From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Advice for first year law student?
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 11:15:28 GMT

In article <1992Aug19.233855.22855@midway.uchicago.edu> thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:

>Mike gives good advice, but there are some areas I disagree with him;
>I'm following up on the conflicts rather than the areas of agreement,
>but hopefully I won't seem like I'm flaming Mike, 'cause it was an
>impressive piece.

Ted kindly omits to remark on the frequent spelling errors introduced
by the scanner. I'll fix those in the next iteration.

>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.  

Ted is exactly right on this issue. While one shouldn't be complacent,
one shouldn't be intimidated, either. So far as I can tell, there is 
no direct correlation, within a law-school class, between raw intelligence
and ability to do well in law school. Doing well has more to do with 
study habits and with analytical approaches than with sheer brainpower,
although the latter certainly helps if you've also got the former.

>>Any question you want to ask a professor probably can be answered 
>>by a "hornbook" (legal treatise) anyway, and library is full of 
>>hornbooks.
>
>But, then why pay for a law school at all rather than correspondence
>classes?

See Sweatt v. Painter. The thing that makes a law school is its students.
Seriously. Working and talking with other students did most for me when
it came to mastering the material.

>My own recommendations:
>Dressler's "Understanding Criminal Law."  Very clearcut, and a much better
>exposition than the Legallines outline (which Dressler also wrote.)

See also LaFave and Scott's SUBSTANTIVE CRIMINAL LAW.

>I swore by Farnsworth in Contracts, and I didn't really understand a
>lot of the consideration/promissory estoppel issues until I read Grant
>Gilmore's "The Death of Contract," a short 150-page or so book that made
>everything coalesce in one night about fifteen weeks into class.  

Grant Gilmore's book is legendary. Sadly, I have never read it, which may
explain my first-year grade in contracts.

> ... the real benefit of
>having an outline is in the writing of it, rather than the study of it. 

This is absolutely true. What one should do is take any outlines one receives 
through one's study group and use them to supplement one's own outlines. 
On the other hand, if you have limited time to prepare for exams, the best
single method of preparation is to take an outline *from any source* and
use it as a source for *taking practice exams.*

>I got by just fine using a word processor to outline.

Nothing wrong with this, of course. My experience is not that using a
word processor is bad--merely that using an outline processor is better.
But unless you've got someone who can demo a dedicated outline processor
to you, you have to take this on faith.

>Once again, good work by Mike.

Thanks for your useful comments, Ted.


--Mike




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Mike Godwin,    |"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First
mnemonic@eff.org| Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit 
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