The 1l Success Guide

Get the information you need to get TOP grades in law school. For many, the road to law school success seems blocked by obstacles and filled with potholes. But learning the law and getting good grades on your law school exams is really not that difficult. You just need someone to show you the way. "The 1L Success Guide" was written by someone who graduated FIRST in his law school class. He shares the methods by which he learned the law and aced his law school exams, earning NINE high-paper awards in the process. If you want to understand how to succeed in law school and get the high grades you will need to land top jobs, read this book. *** From the Introduction: Why must law school feel like Special Forces hazing? By the end of the first semester, you are totally beaten down mentally and physically, and then they throw the exams at you. And, by the way, who is hiding the keys to the kingdom? Why does it feel like there is a secretive law school society that refuses to impart to you the method for actually succeeding? I have one thing to say about all that: It is stupid nonsense. That is why I wrote this book. It is what I wish I could have read before I started law school. Inside these pages I will show you how to prepare for and succeed during your first semester of law school, which culminates with those terrifying exams. It actually is not that difficult once you know what to do. I promise. Although the information in this book is targeted to students in their first semester of law school, this information will be useful to anyone needing some extra figuring out the law school beast. If you had a tough time your first semester and are looking for guidance to help you improve, you will find it in this book. But first, why should you listen to me? I remember how scared and disoriented I felt when I took my first set of law school final exams. My first semester of law school consisted of hours and hours studying, outlining, reviewing, practicing, and memorizing in the hope that I was doing something right. During that semester, I essentially ignored my wife and young child and gained twenty pounds from stress eating and lack of sleep. I went from the relaxed dude with a cool wife and new son, to the stressed out jerk who is always thinking about what needs to get done instead of enjoying life. It sucked. Then, after I took those first exams, after those two weeks of hell on earth, I was so shaken that I thought I had failed each and every exam. I could not respond to any of the questions with a solid answer, so I just tried to analyze every issue I saw (or thought I saw). My answers seemed ambiguous and unfinished. I knew I was screwed. Once I had completed all my first semester exams, I told my wife as I guzzled a beer how much I hated law school and how I was thinking about dropping out, returning to my prior career, and looking for a teaching position. Here's the rub. When I got my grades for first semester exams, I saw that, contrary to what I believed, I had actually done very well on the tests. In fact, I was ranked first in my class! *** I can't guarantee that you will finish first in your class if you read this book, but I can guarantee the book will provide you with an overview of what it takes to do well in law school. Whether you put in the work to achieve great things is up to you.

Offers one hundred rules that every first year law student should live by “Dear Law Student: Here’s the truth. You belong here.” Law professor Andrew Ferguson and former student Jonathan Yusef Newton open with this statement of reassurance in The Law of Law School. As all former law students and current lawyers can attest, law school is disorienting, overwhelming, and difficult. Unlike other educational institutions, law school is not set up simply to teach a subject. Instead, the first year of law school is set up to teach a skill set and way of thinking, which you then apply to do the work of lawyering. What most first-year students don’t realize is that law school has a code, an unwritten rulebook of decisions and traditions that must be understood in order to succeed. The Law of Law School endeavors to distill this common wisdom into one hundred easily digestible rules. From self-care tips such as “Remove the Drama,” to studying tricks like “Prepare for Class like an Appellate Argument,” topics on exams, classroom expectations, outlining, case briefing, professors, and mental health are all broken down into the rules that form the hidden law of law school. If you don’t have a network of lawyers in your family and are unsure of what to expect, Ferguson and Newton offer a forthright guide to navigating the expectations, challenges, and secrets to first-year success. Jonathan Newton was himself such a non-traditional student and now shares his story as a pathway to a meaningful and positive law school experience. This book is perfect for the soon-to-be law school student or the current 1L and speaks to the growing number of first-generation law students in America.

Law School and Exams: Preparing and Writing to Win, Third Edition is the third edition of a popular book whose first edition Bryan Garner reviewed and judged to be “the best on the market.” It combines: Clear and comprehensive explanations of study and exam techniques Numerous illustrative samples that are truly instructive Twenty in-class exercises or take-home assignments on everything from case briefs to essay and multiple-choice exam questions. Comprehensive and self-contained, the Third Edition is suitable for use as the textbook for a sophisticated Prelaw course, 1L Orientation, or a 1L Academic Success course. Alternatively, incoming freshmen can work through it independently over the summer to be optimally prepared for law school in the fall. New to the Third Edition: The latest in learning theory, including focus and engagement, spaced repetition with interleaving, and altering surroundings during study to create mental bookmarks; plus, nine topics relating to mindset, mindfulness, and well-being. Expanded sets of exercises and assignments, including new and improved essay exams and multiple-choice questions. New discussion of time management. Professors and student will benefit from: The way the book facilitates a flipped classroom: The clear and detailed explanations and illustrations will enable students to prepare well for class, permitting the professor to provide a quick summary of key points before turning to active learning through brainstorming, problem-solving, discussion, debate, and writing exercises. Clear explanations and illustrations for reading assignments and numerous exercises for in-class active learning Sample answers for all in-text exercises in the Appendix for students to check their understanding A major in-text take-home assignment separate from the other in-text materials that can be used to further gauge student’s understanding Teaching materials Include: Teacher’s Manual: Notes for teaching strategies Sample answer for the major in-text assignment Two essay exam questions with sample answers that can be administered as in-class exams for practice, or as graded exams

