You’ve gotten into law school—CONGRATULATIONS! That’s such an accomplishment in and of itself. I know exactly where you are right now and how you’re feeling. Uncertain, but ambitious and ready to slay. But… how do you go about slaying? Especially during your first year of law school when you know literally nothing. Well, look no further! I’ve gone through three years of law school and studied for and passed two bar exams, so I’ve been there and done that. I know what it takes to succeed, and I’m confident that these tips will help you NAIL you first year of law school!
Develop a Relationship with Your Professors: if you want to do well in law school (and I presume that you do), then get to know your professors! I mean, at the end of the day, it’s your professors who will be dishing out your final grade, which is often based on a single final exam at the end of the semester. WOAH. And yes, you read that right. Many professors give only a single final exam at the end of the semester, which is based entirely on memory, and which accounts for your entire grade. So! It pays to have a good relationship with your professor.
And by developing a relationship, I don’t mean just waving at them in the hallway as you pass by, or answering a single question in class—no. I mean stopping by your professor’s office for dedicated office hours to engage in conversation with them. Walk in, shake their hand, and introduce yourself as a student in their class. Get to know them as a professor and a person. Allow them to get to know you as a student and a person. Ask them for advice and seek their help in learning what they are teaching. Most of all, practice answering questions and ask for their feedback.
What I mean by this, is ask them for a practice question, or find an appropriate practice question in your casebook, and sit down and write out an answer. The answer does not have to be from memory or from scratch, but it will allow you to practice writing and receive that specific professor’s feedback on your answer. You simply cannot imagine what dividends it pays to write out an answer to a question and sit down with your professor and get step by step feedback. Like I said, at the end of the day, it is the professor who will be 100% responsible for your final grade—don’t you want to know exactly what they’re looking for in an answer? I did this with every single one of my professors during my first year of law school, and I shot to the top 5% of my law school class after my first year. I’m telling you, guys, it works. Not only will developing this type of relationship with your professors pay off short-term, but it will open you up for opportunities later on in law school and even after law school. Even after I had graduated from law school, passed the bar exam, and entered my first year of practice, I still called up my civil procedure professor on his personal cellphone to ask him questions! You just can’t beat that type of long-lasting relationship.
Learn to Write a Brief: success in learning the law during your 1L year lies in learning how to 1) read a case, and 2) brief a case. Those two “how-to’s” fall hand in hand and are equally important to your success in understanding the law, and ultimately applying the law and succeeding all throughout law school. Learning to write a brief should be the first thing that you tackle on DAY ONE of law school, and preferably, before you even enter your first class. And the best part is, it’s not super difficult once you understand the system! If you can learn the way that the “four’s” of briefing fit together in the very beginning of your law school career, you will be well on your way to having a comprehensive understanding of each case that you read, thereby mastering each course that you take.
A brief is essentially an outline of the entire case that you read. A brief divvy’s up the case in an easy-to-digest way, and allows you to pick apart the different legal issues and rules, and hone in on the court’s analysis and the facts that the court drew from. It essentially breaks down the case so that you understand the case, but also so that you can discuss the case (when the inevitable and all-dooming cold-calling occurs) to have an intelligent discussion to further apprise you of the nuts and bolts of the legalities of the case.
With that in mind, a case brief consists of four main parts: issue, rule, analysis, conclusion. The issue is literally the legal issue for the court’s determination in that specific case, such as “whether a valid contract existed,” or, even more narrow, “whether an offer existed, sufficient to support a valid contract.” Understanding the issue for the court’s determination is paramount to understand what’s goin’ on in the case—if you don’t know what the issue is, then none of the subsequent facts or analysis will make any sense whatsoever. The rule (or rules) is the law that the court applies to the given set of facts, which it then uses for its analysis. The rule can be as simple as stating that “an offer is a manifestation of intent to be bound by the contract.” The court will then use that rule and apply it to the set of facts, giving rise to the court’s analysis. The court will apply the rule to the facts, and analyze whether the given set of facts arise to the rule set forth. An analysis might look like, “Sally and Ahmed spoke on the phone. Sally told Ahmed that she was interested in selling Ahmed her car, but wanted to wait before entering into a contract. Ahmed misunderstood, and sent Sally a check for the car anyway. An offer does not exist because Sally did not manifest an intent to be bound by a contract.” This analysis then leads to the court’s conclusion that an offer does not exist, and therefore a binding contract does not exist.
