Law School Confidential VS Planet Law School II

[Which book is the best for law school prep]

Which book is the best for law school prep

Law School Confidential

 22 (27.8%)

Planet Law School Vol II

 20 (25.3%)

Something Else

 8 (10.1%)

Neither, read something fun instead.

 29 (36.7%)

Total Members Voted: 79

[The Artist]

Now my analogy:

Learning Spanish--you don't *really* learn how to speak Spanish fluently until you're fully immersed for years in a Spanish-speaking country--and you can't *really* learn a language until you're in that foreign language school in some country and living with a host family. But it sure helps if you arrive with a basic vocabulary and sense of grammatical structure in Spanish. That way, you can get a basic grasp of conversations, know what questions to ask (and how to ask them) and also how new words, verb tenses, etc fit into the bigger scheme of "SPANISH THE LANGUAGE"...knowing a bit of Spanish sure makes those first few months easier and you can get out of "baby talk" a lot faster.

And so with "THE LAW". 

I must say... your analogy kicked my analogy's ass 

[SplitFinger]

Holy crap, I'd completely forgotten that PLSII recommended getting and reading the Restatements.  Most "prepping" IMHO is a colossal waste of time, but reading the Restatements is beyond a waste of time.  It's utterly ridiculous.

If you simply must read something to prep, stick to the E&E's.  Better yet, do something useful with yourself.  Go to court and watch some trials.  Find a lawyer and ask if you can tag along if they're going to be doing something interesting.  With all the reading you're going to do during the year, I assure you that you'll barely remember anything you read before school started.  It certainly won't help you on the exam.

If you didn't prep, you don't know if it works or not. Granted I am a 0L, but the arguments for and against prepping are about equal, probably slightly favoring prep.

How is getting the Restatements utterly ridiculous? They list the elements of BLL and provide a ton of hypos. Both are critical to good grades from all accounts. Now, if you don't want to buy it you can just use it at the library for free, which would eliminate the high cost of purchasing them. Also, PLS mentions the restatements as a 'recommended' and not a 'must get'.

I believe we had this discussion in your last incarnation.  Once again, I know a few people who did prep, and as far as I can tell it didn't help them at all.  But of course since you are a 0L, you know all the answers, so I'll not bother trying to convince you otherwise.

When you get to law school, you will find out that there is no such thing as "the BLL".  There's your professor's version of black letter law.  In most respects it will match what you will find in the supplements.  But there will be stuff that your prof will totally skip (in my Contracts class we never learned anything about the UCC - those of you who already had K's will realize how utterly bizarre that is!) and other stuff that he will teach that simply isn't in the E&E's or the Restatements or anything else.  That's what you need to know.  Not "the BLL".

Anyway, whatever - you'll learn.  Probably the hard way would be my guess, but who knows.  There's a large element of randomness to it anyway.

[rtqw]

Purchasing Restatements now seems utterly silly to me. Your first year classes are not the entirety of property law, contract law, torts law, etc., they are what your professor teaches about those topics. Some classes your professor will recommend you purchase the restatement, but otherwise, you can look up Restatement provisions you cover on Westlaw or Lexis (for free). It's also worth noting that in some cases the 'Restatement' doesn't actually restate the law - it is what some law professors think the law should be.

[difinity]

http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/

 

[terranullius]

I'm just another 0L, but I'll tell you what I'm doing because so far it seems to be working. I'm not going to read about specific legal subjects. Instead, I read LSC and am in the process of reading PLS II. In addition, I am working through at least the basic exercises in Legal Writing in Plain English by Bryan A Garner with a couple of other 0Ls. Finally, I will be working through Reading Like a Lawyer by Ruth Ann McKinney.

My idea is to familiarize myself better with HOW to learn the material covered in law school, not WHAT I will be learning when I attend class and do the readings. If the only head start I get is taking only one or two weeks to settle into a routine and let things click when others take three or four weeks, I'm good with that.

