How to Survive the First Year of Law School

 How to Survive the First Year of Law School

At The University of Texas

by Mike Godwin, mnemonic@eff.org

(Copyright 1988,1992. This article may be freely distributed on any

computer forum, including commercial online services. To reproduce it

in print or in any other non-computer medium, please seek permission

from the author.)

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You went to a decent college, you scored well on your Law School

Admission Test, and you ranked in the top 10 percent of your class.  So,

now that you're here at The University of Texas School of Law, you can

look forward to an unbroken string of acadernic successes, right?

Not so fast. No matter how easy you found undergraduate school to be,

law school is a different story. And the sooner you learn that, the

better your chances of coming out of the law-school game a winner.

First, disabuse yourself of any notions about your natural academic

superiority. Sure, you're good, but so is everyone else in your class.

And since everyone is graded against everyone else on a curve, the

chances are nine out of 10 that you'll be in the bottom 90 percent of

your class, regardless of your undergraduate performance.

This means that law-school success doesn't come merely from knowing the

law; you have to know it better than most of your peers.  So you can't

be complacent.

If you start heeding the following hints early in your first semester,

they'll improve your chances of hot job offers...and maybe even an

editorship on the law review.

Class Participation

If you saw the movie "The Paper Chase" (and odds are that you did, or

you wouldn't be here), you probably know that large classes in law

school normally are run by "the Socratic method."  Rather than

lecturing, the professor will assign some reading for the day and

conduct the class by asking students questions about the material.

Watching the movie, you probably got the impression that the best 

law students are those who are eager and able to answer the 

professor's questions.  Don't be fooled.  Glibness and self-possession 

in class are only roughly correlated to exam performance, and your 

grades are based almost entirely on final exams, not on your 

quickness in the classroom.  Because the finals are graded 

anonymously, the professor won't even be able to link your 

classroom participation with the exam.

It's far wiser to spend your time mastering the principles behind 

each case you read rather than memorizing its facts.  If you try the 

latter tactic, your brain will be too muddled with facts at exam time 

to allow you to apply the law.  Don't worry about the inevitable 

instances in which a professor tries to embarass you for knowing 

less than he does.  (I refer to the professor as "he" because almost all 

UT law professors are male.  Most are white, too).  You can get your 

revenge by earning an honors grade in the course.

Class Preparation

Keep up with the assigned reading.  Onerous though the reading may 

be, it's easier to keep up than to catch up.  And reading the cases for 

the day will enable you to answer most of the questions any 

professor tries to throw at you.

If for some reason you do get behind on the reading, however, don't 

panic.  This happens to some of the best law students.  Attend class 

anyway, even if you haven't read that day's class materials.  The 

professor's Socratic questions will clue you in to the issues he expects 

you to know for the exam.

Professors

Some law professors are frightening; others are charming.  

Ultimately, however, their personalities don't matter very much.  

Whether he likes you or not, each professor will grade your exam 

according to the curve.  There's no such thing as an "easy" law course, 

although you may find some lectures more tolerable than oothers.  If 

the material is easy for you, it may well be easy for everybody, so the 

curve can get you anyway.

While some law professors make a pretense of keeping office hours, 

most of them don't really want to see you outside the classroom, a 

milieu they prefer because that's where they have all the control.  

Any question you want to ask a professor probably can be answered 

by a "hornbook" (legal treatise) anyway, and library is full of 

hornbooks.

Don't expect too much sympathy from your professors.  After all, law 

school is a game they've *won.*  They may have some sort of abstract 

pity for the poor contracts student who's agonizing over Sec. 2-207 of

the Uniform Commercial Code, but under no cirumstances will you be able to 

persuade them to change your grade.

Briefing your cases

The rule here is "Condense, condense, condense." Nothing's more 

pathetic than the law nerd whose brief is longer than the case 

excerpt in the casebook. Remember this rule: Each case has one or 

two main ideas. Find them, and you'll have what you need to know 

for the exam.

And good, *brief* briefs can be easily incorporated in your study 

outline.

Some professors like to ask tricky questions about the fact pattern of 

a case during the lecture, but don't write these details down.

Instead, make notes in the margin or highlight key facts of your 

casebook. If you've read the case, you should be able to remember 

the facts long enough to get through the class period. And if the

professor stresses a particular type of fact pattern in the lecture,

he's signalling to you a possible exam issue. Note the issue, not the

facts of the particular case.

Buying study aids

Basically, there are two types of study aids you can buy for first-

year courses: commercial outlines and hornbooks. A commercial 

outline is a prepackaged, detailed skeleton of the material you

need to know for a particular course. There are several brands of 

outlines, and each has something to recommend it. The Legalines 

outlines track particular casebooks, while the Emanuel Law Outlines 

and Gilbert Law Summaries are more general, although they will 

include many of the cases in your casebook.

You may find it best to buy Legalines outlines for each of your 

courses except contracts. (The UT professors who wrote the contracts 

casebook designed it in a way that makes it difficult to produce a 

commercial outline for it.) Then you can supplement the Legalines 

with general-purpose outlines like Emanuel's and Gilbert's for 

courses you're having trouble with. Be aware that occasionally the case

summaries and discussions in the commercial outlines are *mistaken*--

let your professor and your classmates supplement your take on a given

case or issue.

