How To Do Well In Law School

I’ve been out of law school for about six months now, and I still catch myself feeling like I ought to be studying something or taking notes at home…  As I prepare to enter the work force as an honest-to-God attorney, I want to give a bit of unsolicited advice to law students.  To all you law students out there, and in particular the 1Ls and bottom-third folks:  I too have been through the bowels of hell, and Socrates is there…

While I enjoyed parts of law school, on the whole it was not a fun experience.  During my 1L year I wasn’t exactly a top performer, and in fact I managed to pull down four D’s over two semesters.  Yes, you heard me.  But by the end of law school I was making all B’s, which wasn’t enough to get me to cum laude, but it did help my estimation of what I was capable of–and I did pass the Florida Bar exam on my first try, so something clicked along the way.  I learned a lot in law school (some of which I mentioned in a past post), but the procedures and techniques I used are almost as important as the substance of what I learned.  From 1L  D’s to 3L B’s, I changed quite a bit about my approach to law school.  Here are some of the practical steps I took to move from doing badly to doing well.

Read everything.  I know this might seem obvious, but you have to actually read EVERY DAY for EVERY CLASS.  Ok, that’s overstating it a bit–but you should read before each class (and definitely not months later, the day before finals).  In my experience, most professors give between twenty to forty pages of reading for each session (give or take, based on how often the class meets), and this usually can be knocked out in an hour or two, at least after the first year.  During the 1L year, reading cases will take a long time; sometimes as long as a few hours for a single case.  As a 1L stuff can really pile up quickly, especially since you have to worry about legal writing assignments and fully briefing cases (unless you have a kind-hearted professor who doesn’t abuse folks with the Socratic method).  1Ls, don’t get discouraged by how long it takes to read, and if you aren’t seeing an improvement, make sure you’re reading for important details only–you should know the rule of law of the case and the holding (i.e., does it modify or merely clarify existing law), plus the facts of legal significance.  If you’re tempted to not read, especially as a 1L, heed ye this warning:  I put off reading for a few of my classes during 1L year until the week before finals–and I suffered the consequences by earning a D four times that year.

Don’t read everything.  I know this might sound like I’m contradicting my last point, but if you’ve been through a few semesters of law school you’ll realize that you’ve got to prioritize your reading, and really focus on taking good notes in lecture.  Reading for every class is the best way to go as a new to the law school experience, or if you aren’t sure what kind of testing style the professor will use, but to be honest, there are some classes where you can do just fine by skimming the cases and only taking notes on what the professor points out in class.  These are generally the classes where the professor doesn’t call on people, lectures the entire session–sometimes chasing obviously trivial tangents–and the professor will usually tell you what was important from a particular case.  You’ve got to get a feel for this kind of class, and play it safe by reading before class for at least the first few weeks and intermittenly during the semester if you feel like you aren’t understanding lecture.  But like I said before, you’re better off reading everything if you can.

Book brief. It took me a little longer than most folks to get the hang of book briefing, but when I did it changed my life.  For reals.  One of the best time savers any law student can practice is book briefing.  This is basically taking notes in the margins–as opposed to writing your case brief out fully in your class notes–and highlighting/ underlining/ bracketing important passages in the text.  It’s really important that as you read, you take the time to summarize these important passages in the margin, focusing on the individual points of a given argument as well as the big ticket items like the holding and dispositive facts.

Make your class notes into your final outline.  This may seem like a really simple point, but you should never try to incorporate your notes into your outline–that’s just a huge time-suck, and you’d be doing everything backwards.  Instead, supplement your class notes, reformat them if you need to, but make this your final outline.  I offer this advice at the risk of stating the obvious because during my 1L year I didn’t understand how to outline, or even what an outline was.  (Just for you noobs, an outline in law school is a pretty big deal, because you can usually bring said outline into the exam with you.  But even if the exam is “closed book,” the outline is your best tool for understanding the key concepts of the course.)  During my finals review of my 1L year I tried to re-read everything we’d covered in each course and outlining as I went.  That was not smart.  A much more practical approach is to use your course notes and only use your casebook where you need to fill in additional information (or you just don’t understand your notes).  Ideally, during the semester, you should be taking notes in class, pulling from readings and lectures, and after class go back over your notes to fill in material from cases if you didn’t have time during lecture.  So you want to have a good outline, one that gives you both a big-idea view of the course and it’s subparts, as well as important details about particular cases and aspects of the law (including areas your professor stressed during class).  If you take good notes during class, and you break areas up with headings, bullet points or some kind of list format, it’s really easy to make this your final outline by supplementing cases or issues during your final review.

Look over past exams.  Most professors tend to test the same issues again and again every time they teach a course.  There may be variations from semester to semester, or if there’s a major change in the law, but usually trends in what’s tested.  A great way to see what’s likely to be tested is by getting a copy of a past exam.  Lots of professors in law school will put past exams on file with the library.  Take advantage of this, look over past exams, practice issue spotting and responding to particular fact patterns.  You don’t have to sit down for four hours with each exam–feel free to just take notes on your copy of the old exam, or outline your answers.  But you’d have to be either crazy or overly confident if you don’t take advantage of the professor’s generosity,  especially given the fact that most courses are graded on a harsh curve–and you can bet that at least some of your classmates will do the extra bit of work to skew the curve in their favor.

