From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Advice for first year law student?
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 19:07:33 GMT

In article <3732@cvbnetPrime.COM> jharring@banner.UUCP (Joe Harrington) writes:
>I'm starting first year of law school at Boston University next
>week.  Are there any law students or recent law grads that would
>care to share some advice for a first year?


-----

How to Survive the First Year of Law School
At The University of Texas

by Mike Godwin, mnemonic@eff.org

(Copyright 1988,1992. This article may be freely distributed on any
computer forum, including commercial online services. To reproduce it
in print or in any other non-computer medium, please seek permission
from the author.)

-----------

You went to a decent college, you scored well on your Law School 
Adrnission Test, and you ranked in the top 10 percent of your class. 
So, now that you're here at The University of Texas School of Law, 
you can look forward to an unbroken string of acadernic successes, 
right?

Not so fast. No matter how easy you found undergraduate school to 
be, law school is a different story. And the sooner you learn that, the 
better your chances of coming out of the law-school game a winner.

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.

This means that law-school success doesn't come merely from 
knowing the law; you have to know it better than most of your 
peers.  So you can't be complacent.

If you start heeding the following hints early in your first semester, 
they'll improve your chances of hot job offers...and maybe even an 
editorship on the law review.

Class Participation

If you saw the movie "The Paper Chase" (and odds are that you did, or 
you wouldn't be here), you probably know that large classes in law 
school normally are run by "the Socratic method."  Rather than 
lecturing, the professor will assign some reading for the day and 
conduct the class by asking students questions about the material.

Watching the movie, you probably got the impression that the best 
law students are those who are eager and able to answer the 
professor's questions.  Don't be fooled.  Glibness and self-possession 
in class are only roughly correlated to exam performance, and your 
grades are based almost entirely on final exams, not on your 
quickness in the classroom.  Because the finals are graded 
anonymously, the professor won't even be able to link your 
classroom participation with the exam.

It's far wiser to spend your time mastering the principles behind 
each case you read rather than memorizing its facts.  If you try the 
latter tactic, your brain will be too muddled with facts at exam time 
to allow you to apply the law.  Don't worry about the inevitable 
instances in which a professor tries to embarass you for knowing 
less than he does.  (I refer to the professor as "he" because almost all 
UT law professors are male.  Most are white, too).  You can get your 
revenge by earning an honors grade in the course.

Class Preparation

Keep up with the assigned reading.  Onerous though the reading may 
be, it's easier to keep up than to catch up.  And reading the cases for 
the day will enable you to answer most of the questions any 
professor tries to throw at you.

If for some reason you do get behind on the reading, however, don't 
panic.  This happens to some of the best law students.  Attend class 
anyway, even if you haven't read that day's class materials.  The 
professor's Socratic questions will clue you in to the issues he expects 
you to know for the exam.

Professors

Some law professors are frightening; others are charming.  
Ultimately, however, their personalities don't matter very much.  
Whether he likes you or not, each professor will grade your exam 
according to the curve.  There's no such thing as an "easy" law course, 
although you may find some lectures more tolerable than oothers.  If 
the material is easy for you, it may well be easy for everybody, so the 
curve can get you anyway.

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

Don't expect too much sympathy from your professors.  After all, law 
school is a game they've *won.*  They may have some sort of abstract 
pity for the poor contracts student who's agonizing over Sec. 2-207 of
the Uniform Commercial Code, but under no cirumstances will you be able to 
persuade them to change your grade.

Briefing your cases

The rule here is "Condense, condense, condense." Nothing's more 
pathetic than the law nerd whose brief is longer than the case 
excerpt in the casebook. Remember this rule: Each case has one or 
two main ideas. Find them, and you'll have what you need to know 
for the exam.

And good, *brief* briefs can be easily incorporated in your study 
outline.

Some professors like to ask tricky questions about the fact pattern of 
a case during the lecture, but don't write these details down.

Instead, make notes in the margin or highlight key facts of your 
casebook. If you've read the case, you should be able to remember 
the facts long enough to get through the class period. And if the
professor stresses a particular type of fact pattern in the lecture,
he's signalling to you a possible exam issue. Note the issue, not the
facts of the particular case.

Buying study aids

Basically, there are two types of study aids you can buy for first-
year courses: commercial outlines and hornbooks. A commercial 
outline is a prepackaged, detailed skeleton of the material you
need to know for a particular course. There are several brands of 
outlines, and each has something to recommend it. The Legalines 
outlines track particular casebooks, while the Emanuel Law Outlines 
and Gilbert Law Summaries are more general, although they will 
include many of the cases in your casebook.

You may find it best to buy Legalines outlines for each of your 
courses except contracts. (The UT professors who wrote the contracts 
casebook designed it in a way that makes it difficult to produce a 
commercial outline for it.) Then you can supplement the Legalines 
with general-purpose outlines like Emanuel's and Gilbert's for 
courses you're having trouble with. Be aware that occasionally the case
summaries and discussions in the commercial outlines are *mistaken*--
let your professor and your classmates supplement your take on a given
case or issue.

