How NOT to prepare for law school
If you're getting ready for law school check this out: we put together a free e-book called the “Ultimate Pre-Law Checklist.” Just click the link below to download it. It's some of our best tips and strategies for getting ahead before you start law school, and it will put you miles ahead of your classmates, just click here.
There’s a lot of bad information out there and there are a lot of mistakes you can make before starting law school.
I’d like to talk about some of the worst things you can do before starting law school.
#1 Don’t read the casebook
The last thing that you should do is start opening up a casebook and reading inside. Why? You're not going to cover everything that's in the book, every professor is different (and use the same case in different ways), and you're going to have to learn how your particular professor uses that case book. On top of that, if you did decide start reading it, a lot of the cases wouldn't make a lot of sense. That's because the law needs to be interpreted. Sometimes you use the facts from a certain case as a point of reference. Sometimes you only use bright-line rules, and you ignore the facts, and it's up to your professor to tell you what's important to take away from every particular case. In addition, it's really complicated stuff, and there are hundreds of books that are out there to help digest that material. Books like commercial supplements and commercial outlines, so digging into your case book while it might seem like a good idea and a good way to get ahead is actually a terrible idea. It's just going to create more stress.
#2 Don’t read commercial outlines
And speaking of commercial, don't read those either. A commercial outline contains a summary of a particular subject, in this case torts. But it's a bad idea to sit down and read those too - first of all, it's hundreds of pages long and these are big pages. It would be a huge task to try and read through it, and you have at least three substantive courses every semester. You're not going to get through it, and even if you did, you probably wouldn't really understand it, even in its broken down components. And again- you have to understand the law as your professor presents it to you. Your professor is the one that's going to be giving you a final exam, and that professor is going to write their final by themselves. So it's really important to understand the law as your professor gives it to you. Now, we love commercial outlines and supplements at Legal Eagle, they play a very vital role when you're studying for class. But the summer before law school starts is not the right time to read it. It's a recipe for disaster, it's just not worth it.
Which leads me to my third point:
#3 Don't try understanding the law before you get to law school
It would take an incredibly long time. Lawyers spend their entire careers learning very small portions of the law. And any advantage you would have in learning the substantive law would quickly be erased as people started boning up themselves on the law itself. Which leads me to my next point:
#4 Don't freak out
Law School is a very stressful time, but it's also wonderful. You'll meet great people and you’ll stretch yourself academically in ways that you didn't think you were capable of. I can tell you as a practicing trial attorney it was an incredibly worthwhile experience and I would do it again if I had to. Which brings me to my final tip:
#5 Don't do nothing
It’s tempting sit back on a beach and relax before you start law school, but now is the time where you really can get a head start. And you get a head start not by studying the law, but by studying law school itself. So many people go into law school not knowing anything about the process itself, and specifically they don't know anything about how to take law school exams, but law school exams are kind of like the LSATs. There are strategies and there are tactics to do better, and you can practice those tactics ahead of time. In our video on the two pillars of law school success, we talked about how you have to both master the law and master the tests in law school. Everybody masters the law in law school but so few people put in the time to learn how to take law school exams well. And when your entire grade is based on one single exam, it's so important to learn how to do that exam. So while it's tempting to just sit back, don't do nothing before you start law school. So there you go. Those are the things you should not do before starting law school. Hopefully that helps before you begin.
If you're getting ready for law school check this out: we put together a free e-book called the “Ultimate Pre-Law Checklist.” Just click the link below to download it. It's some of our best tips and strategies for getting ahead before you start law school, and it will put you miles ahead of your classmates, just click here.
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