Start working ahead of time? Forum

[vincere]

I graduated this past winter and am working part time on some research gigs....is there anything i can do to prepare for law school in the next 9 months?

Any help greatly appreciated

[ben1185]

Lots of threads on this... some say no, some say yes. Me, I would say read the general books about what to expect at law school. Don't read anything about the actual classes, it won't help much if at all. For example, don't read the CivPro E&E. Do know what a Plaintiff, Defendant, and cause of action are and the difference between civil and criminal.

Getting to Maybe
Law School Confidential
Scott Turow's (sp) 1L (Very funny book... law school isn't this bad anymore)
A Civil Action (Great book)
Buffalo Creek Disaster
Possibly books about legal writing (particularly Garner's stuff)
Law 101 is a very basic bare-bones cover of the law... it's not bad for a quick skim, but you probably know most of what's in there
The Bramble Bush (I found this not very useful)
... There's others
Even John Grisham is fun and provides some information on basic framework of how some things work. (Also has things that are not realistic though)

Just remember, only read it if it's fun and enjoyable. Don't start studying, outlining, memorizing, etc... Law school doesn't require it.

[20160810]

Everyone says not to read the E&Es before classes start. It does seem pretty excessive and gunnerish, but they're pretty plain English, and I don't know how carefully reading those before law school wouldn't be helpful to someone. On the other hand: You might never have 9 months to screw around again, and that time could probably be spent in more memorable ways. There will be time aplenty for E&Es later.

[TTT-LS]

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[truevines]

Try to boost up your typing speed to 100 wpm. 8k ~ 9k words in 3 hours seem to be necessary for a A/A+ final.

[VincentChase]

Everyone says not to read the E&Es before classes start. It does seem pretty excessive and gunnerish, but they're pretty plain English, and I don't know how carefully reading those before law school wouldn't be helpful to someone. On the other hand: You might never have 9 months to screw around again, and that time could probably be spent in more memorable ways. There will be time aplenty for E&Es later.

The problem with reading E&E's ahead of time is that you may be wasting your time because of the idiosyncracies of your professors. The law is so vast, professors can cherry pick which topics to teach and emphasize in each first-year class. And E&E's leave out a lot, too. I don't think the Torts guide, for example, covers product liability.

Also, from a practical standpoint, you probably won't remember much of this. It's hard enough for me to remember something we were taught last week when I get around to reviewing it before finals, let alone remembering something I read the summer before with no context.

[steve_nash]

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[nickwar]

Break up with your girlfriend (which you probably don't have because you're asking this question), get drunk as often as possible and enjoy the last 9 months of freedom you'll have for a while. E&Es will be of minimal value, as you have no idea what to concentrate on or what you'll even be learning. Ie -- my section's Criminal Law was literally the exact opposite of other sections'. There's nothing wrong with getting to maybe/confidential/etc., but read them for fun; not to try to glean some super secret law school success tactic from them.

[thesealocust]

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[Snooker]

There's two lines of advice on this thread you will find, the "TTT advice" and the "Prep advice". The TTT advice basically says that you shouldn't try to prepare, because you need to be relaxed and ready to hit the books. The TTT advice best for those people who cannot stay highly motivated for long periods of time. In my experience with law school grads and alumni (at Texas ), there's definitely two opposite poles of personalities - those who can stay motivated to pursue a goal doggedly for years, and those who start burning out after just a couple of months. If you are in the "burn out" crowd, definitely take the time to relax.

The other end of advice is the "prepare in advance" advice. Many prominent law school deans have commented that the process of a 1L learning to "think like a lawyer" is learning important legal concepts inherent to all of the fields of law, along with the format of legal reasoning. These can definitely be learned in advance. I personally read a few books in advance and found that doing so seriously cut down on the amount of time I spent reading the casebook and made many things a lot more clear. There's definitely diminishing returns on time invested in studying. I'd read a case once and be crystal clear on it (due to the concepts) when people who read it five times were still confused. I do not recommend trying to learn all the substantive rules, because frankly the rule in itself is fairly simple. This route is perfect for those who don't burn out easily. I'm probably even more motivated now than on the first day.

As for the elephant in the room - does it improve grades? To that, we just don't know. There's never been a survey of law students to determine if reading in advance helps. Law school grading is notoriously unfair and haphazard, though. The most prepared law student will always lose to a middling law student, if the middling law student took a better approach to solving exam problems. There's a thread here where most 2L/3L students attribute their success to pure luck. Anyone reading the books in advance will make life less stressful for themselves as law students, in my opinion, just don't overdo it. I read a lot of books on plane flights because they were short and easy to get through.

