The Secret of Outstanding Performance in Law School

            The first year of law school is like being dropped off in the ocean at midnight on a cloudy night.  You can see the land and a lighthouse, but you must put your head down and swim stroke after stroke until you look up again and see that the lighthouse is to the left of where you are swimming.  So you put your head down and swim, swim and swim until you look up again and the lighthouse is to your right.  You never quite know where you are because the feedback you get is few and far between.  There usually is one exam at the end of the semester.  The volume of material is tremendous.  Imagine being in the backyard of your house and having your neighbor directly behind you back up a dump truck as big as your house and begin to dump manure into your backyard.  The volume is enormous and you have one small shovel to keep your house from being buried by truckload after truckload of manure.  A book for a one semester subject may be a thousand pages long.  An outline of the book to study for the bar exam after law school will be approximately a hundred pages long, and the short outline to memorize prior to the exam will be approximately thirty pages long.  There will generally be seventeen of these outlines to memorize for the bar exam. 


          The students who get accepted to law school are the best of the best.  They must get A's and B's in high school to get into college.  Then they have to work reasonably hard to get A's and B's in college, as well as scoring high on the law school aptitude test.  Therefore, fellow students in law school are natural achievers who know what it means to work hard and get good grades.  However, law school can be quite deflating because in a class of 80 there may be one or two A's, four to six B's, and the rest C's, D's and F's--not quite the grades that these high achievers are used to receiving.

            Additionally, law school is not quite college in terms of what steps need to be taken to get good grades.  College requires 1) memorization of vocabulary or other terms and 2) the ability to regurgitate on the test the exact stuff you memorized.  Law school requires 1) memorization of legal principles (e.g. a gift is donative intent plus delivery of the item) plus the ability to recall them on the test, and 2) you have to be able to apply the law to the facts.  For example, Sally and Bill are in a restaurant.  Sally handed a watch to Bill.  Bill wouldn’t give it back.  Sally sued Bill and claimed she smiled and said, “Bill, you can look at this watch,” then they had an argument because Bill wouldn’t give her back the watch.  Bill claims Sally gave him the watch and said “Bill, you can have this watch.”  Zach, a person sitting in the restaurant, saw Sally and Bill talking.  Zach saw Sally smile as she handed the watch to Bill and Bill put it in his pocket.  A minute or two later, they started arguing.  A judge must decide who to believe.  When you get to be an attorney, you won’t know who will come into your office—Sally or Bill.  Therefore, as an attorney, you need to be able to analyze what facts would persuade a judge that Sally should win or that Bill should win.  In law school, you will need need to show the law school professor that you realize what facts shift the conclusion from Sally wins (Bill has to give it back) or Bill wins (and gets to keep it).  It is less important who wins.  It is somewhat important to show that you have memorized the elements of the law (donative intent + delivery) like college.  However, the more important requirement in law school is showing that you know how the facts can be argued to change the outcome. This called "thinking like an attorney and it is what makes law school different from college.  For example, one law students answer might look like this:

Bill would argue that Sally’s smile showed her intent to give him the watch.  Additionally, they didn’t argue over the watch, they were arguing politics.  Finally, the fact that they did not argue immediately after he put it in his pocket shows that she meant to give it to him forever.  However, Sally would argue that she tried nicely to get the watch back after she let him look at it, but he wouldn’t give it back to her.  Her only recourse was this lawsuit.

           

            The hard part of law school is that the volume of memorization of legal principals is overwhelming.  Watching the professor question the students in class and reading dissenting opinions show law students how certain facts can be argued to change the outcome.  Class notes add to the volume of material to synthesize.

            Some students will easily remember what they learned in class.  Most students need to focus on these tips to spend their time efficiently.  The following five tips will ensure success in law school.  

1.         Don't prepare for class.  This first tip will be very difficult to follow and will be contrary to every single rule law professors and fellow students, as well as lawyers, will tell law students.  However, the maximum preparation time for each class should be 5 or 10 minutes.  Unfortunately, most law students follow the advice of their professors who want prepared students to facilitate class discussion.  Actually, instead of class discussion, a law student's first year is class humiliation.  By not preparing, you may lose extra credit points and look stupid in front of your peers.  However, your peers will change their minds about you when the grades come out because you will get great grades and they will be astounded because you will have better grades than they.    

2.         During class, take furious notes.  Write down everything that is said by the professor.  Everything.  Great note taking is an essential skill for law students as well as lawyers.

3.         After each class, spend 1 to 3 hours reading the materials that were covered in class, then outline or "brief" the cases, and finally integrate the case briefs into your rewritten version of your class notes.  One way to do this is to have a spiral notebook for each class.  Take class notes on the right side of the notebook (don't write on the back of each sheet).  Then rewrite your notes on the left side cleanly, neatly, legibly, with the cases and the professor's comments integrated into the rewritten notes.  The act of writing helps many people memorize the material.

4.         Reread all of your rewritten notes every Friday.  Don't read just that week's notes, but all notes.  Be in a constant state of review!  On Fridays, take your rewritten notes and condense them into an outline form, put them on 3x5 cards and take them with you wherever you go.

5.         Last, but not least, go over your 3x5 cards daily.  Go over all of the cards every day and begin memorizing the outline concepts that you have distilled onto your 3x5 cards.  This memorization technique is absolutely the most important thing you can do in law school.  As an alternative, some students condense their outline until it is down to one or two pages and they can recite everything on the outline.

                                                                Persistence......

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.  Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.  Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

        --Calvin Coolidge