My Two Cents for One L’s

Believe it or not, I am good for more than just being a smartass. I actually did well my first year of law school, so I thought I’d pass on some bits of wisdom garnered from my and others’ 1L experiences. Ignore them at your own peril.

Don’t ever brief a case. Yes, you read that right. My entire law school career, I never once briefed a single case. To me, the idea seems tedious, boring and unnecessarily duplicitous. These opinions were written by people who are way smarter than you and can phrase things far more eloquently and intelligently than you can. I found book briefing to be a much better way of pulling out the key information in a usable format.

The key concept behind book briefing is to use different colored highlighters for different parts of the decision so they jump off the page when you’re on the spot and your professor is on the warpath. For instance, I used pink to highlight the court, issue, procedural posture, holding and judge; green for pertinent facts; yellow for key legal analysis and reasoning; blue for important cited precedent; and orange for key points in the dissenting opinion. But, of course, you’re free to develop your own system.

In addition to highlighting, I always made numerous notations in the margins of my casebooks so that I could jump to them quickly when called on. For example, “P’s arg.,” “D’s defense,” or “Test: 1) Compelling state interest, 2) Necessary to achieve that interest, 3) Least restrictive alternative.” Also, when a court breaks up its analysis into sections, number them (courts are not original, they will often state that they reached their decision for the following x reasons).

Fair warning: Many professors loathe book briefing. That just goes to show how much smarter you are. And when you’re put on the spot, rather than shuffling through a veritable forest of paper or frantically searching for files only to have Word crash on you at a critical moment, you’ll be able to answer the professor’s questions in a calm, collected manner. Except there’s really never anything calm or collected about 1L’s — y’all generally maintain that deer-in-headlights look all year long.

Robert Miller’s Law School Confidential has some excellent information about book briefing as well as other tips and tricks for surviving the law school, job hunting and bar exam experiences. I highly recommend it.

Sleep a whole lot. I’m really not kidding. So many people told me they never slept their first year of law school because they spent so much time studying. The truth of the matter is that they were probably spending countless futile hours typing up case briefs (see above). I, on the other hand, took a two-hour nap every single day of my 1L year and still managed to finish near the top of the class. As Anonymous Boyfriend would say, it was all about working smarter, not harder. I could not agree more.

For the record, I often fell asleep on my casebooks while attempting to study. While I cannot confirm the scientific basis for learning through osmosis, you may or may not want to give it a try. However, be careful with this, as you may end up waking up with pen and/or highlighter on your face, couch and dog.

Don’t sleep with your classmates. While I did just tell you to sleep a whole lot, I strongly suggest you avoid sleeping with anyone in your law school class. I don’t have any personal experience in the matter, but from observing the experiences of others, law school romance/drunkenness/horniness/idiocy can make for some very awkward situations in class and social settings. Just think, you’re stuck with these people for the next three years, and law school classes aren’t that big. News travels fast, and people don’t forget — law school gossip is as close as most law students have to a life.

I would personally advice against consorting with other lawyers or individuals in the legal profession altogether, but that is just my preference. AB is as far from a lawyer as you can get, which I like, because there’s no shop talk and I like talking about non-law-related stuff. However, several good friends of mine from law school are happily married to, engaged to or cavorting with other lawyers, case clerks and copyboys, so it can work out if you approach the situation carefully.

Use commercial supplements and upper-class students’ old outlines. Unless your law school’s honor code makes it a violation, there is absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel. While I am absolutely an advocate of making your own outlines from your class notes and materials, it is a fantastic idea to cross-reference your outlines with other students’ outlines and commercial supplements. You might have missed something, or you may discover a more clever way to organize your thoughts.

Do not just copy others’ outlines. This is where AB’s “work smarter, not harder” concept comes into play — taking the time to craft your own outlines with the assistance of outside materials will save you a lot of work later. You’ll actually learn the material while you’re making your outlines and you’ll spend less time re-learning when exam time comes around.

Besides, many a law professor has been known to snatch exam questions directly from sample questions provided by Mr. Gilbert, Mr. Emanuel, and Mr. Glannon.

I hope some of you have found my advice, though perhaps a bit unorthodox, to be helpful or at the very least, thought-provoking. In the near future I’ll post some more articles dealing with topics such as note-taking, study habits and exam-taking skills, so stay tuned!