Open Book: The Inside Track to Law School Success, 2E is a book that every JD and LLM law student needs to read, either before classes start or as they get going in their 1L year. Now in an expanded second edition, the book explains in a clear and easygoing, conversational manner what law professors expect from their students both in classes and exams. The authors, award-winning teachers with a wealth of classroom experience, give students an inside look at law school by explaining how, despite appearances to the contrary, classes connect to exams and exams connect to the practice of law. Open Book introduces them to the basic structure of our legal system and to the distinctive features of legal reasoning. To prepare students for exams, the book explains in clear and careful detail what exams are designed to test. It then devotes a single, clearly written chapter to each step of the process of answering exams. It also contains a wealth of material, both in the book and digitally, on preparing for exams. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Open Book comes with a free suite of 18 actual law school exams in Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law, Property and Torts, written and administered by law professors. These exams include not only questions, but: (1) annotations from the professors explaining what they were looking for; (2) model answers written by the professors themselves; and (3) actual student answers, with professor comments that explain why certain answers were stronger of weaker. As Open Book explains, there is no better way to prepare for exams than by practicing, and these unique materials will enable students to get the most out of their pre-exam practice.

A concise, highly accessible guide to exam success. Provides an insider s view of what professors look for in exam answers, and how exam-taking connects to good lawyering. Accompanied by a Web site with content that is both free (e.g., sample outlines, class notes, case briefs) and for-sale (e.g., sample exams and memos written by professors giving feedback on the answers). Features: High-profile, experienced authors from elite schools with hands-on experience teaching the majority of the courses in the traditional 1L curriculum Distinctive central pedagogy: the pinball method of exam-taking Accompanied by Web site with content that is both free (e.g., sample outlines, class notes, case briefs) and for-sale (e.g., sample exams and memos written by professors giving feedback on the answers). Explains to students not just the how but the why of law school exams what makes law school exams different from exams students have encountered in other settings Detailed examples provide concrete demonstrations of exam-taking techniques Highly readable: prose is straightforward and humorous; key points accented with memorably amusing illustrations Not just an exam prep book; students are offered guidance on getting the most out of classes, and law school more generally

Many books give law students advice about how to navigate through their first year of law school. This book strives to be something different. The purpose of "One L of a Year" is to focus on the reading, studying and testing strategies used by the most successful law students. This book is more than advice--it is a learning guide based upon empirical research and statistical correlations between law student learning and their law school GPAs. Most importantly, this book attempts to show you what high-ranking law students have done to achieve success during their first year. It's one thing to read about how to take a law school essay exam--it's quite another thing to see examples of student essays, outlines, legal memoranda, and multiple choice questions. With drive and determination, most students can get through law school. However, "One L of a Year" gives you the research-based skills to maximize your own success.

One L, Scott Turow's journal of his first year at law school and a best-seller when it was first published in 1977, has gone on to become a virtual bible for prospective law students. Not only does it introduce with remarkable clarity the ideas and issues that are the stuff of legal education; it brings alive the anxiety and competiveness--with others and, even more, with oneself--that set the tone in this crucible of character building. Each September, a new crop of students enter Harvard Law School to begin an intense, often grueling, sometimes harrowing year of introduction to the law. Turow's group of One Ls are fresh, bright, ambitious, and more than a little daunting. Even more impressive are the faculty. Will the One Ls survive? Will they excel? Will they make the Law Review, the outward and visible sign of success in this ultra-conservative microcosm? With remarkable insight into both his fellows and himself, Turow leads us through the ups and downs, the small triumphs and tragedies of the year, in an absorbing and thought-provoking narrative that teaches the reader not only about law school and the law but about the human beings who make them what they are. In the new afterword for this edition of One L, the author looks back on law school from the perspective of ten years' work as a lawyer and offers some suggestions for reforming legal education.