It’s as easy as that! Of course, it becomes a bit more complicated depending upon the complexity of the case, but that’s the gist, and moving forward it will be paramount for your understanding and overall success to learn how to brief a case in your first year. Now, moving forward into your following years, you may find that you need to brief your cases less because you inherently understand how the moving parts fit together. And that’s fine! I personally continued briefing my cases throughout the entirety of law school, but I think I was like one of three people to continue doing that… ha! Nonetheless, during your 1L year, you must brief your cases—that’s just how it be!
Employ the Hour-by-Hour Methodology: hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second. Sounds like an easy, schedule, right?! It’s not actually as difficult as it sounds, and it pays off SO so much. I practiced the hour-by-hour methodology during law school, as well as for the entirety of the months that I studied for the bar exam. This isn’t something that was taught to me, but rather a practice that I began on my own so as to be as efficient as possible each day. The hour-by-hour methodology functions just as it sounds: you literally plan out your day hour by hour based on everything that you need to get done for the day. In an environment such as law school, where you have hundreds of pages of cases to read each night, brief to write, all while preparing yourself to speak in front of potentially hundreds of people on any given day, making the most of your time is imperative.
Queue the hour-by-hour methodology! Let’s say you have three cases to read, a practice question to draft an answer to, and a brief to draft. First, prioritize each task. If your brief is for a case that you’ve already read, which you will be discussing tomorrow, then prioritize that brief. Second, sit down and put pen to paper for your time allocation—this is the first thing you should do after you come to a general prioritization of your tasks. When you first wake up in the morning, you should literally write down your schedule. Here is a morning example:
- 7:00 AM – 8:00 AM: read Erie v. Tompkins.
- 8:00 AM – 8:15 AM: quick break and snack.
- 8:15 AM – 9:30 AM: brief Erie v. Tompkins.
- 9:30 AM – 9:40 AM: break and prepare to draft answer to civil procedure practice question.
- 9:40 AM – 10:40 AM: draft answer to civil procedure question under exam-like conditions.
- 10:40 AM – 10:50 AM quick brain-break to breathe.
- 10:50 AM – 11:20 AM self-grade practice question.
- 11:20 AM – 11:25 AM: regroup before lunch.
- 11:25 AM – 12:30 PM: read Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball.
- 12:30 PM – 1:15 PM: LUNCH!
WHEW! Yes, I literally scheduled my days like this, even down to as little as five-minute breaks. I did this during law school and during my preparation for the bar exam (both of them!) You guys, LET ME TELL YOU, this works. This strategy keeps you on task and helps you to make the most of your day. It allows you small brain-breaks throughout the day, which allows you to continue moving full speed ahead. If you doubt it, just try it for a day and thank me later!
Volunteer in Class Regularly: “only truly psychotic people enjoy volunteering to speak in front of like, more than one other person.” I’m going to be honest: I HATE PUBLIC SPEAKING. Fitting that I chose to become an attorney, no? Lol, just kidding! But really, all jokes aside, public speaking is the bane of my existence. It always has been, and it always will be. Notwithstanding, one of the best things that you can do for yourself in law school—and establish early on in law school—is regularly volunteering to speak in class, whether it be answering questions or offering your opinion. Volunteering in class provides three benefits: it will help you become more comfortable with speaking in front of others, it will allow you to engage with the material in a different and more meaningful way by openly discussing it with others, and, perhaps most importantly, it will show your professors that you’re taking initiative to participate and learn.
