Going To Law School

At some point along the way - hopefully, sooner than later - you will realize WHY they make you jump through all of the hoops. There simply is no substitute for doing each and every task you have to do in law school.

The important things to include in a case brief are the following:

Court
Disposition at lower levels - trial and any lower appellate courts
Parties' names
Key Issues, disposition of each and rationale for each disposition

Cases are the lifeblood of first year - your textbooks are made up of them, your classes are spent arguing and discussing them, and your exams are spent making or discounting arguments from cases you've covered.

Keep reading the cases until you understand them. Rest assured that if you got into a law school that ANYONE has heard of - and I seem to remember all 1Ls here did - you are smart enough to understand this stuff. Really. Take that as an absolute, gravity/death/taxes surety.

By the way - a promise to act as a surety for someone is one of the contracts that must be in writing in order to be enforceable. Good ol' Statute of Frauds.

also realize that after 2-3 weeks you will likely never brief anything ever again unless you really like it for some reason. because it's kind of dumb. i always just highlight things and repeat points in the margin w/ pen. OR, if the book is printed on the right kind of paper use pencil to do that and then when you go through the case in class write anything else important in pen so you can find it when you outline. so my book is a mess, but my hw is manageable!

Wait, you actually have to turn in briefs at Cardozo??? Man am I glad I went to BLS.

Although I briefed all the cases for orientation and then the prof didn't even ask us to state facts of most of them let alone answer questions.

yeah i would totally hate that too because it's like, i'm here to be a grownup. don't collect my homework.

We got a big lecture on (the pitfalls of) laptop usage today from an otherwise good but relatively old prof. It was pretty irritating, and his reasons were total bs. I actually listen BETTER when I type notes instead of write, because I type faster than I scribble and thus waste less time. What's more, I then have nice, legible, easy to re-organize notes. Fuck off (otherwise smart) old dude.

I think Carbozo is trying to go all hardass like Fordham; Fordham used to be a pretty dingy local NYC school even just 2 decades ago. They adopted the harshest grading curve of any school outside North Korea, and now they're like, top 25. So I can't imagine this place is going to get any easier.

FWIW, my process developed into the following, increasingly succesful order of actions:

1) Read cases
2) Make SHORT - like 5 line - notes for class discussions
3) Include notes from class next to/ interspersed with your notes.
4) Keep organized by date/chapter
5) Repeat for next topic/subject area

At first gloss, that's really it. Especially with Contracts and to some extent Torts, you really want to see the ENTIRE body of law all at once, and then again all at once, and this is what outlining is for.

And another word on outlining...

NEVER

EVER

EVER

Expect to do as well with pre-made/borrowed outlines as you would with formulating your own.

I cannot stress this enough. Law school, as stated above, is all about learing the academic level of legal analysis. Outlining is creating a map for your brain to use when doing these analyses. Therefore, would you know the mapped terrain better if you made the map yourself, or just bought one?

Thanks for the advice. This brief's gotta be done by tomorrow.

it's ok to peruse the internets in class when you get bored

My first day of class I didn't quite understand. Everything the professor talked about was the shit I made notes of when I did the 100 pages of reading. I stared at the wall for about 2 hours.

Just wait.

just wait . . . until you get to business associations

because it is boring and stupid! i got an A though *puffs chest*

Business Associations was alternatively called "Agency, and All Her Bastard Offspring" by my classmates and I.

I, too, got an A. While reading ILX, no doubt.

burt it sounds like youre just too smart for law school!

Ok, is there any point in joining the ABA "Student Division" right now? And is there any other careerist shit I ought to be working on yet other than just doing well in law school?

no. and no.

Right: No and no. Focus on law school. If you have time left over, enjoy your life. It will help you in school.

Seriously correct. Focus on getting the best grades you can right now. First year is all about the numbers.

All the legal fraternities and ABA-related stuff are nice and all, but you're paying a lot of money to get a job, and the most direct route is scoring well during your first year. The other stuff can wait until second semester second year and third year.

Be lucky you're married, dude; I was just asked out by two girls today! :{ Both in my section and legal writing section, so I'm not sure I really want to go there. This is definitely the time to focus on work.

Oh yeah, and if you still read this ilx0r felicity, you were dead right.

oh that is so unlucky

???

subtle stanton

Totally a judgment call, dude. If the girl seems cool, and you're cool, and the occasionaly hook-up wouldn't cause unnecessary intra-section tension, it could be a good thing come exam time.

But, if it will add stress or awkwardness to the already too-crazy life you're embarking on, or you think it might at all, don't do it.

It appears to me that the only way to actually learn any of this law material is to spend hours and hours of your own free time doing work that is not required by class. I just spent 2 hours outlining the litigation process so I could understand what the hell is going on in Elements of Law.

There is no such thing as work "required by class"

Well, you know, the stuff on the syllabus.

