Law school woes?

Question

I need advice on how to succeed in law school. Obviously i'm desperate if I'm on yahoo asking for help but I am. I'm in my 10th week of my first year of law school and I'm just feeling out of control. No matter how much time I spend studying and reading the cases and working on my outlines I get to class and basically every question the Professor asks I can't answer. There's never enough time for me to really learn this stuff either rather I feel like I do the reading, move on and never learn it. Do you guys recommend that I just switch to reading supplements to actually learn the material instead of analyzing the cases in the textbook? Because if i were to take a final right now I wouldnt be able to answer anything. Somethings gotta give because i'm studying so much of the textbook and feeling like i'm getting nothing out of it. Plus, I got the mean on my first midterm in torts. And thats the easiest subject I have. I can't imagine how i'd do if i had taken a Civ. Pro. test!

Answer 1

I am a 3L - I tutored about 10-15 1Ls last year as part of a structured program they offer at my school, so this is something I have thought a lot about. I could go on and on for hours about this, but the main thing I think you need to keep in mind is that - just like someone who is starting a business - you need a study plan that you can stick to. The easy part is actually the former - it is not that hard to develop an effective plan. The hard part is sticking to it. There are so many sources available to study from (casebooks, notes, your outlines, other people's outlines, commercial outlines, bar review materials . . ) that it is easy to get lost in a sea of paper and bindings and lose sight of your objective. It also easy to take your eye off the ball to think about things like "will I make law review," "will I ever get a job," will I do better than the other person sitting next to me," "what if I don't pass and get on probation," etc. Never mind all that, seriously, just worry about learning the law and applying it. Right now you need to look at one part of the big legal picture: 1L subject-matter.

Moving right along: the first thing you need to answer is: what does my professor want? I think most 1L professors want about the same thing - they want you to be able to demonstrate your ability to apply the basic principles of Contracts, Civ Pro, Torts, and Property to relatively simple (those sometimes verbose) fact patterns. The key word in all that is "apply." If you have read the cases, you need to keep in mind that each one of those cases demonstrates application of a rule of law (sometimes a majority, sometimes a minority rule). Therefore, there should be no rule of law applied in those cases that you don't have in your outline unless the case was overruled and the authors just put it in there to show you what the law used to be - which should be fairly clear because they'll have a case after it with a current rule. In addition, I think it is worth it to get the "law in a flash cards" and memorize all the rules that way - the cards with the diamonds on them.

As a general matter, those rules will also be reprinted in commercial outlines. One way or another, you need to get the rules into a form where you can memorize them, and once you do memorize them, you are 50% of the way there. And here's the good news - this is where most of your classmates will quit. But you won't! You will get all of the old exams your professor has given. You won't *look* at them, you will sit down and *do* them with a stopwatch. You will check your answers against the model answers. You will do this over and over until you want to pull your hair out. When you can't understand how anyone reached the model answer, you will ask the professor or consult another source. If there is a concept you are having difficult with, Examples & Explanations (for Civ Pro and Contracts especially) is an excellent source; it also offers excellent hypotheticals that you can work through. Sometimes these hypotheticals are especially good at demonstrating nuanced application of the relevant principles. The flashcard hypotheticals are good warm up for more complex hypos.

The good thing is you still have enough time. I feel like I am throwing the same old / same old at you - telling you to do everything - but the key is none of these things is a magic bulett. The idea is to divide your studying in half 1. learning the rules and committing them to memory 2. applying them.

When you are doing all these practice problems, keep in mind that you are overwhelmingly likely to answer even the moderately difficult hyoptheticals wrong the first time you try applying the rule. Just like you are likely to answer wrong in class. In law school, sounding right in front of other people in class, or to yourself at home when you are doing practice problems, counts for exactly 0% of your grade. If you aren't falling down you aren't learning.

Also, one thing commercial outlines don't tell you is what your professor thinks is important. For example, in my property class, we spent a lot of time talking about recording statutes near the end of the semester. It was probably only about 1/12 major concepts covered in the commercial outline, but it was 50% of my grade. The commercial outline had the correct rules about recording statutes, but it was hardly clear from that book how important it was to my prof. that I understand that.

If you study hard at knowing AND applying the law, you will not fail. It's also probably fair to say, though, that if you study hard only at learning the laws but not applying them, you will not make As and Bs.

A few more things: 1. if you haven't read the cases, or you didn't understand them at all, I suggest that you get the LIAF cards and memorize all the rules of law. Do some of the hypothetical cards. Then go back and look at the cases. Voila! They all make a lot more sense now, don't they! 2. If there is multiple choice on an exam, you need to get a hold of some practice multiple choice questions, which are widely available in commercial outlines, PMBR bar review books, etc. 3. don't worry about making your outline look pretty - my outlines are handwritten on oversized flash cards - I wasted a few days trying to learn how to format and condense them properly on MS Word that could have been spent learning law, so I swore it off.

