How to Survive Your First Year of Law School(Kenya)
- Do all of your own outlines. Reading outlines
that other students prepared may convey information, and some of it may
even be accurate. However, the act of doing the outline yourself helps
you to understand the material as you write it and to remember what you
read and why you wrote summarizing points. If you have questions or
don't understand something, by all means take advantage of your
professor's office hours. If your course is taught from a
casebook, consider looking at a good treatise in the library; treatises
present the information in a logical order, building from basic
principles to specifics. Consider commercial outlines, like Emmanuel or
Gilbert, as hints that may help you, but can be too terse on the one
hand or too cluttered with detail on the other. Avoid outlines by other
students; they probably didn't get it any better than you do. Also, if
you write your exam answers based on mistakes in another student's
outline and a few of your classmates write the same mistakes, your
professor will not be amused by your following one another blindly.
- If you have classes that allow the use of outlines, write your
outlines in the same format that you would write an answer to an essay
question. When an issue arises on the test, you would basically
transcribe your outline, while analyzing the specific facts needed to
answer the essay question. For maximum efficiency, your outlines should
be color coded, tabbed, and in a 3 ring-binder.
- In classes that do not allow using outlines during exams,
concentrate on perfecting your outline and making it more concise, to
help you internalize and understand more, so that you have less to memorize.
- "Make your own outline" doesn't mean that you should never look at
an outline made by someone else. By all means look at others' outlines
before making your own. They can be useful as samples to see how others
have done it. There are many of them posted on the internet.Listen,
don't let anyone fool you, law school is hard. It will make college feel
like nursery school. You actually have to study for exams, and cramming
the night before WILL NOT work. However, the best advice I ever got was
from an upperclassman. He suggested I bring outlines from previous
semesters to class and work off them in case I missed anyone the
professor discussed. Most professors don't change their lesson plans!
Sometimes they're teaching almost word for word from previous semesters.
- The most important thing you can provide yourself is an
understanding of how you learn most efficiently. For instance, many
students make outlines, because it's a fairly efficient way to learn.
However, if you are capable of memorizing quickly, you may end up
spending too much time perfecting an outline, and not enough time
understanding and memorizing the material.
- Learn to summarize cases efficiently. Most of "learning the law"
isn't memorizing statutes. It's more analogous to learning to apply
"stupid fines": someone behaved badly and hurt someone else, and the
court has to (1) figure out what happened, (2) look at similar
situations that the court dealt with in the past, and (3) use those past
similar situations to decide how much money will fix the hurt. You
should learn to read a court case, figure out what happened (the facts),
and how the past law in similar cases (precedent) was applied to fix
things. Learn to spot how slightly different situations (fact patterns)
result in slightly different applications of the law, and slightly
different results. What they're trying to teach you in law school is how
to analyze new factual situations and use what was decided in previous
court cases to figure out how to deal with the new situation. THIS IS
WHAT YOU'LL BE TESTED ON, both in law school and on the bar exam (and in
real life).
- Pace yourself. Rome wasn't built in a day and you can't expect to understand the law
in a day or a week or a month. So you try to understand some crucial
points in the development of the reasoning in each course of study, and
to try to interrelate various concepts as they historically and
currently are viewed.
- Try to discover the big picture.
The law is more a process than a set of rules. A panoramic view is
about seeing broad social policies, principles that allow society to
function, and a means of peacefully resolving disputes. Don't let all
the specific rules and cases you are required to learn, important though
they are, obscure what the law is really about. Some law schools (or
law professors) stress learning the so-called black letter rules, while
others focus more on the underlying principles. Even in "black letter
schools," understanding the bigger picture helps you to answer exam
questions when you don't remember a specific rule.
- Use the library to fill in gaps.
It isn't just a study hall. The library has books that can help you
understand material that is not clear from assigned reading or lectures.
Ask the librarian. Law school librarians are an excellent resource, and
most enjoy helping students more than re-shelving books. Of course,
don't overwhelm your brain or take on so much extra reading that it
interferes with your required study. Using the library is more
economical than buying extra books, especially before you know what
books belong in your own collection.
- Speak up in class.
Participating actively in class is the best way both to "get it" and to
evaluate for yourself how you are doing. If you aren't doing so well,
it's better to find out when you still have time to improve than to be
disappointed when you get your grade. Also, if you speak up on the days
you are well prepared, the professor will be less likely to call on you
on the occasional day when you have not mastered the material. But, be
careful not to overstep the line and become a drag on the class. Don't
be afraid to ask questions, but some discussions are better reserved for
office hours.
- Get to class early so you get a good seat.
Closest to the professor is best, both for staying engaged and hearing
well. The more rows you have in front of you, the more you will be
distracted by students playing games, looking at sports stats, or
watching YouTube. If you feel the need to hide out in back, you won't be
alone, but you are asking to fail.
- Have a tacit agreement with your small group members to "back each other up". If someone from your small group is struggling during the Socratic torture, another member of the group should chime in.
- Don't expect the grade inflation you enjoyed in undergrad.
Many schools enforce a B- curve. Some professors do not give A's. Some
smart students go three years and never get an A. This can be a shock.
- Realize that everyone will crash and burn sometime.
It doesn't matter how smart you are, or whether you study 20 hours a
day, you will eventually crash and burn in class. The next day, the sun
will rise and you will say, "That was not so bad". It gets easier after
your first flame out.
- Look to your right, look to your left.
If you see that you are answering the questions as well as your
classmates, the confidence you gain will help you. On the other hand, if
you are not, study harder and re-evaluate your study methods; don't
wait until exams to discover what you need to do to succeed.
Warnings
- Do not expect law school to teach you to be a lawyer. It will teach you how to think like a lawyer, the rest is up to you.
- Experiment with study groups to see if working with other people
helps you. If you get the right chemistry in a study group they can be
very helpful. If you get the wrong chemistry, they can be a waste of
valuable time. If you just want to socialize, go to the clubs instead.
If you are going to share outlines, demand drafts by mid term in order
to ensure everyone is sharing the load. Some people thrive in study
groups and others find they are better off choosing one study partner
for each class. Take turns teaching each other important principles.
- Law can be an easy subject to fall behind on if you don't keep up.
There is just too much information to try and wing it late in the term;
that is why outlining is important.
- If you need to take some time away from your course (family
emergency, major illness), speak to your professor and/or someone in
student services or dean of students. Explain the situation. They
should be able to tell you the work you are likely to miss out on which
will allow you to catch up when you can.