So far the hardest seeming thing about law school for me is that pretty much everyone I've talked to sounds like they're smart, generally get the material and work very hard. I'd like to think I'm smart too, and I've been working hard too, but the fact is that we're graded on a curve and I'm not sure if i have anything that gives me an edge over most of them. OTOH there are a fair number of dumbfounded-looking mouth-breathers and people who make totally off-mark comments in every class.

Yesssssss, that makes me so scared. It seems like there are a bunch of people who have these amazing answers in class, and I'm like "what the hell are you talking about? I'm scccrewwwed!" Hence working extra hours tonight.

Also going back to school after being out for years has been a real transition. I'm going to live, eat, and breathe this law stuff from now on..

I was just looking through Glannon for stuff for my Civ. Pro class but it wasn't that helpful. I was having some trouble on the finer points of subject matter jurisdiction as taken from the constitution and various cases but Glannon really only seemed to outline the basics, which I more or less get.

I haven't started classes yet (we had two early Elements classes last week), so Civ Pro, torts, etc. are a MySteRy to me. I just want to make sure those damned braniacs don't kick my ass to down to median.

-to

So far the hardest seeming thing about law school for me is that pretty much everyone I've talked to sounds like they're smart, generally get the material and work very hard. I'd like to think I'm smart too, and I've been working hard too, but the fact is that we're graded on a curve and I'm not sure if i have anything that gives me an edge over most of them

Mostly true. Don't worry about it. Focusing on what others know -- or seem to know -- will cleave up your confidence. Just study the subject matter and how to take the all-important end-of-semester exam.

Yes, the end of semester exam ... how soon should you start studying for it?

I'm guessing the details of the litigation process will come to you over time as you read cases and examples. I happened to pick up a lot of it from my job and it will probably become more second nature to you as you get to see it in action.

I'd study just the materials as they're presented for the moment. I guess I started looking over everything about mid-semester, building momentum into our "dead week," where there were no classes and the students prepared for the final exams.

But it isn't too early to start analyzing the way the professors test their students. Many professors have old tests available. They will give you valuable insight into what the teacher is probing, and what issues are important to him or her.

(xp)

(To be fair, from time-to-time throughout the semester, I did go back in my study aids (e.g., Gilberts) and casually review earlier materials, just to see how they all related to each other).

Oh, two more things. First, be wary of study groups. Some are helpful, supportive environments. Others are incubators for paranoid, depression, mistrust and angst. Worse still, some people are in study groups less to review and master the material and more to scare others in the group, or prove that they're smarter or more knowledgeable than others in the group.

Second, don't worry about who sounds smartest in class. Some of the people at the top of my graduating class almost never spoke in class, or sounded nervous or hesitant or unsteady when they did speak. And some of the most articulate and confident speakers in the class were mediocre students. You never know, so it's unhelpful to worry about it.

So would you say it's more important to find the most decent and nurturing people rather than necessarily the smartest to study with?

Yeah, I'd say so. In fact, I think some of the highest ranking members of my graduating class didn't participate in study groups, at all.

I stopped participating in study groups during my first year. I kept studying with friends, informally and infrequently, during my second and third years, but even those experiences didn't seem very useful, in retrospect.

I got together to study with someone today and it just ended up being 3 hours of flirting and talking about the differences between the West Coast and East Coast. I think taking time to be social is probably more useful than actually studying anything.

i like daniel, esq.'s advice for study strategies

reading these recent posts makes me so glad i'm finished law school! good luck you guys, it's going to be hard work. There are some fun bits and lots of really fascinating bits but oh my goodness it was hard.

BUT being a lawyer is great!

Seeing how smart and hard working everyone at school is, it makes me regret this decision a little. "Making top 15%" seemed a little easier on paper.

all you can do is be your best and try and enjoy what you're doing, and don't take too much notice of what everyone else is up to. i wasn't one of the people piping up in class with lots of words of wisdom mind you, but that's the way i approached it (also the approach i try to take to the rest of the stuff in life) and almost by default i got awesome marks and thusly an awesome job.

I hated speaking in class, BTW/FWIW, despite being on my HS and college debate teams.

i hate it too because i fear people are thinking what i think: "why doesn't this asshole shut his/her mouth?" it makes me very nervous and i can never say what i mean. the worst was i took "gender and the law" as a fluff course last year and it was so catty and obnoxious most of the time that i never wanted to say anything despite, i think, knowing what i was talking about.

also i never study with other people. first year they harp on study groups too much and make you feel like you absolutely must have one or you're doing it wrong. i really prefer to work things out on my own, and that has worked fine.

yep i was often reluctant to speak up in class too. but a lot of my lecturers were fond of putting people on the spot, so i always did all of my reading before class and was prepared to answer those sorts of questions. i used to try and make myself answer one question each class too, which gave me more confidence in my conclusions than i would have had otherwise. also it helps you to get to know the lecturers, which i found to be a great help in the long run too.