I've read several books and here's what I recommend to a 0L:
The concept and insight books on torts, contracts, and civil procedure.
---Comment: these books read like Stephen King novels but will fill you in on all the background aspects of the law
John Delaney's books on Legal Reasoning and Law Exams
---Comment: do the legal reasoning book a few days before class. It teaches you how to read cases.
Basic Concepts of Criminal Law (Fletcher)
---It's like the concept and insight books above, for a 1L topic it doesn't exist for
Getting to Maybe
---Only after you've read the 1L mini-books
Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Levi)
---Should definitely be one of the very last books you read
A Civil Action (Harr)
---A good novel that's often used to teach 1L classes
McClurg's 1L of a Ride
---Law prof who interviewed lots of law faculty and students to produce a good guide book. WAY better than law school confidential, which has many suggestions that amount to basically self-sabotage.

After this bunch, don't hesitate to shop around for interesting books, like Cardozo's nature of the judicial process, or books that link your undergrad major up with the law. There is definitely a "Law and <undegrad major>" book for every field, even English majors. Judges seem to value law and economics & law and philosophy most in their judicial opinions. If you can link your intellectual passions up with the law, the subject will be much richer for you.

[sayan]

There's two lines of advice on this thread you will find, the "TTT advice" and the "Prep advice". The TTT advice basically says that you shouldn't try to prepare, because you need to be relaxed and ready to hit the books. The TTT advice best for those people who cannot stay highly motivated for long periods of time. In my experience with law school grads and alumni (at Texas ), there's definitely two opposite poles of personalities - those who can stay motivated to pursue a goal doggedly for years, and those who start burning out after just a couple of months. If you are in the "burn out" crowd, definitely take the time to relax.

The other end of advice is the "prepare in advance" advice. Many prominent law school deans have commented that the process of a 1L learning to "think like a lawyer" is learning important legal concepts inherent to all of the fields of law, along with the format of legal reasoning. These can definitely be learned in advance. I personally read a few books in advance and found that doing so seriously cut down on the amount of time I spent reading the casebook and made many things a lot more clear. There's definitely diminishing returns on time invested in studying. I'd read a case once and be crystal clear on it (due to the concepts) when people who read it five times were still confused. I do not recommend trying to learn all the substantive rules, because frankly the rule in itself is fairly simple. This route is perfect for those who don't burn out easily. I'm probably even more motivated now than on the first day.

As for the elephant in the room - does it improve grades? To that, we just don't know. There's never been a survey of law students to determine if reading in advance helps. Law school grading is notoriously unfair and haphazard, though. The most prepared law student will always lose to a middling law student, if the middling law student took a better approach to solving exam problems. There's a thread here where most 2L/3L students attribute their success to pure luck. Anyone reading the books in advance will make life less stressful for themselves as law students, in my opinion, just don't overdo it. I read a lot of books on plane flights because they were short and easy to get through.

I've read several books and here's what I recommend to a 0L:
The concept and insight books on torts, contracts, and civil procedure.
---Comment: these books read like Stephen King novels but will fill you in on all the background aspects of the law
John Delaney's books on Legal Reasoning and Law Exams
---Comment: do the legal reasoning book a few days before class. It teaches you how to read cases.
Basic Concepts of Criminal Law (Fletcher)
---It's like the concept and insight books above, for a 1L topic it doesn't exist for
Getting to Maybe
---Only after you've read the 1L mini-books
Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Levi)
---Should definitely be one of the very last books you read
A Civil Action (Harr)
---A good novel that's often used to teach 1L classes
McClurg's 1L of a Ride
---Law prof who interviewed lots of law faculty and students to produce a good guide book. WAY better than law school confidential, which has many suggestions that amount to basically self-sabotage.

After this bunch, don't hesitate to shop around for interesting books, like Cardozo's nature of the judicial process, or books that link your undergrad major up with the law. There is definitely a "Law and <undegrad major>" book for every field, even English majors. Judges seem to value law and economics & law and philosophy most in their judicial opinions. If you can link your intellectual passions up with the law, the subject will be much richer for you.

Excellent reply. Your suggested reading framework seems solid.

Any suggestions on legal writing books? Elements of Legal Style, perhaps? Are there any decent 1L mini books for Property?

[Snooker]

Delaney's book covers a lot of legal writing from the analytical standpoint. From the style standpoint, there is Writing a legal Memo, by John Bronsteen. Recently, Justice Scalia teamed up with Texas Law grad Brian Garner to write, Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges. I haven't read the latter, but the legal writing people all seem to be talking about it.

