If you are an undergraduate student preparing for Law School you already know the stresses of preparing for your Law studies. The majority of this anxiety comes from not knowing exactly what to expect. This article should help you be as prepared as possible for your tenure as a Law Student.
Prepared by the Pre-Law Committee of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar
Introduction:
There is no single path that will prepare you for a legal education. Students who are successful in law school, and who become accomplished professionals, come from many walks of life and educational backgrounds. Some law students enter law school directly from their undergraduate studies without having had any post-baccalaureate work experience. Others begin their legal education significantly later in life, and they bring to their law school education the insights and perspectives gained from those life experiences. Legal education welcomes and values diversity and you will benefit from the exchange of ideas and different points of view that your colleagues will bring to the classroom.
Undergraduate Education:
The ABA does not recommend any undergraduate majors or group of courses to prepare for a legal education. Students are admitted to law school from almost every academic discipline. You may choose to major in subjects that are considered to be traditional preparation for law school, such as history, English, philosophy, political science, economics or business, or you may focus your undergraduate studies in areas as diverse as art, music, science and mathematics, computer science, engineering, nursing or education. Whatever major you select, you are encouraged to pursue an area of study that interests and challenges you, while taking advantage of opportunities to develop your research and writing skills. Taking a broad range of difficult courses from demanding instructors is excellent preparation for legal education.
A sound legal education will build upon and further refine the skills, values and knowledge that you already possess. The student who comes to law school lacking a broad range of basic skills and knowledge will face a difficult challenge.
Pre-Law Advisor:
Undergraduate institutions often assign a person to act as an advisor to current and former students who are interested in pursuing a legal education. That individual can help you with researching and identifying law schools to which you may want to apply. If you are still attending undergraduate school, your prelaw advisor can be helpful in selecting courses that can help you achieve your goal.
Core Skills and Values:
* Analytic / Problem Solving Skills
* Critical Reading
* Writing Skills
* Oral Communication / Listening Abilities
* General Research Skills
* Task Organization / Management Skills
* Public Service and Promotion of Justice
There are important skills and values, and significant bodies of knowledge that you can acquire prior to law school and that will provide a sound foundation for a legal education. These include analytic and problem-solving skills , critical reading abilities, writing skills, oral communication and listening abilities, general research skills, task organization and management skills, and the values of serving faithfully the interests of others while also promoting justice. If you wish to prepare adequately for a legal education, and for a career in law or for other professional service that involves the use of lawyering skills, you should seek educational, extra-curricular and life experiences that will assist you in developing those attributes. Some brief comments about each of the listed skills and values follow.
Analytic / Problem Solving Skills
You should seek courses and other experiences that will engage you in critical thinking about important issues, challenge your beliefs and improve your tolerance for uncertainty. Your legal education will demand that you structure and evaluate arguments for and against propositions that are susceptible to reasoned debate. Good legal education will teach you to "think like a lawyer", but the analytic and problem solving skills required of lawyers are not fundamentally different from those employed by other professionals. Your law school experience will develop and refine those crucial skills, but you must enter law school with a reasonably well developed set of analytic and problem solving abilities.
Critical Reading Abilities
Preparation for legal education should include substantial experience at close reading and critical analysis of complex textual material, for much of what you will do as a law student and lawyer involves careful reading and comprehension of judicial opinions, statues, documents, and other written materials. As with the other skills discussed in this Statement, you can develop your critical reading ability in a wide range of experiences, including the close reading of complex material in literature, political or economic theory, philosophy, or history. The particular nature of the materials examined is not crucial; what is important is that law school should not be the first time that you are rigorously engaged in the enterprise of carefully reading and understanding, and critically analyzing, complex written material of substantial length.
Writing Skills
As you seek to prepare for a legal education, you should develop a high degree of skill at written communication. Language is the most important tool of a lawyer, and lawyers must learn to express themselves clearly and concisely.
Legal education will provide you with good training in writing, and particularly in the specific techniques and forms of written expression that are common in the law. Fundamental writing skills, however, must be acquired and refined before you enter law school. You should seek as many experiences as possible that will require rigorous and analytical writing, including preparing original pieces of substantial length and revising written work in response to constructive criticism.
