advice about what you should do in law
school are like butts everybody has one
and most of them stink today we're gonna
talk about some of the worst advice you
can possibly get about what to do in law
school and how to avoid it so stick
around I was chatting with some of my
fellow lawyers about some of the worst
advice that they had gotten before they
went to law school and I realized that
there is a lot of bad advice out there
so I want to make sure that you don't
suffer from that same advice this way
that some of my friends did so I want to
talk to you about some of the worst
advice that's out there and why you
should ignore it in no particular order
the first thing that you should not
listen to is the advice that says you
don't need to go to class or pay
attention once you get there this is
terrible advice every professor is
different they're gonna have their own
slant on the law they may actually teach
you different black-letter law than is
the law in most states they may have a
different philosophical bent than other
people do they may have a pet issue that
they go into a huge amount of depth
whereas other professors just skip over
it or simply cover it from a cursory
point of view you want to understand
what idiosyncrasies your professor has
and the only way you can do that is to
go to class you shouldn't go to class
expecting that you're going to
understand all the substantive law in
fact most of the time you're gonna learn
the substantive law on your own when you
go back and you compile and synthesize
the information from your class notes
with your commercial outlines into your
personal outline that's where you really
understand and learn the law but make no
mistake it is vital that you go to class
because as I said your professor is
gonna have their own individual spin on
the law and if you don't go to class
you're gonna miss out on what that is
the second example of really horrible
terrible advice is that you should brief
every case you read I don't know why but
when students get to law school often
their own law school faculty will tell
them that they need to case brief every
single
case a case brief is it's almost like a
book report you're summarizing every
individual portion of the case that you
read this is a huge waste of time most
of what you learn from a case will not
go into the final exam really the only
things that you can use from a case
include the facts of that particular
case and perhaps the black letter law
that is gleaned from that particular
case most of the information in the case
the procedural posture the dissenting
opinion the dicta all of that is
irrelevant for the purposes of your
final exam
so all at that time that you put in to
case briefing is a total waste of time
don't fall into the trap of case
briefing every case that you read by and
large it's a huge waste of time don't
feel like you need to do that for every
case or perhaps even any of your cases
the third example of some really
terrible advice is that you should not
use commercial outlines or some people
even say using commercial outlines is
cheating this is terrible advice
commercial outlines are great they're
not a substitute for doing your own
outlines you're certainly going to have
to put the time into making your own
personal outline yourself but they are
invaluable to summarizing really
abstract and arcane types of law for you
most of the time in law school what you
need are simple statements of the law
most of law school is going to be
incredibly confusing but using a
commercial outline to get to the heart
of matters will really help out you can
use commercial outlines to prepare for
class in fact one thing I recommend is
to read the section of commercial
outline on the subject that's going to
be covered in class so that you have
primed yourself with a cursory
understanding so that when you go into
the nuance in class
you've already primed yourself to
understand commercial outlines are great
you will use them hand in hand with your
class notes when you go back and
synthesize the law and compile
everything into a personal outline for
yourself don't feel like it's cheating
when you practice in the law you'll
learn that everybody uses practice
guides and Westlaw headnotes for
summaries few people have the time to
read every single
front to back when they're researching
wilt yet real lawyers use all the
shortcuts that they can get and as a law
student you should too
the fourth piece of some really terrible
advice this one's really gonna hurt your
pocketbook if you follow it buy all of
your case books new because you'll use
them in practice a couple things that
are wrong here one just because your
case book has some highlighting and some
underlining in it that doesn't change
its usefulness a case book really is
just a compilation of cases that are in
the public domain there's really no
benefit to getting a new case book
except if you are really unable to get
past some notes that are in the book for
the most part I think people can see
past the highlighting and if someone has
already highlighted it maybe they did a
good job and you can skip that entirely
but the second half of this advice is
just insane no one will ever use a case
book in practice they are totally
useless first of all who knows if you'll
be even be practicing in the same state
as the cases in your case book and more
to the point it's going to be outdated
it's probably outdated by the time it's
published so you're certainly not going
to be using your case book either in
practice or for studying the bar the
second year class ends you will never
pick up that case book again the fifth
piece of really terrible advice is to
wait until the end of the semester to do
your outlines I think this is a horrible
idea
one of the best pieces of advice I ever
got was to do your outlines every week
set aside time every weekend to
synthesize all the substantive law and
your case notes and put it into an
outline it's gonna save you a huge
amount of time people say that you need
context to understand that's total crap
you will forget what is covered so it's
better to create your outlines while
it's still fresh in your mind and just
get it over with when the semester is
over if you need to redo parts of your
outline it's much easier to redo the
outline than it is to start from scratch
and most likely what will happen is that
if you do it every week instead of
waiting till the end you will have an
entire outline that's done so that you
can hit the ground running with practice
tests and memorizing law during
study period instead of starting from
scratch on your outlines it'll save you
a huge amount of time context is
overrated just start and iterate from
there people say that you study by
building your outline and while that's
true it's not like you're ignoring that
work by doing the your outline every
single week you're just getting that
done ahead of time so you can put more
time into memorizing the law and doing
your practice tests so you'll be way
ahead of everybody else who waits till
the end of the semester to do their
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good advice so you can avoid all of the
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