Some students buy "hornbooks" for particular 

subjects, but for a first-year student the treatises often go into too 

much unnecessary detail. Theyre also very expensive, and in general 

it's best not to buy them; but you may want to make an exception for 

contracts, which many students find a particularly subtle and 

difficult branch of law. The Calamari and Perillo hombook is good for 

general contract law, while the White and Summers hornbook is 

necessary for a thorough understanding of the parts of your 

contracts course that deal with the Uniform Commercial Code. You 

may also want to consult UT Professor Charles Alan Wright's treatise 

on the law of federal courts for your civil-procedure class.

Finally, if you signed up early for a bar-review course (believe it

or not, some people do this during their first year), some bar-review

courses will allow you to "check out" their reviews of black-letter 

law.

Study Groups

Try to get into one. When you find a likely group, make sure that 

most of the people in the group are dedicated enough to stick with it. 

Discussing difficult ideas with other law students is a good way of 

making sure you understand them. In general, study groups work 

best with about five people, with each person concentrating on one of 

the five first-year courses you'll be taking each semester. If you 

have a choice about which course to concentrate on, choose the 

course you think you'll find most difficult your responsibility to 

your friends in the study grou p will give you an added incentive to 

master that material.

Computers

Buy a computer--you can purchase them at near-wholesale cost at 

the Texas Union MicroCenter on 21st Street. Only if you own a 

computer will you be able to produce and edit a legible course outline 

in a hurry.  You'll need two types of software:  a good word 

processing program to help you with the briefs and memos you have 

to produce for your legal research and writing seminar, and an 

outline program to produce the course outlines you'll need for exams.  

(Some word processors include outlining capability--in general, those

word processors are not as good at outlining as programs designed for just

that purpose.)

If you buy a Macintosh, the outlining software of choice is MORE; if you

own an IBM PC, buy Thinktank or Grandview.. Both products are available

at local computer stores.

Exam-taking strategy

Your heart's beating rapidly, your palms are sweaty, and your mind is a

blank.  Yes, you're taking your first law-school exam. How on earth do

you handle those exam questions?

The first thing to remember is that all law-exam questions are more or

less alike. Each describes an invented and often quite complex situation

that, had it occurred in real life, would probably generate one or more

lawsuits. Following the fact situation is usually a question or

instruction such as "Describe the potential legal claims and liabilities

of each party."

Your best strategy, when you outline your answer, is to pretend you're

the lawyer for each party in turn.  Pretending to be Smith's lawyer,

quickly list all the legal principles from your course outline that

could advance Smith's case against Jones. Now play the part of Jones'

lawyer how would you answer each of these legal arguments or daims? What

counterclaims could you use against Smith? What will Smith say in

response to your responses? What other parties in the fact situation

could sue or be sued? And so on.

Inevitably, you'll see some obvious legal issues in the fact pattern.

You have to deal with them, of course, but don't make the fatal mistake

of assurning that by handling the obvious or major issues you've written

a good exam answer. After all, your peers probably share your gift for

seeing the obvious.

So, how do you make sure you catch the subtle issues as well as the

straightforward ones? When you're preparing for the exam, condense your

outline into a checklist of one- or two-word shorthand expressions for

legal principles.  Memorize the checklist, and recite it in your head

each time you pretend to be the attorney for one of the parties. (Better

yet--write it down on your scratch paper at the beginning of your exam

as soon as you're allowed to start writing, before you even read the

first question.  The checklist will remind you of issues you'd otherwise

overlook.

Practice Exams

Besides creating a legal-issues outline, the best way to prepare for

exams is to take practice exams.  Almost all professors keep their old

exams on file in the lbirary.  After you've done the bulk of your study

outlines, photocopy your professors' exams from the last couple of

years.  Then sit down with a friend and practice outlining exams answers

based on the old questions.  Don't bother writing a full exam answer!

Time yourself, and give yourself about as much time to outline each

answer as you would during a real exam.  YOu should budget about a third

of the time you're given to answer an essay question for outlining your

answer (e.g., 20 minutes for a 60- minute question).

After each question, compare your outlined answer with your friend's.

He or she will have seen somepoints you missed, and vice versa.  This

pinpoints issues you may tend to overlook during the real exam.

Other matters

Four of your first-year law courses contracts, torts, civil procedure,

and property will last your entire first year. You'll also take two

semester-long courses: criminal law in the fall and constitutional law

in the spring.

Thus, if you have to concentrate on any particular exam during winter

midterms, concentrate on criminal law; that's the only exam you'll take

in your first semester that counts as a grade for an entire course.

Conversely, the exam for the three-hour constitutional-law course in the

spring will count less toward your average than the exams for your

year-long courses, which are each worth five or six hours' credit.

Don't get too competitive.  It's the friends you make during your first

few months as a law student who'll help you get through the year.  Don't

be deluded into thinking that other students are the enemy; they're not.

It's the system you've got to beat, and you can do it with the right

attitude.  A vicious competitive streak, however, tends to undermine

your karma in the long run.

Finally, try to enjoy yourself.  The law really can be fun to learn if

you let yourself relax.  Most people who make it through the first year

look back at it as a time of rapid intellectual growth and the building

of mental discipline.  Don't regard law school as just the

stepping-stone to a career.  A law-school education has value in itself

-- it will teach you a lot about what makes our society tick.