Some students buy "hornbooks" for particular 
subjects, but for a first-year student the treatises often go into too 
much unnecessary detail. Theyre also very expensive, and in general 
it's best not to buy them; but you may want to make an exception for 
contracts, which many students find a particularly subtle and 
difficult branch of law. The Calamari and Perillo hombook is good for 
general contract law, while the White and Summers hornbook is 
necessary for a thorough understanding of the parts of your 
contracts course that deal with the Uniform Commercial Code. You 
may also want to consult UT Professor Charles Alan Wright's treatise 
on the law of federal courts for your civil-procedure class.
Finally, if you signed up early for a bar-review course (believe it
or not, some people do this during their first year), some bar-review
courses will allow you to "check out" their reviews of black-letter 
law.

Study Groups

Try to get into one. When you find a likely group, make sure that 
most of the people in the group are dedicated enough to stick with it. 
Discussing difficult ideas with other law students is a good way of 
making sure you understand them. In general, study groups work 
best with about five people, with each person concentrating on one of 
the five first-year courses you'll be taking each semester. If you 
have a choice about which course to concentrate on, choose the 
course you think you'll find most difficult your responsibility to 
your friends in the study grou p will give you an added incentive to 
master that material.

Computers

Buy a computer--you can purchase them at near-wholesale cost at 
the Texas Union MicroCenter on 21st Street. Only if you own a 
computer will you be able to produce and edit a legible course outline 
in a hurry.  You'll need two types of software:  a good word 
processing program to help you with the briefs and memos you have 
to produce for your legal research and writing seminar, and an 
outline program to produce the course outlines you'll need for exams.  
(Some word processors include outlining capability--in general, those
word processors are not as good at outlining as programs designed for just
that purpose.)

If you buy a Macintosh, the outlining software of choice is MORE; if you own
an IBM PC, buy Thinktank or Grandview.. Both products are available at local
computer stores. 

Exam-taking strategy

Your heart's beating rapidly, your palms are sweaty, and your mind 
is a blank.  Yes, you're taking your first law-school exam. How on 
earth do you handle those exam questions?

The first thing to remember is that all law-exam questions are more 
or less alike. Each describes an invented and often quite complex 
situation that, had it occurred in real life, would probably generate 
one or more lawsuits. Following the fact situation is usually a 
question or instruction such as "Describe the potential legal claims 
and liabilities of each party."

Your best strategy, when you outline your answer, is to pretend you're 
the lawyer for each party in turn.  Pretending to be Smith's lawyer, 
quickly list all the legal principles from your course outline that 
could advance Smith's case against Jones. Now play the part of Jones' 
lawyer how would you answer each of these legal arguments or 
daims? What counterclaims could you use against Smith? What will 
Smith say in response to your responses? What other parties in the
fact situation could sue or be sued? And so on.

Inevitably, you'll see some obvious legal issues in the fact pattern. 
You have to deal with them, of course, but don't make the fatal 
mistake of assurning that by handling the obvious or major issues 
you've written a good exam answer. After all, your peers probably 
share your gift for seeing the obvious.

So, how do you make sure you catch the subtle issues as well as the 
straightforward ones? When you're preparing for the exam, condense 
your outline into a checklist of one- or two-word shorthand 
expressions for legal principles.  Memorize the checklist, and recite it 
in your head each time you pretend to be the attorney for one of the 
parties. (Better yet--write it down on your scratch paper at the beginning
of your exam as soon as you're allowed to start writing, before you even
read the first question.  The checklist will remind you of issues you'd
otherwise overlook.

Practice Exams

Besides creating a legal-issues outline, the best way to prepare for 
exams is to take practice exams.  Almost all professors keep their old 
exams on file in the lbirary.  After you've done the bulk of your 
study outlines, photocopy your professors' exams from the last 
couple of years.  Then sit down with a friend and practice outlining 
exams answers based on the old questions.  Don't bother writing a 
full exam answer!  Time yourself, and give yourself about as much 
time to outline each answer as you would during a real exam.  YOu 
should budget about a third of the time you're given to answer an 
essay question for outlining your answer (e.g., 20 minutes for a 60-
minute question).

After each question, compare your outlined answer with your 
friend's.  He or she will have seen somepoints you missed, and vice 
versa.  This pinpoints issues you may tend to overlook during the 
real exam.

Other matters

Four of your first-year law courses contracts, torts, civil procedure, 
and property   will last your entire first year. You'll also take two 
semester-long courses: criminal law in the fall and constitutional law 
in the spring.

Thus, if you have to concentrate on any particular exam during 
winter midterms, concentrate on criminal law; that's the only exam 
you'll take in your first semester that counts as a grade for an entire 
course. Conversely, the exam for the three-hour constitutional-law
course in the spring will count less toward your average than the 
exams for your year-long courses, which are each worth five or six 
hours' credit.

Don't get too competitive.  It's the friends you make during your first 
few months as a law student who'll help you get through the year.  
Don't be deluded into thinking that other students are the enemy; 
they're not.  It's the system you've got to beat, and you can do it with 
the right attitude.  A vicious competitive streak, however, tends to 
undermine your karma in the long run.

Finally, try to enjoy yourself.  The law really can be fun to learn if 
you let yourself relax.  Most people who make it through the first 
year look back at it as a time of rapid intellectual growth and the 
building of mental discipline.  Don't regard law school as just the 
stepping-stone to a career.  A law-school education has value in itself 
-- it will teach you a lot about what makes our society tick.





-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First
mnemonic@eff.org| Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit 
(617) 864-0665  | the expression of an idea simply because society finds 
EFF, Cambridge  | the idea itself offensive or disagreeable." --W. Brennan