Volunteering in class regularly is something that I actively challenged myself to do early on in law school. I made a conscious effort to raise my hand, ask questions, and engage in classroom discussion. And I’ll tell you what—it made all the difference in the world moving forward. Actively volunteering in class enhanced my classroom presence and put me on a different level in the eyes of the professors, as it did with every other person that volunteered and made an effort to engage and learn. Just please, don’t be the person in the back row that never speaks!
Prepare for Final Exams (beginning with the first day of class): if you aren’t already aware (and you should be, because I mentioned it above), a majority of your final course grades will be based on a single final exam at the end of the semester. This exam will likely be a 3 to 4 hour written exam based entirely from memory—it is what it is. I remember first learning this and not quite comprehending how a final grade could be based on a single exam! But, it’s true. What is the best way to prepare yourself for a final exam based on an entire semester’s worth of information? It’s to start preparing for your final exams on the very first day of class! And I mean that as literally as it sounds. The two most important documents you will create from your class lectures, which will prepare you for your final exams, are: your notes and your outline. Your notes feed your outline, but your outline is your bread and butter.
- Notes:
I think this one is pretty obvious—take notes in class, you guys! Do not surf Facebook, do not listen to music, do not do anything other than pay attention and take notes. Personally, I typed my notes, and I typed every single word the professor said. Others hand wrote their notes (I cannot fathom how that’s possible), and that’s fine too. Draft headings, notate bullet points, and even color code your notes if need be. The point is that you write clear, substantial notes, from which you can draft a coherent outline later on.
- Outline:
This one may not be so obvious, and it is pretty exclusive to law school (I think), though the outline methodology could be employed for any course you’re taking and in any field of study. An outline, per my husband, is like a roadmap of the entire course—every piece of information that you will need to succeed on the final exam. The point of an outline is to take your notes, case law, and other information you’ve received throughout the course and put it into a coherent format that functions as an end-of-semester study guide for your final exam. Note, however, that you should literally begin your outline the first day of class. And, if not the first day, at least the first week. I know there are plenty of people reading this who have gone through law school rolling their eyes at me right now, thinking to themselves that they didn’t begin their outlines until a month before final exams, but that is NOT the way to do it. Ideally, each day after class (or each weekend after that specific week of classes), you should be taking your sporadically drafted notes and typing them up into a coherent format that will function as your end of semester study guide.
I say to work on your outline daily, or weekly, for four reasons: 1) by the end of the semester, you will be overwhelmed with the amount of notes you have to type up into an outline. Truly, the rate at which your professor speaks and the amount of notes you accumulate over a semester is astronomical. If you wait to begin your outline at the end of the semester, rather than typing up your notes and adding to your outline daily, you will become overwhelmed. Especially if you have to do this for 5 classes! 2) keeping up with your notes and retyping them daily or weekly will reinforce the information that you just learned, thereby allowing you to be even more prepared at the end of the semester when you pull out your start-of-semester information to begin studying for finals. You will already be familiar with the information, have an outline started, and be more successful on your finals, GUARANTEED. 3) Revisiting the information each week while it’s still fresh in your mind will allow you to identify any problem areas that you may be struggling with. I promise, you do not want to be three weeks out from your Real Property final exam and be like, “OMG, I do not know the Rule Against Perpetuities.” I promise that will not be fun, and you will not do well. Finally, 4) you will be ahead of everyone else! I told you above, there are plenty of people rolling their eyes at me right now as I advise you to begin your outlines as early as the first week of class. Well, those are the people that were overwhelmed studying for finals, struggled to make coherent outlines, instead made lazy, half-a**ed outlines, and did less than stellar on the final exam because they didn’t know the information like they should. And while I’m not saying that I was *perfect,* I will say that I had impeccable study habits that served me well throughout law school. While others were creating their outlines from scratch mere weeks before final exams, mine were already done. While others were panicking, I was studying. You get the picture. Start early and it will pay off, I promise.
So, that’s it! That is Part One of how to nail your 1L year of law school. I hope that was helpful, and please comment, email, or send me a message if you have any questions! Stay tuned for Part Two!