Oral Communication and Listening Abilities
The ability to speak clearly and persuasively is another skill that is essential to your success in law school and the practice of law. You must also have excellent listening skills if you are to understand your clients and others with whom you will interact daily. As with writing skills, legal education provides excellent opportunities for refining oral communication skills, and particularly for practicing the forms and techniques of oral expression that are most common in the practice of law. Before coming to law school, however, you should seek to develop your basic speaking and listening skills, such as by engaging in debate, making formal presentations in class, or speaking before groups in school, the community, or the workplace.
General Research Skills
Although there are many research sources and techniques that are specific to the law, you do not have to have developed any familiarity with these specific skills or materials before entering law school. However, it would be to your advantage to come to law school having had the experience of undertaking a project that requires significant library research and the analysis of large amounts of information obtained from that research. The ability to use a personal computer is also necessary for law students, both for word processing and for computerized legal research.
Task Organization and Management Skills
To study and practice law, you are going to need to be able to organize large amounts of information, identify objectives, and create a structure for applying that information in an efficient way in order to achieve desired results. Many law school courses, for example, are graded primarily on the basis of one examination at the end of the course, and many projects in the practice of law require the compilation of large amounts of information from a wide variety of sources. You are going to need to be able to prepare and assimilate large amounts of information in an effective and efficient manner. Some of the requisite experience can be obtained through undertaking school projects that require substantial research and writing, or through the preparation of major reports for an employer, a school, or a civic organization.
The Values of Serving Others and Promoting Justice
Each member of the legal profession should be dedicated both to the objectives of serving others honestly, competently, and responsibly, and to the goals of improving fairness and the quality of justice in the legal system. If you are thinking of entering the legal profession, you should seek some significant experience, before coming to law school, in which you may devote substantial effort toward assisting others. Participation in public service projects or similar efforts at achieving objectives established for common purposes can be particularly helpful.
General Knowledge
In addition to the fundamental skills and values listed above, there are some basic areas of knowledge that are helpful to a legal education and to the development of a competent lawyer. Some of the types of knowledge that would maximize your ability to benefit from a legal education include:
* A broad understanding of history, including the various factors (social, political, economic, and cultural) that have influenced the development of our society in the United States.
* A fundamental understanding of political thought and of the contemporary American political system.
* Some basic mathematical and financial skills, such as an understanding of basic pre-calculus mathematics and an ability to analyze financial data.
* A basic understanding of human behavior and social interaction.
* An understanding of diverse cultures within and beyond the United States, of international institutions and issues, of world events, and of the increasing interdependence of the nations and communities within our world.
Conclusion
The skills, values and knowledge discussed in this Statement may be acquired in a wide variety of ways. You may take undergraduate, graduate, or even high school courses that can assist you in acquiring much of this information. You may also gain much of this background through self-learning by reading, in the workplace, or through various other life experiences. Moreover, it is not essential that you come to law school having fully developed all of the skills, values and knowledge suggested in this Statement. Some of that foundation can be acquired during the initial years of law school. However, if you begin law school having already acquired many of the skills, values and knowledge listed in this Statement, you will have a significant advantage and will be well prepared to benefit fully from a challenging legal education.
While knowing the skills necessary to succeed will undoubtedly be a great tool for preparation, the only way to truly prepare for the Law School experience is to take part in a Law School Prep lecture series. These types of lecture series are available in person all over the country, however they can be very pricey. eCasebriefs.com now offers a FREE online version of the Law School Prep course. This course offers 12 video lectures given by top professors. Each lecture is roughly 2 hours long and covers topics that range from "How to Briefs a Case" to "Constitutional Law" and everything in between.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Law School Prep
Phi Alpha Delta Reporter
Law and Technology Column
Fall 2010
By: David Gray, CEO, www.eCasebriefs.com
Law School Prep Course…for FREE!
Now that the year is in full swing and that you have begun applying to law school, the pressure of being a one L may soon start to develop just a little more. I mean how often to you engage in a graduate school program? Probably not too many times during your life time will you study with such intensity as you will when going through the study of law.
Law school is a very challenging environment and quite scary for most of us who have never endured the wonderful study of law. What most of us wished we would have been exposed to was a better introduction on what to expect in law school. Of course we all read One L, and have seen all of the law TV shows and movies, but for the most part these types of explanations of law school have been developed by very experienced TV, media and movie executives made for the purpose of exciting the general public. What they don’t show you is what it’s really like to be a law student.
