0L Preparation: Law School Confidential

Lest I get the reputation of "gunner," I just want to clarify that I have been preparing in a slow, meandering sort of way, and I DO in fact plan to take a majority of the summer off to go shopping, go to the beach, go to Cabo, drink, read trashy romance novels, watch bad reality tv, work on my tan, and play in a semi-professional sloshball league (yes, sloshball is srs bizniz.)

However, I do think that to be forewarned is to be forearmed, and while I might not spend my summer reading casebooks that I won't remember, I will continue trying to get a grasp on a few of the more fluid and technical aspects of law school, rather than the black letter law itself.

One book that I've been reading for a while is the highly-recommended book Law School Confidential by Robert Miller. Written "by students, for students" this book gives a blow-by-blow account of the entire law school process, from making the decision to be a lawyer through all three years of law school. It includes LSAT study tricks, law school exam techniques, and interview tips for OCI.

To be quite honest, I kind of skipped over the entire section on the LSAT and prep, because it didn't really apply to me. So if you want to know about that section you should probably just pick up the book. It's widely available at Barnes and Noble and Borders (although the Borders in my hometown is shutting down -- I like B&N better, anyway).

My overall opinion of this book is that it probably takes an honest, if somewhat overdramatic look, at the law school experience. I imagine that the tips and tricks in this book are probably things that I (and my fellow 0Ls) would pick up during the first semester of law school without a "how to" guide, and that, while informative, this book was not necessarily substantive.

For gunners, this would be bad. For me, this is good. At this point, I think that the way that LSC presents information of the format of an exam, what an outline can/should look like, and where you should be in your work at a give point during the semester is what will probably serve me well, without getting me too panicked or confused.

The most relevant things that I saw (and remember, relevance is in the eye of the beholder, and this beholder has zero experience at an actual law school, so take it with a grain of salt) were the descriptions on briefing/highlighting, the description of a (super gunnerish) study schedule for the weeks leading up to finals, and the list of commercial outlines Miller recommends. To synthesize:

Highlighting/Briefing:

• Buy five different colored highlighters: yellow, green, pink, blue, and orange (but I hate orange highlighters, so I'm going to go with purple).
• Each of the colors should correspond to a different section of the case: GREEN - facts, YELLOW - critical legal reasoning, PINK - holding/court/judge/procedural posture, BLUE - important precedents cited and their holdings, and ORANGE(PURPLE) - important dissenting remarks.
• After skimming the case through once, go back through and highlight in the color-code listed above, but do so sparingly. That way if you're called on in class to discuss a case, your eye immediately knows where to go on the page.
• Miller also suggests drawing a small figure at the top of your case to remind you what the case was about, but I really don't think that this is necessarily a tip that I will use.

Commercial Outlines:

• Civ Pro: Glannon, Emanuel
• Torts: Gilbert, Glannon
• Property: Gilbert
• Contracts: Emanuel
• Constitutional Law: Emanuel
• Criminal: Gilbert's

While the section on preparing for law school and the section about the first semester of the 1L year were probably the most valuable to me, I went ahead and read through the rest of the book, just to familiarize myself with the concepts and etiquette -- this way when I go back to re-read the different sections as they actually become relevant to me, I'll already have the groundwork done. I just think that the more I read about the abstract "law school experience" the less likely I'll be to panic at the starter's pistol, you know?

I've just ordered a copy of Getting to Maybe (which is, apparently, all about the exam process), so it should be here soon-ish. Plus one of the profs at SMU put together a "Suggested Reading" list that I'll probably take a crack at...at least the ones that look easy.

Anyone out there have any good suggestions for other 0L prep (besides the beach/sloshball) that they found useful?