People transfer for a variety of reasons. I personally did not get a fantastic LSAT score and couldn’t get into my top choice law schools on the first go around. I attended a safety school that I’d been accepted to and immediately made plans to transfer after my first year.

Knowing right off the bat that I wanted to transfer helped me do well in my classes because I had a lot of motivation with a very clear goal in mind. It also helped me to craft a strategy and develop a timeline to get things accomplished in an orderly manner.

Hopefully this timeline will be helpful to those of you who have decided to transfer or are actively considering it as an option.

September:

• Find a study group, if you haven’t already. Carefully select bright and disciplined people who you can get along with for long periods of time, and who will be able to really help you master the material for the exam.
• Stay caught up with your reading. Try to stay ahead if you can, but definitely do not get behind. If you are currently behind, catch up now.

October:

• Begin outlining your classes. Outlining is an iterative process and thus you should start early because your outlines will change and go through several versions as you refine them.
• Develop relationships. Once you have settled into the school routine, begin developing relationships with professors who you might want to provide you with recommendations. It’s okay to demonstrate genuine interest in a class, but do not become a gunner.

November:

• Start studying for finals. This process should begin about six weeks before your first exam. Aim to master one subject per week and do practice questions. Iron out the kinks in your outlines; meeting with your study group is helpful in accomplishing this goal.
• Finish your outlines. Have all of your outlines up to date for the most recent class session by the time you break for Thanksgiving. Enjoy some turkey and stuffing as a reward!

December:

• Ace your final exams! With well-prepared outlines and a disciplined study schedule, you should be able to kick some ass on your first semester final exams.
• Take time to reflect. With your first semester finals behind you, take this opportunity to decide whether or not you really want to transfer. Think about the qualities you are seeking in your ideal law school environment, both academically and environmentally.
• Research. You have two weeks off for the holidays; make them productive. Using the criteria that you have determined are important in a prospective law school, select several schools that you want to apply to. Look at their transfer criteria, application requirements, tuition costs, etc.

January:

• Evaluate your fall semester grades. Once your fall grades are posted, evaluate your performance and determine which schools from your list you actually have a realistic shot at being accepted to. You might need to revisit your list and add some schools and delete others.

February:

• Stay caught up. Just like fall semester, you need to stay caught up with your reading during the spring. This can be particularly challenging if your law school adds an additional class for spring semester, but is nonetheless imperative.

March:

• Begin outlining. Again, you’ll want to begin outlining during the middle of the semester or so.
• Start crafting your personal statement. For me, this was the most challenging part of the transfer application. Start early so that you can have several people read over it before you have to submit it with your applications. You may need to write more than one statement if the schools you are applying to give different essay prompts. Spring break is a good time to start your personal statement.

April:

• Take care of administrative issues. Finalize the list of schools you’ll be applying to. Register for LSAC. If your LSAC subscription has lapsed, you’ll need to register again. Make sure you have transcripts from your previous degree-granting institutions sent to LSAC. Begin filling out the individual applications. Budget for application fees. Write down due dates.
• Approach your selected professors for recommendations. This can be intimidating and nervewracking. I was afraid that my professors would be insulted that I was leaving their school. To the contrary, they were supportive and more than willing to write me excellent recommendations to my schools of choice. One professor asked me why I was transferring, another said that it wasn’t her business to ask. Be prepared for either reaction. Have all forms ready to give them, with postage-paid envelopes attached and a post-it with due dates on each one.
• Begin studying for spring finals. As with last semester, you’ll want to give yourself plenty of time to study, beginning about six weeks before your first exam.

May:

• Submit your applications. Have you applications submitted before finals begin so that you only have to tackle one hurdle at a time.
• Finish the year with a bang! You’ve almost made it – do great on your finals so that you will place high in your 1L class and optimize your chances of getting into the law school of your dreams.

June:

• Request transcripts. As soon as your law school releases first year grades, request official transcripts be sent directly to each of the schools you’ve applied to. Some schools may want your 1L transcripts to go through LSAC, but that usually takes too long considering the admissions directors’ short deadline.
• Sit back and wait. Although it’s difficult to do, you just have to be patient. Many schools don’t make their transfer decisions until sometime in July.

July:

• Select a law school! With a little determination and a lot of hard work, you’ll have a very difficult, but great decision to make – which law school will you attend?
• Get in touch with career services at your new law school. You don’t want to miss the early interview process, as this is when many firms start their hiring process for the following summer.
• Withdraw from your old school. Contact the registrar and any other administrators you need to in order to make sure that you are withdrawn from your classes and that you won’t receive a tuition bill from your old school.
• Notify your friends. It’s a hard thing to do, but make sure you let your friends at your old school know that you’re leaving.

