Law School Case Briefs And Exam Writing Secrets Known By Only The Very Best Law Students

These secrets are tough to accept when you are a 1L law student

. They are easy to determine in hindsight however when you listen closely to all those who are around you and in particular to law school professors you will end up confused and influenced by their positions of superiority. Most law students simply tune in to the incorrect individuals who have no idea what they're speaking about. They're elusive since the 1L year of law school is easily the most confounding and wasteful time of your life. Most law students will expend their priceless time following ineffective advice that is utterly divergent to all best-known methods of learning; methods they've used to reach outstanding results in their past school performance. Nearly everybody will tell you that you have to learn how to think like an attorney but just do a little exercise and ask anyone of these so called experts what and how does one think like an attorney? They won't have a reply that is cogent or even organized. You ask us that question and we can almost instantly define what thinking like a lawyer is all about.

Because of pressure, confusion, and inability to determine who is telling the truth, most law students will fully give up on the methods they've used for about 17 years or more (from which they've achieved remarkable results) and embark on experimental learning methods which have no basis in education and in fact do not work. That is the big miscalculation that virtually all students make in their 1L of law school which is why most 1L first semester students never learn them. Just take a couple of minutes and meticulously read what we wrote and you can also achieve these Secrets.

Secret #1: You already know how to think like a lawyer.

Ask yourself the next questions:

1. Have you taken the LSAT?

2. Did you do well on the LSAT?

(You might possibly answer yes to this question if you have been accepted to an ABA certified law school inside the United States).

If you answer yes to these questions, you already know how to think like an attorney. The only actual issue that you have is that you don't know any law. If you don't know any law, it is next to impossible to generate the type of attorney like analysis most law school professors look for on exam answers. If you know a lot of law it is very easy to produce legal analysis in a lawyer like fashion. If you knew all the law in any specific area or had studied it for 19 or more years and in reality used it in court you would be able to perform fantastic lawyer like analysis.

The more law you know from recall, the better able you will be to legally examine any given factual problem. You have been making use of the memorize-apply study method all of your daily life and there's no valid reason for you to get away from that approach for the Socratic method which is far inferior to all other learning methods known. Stick to what has brought you to the party; it'll never fail you. There are no special training methods or learning experiences needed to produce lawyer like analysis. You currently know how to think like an attorney; all you have to do is to learn a little law, discover ways to apply it, and then understand how to dissertate that law.

Secret #2: Your grades in law school will be based almost solely on final exam performance. Exam writing is a skill.

Despite how clever you are, or think you are, you can only master a skill by practice. Proficiency in a skill can never be developed based on your natural level of intelligence or knowledge about any particular subject. Knowledge and learning ability will only quicken the rate at which you learn a skill. However, once you know the skill for just one of the courses you are taking, you'll have picked up the skill of exam writing for all the classes you're taking.

You cannot be taught a skill from just one lecture. You will not even understand most of the guidance given in a short 4-6 hour lecture until you learn a significant mass of law. To proficiently learn the skill of exam writing you must practice, practice, and practice some more. This must include a biweekly review of the key 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 material we have to convey to you about the skill of exam writing.

Secret #Three: If you do not memorize the law you may not be able to thoroughly do issue spotting on any law school 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 principle; 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.

Secret #4: It truly is impossible to memorize all the law necessary and to learn a skill a few weeks before an exam.

There are 327 items that you need to know about contract law in order to ensure that you will get an A on any exam you will ever take. There are 465 things that you need to know about criminal law.... There are 390 elements that you need to know about tort law.....There are 196 items that you need to know about constitutional law... Get the picture. If you wait until November to start memorizing the law as well as to practice the skill of exam writing, you may be too late. The earlier you start, the less complicated it will be.

Do not be misled by instructors giving you open book exams and telling you that it is not appropriate to memorize the law. You simply will not have enough time on an examination to be paging through case books or even your own outline in order to look up information. Those students who spend their examination time issue spotting, organizing their answers, forming their legal analysis of the issue present, and then effectively writing the answer in proper English will get the best marks.

Secret #5: In order to learn the application of law, you have to case brief at least 1,000 cases. However, short questions and answers will attain the same result.

It takes about 50 minutes to fully brief a case. It only takes about 3 minutes to do a short form Q&A. Even if the questions and answers were 1/2 as useful as case briefing, in actuality they are 70% as effective, they would still provide a massive advantage in cutting down time in mastering the application of the law.

If you need to be preoccupied with traditional case briefing in order to learn how to apply law, you will squander considerable time and energy. Traditional case briefing is wasteful. You do not have time to investigate the other eight hundred cases (for each course) that are not in your case book in order to learn the application of the law. Casebrief the cases in your case book and then do brief Q&A.

Secret #6: You will only go over about 60% of the law in classroom sessions. You cannot rely on classroom discussions for mastering the law. You can only rely upon classroom sessions for helping you with the application of the law.

This is the greatest area of misconception in law school. In order for you to stand out in law school you must memorize, apply and dissertate the law. During class you do not have sufficient time to do all 3 so short cuts must be taken. Instructors are not teachers and they are there to trigger truly independent thought and as such they will only go over the application of the law as this is the most challenging area that can't always be learned in isolation. You are expected to have discovered or memorized the law just before you go to class.

Normally most casebooks focus on areas of the law that are more hard to apply and don't address all areas when there is no real dispute over the application of law in that specific area. Law Students who rely on case books and class discussions to learn law will not know about sixty percent of the law needed to excel on an exam.

Secret #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's what applying the law is dependent on. If most students learned the law before they stomped into class, they would simply say to themselves that this case is utilizing the transferred intent doctrine under tort law or this case is teaching to us how the reasonable person standard for a manifestation of contractual intent is examined under offer under contract law. In class, you are merely learning the application of the law and making sure that you have an understanding of 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 fully understand the concept behind the application of that law. It is more or less impossible to take notes on how to think about something. The truth is, when most students begin to memorize the law their knowledge of what's being talked about in class increases by orders of magnitude and the volume of note taking drops to almost nothing.

Class time is supposed to be spent understanding the concepts of how to apply the law. You must learn the concepts behind the idiomatic law if you want to learn how to think like an attorney. If you do not have an understanding of or have a rudimentary feel for the basic law you will not comprehend any of the concepts nor will you understand what the true issues are when confronted with difficult idiomatic law. It's essential to listen and learn in class. Taking notes on how to think about the law is a genuine waste of time and if you follow this strategy it will definitely show up in your scores on final tests.

by: Paul Owen

POST COMMENT

Choosing Among Schools Teaching And Education Degree Career Options Mothers: Get The Scholarship Then Get The Education 3 Old School Mobile Phones; A Look Back At How Far Mobile Phones Have Come Things To Look For In A Great Adolescent Education System Federal Education Grants Granted To You Mothers: How Education Grants Can Help You Solutions For Dilemmas That School Services Face Top Grade Cleaning Solution For Schools Education Scholarships: Giving A Helping Hand To Moms Help Your Child Excel In School Hire A Reliable Private Tutor Consider Attending Medical School Assessing Ourselves About Money Matters Starts In Primary And Secondary School Children.