To throw another chip onto the TTT argument and repeat several points I made last month (around December 10 or so), there doesn't seem to be a whole lot you can do to ensure success in law school. There is tremendous criticism from all angles that law school doesn't test fairly or accurately, and that law professors don't teach you anything useful. I think this takes three forms. The most important skill you have for an exam is being able to produce legal analysis of a fact set, but law professors won't teach you how to do it in most cases.* That's the tradition.

Second, they won't train you to solve problems, but rather teach case reading. The best thing you have is a horde of MC problems to solve. There's essay exams, too, but guess what? The professor isn't going to be there to tell you if you're hitting the mark or not. Imagine training soldiers to fight in Iraq by putting them through target practice where they never get a chance to see if you hit the thing. Our soldiers wouldn't be able to hit a thing if they practiced like that; they'd be sitting ducks on the battlefield. But that is basically how legal education works.

Third, the classic criticism, you might not even be tested on what you covered in class. The whole exam might be a big surprise. I had this happen on most of my tests. The only thing that saved me was CALI exercises which had covered the topics, by chance. Or there might be a question based around one of the professor's aging law review articles, and the A+ grades will go to whichever student found that article.

These common criticisms (all repeated on LEEWS, law reviews, blogs, etc.) lead to the mindset of what I will call "TTT Fatalism". It's the mindset that no matter what you do, factors totally beyond your control are going to dictate the outcome. There's a big thread here about how everything is a matter of luck. The classes are so bad at preparing students for class that they actually came up with a test of your raw test-taking ability that can actually predict student success on law exams, but has no bearing on legal writing or professional success. All of them weigh against your ability to prepare ahead of time.

Law exam performance is a great mystery because legal academics in general really do not care about how their students perform, and there are a very minimal number of articles investigating how law students can succeed better. (though there are 10,000 advice books selling for hot profit, go figure) We really only know three things from the law reviews. CALI and hypos improve exam performance a moderate amount, Hornbooks improve it a little bit, and going to church hurts grades. (which is strange, because church attendance usually helps grades. Indeed, the road to biglaw is the road to hell.) Finally, getting direct feedback from the professor tends to improve grades a lot. General case reading advice seems to have a small impact, whereas getting feedback on an actual legal problem seems to have a big impact.

Personally, I still say go for it. Reading ahead just compresses time you spend studying during school. Maybe you can figure some way to improve your odds against the exams with the extra time during the semester. Maybe you will chill out more. I do not think reading ahead causes burn out, I think boredom with socratic method classes on graded curves for three years causes burnout. The law is a very interesting subject, and academics go on for decades talking about the same field of law.



*To be fair, one of my professors provided lots of help on legal analysis and another provided a little bit.

[nickwar]

There's two lines of advice on this thread you will find, the "TTT advice" and the "Prep advice". The TTT advice basically says that you shouldn't try to prepare, because you need to be relaxed and ready to hit the books. The TTT advice best for those people who cannot stay highly motivated for long periods of time. In my experience with law school grads and alumni (at Texas ), there's definitely two opposite poles of personalities - those who can stay motivated to pursue a goal doggedly for years, and those who start burning out after just a couple of months. If you are in the "burn out" crowd, definitely take the time to relax.

The other end of advice is the "prepare in advance" advice. Many prominent law school deans have commented that the process of a 1L learning to "think like a lawyer" is learning important legal concepts inherent to all of the fields of law, along with the format of legal reasoning. These can definitely be learned in advance. I personally read a few books in advance and found that doing so seriously cut down on the amount of time I spent reading the casebook and made many things a lot more clear. There's definitely diminishing returns on time invested in studying. I'd read a case once and be crystal clear on it (due to the concepts) when people who read it five times were still confused. I do not recommend trying to learn all the substantive rules, because frankly the rule in itself is fairly simple. This route is perfect for those who don't burn out easily. I'm probably even more motivated now than on the first day.

As for the elephant in the room - does it improve grades? To that, we just don't know. There's never been a survey of law students to determine if reading in advance helps. Law school grading is notoriously unfair and haphazard, though. The most prepared law student will always lose to a middling law student, if the middling law student took a better approach to solving exam problems. There's a thread here where most 2L/3L students attribute their success to pure luck. Anyone reading the books in advance will make life less stressful for themselves as law students, in my opinion, just don't overdo it. I read a lot of books on plane flights because they were short and easy to get through.

