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Newsletters>
7 Secrets to Law School Success
February 27, 2006
Secrets to Law School Success
The Secrets to Law School Success are difficult to accept
when you are a first year law student. They are easy to see
in hindsight but when you listen to all those around you
and in particular to law school professors you will be
confused and influenced by their positions of authority.
Most students just plain listen to the wrong people who
have no idea what they are talking about.
The Secrets to Law School Success are elusive because the
first year of law school is the most confusing and wasteful
time of your life. Most students will spend their precious
time following worthless advice that is completely
contradictory to all known methods of learning; methods
that they have used to achieve excellent results in their
past academic performance. Everyone will tell you that you
have to learn how to think like a lawyer but just do a
little exercise and ask anyone of these so called experts
what and how does one think like a lawyer. They will not
have an answer that is cogent or even organized. Yet, you
ask us that question and we can easily define what thinking
like a lawyer is.
Because of anxiety, confusion, and inability to determine
who is telling them the truth, most students will totally
abandon the study methods they have used for at least 17
years or more (from which they have achieved superior
results) and embark on experimental learning methods that
have no basis in education and in fact do not work. That is
the big mistake that almost all law students make in their
first year of law school and that is why most first year
first semester law students never learn the Secrets to Law
School Success.
Just take a few minutes and carefully read what we have
written and you too can achieve the Secrets to Law School
Success.
Secrets to Law School Success #1
You already know how to think like a lawyer.
Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Did you take the LSAT?
2. Did you pass the LSAT? (You may answer yes to this
question if you have been accepted to an ABA accredited law
school in the United States).
If you can answer yes to these questions, you already know
how to think like a lawyer. The only real problem that you
have is that you do not know any law. If you do not know
any law, it is next to impossible to produce the type of
lawyer like analysis most law school professors look for on
exam answers. If you know a lot of law it is really easy to
produce legal analysis in a lawyer like fashion. If you
knew all the law in any particular area or had studied it
for 20 years and actually applied it in court you would be
able to perform perfect lawyer like analysis. The more law
you know from memory, the better able you will be to
legally analyze any given factual situation.
You have been using the memorize-apply study method all of
your life and there is no reason for you to abandon that
method for the Socratic method which is inferior to all
other learning methods known. Stay with what has brought
you to the party; it will never fail you. There are no
special training methods or learning experiences needed to
produce lawyer like analysis. You already know how to think
like a lawyer; All you need to do is to learn some law,
learn how to apply it, and then learn how to dissertate
that law.
Secrets to Law School Success #2
Your grades in law school will be based almost solely on
final exam performance.
Exam writing is a skill. No matter how intelligent you
are, or think you are, you can only learn a skill by
practice. Proficiency in a skill can never be developed
based on your inherent level of intelligence or knowledge
about any particular subject. Knowledge and intelligence
will only accelerate the rate at which you learn a skill.
However, once you learn the skill for just one of the
classes you are taking, you will have learned the skill of
exam writing for all the classes you are taking.
You cannot learn a skill from just one lecture. You will
not even understand most of the advice given in a short 4-5
hour lecture until you learn a critical mass of law. To
effectively learn the skill of exam writing you must
practice, practice, and practice some more. This must
include a biweekly review of the critical skills and advice
given in any lecture. The more law you learn and the more
you practice the skill of exam writing the more you will
learn from the information we have to convey to you about
the skill of exam writing.
Secrets to Law School Success #3
Issue spotting is dependent on how much law you have
memorized before you take any exam. It's a fact; your
grade on any exam will be dependent on how much law you
have memorized and can recite from memory the night before
the exam.
This is based on a simple principal; if you can't spot the
issues on an exam you won't score the points.
Example: If there are 27 items that you can ever possibly
know about Offer under contract law and you only know 13 of
them you have the potential of spotting only 13 issues.
The only way you can potentially spot all the issues on an
exam about Offers is to have the 13 issues that you know
about be the only issues present on the exam. That
possibility is highly unlikely.
