- 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.
(bright music)
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 wanna make sure that you don't suffer
from that same advice the way
that some of my friends did.
So I wanna 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 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
our 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 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 fax 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 of that time you
put into 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're 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 you for class.
In fact, one thing I recommend
is to read the section
of the 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'll 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 case
front to back when they're researching.
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 casebooks new,
because you'll use them in practice.
A couple things that are wrong here.
One, just because your
casebook has some highlighting
and some underlining in it,
that doesn't change its usefulness.
A casebook, really, is
just a compilation of cases
that are in the public domain.
There's really no benefit
to getting a new casebook,
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
casebook in practice.
They're totally useless.
First of all, who knows if
you'll even be practicing
in the same state as the
cases in your casebook?
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 casebook
either in practice or
for studying the bar.
The second your class ends,
you will never pick up
that casebook again.
The fifth piece of really terrible advice
it 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'll have an entire outline that's done,
so that you can hit the ground
running with practice tests
and memorizing the law
during your 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 your outline every single week.
You're just getting
that done ahead of time,
so that 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 until the end of the
semester to do their outline.
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Also, please download the checklist below
for more good advice, so
you can avoid all of the
terrible advice that's out there.
Thanks for stopping by.
(upbeat music)