Many of the law schools today have a brief introduction to the law school process and what to expect in law school on a day to day basis, but again it is more of a shortened and very brief overview of the experience. I mean how can the school itself condense the study of law? It is they who you will spend three years of your life with so they really don’t want to tell you too much before you actually go through the experience. Next, there are some other courses in the market that are geared to introducing you to the law school experience. The issue with these
courses is that they are usually only given via a specific week during the summer, and if you are not around in your city during that week then you basically missed the boat. Enter the Law School Prep Course on eCasebriefs.com.
The Law School Prep Course on eCasebriefs.com is the most comprehensive introduction to the study of law. Furthermore, the course is open for anyone to attend whether you have been accepted to law school or are just pondering whether becoming a lawyer is for you. Finally, the Course is absolutely free for all to enjoy.
The Course opens with an introduction to the law professors who will teach you what to expect in law school. Professors Tania Shah and Melissa Gill are both esteemed law professors at the University of Massachusetts School of Law, Dartmouth, and will guide you step by step through the law school experience. Furthermore, they both are tutors at LawTutors.net, the nation’s most widely used law tutoring company. The Course then proceeds to build upon itself by following a proper syllabus developed by the professors. You first learn How to Brief a Case. This lecture focuses on what is probably the most important exercise you will perform daily in
the study of law – the case briefing process. Next you move into What to Expect in Class, or how a typical class is taught using the Socratic method of teaching. Then into How to Prepare a Course Outline, which are the materials you personally develop for studying for exams. Then the Professors take you into the Final Exam experience and what to expect. They tell you how to use your course outline in mastering your final exams. It is only at this point that you they have to look forward to the overview of the six core 1L courses: Torts, Property, Contracts, Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Criminal Law.
Each of the different lectures mentioned above come with exercises that you perform and submit and are reviewed by Professor’s Shah and Gill who then send you a correct answer to each exercise that you submit. Finally, the Course ends with a full discussion on Study Tips and Hints and a discussion on the proper use of Study Aids to assist with your law school studies.
Taking advantage of the Law School Prep Course on eCasebriefs.com will help you understand the process, and provide you comfort with what to expect when entering law school. There is no other course that provides more substantive information for the introduction to law school than the Law School Prep Course, and one of the biggest benefits of all is that it fits with everyone’s budget – it’s completely free.
David Gray is CEO of eCasebriefs.com and can be reached at
dgray@eCasebriefs.com
Law and Technology Column
Fall 2010
By: David Gray, CEO, www.eCasebriefs.com
Law School Prep Course…for FREE!
Now that the year is in full swing and that you have begun applying to law school, the pressure of being a one L may soon start to develop just a little more. I mean how often to you engage in a graduate school program? Probably not too many times during your life time will you study with such intensity as you will when going through the study of law.
Law school is a very challenging environment and quite scary for most of us who have never endured the wonderful study of law. What most of us wished we would have been exposed to was a better introduction on what to expect in law school. Of course we all read One L, and have seen all of the law TV shows and movies, but for the most part these types of explanations of law school have been developed by very experienced TV, media and movie executives made for the purpose of exciting the general public. What they don’t show you is what it’s really like to be a law student.
Many of the law schools today have a brief introduction to the law school process and what to expect in law school on a day to day basis, but again it is more of a shortened and very brief overview of the experience. I mean how can the school itself condense the study of law? It is they who you will spend three years of your life with so they really don’t want to tell you too much before you actually go through the experience. Next, there are some other courses in the market that are geared to introducing you to the law school experience. The issue with these
courses is that they are usually only given via a specific week during the summer, and if you are not around in your city during that week then you basically missed the boat. Enter the Law School Prep Course on eCasebriefs.com.
The Law School Prep Course on eCasebriefs.com is the most comprehensive introduction to the study of law. Furthermore, the course is open for anyone to attend whether you have been accepted to law school or are just pondering whether becoming a lawyer is for you. Finally, the Course is absolutely free for all to enjoy.
The Course opens with an introduction to the law professors who will teach you what to expect in law school. Professors Tania Shah and Melissa Gill are both esteemed law professors at the University of Massachusetts School of Law, Dartmouth, and will guide you step by step through the law school experience. Furthermore, they both are tutors at LawTutors.net, the nation’s most widely used law tutoring company. The Course then proceeds to build upon itself by following a proper syllabus developed by the professors. You first learn How to Brief a Case. This lecture focuses on what is probably the most important exercise you will perform daily in
the study of law – the case briefing process. Next you move into What to Expect in Class, or how a typical class is taught using the Socratic method of teaching. Then into How to Prepare a Course Outline, which are the materials you personally develop for studying for exams. Then the Professors take you into the Final Exam experience and what to expect. They tell you how to use your course outline in mastering your final exams. It is only at this point that you they have to look forward to the overview of the six core 1L courses: Torts, Property, Contracts, Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Criminal Law.