Get rid of social distractions. Here’s the short version of this bit of advice:  Get rid of all your friends during law school.  To be fair, socializing may not be your own personal distractor, but it was for me.

I mentioned before that I didn’t read as much as I should have during my 1L year, and I suffered the consequences.  One of the big reasons I didn’t read is because I just was too distracted to force myself to read.  I mean seriously, who rather read about boring court opinions about acquisition by capture or the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, over something fun like playing a frantic game of Mario Kart with your roommates, staying up late to talk about practical orthopraxy (trust me, it’s more interesting than it sounds), or making a midnight run for chicken fingers (Guthries!)?  I blame myself for my poor grades from 1L year, but part of my problem was that I lived with really fun roommates.  I liked to hang out with the guys way more than I liked to study.

Another “distractor” was my girlfriend.  Having a serious dating relationship takes up lots of time, not in a bad way, but because you wind up spending so much time together.  Nothing wrong with spending time together, but it was really tough for me to focus on studying–when we’d just “hang out and do homework togther” (her words…) and not on talking or making plans for the next date.  After my 1L year my girlfriend and I got married, so she’s now my wife.  And in my experience, it’s actually a lot easier to be married and be in law school than it is to date and be in law school.

So my advice is to ditch most of your undergrad friends (you’ll know who to stay in touch with based on who supports you during that stressful first semester), and dump or marry  your girl/boyfriend if you want to do well in law school.

Get a hobby.  The Xbox saved my law school career.  No really.  I got an Xbox 360 in September of my 3L year, I played a few hours each week (usually right after class as a way to mentally unwind), and I got better grades that year than any other year.  So there.  Now you may not be into video games, and that’s okay, but you should find some non-legal activity to take part in.  Law school can be incredibly stressful, and even when it’s not stressful, it can be mentally taxing to keep up with all the readings and various subjects.  Go to the gym, go jogging, walk the dog, watch a movie, do the dishes, do something to allow your mind time to process all of the information you stuff in during the semester.  Just be careful to keep this a “hobby” and not something that’s going to compete with your study time.

Realize the purpose of law school.  Some folks think law school is about “learning the law,” kind of like a physician learns human anatomy.  This isn’t totally wrong, but law school is about so much more.  The purpose of law school is essentially two things.  First, on a meta-level law school is not about learning the law per se; it is about “learning to think like a lawyer,” which means appreciating the subtle points of rational argument and analysis.  Secondly, you must see that, at the same time, law school is about learning the law, but it’s not so much particular laws as it is particular themes within the law.

Think like a lawyer… that’s what we’re told to do as law students.  This means you become adept at the fine art of comparison and contrast, learning to discuss what distinctions matter and why.  But how do we go from shadow-dwelling plebeian 1Ls to enlightened lawyers?  Aside from brushing up on the Allegory of the Cave, my advice is to try to enjoy well written court opinions.  Soak up the language of the Court, bathe in the didactic back-and-forth.  This may be a bit too far out for some folks to find helpful, but going to law school is a step toward “learning to love the law,” and this is a point of deep emotional significance.  If you’re in law school you probably realize that law school really sucks sometimes. There were moments when I had serious doubts about whether I was smart enough to “get” a particular subject or if I had made a poor career decision.  One of the things that really helped ground me in my law school experience, and made me feel ok about “the law” was learning to appreciate the depth of the opinions of major cases.  Sure there are some bad opinions in casebooks, and even some funny ones (Lord Denning anyone?), but there are also some opinions that make for compelling, soul-stirring reading.  Most of the Con Law cases you read as a 1L will be part of what I’m talking about (after you get past Marbury v Madison…), and it’s a safe bet that a good deal of U.S. Supreme Court opinions are too.  To fully appreciate this depth during the busyness of class preparation, I recommend you actually take the time to type into your notes the significant quotes from major cases–you’ll be surprised how often the language of the Court comes up in later cases or on exams.  When you re-write these quotes, and then re-read them later, you begin to have a deeper understanding of what these learned men and women really meant, and from this what it means to “think like a lawyer”…  Knowing a few of these quotes (at least well enough to paraphrase on an exam) is good for your grades, and more than that, will give you something to think about long after the semester is over.  Think of these Court opinions as beacon to show you how to think and communicate as an attorney.

The second side of realizing what law school is about boils down to recognizing particular themes within the law, as opposed to worrying about memorizing any individual law in itself.  One of the best books I read in law school was “Getting To Maybe,” and the authors cover this issue in great detail there.  I highly recommend this book to any law student.  Short of reading this book, I’ll tell you that there are recurring themes within the law, such as how do we interpret an existing rule (broadly or narrowly), and if “fair” means treating like parties alike while treating dissimilar parties dissimilarly, then how do we decide what distinctions are significant enough to rise to the level of legally dispositive?  These are some of the recurring themes, and until you can learn to spot these, you won’t be “thinking like a lawyer,” and chances are you won’t be doing well in law school either.

This won’t happen overnight, so don’t fret if you struggle with the basics during your first few months.  But please learn from my mistakes, take my advice if you find it helpful, and don’t be too hard on yourself if you aren’t doing well in law school.  These are some practical study habits you can implement, and I’m proof positive that they work (and may even  carry over to help pass the bar exam on the first try).