu tells us:
*In article <1992Aug19.190733.23105@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
*
*Mike gives good advice, but there are some areas I disagree with him;
*...
*
*>First, disabuse yourself of any notions about your natural academic 
*>superiority. Sure, you're good, but so is everyone else in your class. 
*>And since everyone is graded against everyone else on a curve, the 
*>chances are nine out of 10 that you'll be in the bottom 90 percent of 
*>your class, regardless of your undergraduate performance.
*
*But at the same time, don't let yourself be intimidated by the
*inevitable number of people you meet who seem smarter than you;
*when grades come in at the end of the year, there are going to
*be a lot of surprises.  

As I believe Ted says further on, or perhaps in the part I've snipped,
different law schools vary greatly..probably on each and every
aspect of Mike's article.  Hence the inherent pitfall in anyone trying
to give general advice to a 1L heading into a specific school.  [This
is not to say that the advice given by Ted and Mike wasn't very
good...it was!..and well written!]

In my own school there definitely were surprises every time grades
came out, and there seemed to be *no* correlation between amount of time
spent studying, or method of studying, and the grade outcome.  This
was enhanced by the fact that Stanford has a forced 3.2 grade
average.  I've heard of other schools that have similar forced curves,
none which seem to be very upfront about them, the point being that
you may well get to school and find out during your first semester
that there is a forced curve which, up until that point, you had no
idea about.


*>Class Preparation
*>
*>Keep up with the assigned reading.  
*
*Better yet, be ahead.  Law school is a stressful experience, and you're
*going to find yourself getting sick more often than you anticipated.
*Having an extra couple of days breathing room when you absolutely need
*that twelve-hour night of sleep while fighting off a cold can save you
*much grief later.

Now, I *swear* this is the truth, and I mention it to highlight the
differences between schools.  Specific only to my own school: don't be
ahead on the reading, in fact, don't bother to do it at all.  In fact,
some students never bother to buy the books after second year, and
I dare say that most students, even those who buy the books, don't do
the reading.

Why is this?..well at our school none of the black letter law courses
were.  Even in Criminal Law...we learned *no* black letter law - but I
could tell you ever single theory of incarceration, and about
oppression of the masses.  Stanford is a heavy Crit. school, pure
theory, no real life.


*>Professors
*>
*>While some law professors make a pretense of keeping office hours, 
*>most of them don't really want to see you outside the classroom, a 
*>milieu they prefer because that's where they have all the control.  
*
*I think this varies from school to school and professor to professor.

Ah, I *knew* Ted said that somewhere. :-) Our professors were
incredibly accessible, most of them we could be and were on a first
name basis with.  Again, I think the only real generalization that can
be made about law school is that there are no generalizations which
can be made. 

*>Any question you want to ask a professor probably can be answered 
*>by a "hornbook" (legal treatise) anyway, and library is full of 
*>hornbooks.

And if you are at a school such as the one I was at, it may be the
*only* way you'll get a black letter law question answered.

*>You may find it best to buy Legalines outlines for each of your 
*>courses except contracts. 
*
*But on the other hand, some of the Gilbert's outlines are written
*by the person who wrote your casebook, and you may want to get those;
*Gilbert's on Property is crucial if you want to understand the
*Dukeminier casebook.

Funny story:  we had Franklin for Torts, who discussed the Gilbert's on
Torts.  First day of class he said "If you *must* be a canned outline,
do *not* buy the Gilbert's.  It will be useless to you.  What you will
learn here is way above the level for which that book was written.
That book was written for people at schools like <insert name of
non-ABA school in SoCal>.  I ought to know...I wrote it."

About computers [darn, already deleted the discussion about "If you
buy a Mac, get "MORE", etc]:  If you don't already have a computer,
and you are going to buy a Mac - don't.  At least around here, DOS
machines are the standard in law firms.  I can't imagine it is that
different anywhere else in the country.  Unless you want to be stuck
with a machine which will be incompatible with the formats at your
future place/s of employment, get a DOS machine.

-------

When I wrote via email to the original poster, I offered but two
pieces of advice..I think it's interesting that neither were touched
here...just shows that different people focus on different things.  I
wrote that the new law student should be aware that the market is
*very* tough right now, and that because of this in some local markets
grades have gained a new emphasis which they heretofore did not
"enjoy".

I should have added that if their career services office was anything
like ours, they should plan right off to do as much of their own job
searching as possible, and to be creative about it.

The other piece of advice I offered, and which throughout three years
of law school (including 2 years of orientation committee) I gave to
as many 1Ls as I could [yes, even while I was a 1L :-)] was:

		DON'T FORGET TO HAVE A LIFE!!!

It's only law school, for chrissakes.  It's not worth your marriage,
relationship, children, or any other life-important thing.

Annie

Xref: sparky misc.legal:16179 talk.politics.misc:40751