I've read several books and here's what I recommend to a 0L:
The concept and insight books on torts, contracts, and civil procedure.
---Comment: these books read like Stephen King novels but will fill you in on all the background aspects of the law
John Delaney's books on Legal Reasoning and Law Exams
---Comment: do the legal reasoning book a few days before class. It teaches you how to read cases.
Basic Concepts of Criminal Law (Fletcher)
---It's like the concept and insight books above, for a 1L topic it doesn't exist for
Getting to Maybe
---Only after you've read the 1L mini-books
Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Levi)
---Should definitely be one of the very last books you read
A Civil Action (Harr)
---A good novel that's often used to teach 1L classes
McClurg's 1L of a Ride
---Law prof who interviewed lots of law faculty and students to produce a good guide book. WAY better than law school confidential, which has many suggestions that amount to basically self-sabotage.

After this bunch, don't hesitate to shop around for interesting books, like Cardozo's nature of the judicial process, or books that link your undergrad major up with the law. There is definitely a "Law and <undegrad major>" book for every field, even English majors. Judges seem to value law and economics & law and philosophy most in their judicial opinions. If you can link your intellectual passions up with the law, the subject will be much richer for you.

You forgot to include how well you did, choosing the "non-ttt" method of studying. I think it's ridiculous to label not reading every 1L book at Borders a "ttt" study strategy, just because it's a path of least resistance. I read a couple of them before I came to school and they basically did nothing for me, but that's just my experience.

And I don't mean to say they didn't do anything for me because I haven't done well. I've done well so far at a good school, but have noticed very little of their advice has shown up in my course work/exams.

You seem to think "burn out" is shameful. Burn out is human nature and must be planned around. If you've never felt burnt out with anything you've put significant time and effort into, you are either doing something wrong or have very little of a life elsewise. Neither situation I'd want to be in. I wouldn't label someone who plans around burn out as being "ttt" -- that's ridiculous.

I basically just wanted to make sure you have law school experience and aren't an incoming 0L who is tossing around the "ttt" label. I would appreciate if you would include how your readings have helped/hurt your success in school, and even which books were most helpful for you.

[thesealocust]

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[thesealocust]

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[tome]

For what it is worth, when I was in your position I was wondering the same thing, and came on here and asked the same question. TTT-LS said the same thing he said above. (Actually, if anything, he has mellowed with age and is now allowing people to read getting to maybe--I seem to remember him saying not to read anything, but I could be wrong.) I was skeptical, and I did what he suggested more from laziness than agreement. In my single semester of LS, I have to say that I now agree with this position fully. You have a whole semester to learn this stuff off an expert.

Anything other than reading the general stuff to hit the ground running (GTM and LSC being the only two I think helped) is a waste of time. However, I honestly think this is something you can only truly appreciate once you get some law school under your belt. Not much either, really; after just a month or two I saw the truth in it.

[Snooker]

These common criticisms (all repeated on LEEWS, law reviews, blogs, etc.) lead to the mindset of what I will call "TTT Fatalism". It's the mindset that no matter what you do, factors totally beyond your control are going to dictate the outcome.

huh? I think you're badly misrepresenting his point of view. People often don't understand how to do well on law school exams, but the tremendous and continuous success some seem to able to achieve (TTT-LS amongst them, so far as I can tell) would suggest exactly the opposite of what you're discussing.

Even though my experience is quite limited, I disagree strongly with basically everything you said about grading being random/arbitrary. Law school exams can magnify small errors, and professors do rarely teach you in a way that prepares you for taking an exam - but that doesn't mean the grading is crazy or that they are impossible to prepare for?

The criticism isn't so much with that there isn't a difference between the different levels of exams so much as the law professors aren't really committed to preparing you adequately. The issue has been studied by law professors, and nobody can really find a clear difference between the effectiveness of different sorts of preparation methods unless the professor is providing feedback. Apparently legal self-training isn't very effective.

[rayiner]

These common criticisms (all repeated on LEEWS, law reviews, blogs, etc.) lead to the mindset of what I will call "TTT Fatalism". It's the mindset that no matter what you do, factors totally beyond your control are going to dictate the outcome.

Even though my experience is quite limited, I disagree strongly with basically everything you said about grading being random/arbitrary. Law school exams can magnify small errors, and professors do rarely teach you in a way that prepares you for taking an exam - but that doesn't mean the grading is crazy or that they are impossible to prepare for?

I agree with this. Between all the practice exams and whatnot, really nothing on my finals was a surprise. A lot of people in my class thought that our Civ Pro multiple-choice was a bit out of left field, and were really glad they did Glannon's MC guide, but I noticed early in the semester that our professor paid a lot of attention to working through the "clear cut" questions in our case notes, which were, not surprisingly, pretty similar to the types of questions on the MC section of the exam.