August:

• Start classes at your new law school! Congratulations, you did it! You’ve worked hard, so enjoy your final two years of law school at your new law school.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting more detailed articles about some of the action items listed in the timeline. But for now, this will hopefully provide a helpful perspective of the big picture for those of you already considering transferring. Best of luck, and check back for future transfer articles!

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!

None of these classes are on the bar exam. But, they might come in handy if you need an outline for that schedule-filler class you signed up for, but don’t want to attend. Yes, I’m talking to you, 3L’s.

Note: These outlines are all in Word 2007 format.

Copyright

Intellectual Property Survey (Trade Secrets, Patent, Trademark, Copyright and Unfair Competition)

Media Law

Natural Resources

I hope some of y’all found these outlines helpful. That would make one of us.

These are from those not-required-yet-highly-recommended classes (read: Bar exam subjects). As you can see, I was a much less prolific outliner after first year, as I took far more classes than I actually have outlines for.

Note: These outlines are all in Word 2007 format.

Constitutional Law II

Evidence

Trusts & Estates I

U.C.C. Article 9 (Secured Transactions)

Forthcoming: Outlines for non-bar exam classes and other electives.

Use and distribute them freely, but trust me, your professors are not full of bullshit (for once) when they tell you making your own outline is an important part of learning this stuff, which you won’t ever see again. Until the bar exam.

Without further adieu, here they are!

Note: These outlines are all in Word 2007 format.

Civil Procedure I
Civil Procedure II

Contracts I
Contracts II

Criminal Law

Constitutional Law I

Property I (& a chart of rules for estates in land)
Property II

Torts I
Torts II

Stay tuned for: Constitutional Law II, Evidence, U.C.C. Article 9 (Secured Transactions), Trusts & Estates, and other equally fun topics.

Aside from stressing about cleaning my house and making sure all my guests had breakfast and hot water for showers, the foremost concern in my mind was not falling when I crossed the stage in my mammoth stiletto heels (hey, a girl’s gotta have cute shoes to balance out the ridiculous-looking graduation attire). This should come as no surprise to most of you, being as I am a walking calamity and all.

As we lined up to receive our symbolic empty diploma tubes that represent three years of our lives gone and thousands of dollars in debt to be paid over the next twenty years, I became increasingly nervous about the prospect of face-planting in front of hundreds of people. First I thought I was going to pee myself. Then I thought I might throw up. Falling would not be something I could live down. No one would remember that I graduated from law school; no, they would remember that I fell on my face and got a plywood splinter in my forehead while graduating from law school.

Here is photographic evidence that I successfully crossed the stage, received my meaningless tube, shook no less than half a dozen hands while attempting to smile, all the while NOT falling:

A momentous occasion, y’all.

A justice from the state supreme court spoke about things we should keep in mind as we enter the legal profession, like the importance of character, morals, a sense of humor, and some other stuff that I don’t remember because I dozed off (but I’m pretty certain involved an eightball of cocaine).

The highlight of the ceremony, however, was our class president‘s speech. This is the same guy who emcee’d the Law Revue wearing drag and delivered a rousing version of “Copacabana” and was voted Most Likely to Be Involved in a Sex Scandal While Running for Office. Needless to say, his speech was highly entertaining and peppered with quotes from “Legally Blonde” and remarks on recent national tragedies, namely the recent season of “American Idol.” Being that this is the Deep South and approximately half of the members of the audience were clad in at least one item of seersucker, I am certain that Preston caused at least five strokes and/or heart attacks. I approve wholeheartedly.

And now that I’m officially done with law school, I have to prepare for the bar exam, which is a mere seven weeks away. In the meantime, I’ll wait patiently for the university to send me my $90,000 piece of wall candy.

And the bitch of it all is, even though I suffered through three years of law school and managed by some miracle to graduate, I’m still not a lawyer — I’m just a slacker with a J.D.

It’s a good day when I go to class, and a great day if I actually manage to do most or all of the reading before class actually starts. I have nary an outline to show for the semester and the two papers that I have to write this semester are still just a figment of my uninspired imagination.

As the weather gets warmer and sunnier, the patios of the downtown bars — not-so-coincidentally located a mere block or so from the law school — suddenly become more alluring. Consequently, my sharp decline in motivation is directly correlated with an increase in beer consumption on warm, sunny patios. I justify it by reflecting back on the wise words of Professor Entertainment-and-a-half. As a matter of fact, I have taken her at her word and not bothered to show up for Entertainment Law in weeks.