I know this all sounds like a lot, but there is plenty of time. You could memorize all the basic rules of Torts I in one solid day I bet - so it's not as bad as it looks. You'll be fine: don't worry, just work, because if you are working there is nothing to worry about. Anything you have heard about people having some sort of magic talent for this where they don't have to study is self-glorifying b.s. Any person of above average intelligence can learn it with hard work, and a genius who doesn't study will do poorly. I have found the correlation between hard work and high performance to be remarkably high at my law school, and the correlation between apparent intellect and performance seems to only differentiate the very top students who all work equally hard.

Answer 2

Hey listen, don't stress so much! Getting the mean on your Torts midterm isn't bad at all, and if you didn't feel lost and miserable right now than your professors wouldn't be doing their jobs. Ridiculous, isn't it? Its this crazy little first year song and dance that we all go through, but when you're done you're done!

Here are a few tips to catch you up and keep you calm:
Get GOOD at briefing cases. Use Lexis and Westlaw's briefs and anything you can find online, reading them will help you to quickly spot issues and important facts in what you read. Remember that most of the language in the case is just dicta, and you don't need to know it. You'll eventually be able to pick out the things you need to remember very quickly, without wasting time on the rest of it. You should use supplements, but the most important supplements aren't commercial outlines. Get outlines from 2 and 3 Ls at your school. They've already condensed a semester's worth of information for you, and it can help you follow along. I still have my outlines and I send them along to 1Ls whenever possible. They saved me more than once in law school. Lastly, check out some old exams to see how the tests work. They are not structured like college exams, and it takes some practice to get used to them. Once you master the exams, you can go in there with nothing but an outline and a smile and escape with a B. Not that I've...ahem...done such a thing.
You'll be fine, take a deep breath. :)

Answer 3

I understand completely what you are feeling right now. The "middle-end" of the first semester of law school is rough. I agree with "BoardingJD" that briefing is of ultimate importance during your first year. Keep reading your casebooks and use Westlaw or Lexis to help with your briefing. Definately use study aids as well - I used them mostly to supplement my outlines. But most importantly, don't give up. It is completely normal to be feeling overwhelmed right now - you aren't seeing "the forest through the trees" quite yet, and that's to be expected. I know that I felt completely hopeless that first semester - I felt like I was the dumbest person in my class - at least once every day I would ask myself "what have I done...this is awful...I'm never going to make it." It may not all come together for you until you really start studying for finals. Make sure you come up with a rule of law for each case - start outlining early and often, using your class syllabi as your "bare bones" outline and start filling it in with your cases/rules of law and relevant material from your study aids. As for your daily work - don't stop reading your casebook, but have your study aids next to you while reading it - I would suggest reading your study aid materials on the case or topic of law before you read the case so you know what to look for. This might help you read and understand the case more efficiently and hopefully help you muddle through all the dicta to get to the real point of the case.
As for the oh-so-terrifying socratic method - I would copy explanatory material from my study aid into my book to help during class discussion - when I was called on in class, I found it confusing to have both my case brief and book in front of me...my mind would go blank and I'd stare at the book and brief, panicking about which to consult to answer the professor's questions. So I started writing in my margins - a word here and there to trigger my memory of the case - important facts and the rule of law at the top of the page. Try to put it in your own words if possible. Also, don't neglect reading the "Notes and Questions" following your cases - I know my professors would often ask questions out of the notes, rather than the actual case.
Don't worry (I know that's impossible, but I'll say it anyway) - it does get better! Like I said before...I felt exactly the same way in my first semester, and I ended up doing just fine. Average grades are to be expected during your first year - I got two C's my first year and still managed to graduate with honors - so don't let the occasional crappy grade get you down.
Good luck!

Answer 4

I graduated with a Masters degree in Criminology/Sociology and a minor in Psychology...and started taking Law classes at one time, thinking I wanted to go to Law School. I eventually quit on the idea of law school, because I really didn't want to go through 3 more years of intense schooling, when I wasn't even certain I wanted to be a lawyer, and I had a baby at home.

My advice is...if you truly want to be a lawyer, you have no choice but to work your *** off. It's going to be hard...very hard, and you do NOT want to slack off and read summaries of cases instead of reading the whole thing. You will NEVER pass the bar if you do that. I found that my law classes took up way too much time and energy for me....and I'm happy that I didn't commit to it too much. I'm happy with what I do now. But if you really want to be a lawyer, you're just going to have to get used to studying and reading non-stop, and getting very little sleep.

Answer 5

No. for 3 years it had an exceptionally very solid bar passage fee, and then the final year it had the backside fee in Michigan. it is for this reason a procedures in many cases perceived as a "fourth tier" college. the generic salaries for inner maximum sector legal professionals graduating from Ave Maria are very low - a pair of million/3 the generic for comparable positions held with the help of graduates of 2d tier faculties.