[gollymolly]

.

[Kohinoor]

Everyone says not to read the E&Es before classes start. It does seem pretty excessive and gunnerish, but they're pretty plain English, and I don't know how carefully reading those before law school wouldn't be helpful to someone. On the other hand: You might never have 9 months to screw around again, and that time could probably be spent in more memorable ways. There will be time aplenty for E&Es later.

I read the E&E for Crim beforehand. During the final with the adrenaline rush in full stride, i did a page of analysis on entrapment because i knew the doctrine clearly and well. Only later did I realize that I knew the doctrine clearly from E&E but not from any class focus on it. In fact, we breezed over the subject in 2 minutes of discussion and 2 pages of reading. A perfectly dispassionate mechanical individual could read the E&E then drop what isn't applicable as the term progresses and the final approaches. A law student taking a final is a frantic rabbit horse chasing a carrot in any hole and will screw himself by mentioning something that makes the professor realize 'This person clearly did not grasp the focus of my in-class discussion and assigned reading. His grade will thus begin at median and go down from there.'

[sayan]

Everyone says not to read the E&Es before classes start. It does seem pretty excessive and gunnerish, but they're pretty plain English, and I don't know how carefully reading those before law school wouldn't be helpful to someone. On the other hand: You might never have 9 months to screw around again, and that time could probably be spent in more memorable ways. There will be time aplenty for E&Es later.

I read the E&E for Crim beforehand. During the final with the adrenaline rush in full stride, i did a page of analysis on entrapment because i knew the doctrine clearly and well. Only later did I realize that I knew the doctrine clearly from E&E but not from any class focus on it. In fact, we breezed over the subject in 2 minutes of discussion and 2 pages of reading. A perfectly dispassionate mechanical individual could read the E&E then drop what isn't applicable as the term progresses and the final approaches. A law student taking a final is a frantic rabbit horse chasing a carrot in any hole and will screw himself by mentioning something that makes the professor realize 'This person clearly did not grasp the focus of my in-class discussion and assigned reading. His grade will thus begin at median and go down from there.'

Really? I've read some guides saying that speaking outside just the scope of discussion earns brownie points if it's still related to the question; it basically shows you have a very strong grasp of the material.

[Kohinoor]

Everyone says not to read the E&Es before classes start. It does seem pretty excessive and gunnerish, but they're pretty plain English, and I don't know how carefully reading those before law school wouldn't be helpful to someone. On the other hand: You might never have 9 months to screw around again, and that time could probably be spent in more memorable ways. There will be time aplenty for E&Es later.

I read the E&E for Crim beforehand. During the final with the adrenaline rush in full stride, i did a page of analysis on entrapment because i knew the doctrine clearly and well. Only later did I realize that I knew the doctrine clearly from E&E but not from any class focus on it. In fact, we breezed over the subject in 2 minutes of discussion and 2 pages of reading. A perfectly dispassionate mechanical individual could read the E&E then drop what isn't applicable as the term progresses and the final approaches. A law student taking a final is a frantic rabbit horse chasing a carrot in any hole and will screw himself by mentioning something that makes the professor realize 'This person clearly did not grasp the focus of my in-class discussion and assigned reading. His grade will thus begin at median and go down from there.'

Really? I've read some guides saying that speaking outside just the scope of discussion earns brownie points if it's still related to the question; it basically shows you have a very strong grasp of the material.

If that was true, why go to class at all? spend that time memorizing the hornbooks then come to the exam and regurgitate the books. I haven't seen a single professor even hint that you would be recognized positively for going beyond the syllabus and several have in fact stated that they will medianpwn anyone who does that. You understand of course that guides wouldn't sell as well if they stated 'only 120 pages of this 500 page book will get you any points on the test. You run the very real risk of spending time on the exam discussing the remaining 380 pages for 0 points in a best case scenario and negative points if you annoy the professor.'

You need to limit yourself to things that were actually on the syllabus and then frame those things in a way that the professor likes. If you know the prof has written two books on X and you think you can segue into a two liner on X despite the question technically only asking for Y, go for it. Aside from that, don't fool yourself into thinking that proving you know things that you're not being tested on will get you points. If I had gone into NIED on my torts final after it was never addressed in class, I definitely would get it back with a 'lol@u' written on it.

Note: you can still be a sickening gunner while following the above advice. Read the full opinion of every case cited in the case book or mentioned in class. Read the relevant section of the recommended hornbook and the not so recommended hornbook. Read the relevant section of the E&E & Glannon's & Legallines. Just wait until you know what you're supposed to be learning first.

[thesealocust]

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