Strangely enough, I have seen the 3L apathy shared by myself and my comrades spread to the 2L class like an insidious infectious disease that eats your brain and gives you the overwhelming desire to drink massive amounts of booze and wake up in a gutter.

Now, I’m sort of baffled about this because 2L’s just aren’t allowed to share in our sloth and apathy. They still have to care. It’s sort of like a rite of passage where you are not allowed to completely let yourself go until spring semester of your last year. After all, law school is essentially just a three-year hazing process. Except, the reward is nothing more than a pretty piece of paper and a staggering amount of debt.

As the real world of nine-to-five jobs and Ann Taylor suits draws frightening near, I have decided to embrace my apathy and revel in spring fever. After all, when else in my life will I be able to sleep in the middle of the afternoon, not show up if I just don’t want to, and drink a bottle and a half of wine on a weeknight?

And that means a whole week of not reading, not going to class, and sitting out in the sun with the Terrorists. In other words, no different than most other weeks for me.

Before my very pregnant Entertainment Law professor arrived in class, I gave serious thought to ditching and enjoying the weather for a couple of hours. Not like I had anything specific in mind planned, other than avoiding the indoors until Copyright.

Just then, Prof. Entertainment-and-a-half walked in. She noticed that most of the class was strategically placed in the back of the classroom.

Prof. Entertainment: Why are y’all hiding in the back? Are you really going to make me lecture from the middle of the room?

[Silence.]

Prof. Entertainment: Most of you guys are 3L’s, right?

[We all nod.]

Prof. Entertainment: What on earth are you doing here on such a gorgeous day? This is the type of day when I was in college — and even in law school — we would be drinking already. You have to take advantage of that stuff – once you start working, you can’t go drink beer at the bar at 1 o’clock without people thinking you’re an alcoholic.

[I close my computer and half stand up, about to make my exit.]

Prof. Entertainment: But now that you’re here, you can’t leave. I mean, I didn’t just walk to campus; I drove an hour and a half in!

Damn. I need to learn to seize a perfectly good opportunity before it passes me by. Next week, if the weather is nice, I’ll take Prof. Entertainment-and-a-half by her word and carpe diem beerum.

The most important social norm in law school is obvious to those of us on the “inside,” but completely foreign to everyone else: Don’t be a gunner. As a matter of fact, this unspoken rule is so painfully obvious that I was hesitant to even rehash it here.

Gunners are those assholes who raise their hands in class and talk just to hear themselves and prove how smart they are and how, as a matter of fact, they are that much smarter than you. They want to flex their intellectual muscle. This is probably an effort to make up for their microscopic penises, being that a good 95% of the gunners in law school are males. First year professors are not friendly to the ego, and as such, generally beat the gunner-ness out of them by the end of first year (or first semester, if they’re really good).

But sometimes people slip under the radar and continue to act like asshats well after first year, entirely oblivious to the fact that they are subject to the hatred and vitriol of an entire class. While I thought I’d escaped most of the gunners long ago, I was rudely informed otherwise this semester – a semester where my patience is thin and my tolerance for bullshit even thinner.

I’m lucky enough to have in my 16-person Copyright class a 2L gunner of epic proportions. Affectionately known by his class as the 43L, the Copyright Gunner has a Ph.D. in Asshattery and loves parading his irrelevant knowledge and high-horse attitude before the class on a regular basis.

Not only does he interrupt both classmates and the professor on a regular basis, but his holier-than-thou attitude makes me roll my eyes so hard I end up with a headache by the time class is over. Example:

Prof. Copyright: Okay, I’ll raise my hand too since I’ve done it, so don’t feel like you’re incriminating yourself or anything: Who in here has committed copyright infringement?

[Entire class, save the 43L, raises their hands.]

Prof. Copyright, to 43L: Come on, you’ve never committed copyright infringement?
43L: No, I haven’t.

[Commence eye-rolling.]

Prof. Copyright: Never?
43L: No. I’ve copied articles for educational purposes, but as an author, I would never commit copyright infringement.

[Oh, barf.]

Prof. Copyright (who is incidentally a well-published author and academic), smirking: Well, I’m an author, too. But that doesn’t mean I have never infringed a copyright.

You get the picture. Many of his comments also begin with the preamble, “In my experience…” or “If I may…”

I swear, before this semester is over, I am going to snap. I’m going to duct tape his mouth shut and beat him over the head with my Copyright book. Infringe that, asshole.

Lesson to be learned, kids: Don’t. Be. A. Gunner.