Finally, I am also reading fiction and non-law related non-fiction like crazy too. And hanging out with my friends and spending time with my family. And packing up my house for a move. It's all about balance. I don't want to cancel plans because I have to prep for something that hasn't started yet. I'm sure I'll be doing that plenty after August.

Good luck!

[CoupDeGlace]

I found parts of Law School Confidential to be OK... but I didn't care much for the tacky product placements. I only read like the first two chapters. Miller's highlighting method is just too complicated; every law student I talked to that had seen that method said to not even bother with it. Everyone has their own method, of course, and I'm sure for many people that way might work... I think the most important thing for everyone is to just find the most comfortable way of studying and sticking to it.

I bought Getting to Maybe... and I'll probably flip through that. But beyond that, I'm not spending much time on law school books or anything. I wasted months of my life obsessing over the admissions process. I want to enjoy my summer. The intellectual things I'm doing to keep my mind sharp include a lot of pleasure reading and studying Mandarin.

[sinkfloridasink]

I've already read PLSII, and all I can say is that for the most part, the advice given is fairly sound, if not a little extreme and pessimistic about the entire legal education system. I'm taking everything he has said with a whole pillar of salt - I'm definitely not getting restatements, buying hundreds of dollars worth of prep books or anything like that. I might pick up one or two of the books he mentioned and see if I find some worth in them (the Glannon E&E's and Delaney's books on Legal Reasoning sound the most promising). I've also got Getting to Maybe lying around, and I'll probably thumb through it a bit before August.

All in all, I guess I wouldn't really consider any of it a true "prep" schedule (I'm not much into those anyway), but a little legal-related reading isn't gonna hurt, as long as I intersperse it with non-legal pleasure reading.

But then again, I'm an 0L and know nothing.

[Alecto]

I just need to say, sinkfloridasink is great.  great name, awesome avatar.  usually interesting and sane posts.

[sinkfloridasink]

I just need to say, sinkfloridasink is great.  great name, awesome avatar.  usually interesting and sane posts.

Thanks, I appreciate it. I'm always up for some random anonymous ego-massaging (and I mean this in a totally non-sarcastic way).

[vercingetorix]

i read PLS II and read through some of the materials he recommends for a "three month" study regimen.  it certainly helped.  i think it bears repeating that most people who slam reading ahead of time didn't do it themselves.  unless you have the iq of a potted fern, learning basic terms and concepts will aid in your comprehension, especially early on.  the comment that there is no such thing as black letter law is also garbage.  assault is assault, res ipsa is res ipsa, a 12(b)(6) motion is a 12(b)(6) motion whether you are sitting in a torts/civ pro class at cooley or at hls.  law school is not that complex but professors will try (often unwittingly) to make it as confusing as possible.  hearing these terms for the third or fourth time in september necessarily will help you grasp the greater concepts behind these terms of art faster than your peers (who will look at the prof like a pig staring at a wristwatch the first time say, "consideration" is mentioned). 
another lame argument is that you somehow won't have time to "party like a rockstar" over the summer.  this type of thinking alone should tell you all you need to know about this category of people.  getting really sh!thoused is soooooooooooo awesome! yeah!  in my frat!  no....i didn't rape her! i love you man!  these lame a$$es really stick out in law school.
the only value in this line of reasoning is that you should absolutely find time to do f*ck-all and just relax.  if you spend a couple hours a day, 5 days a week doing a little reading, you should have tons of time to build a birch bark canoe by hand if that's your thing.
here is what i suggest
PLS II
Learning Legal Reasoning by John Delaney
LEEWS by Wentworth Miller
the E&E's for your first semester classes (except Crim, this varies too much by jurisdiction and some law schools don't even teach the model penal code anymore).
you'll use the E&E's over the semester anyway, so purchasing them now isn't a bad idea even if you don't make a big dent in them. 
just sayin'.