My Advice to Law Students on how to Approach the Experience:

Many of the blogs run by law students continually return to the theme of “the law school experience,” that is what it entails and how to succeed, (or at least get by). As someone who has both a JD & an LL.M., let me offer some advice. First, we should all realize that there are “many ways up the mountain,” that is, many ways to approach achievement and more than one way works. To compound the issue further, some ways work better for some folks than others. (For instance, it was rumored that Bill Clinton at Yale used to blow off many of his classes and didn’t otherwise do much preparing for class. Before the exam, he would simply ask the “smartest student” in the class—which most of the time was Hillary—for her outline, study it hard before the test, and then he would get an even better grade on the exam than she did). I think one of the major hurdles that a law student—especially a first year—confronts is time constraints. There is a lot of work to do, and we want to do well but still have a social life, down-time for activities we enjoy, get a good night’s sleep every night. My approach (which remember may not work for all) is one that allows for the maximum effectiveness but while utilizing the minimum time.

First off, let me say that the approach that I am about to give succeeded for me. I graduated in the top third of my law school class at Temple University, with an overall average of 3.22 (when I began law school, our school had an exam curve of 3.0, and then mid-way through the experience, the school lowered it to 2.85). Plus I was in an MBA program, (with an unrelated GPA system) which made me always have to take a full 15 credit load each semester. I passed the bar after the first try and then enrolled in Temple’s LL.M. in Transnational Law program, which courses were also offered in the JD program and likewise had the same 2.85 curve. I graduated with over a 3.6 in this program (I was taking courses part time—1 to 2 a semester). Moreover, in the JD program, my lowest grade was a B- (never got below it—although I did get a small handful of them). My lowest grade in the LL.M. program was B+.

I always slept 8 hours, watched TV, had a social life, did the things I enjoyed. So how did I do it? First let me reproduce an email that blogger Unlearned Hand reproduced regarding an 1L NYU classroom, on what NOT TO DO. This is a nasty email that the student sent to her professor (the blogger was saying it's a bad idea to send nasty emails to your professor. I agree. But the email also details classroom conduct that likewise is what law students should not be doing):

may i respectfully suggest that perhaps having an instructor who seemed somewhat interested in actually teaching the material objectively and creating an even slightly welcoming classroom discussion atmosphere would have prompted both myself and the vast majority of the rest of the class to pay attention and participate rather than sending each other instant messages, playing online games, and checking our email (my italics)

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Playing online games, checking email, sending messages, and otherwise not being in class on time every day—that is what you SHOULD NOT DO. Now when I attended law school (graduated in ’99) some of the students had laptops; most didn’t. But the classrooms WERE NOT wired. I remember some of the students playing games, but we couldn’t do all that. Instead, treat those classroom hours like GOLD. Typically you only have to sit in class between 12-15 hours a week (not a relatively large amount of time). So be there on time and as soon as the professor begins to speak, take notes like you are a stenographer in a court room. I didn’t always do this in the JD program. Sometimes I would primarily rely on commercial outlines, or outlines from past students—but in those classes, where I either didn’t have perfect attendance, or I let my mind wander—they were the ones where I tended to get the lower grades like “B” or “B-.” I was more consistent about showing up to every class and taking down everything the teacher said in my LL.M. program—and my GPA shot way up, even as the curve didn’t change.

Why is it so important to take notes like this and attend every minute of class? Because if you do this—if you put most of your hard work and energy into these ONLY 12-15 hours a week of work, you can do far LESS work outside of class—which are those hours that we cherish. In fact, you can pretty much stop doing the reading entirely if you are in every class taking down practically everything the teacher says as if you were a stenographer. I remember classes where I literally never cracked a book until the very end when I was putting my outline together and I needed to copy some quotes from the cases, or make sure I got the holding right—and I got A-, or B+. (I got a few full “As” too, but they were pretty hard to come by with our curve.)

My employment law professor (taught by a hard-ass professor, a very hard grader) told us that for every 1 hour in class, we should spend 3.5 hours preparing, literally reading the cases over & over again till we new them as well as she did (she says when she prepares for class, she will sometimes read the cases 7 times—but law profs. only have 6 credits a week teaching load!). I absolutely did not heed her advice. I never read the cases more than once, and I was prepared, I'd say, at most 40% of the time in her class. I was one of 3 full As in that section of employment law, (which had about 45 people). I was interested in the subject so I took good notes, and I had a good outline from the class before, which I used to model my outline on.

Then once you have your copious notes, make an outline from it—or organize those notes into an outline. And here is where you can use (1) the text, (2) past outlines, & (3) commercial outlines, not so much to act as your primary source—but to supplement weaker areas, fill those gaps (and there should NOT be too many gaps) that might exist, or simply to confirm that you got it right in your notes.

Your entire grade in lawschool is based on your exam performance. So in essence, you should be preparing for the exam, not necessarily preparing for class, in order to succeed. You should spend the most amount of care taking notes in class and then constructing an outline based on those notes. Thus, the time out of class that you spend making the outline is more important than the time you spend in class prep.

Start your outlines early; don’t fall behind. Go home and immediately type your notes after class into the outline. I’d say, save for the very end of the semester when you spend many hours getting ready for the exams, I rarely spent more than 40 hours a week -- INCLUDING THOSE 12-15 CLASS HOURS -- doing “work.” And most of the out of class hours were spend preparing the outlines, not preparing for class.

I know this might not work for everyone. And the teachers expect you to be prepared for class. Many teachers use a system where they call on names in alphabetical order or once they call you, they cross your name off of a list, so you don’t have to prepare after that. So you can prepare when you are on call, and then stop reading once off. I don’t want to advise people to be hostile & disrespectful of class room etiquette where you are expected to be prepared for class (although I did have a few awkward incidences where I wasn't prepared but was called on). But in my experience, preparing for class is one of the least important aspects of preparing for the final—which is the only grade that counts. Yet, if you blow off class or don’t pay attention in class, it might be a good idea to prepare for as many classes as you can (do all of the reading), because this will make “re-learning” the material for the final, easier.

One reason why preparing for class was not as important a learning tool for me is that I tend to be a slower reader (compared to an average law student), and my attention breaks easy when I am not reading something that I really enjoy. Thus, it just took me too long to do all of the reading effectively. And in class—because of my short attention span—I also had a hard time paying attention without taking copious notes. In some classes I had the attitude, “I won’t write down everything the professor says, just the really important stuff,” but then I found my attention wandering, and my notes ended up not being too good. And consequently I would do more mediocre in those classes. If I write down everything the professor says—the act of my hand constantly being active taking everything down greatly helped me to follow (and understand) the entire lectures for just about all of my classes where I did this.