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.
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