Each of the different lectures mentioned above come with exercises that you perform and submit and are reviewed by Professor’s Shah and Gill who then send you a correct answer to each exercise that you submit. Finally, the Course ends with a full discussion on Study Tips and Hints and a discussion on the proper use of Study Aids to assist with your law school studies.
Taking advantage of the Law School Prep Course on eCasebriefs.com will help you understand the process, and provide you comfort with what to expect when entering law school. There is no other course that provides more substantive information for the introduction to law school than the Law School Prep Course, and one of the biggest benefits of all is that it fits with everyone’s budget – it’s completely free.
David Gray is CEO of eCasebriefs.com and can be reached at
dgray@eCasebriefs.com
Monday, September 13, 2010
Tips For Future Law Students
Ever wonder what you can expect from your upcoming Law School Career? Here are a few tips that may save you time and a significant amount of stress:
Excerpts taken from http://resipsablog.com/category/future-attorneys/
1. Get advice from 2Ls and 3Ls who are successful in the areas you want to be successful in. Find students who are at the top of their class and find what worked for them, how they managed their time, and how they prepared for their finals. Find students who have had the professors you are taking to get an idea of what to expect and what the professor expects of you. If you want to focus on honing your litigation skills, seek out a mentor who has been on a national mock trial or moot court team. If you want to become an editor on law review or a law journal, focus on improving your writing skills, pay attention to detail, and find someone who already is on a journal to learn about what it is like being on a journal and tips on effectively managing your time.
2. How you do on the final is much more important than how you answer a question in class. Knowing the minutiae of every case is not what is going to get you the best grades, you need to be able to step back and see the big picture, so don’t sweat it if you get an answer wrong in class, but make sure you understand why you missed it, and focus on preparing for the final.
3. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Make the best use of your time by using existing outlines as a starting point, which you can then tweak and make your own. Conversely, you will never want to rely solely on someone else’s outline. Make sure you agree with their conclusions and summary of the law.
4. Get to know your professors. Take the time to meet with professors when questions in during the semester, rather than waiting till the end of the semester to approach them. Successful students seek out prior exams or model exams that the professor has made available, and contemplates questions that could arise while they study, so that they know what to expect on test day.
5. Get to know your law librarians. There are numerous databases and resources that are often overlooked by even experienced researchers or lawyers that law librarians are familiar with, librarians may be the best resources in helping navigate these resources. They can also assist you in forming good Boolean searches, give you search tips, and point you to the best starting point for your topic.
6. Find time for yourself. It is important, now more than ever, to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Regular sleep patterns and exercise may seem hard to fit into your schedule, but are even more important now that it seems like you don’t have time for either.
7. Use technology wisely. The smaller the laptop, the better. You law school books are going to take up a lot of space and the last thing you need is a 17 inch laptop to lug around every day. Back up your work religiously. Email yourself documents that you are working on at the end of each day. On the weekends, back your laptop up to external drives or at the very least to a thumb drive. Finally, use a free service like Mozy to back up your documents on a regular basis.
8. Master the law school exam. Your entire grade for a law school class is often based on a single final exam. At the very least, pick up old exams and do practice questions under timed conditions. Also, be aware that very often commercial outlines go into areas of law not covered by your professor, so to maximize your study time, seek out old exams or practice questions from the professor, the law school library, or other students. Law school exams usually consist of a long fact pattern followed by a series of questions. There are often no right or wrong answers. You are getting graded on spotting issues and them analyzing the potential outcomes. A very simple way to think of a law school answer is set forth by the IRAC Method: Issue, Rule of Law, Analysis, and Conclusion.
9. Consider joining a study group. Going over the material with another person or a small group of people will help you hash out concepts, and ensure a thorough overview of the subject. Study groups sessions should be secondary to extensive individual study, so as a group you can focus on practice questions, clarifying issues, and making sure you have hit all the main concepts.
