Planning on Going to Law School? Read This First, and You'll Thank Me Later. PART I

So you want to go to law school right? Oh I clearly remember how great it felt to finally be able to apply to law schools! I knew that I would have to work very hard, especially through the dreaded first year. What I did not know is what I now wish someone would have told me. I want to make it clear that law school IS very hard. It is hard because the amount of reading and work that you will be required to do is almost humanly impossible. However, if you stay focused on your own work, and you plan each day accordingly you'll do just fine. Second, law school is very expensive so be prepared to go through the poorest days of your life while in law school, unless of course you are rich and therefore you do not have to worry about it.
If you are an average person like me, who put herself through undergraduate education, and worked a job while attending school, then this article is for you. From personal experience I want to give you advice for three things that are very important: (1) how to survive your first year, (2) preparing for the money drought that you will be facing, and (3) doing a life clean up before law school (I will explain what that is in Part III)

First, in order to survive your first year you need to know that most of the people you will be attending classes with are not yet your friends. Think of it as going through high school all over again. There will be many students who are extremely competitive and they want the high class rankings at any expense. Who cares that person X said that she got the highest grade in the writing assignment. Who cares that person Y said that your commercial outline author is not as good as another. Who cares that person Z said that she spoke to the professor and the information you have is wrong. Don't waste your precious limited time in paying attention to this high school drama. If you study hard you will get a good grade, if you don't know which commercial outline to buy ask your professor for a suggestion, if you don't understand something, again ask your professor or your teaching assistant. My advice to you is to worry about yourself, you will find others that you can make friends with because they are not out to get you out of their way.

Second, don't pay attention to what anyone else has to suggest as to study tips. The only people that you should talk to regarding study tips and when you don't understand a topic is: your professor or your teaching assistant. Remember that other first year students do not know anything, they are just like you. Although some of your peers may understand the material, you want to make sure that you get the information from a valid source.

Third, you should practice briefing your cases because you want to be able to learn how to find the issue, rule, analysis, and conclusion for each case. However, book briefing will accomplish the same in a shorter amount of time. First, make sure you practice typing your briefs until you get the hang of it. Then, get higlighters in all sorts of colors and assign each color a topic. For example: Yellow = facts of the case, Orange = the rule of the case, etc. Write any thoughts you have on the margins of the text.

Fourth, work on your OWN outlines. So many students get together and assign each other the task of working on different parts of an outline. Major NO NO. Why? For starters, everyone takes in information differently and therefore what one person thinks the law meant may be totally different from what you think it means. You don't want to end up with someone else's misinformation. There is nothing wrong with getting outlines from a second year student. I find that some outlines have information that is useful, but I do not take someone else's outline and study it. I simply go through their outlines and see if there is any information there that I'd like to include in mine.

Fifth, use your study aids and supplements. When you are in your first year, you have yet to develop your law school study habits. Law school is completely different from undergrad. You will be covering a vast amount of material in a short amount of time, and you are expected to understand and memorize everything your learn. I find that what works good is to do your reading and then flip through a supplement and read what they have to say about it. Supplements aka Commercial Outlines, stupify the material for you. If the way the supplement explains it works best for you, then include this information in your outline. Beware though that your information should always mirror what your professor discusses in class. In sum, your outline should be a product of information you have obtained from: your class notes, previous outlines, your own thoughts, and information on commercial outlines.

Finally, be sure to work on each class outline throughout the school year. I suggest working on outlines every weekend, alternating which class outline you will be working on. This will minimize the amount of time that you will spend going through your outlines right before finals. You want to concentrate on practicing sample exams, and memorizing your outlines for finals. You do NOT want to be wasting time fixing an outline, or worse yet putting one together.

This is all I have to say as to this part for now. If I get a lot hits on this article then I'll write the second part. If you have suggestions please send them over.