Secrets to Law School Success #4
You cannot memorize all the law you need to know and learn
a skill two to three weeks before an exam.
There are 327 things that you need to know about contract
law in order to guarantee that you will get an A on any
exam that you will ever take. There are 466 things that you
need to know about criminal law.... There are 390 things
that you need to know about tort law.....There are 195
things that you need to know about constitutional law...
Get the picture. If you wait until October to start
memorizing the law or to practice the skill of exam
writing, you may be too late. The sooner you start, the
easier it will be.
Don't be fooled by professors giving you open book exams
and telling you that it is not necessary to memorize the
law. You will not have enough time on an exam to be paging
through books or even your own outline in order to look up
information.
Those students who spend their exam time spotting issues,
organizing their answers, formulating their legal analysis
of the issue present, and then neatly writing the answer in
proper English will get the best grades.
Secrets to Law School Success #5
In order to learn the application of law, you have to brief
at least 1,000 cases in each particular course. However,
short form questions and answers will accomplish the same
result. It takes about 45 minutes to fully brief a case.
It only takes about 2 minutes to do a short form question
and answer. Even if the questions and answers were half as
effective as case brief, in actuality they are 80% as
effective, they would still provide an enormous advantage
in saving time in learning the application of the law. If
you want to be preoccupied with conventional case briefing
in order to learn how to apply law, you will waste a lot of
time and effort.
Conventional case briefing is too time consuming. You do
not have time to research the other 800 cases (for each
course) that are not in your casebook in order to learn the
application of the law.
Brief the full version of the cases in your casebook and
then do short form question and answers.
Secrets to Law School Success #6
You will only go over about 60% of the law in classroom
discussions.
You cannot rely on class room discussions for learning the
law. You can only rely upon classroom discussions for
helping you with the application of the law.
This is the biggest area of misunderstanding in law school.
In order for you to excel in law school you must memorize,
apply and dissertate the law. During class time you do not
have enough time to do all three so short cuts must be
taken.
Professors are not teachers and they are there to provoke
independent thought and as such they will only go over the
application of the law as this is the most difficult area
that cannot always be learned in a vacuum.
You are supposed to have learned or memorized the law
before you go to class.
Naturally most case books concentrate on areas of the law
that are more difficult to apply and do not address all
areas when there is no real controversy over the
application of law in that particular area.
Students who rely on casebooks and class discussions to
learn law will not know about 60% of the law needed to do
well on an exam.
Secrets to Law School Success #7
The more notes you take in class the worse you will do in
law school. The typical student comes to class without
having learned any law. That student spends an inordinate
amount of time reading cases thinking that he will learn
law from those cases.
When that student enters class she generally does not know
the law from memory or has not even studied the law. Then
the student proceeds to write down enormous amounts of
notes that have little or no meaning when they are reviewed
for an exam. That student and many of her compatriots may
even try to reason about the law and make logical
conclusions about the law even when they know nothing about
that law.
All we can say is good luck; you'll need it. You cannot
take notes on how to think and that is what applying the
law is all about. If most students knew the law before they
walked into class, they would simply say to themselves that
this case is applying the transferred intent doctrine under
tort law or this case is showing us how the reasonable
person standard for a manifestation of contractual intent
is analyzed under offer under contract law.
In class, you are merely learning the application of the
law and making sure that you understand the underlying
principle that the application is based upon.
If you already know the law, or are well underway to
memorizing it, you go to class to learn how to apply the
law and make sure you understand the principle behind the
application of that law. It is virtually impossible to take
notes on how to think about something.
In fact, when most students start to memorize the law their
understanding of what is being discussed in class increases
by orders of magnitude and the amount of note taking drops
to virtually nothing.
You are in class to make sure that you can apply the law
and understand the principles behind the application of the
law.
You cannot learn the law in class nor can you ever
understand the law if you do not take the time to memorize
it and know all of its important aspects. Stop writing and
listen and learn when you are in class.
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