10. Don’t underestimate the value of after-class review or overestimate the value of reading for class. It should be the third time you are covering the material, the first being when you read before class, and the second being when you went over it in class. After-class review also allows you the opportunity to take any questions you still have on a topic to your professor for clarification. After class review sessions are also the perfect time to review and make notes to your outline.
These tips will definitely be helpful in preparing you for Law School, however the most effective preparation for any future law student is to complete a law school preparation course. There are a few free courses available in the market place.
Excerpts taken from http://resipsablog.com/category/future-attorneys/
1. Get advice from 2Ls and 3Ls who are successful in the areas you want to be successful in. Find students who are at the top of their class and find what worked for them, how they managed their time, and how they prepared for their finals. Find students who have had the professors you are taking to get an idea of what to expect and what the professor expects of you. If you want to focus on honing your litigation skills, seek out a mentor who has been on a national mock trial or moot court team. If you want to become an editor on law review or a law journal, focus on improving your writing skills, pay attention to detail, and find someone who already is on a journal to learn about what it is like being on a journal and tips on effectively managing your time.
2. How you do on the final is much more important than how you answer a question in class. Knowing the minutiae of every case is not what is going to get you the best grades, you need to be able to step back and see the big picture, so don’t sweat it if you get an answer wrong in class, but make sure you understand why you missed it, and focus on preparing for the final.
3. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Make the best use of your time by using existing outlines as a starting point, which you can then tweak and make your own. Conversely, you will never want to rely solely on someone else’s outline. Make sure you agree with their conclusions and summary of the law.
4. Get to know your professors. Take the time to meet with professors when questions in during the semester, rather than waiting till the end of the semester to approach them. Successful students seek out prior exams or model exams that the professor has made available, and contemplates questions that could arise while they study, so that they know what to expect on test day.
5. Get to know your law librarians. There are numerous databases and resources that are often overlooked by even experienced researchers or lawyers that law librarians are familiar with, librarians may be the best resources in helping navigate these resources. They can also assist you in forming good Boolean searches, give you search tips, and point you to the best starting point for your topic.
6. Find time for yourself. It is important, now more than ever, to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Regular sleep patterns and exercise may seem hard to fit into your schedule, but are even more important now that it seems like you don’t have time for either.
7. Use technology wisely. The smaller the laptop, the better. You law school books are going to take up a lot of space and the last thing you need is a 17 inch laptop to lug around every day. Back up your work religiously. Email yourself documents that you are working on at the end of each day. On the weekends, back your laptop up to external drives or at the very least to a thumb drive. Finally, use a free service like Mozy to back up your documents on a regular basis.
8. Master the law school exam. Your entire grade for a law school class is often based on a single final exam. At the very least, pick up old exams and do practice questions under timed conditions. Also, be aware that very often commercial outlines go into areas of law not covered by your professor, so to maximize your study time, seek out old exams or practice questions from the professor, the law school library, or other students. Law school exams usually consist of a long fact pattern followed by a series of questions. There are often no right or wrong answers. You are getting graded on spotting issues and them analyzing the potential outcomes. A very simple way to think of a law school answer is set forth by the IRAC Method: Issue, Rule of Law, Analysis, and Conclusion.
9. Consider joining a study group. Going over the material with another person or a small group of people will help you hash out concepts, and ensure a thorough overview of the subject. Study groups sessions should be secondary to extensive individual study, so as a group you can focus on practice questions, clarifying issues, and making sure you have hit all the main concepts.
10. Don’t underestimate the value of after-class review or overestimate the value of reading for class. It should be the third time you are covering the material, the first being when you read before class, and the second being when you went over it in class. After-class review also allows you the opportunity to take any questions you still have on a topic to your professor for clarification. After class review sessions are also the perfect time to review and make notes to your outline.
These tips will definitely be helpful in preparing you for Law School, however the most effective preparation for any future law student is to complete a law school preparation course. There are a few free courses available in the market place.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
FREE lecture series
eCasebriefs.com is the most widely used free law student study aid resource for current law students. Now, as of July 2010, eCasebriefs.com is introducing to Pre-Law students the only free complete course to introduce students who are interested in attending law school and those students who have been admitted to law school and want an overview of the law student experience. Students now get the opportunity to experience lectures given by law professors from top universities. Additionally, the Course offers students interaction with the law professors teaching the Course. The Course is the first of its kind and is offered online and is 100% free!
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