This is the second of three posts (the other two being “Setting the Stage: Or, How to Do Law School Wrong” and “To Prepare or Not To Prepare, Part II,” both in
Law School: Getting In, Getting Good, Getting the Gold).
Again, this is from the manuscript, so there might be slight changes in the book itself:
To Prep or Not To PrepOne debate of sorts that rages--well, simmers--among advice-givers is whether a student should prepare before starting law school, and, if so, how. One camp, which might be labeled the
Don’t Worry, Be Happy school of jurisprudence, argues that it’s pointless to study and that it’s more important to be fresh and ready for the adventures to come. The other camp--filled with Type-A overachievers (which includes much of law school populations)--proclaims the opposite: “Goodness, you have to prepare! You’ll be lost!! Why aren’t you done yet!!! Where’s my Prozac!!!!”
The first camp is not the camp to be in. If you decide not to prepare you will be way, way behind
and lost. It might be useful, however, to discuss why this is true, so that the importance of preparation will make sense, and so that you’ll know what and how to prepare, in a way that is manageable and beneficial. You
should enjoy your summer before law school (as you should enjoy all summers). But you absolutely should not blow off preparing for what’s to come.
Advice-givers of this camp assert, often strenuously, that any pre-study is pointless. “You won’t know what to study!” “You’ll study the wrong things!” “Everything you need to know you’ll learn when you get there!”
Wrong on all counts. First, you
will know what to study. How? Because that is the way of the law. Any good attorney can tell you at least the main points of every first-year subject. Look at the table of contents of any commercial outline, hornbook, or casebook, and you will see…exactly the same major concepts, for every course. The law, to
be the law, must be predictable. It must be structured. This is (or should be) the essence of the study of law too.
So, as to points one and two (“You won’t know what to study!” “You’ll study the wrong things!”), you will know exactly what to study, and you will not study the wrong things. If, for example, we look at Contracts, you will find that every single contract undergoes the same basic tests: formation, legality, breach, damages--leading to the insight that, gee, wouldn’t it be useful to begin thinking about these topics, at least in the most overarching of ways.
To those who say, “…But your profs might focus on different areas of the law!” First, no they won’t. Law professors are not only uniformly trained at the top law schools, they are expected to cover the major areas of each discipline. Second, these major areas are “well-settled,” a term of art in the law meaning that everyone knows what’s what, and everyone also knows what is to be covered. They are the legal “canon,” or near-sacred text of what is accepted as basic among the profession. Third, might a professor deviate on one point or another? Sure. The answer? It doesn’t matter. Even if they do deviate, it’s not likely to be more than a minor difference of emphasis. Actually, even this doesn’t go far enough:
especially if they deviate, “pre-study” becomes more, not less, valuable. The more you know about the general framework of that area of the law, the more you will recognize the differences--and deviations. It is the difference between a novice and intermediate player. Not yet expert, but a world of difference between the two.
So, in short, you should begin preparation in a careful way: you should begin laying out the major headings for your master outlines. You will have six: Contracts, Property, Torts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, and Constitutional Law. Even if there is a difference in your first-year courses, which is unlikely, it would be
highly unlikely that any of these will go to waste. Even if your law school pushes one to the second year, let’s say, you’ve “wasted” perhaps a few dozen hours’ time. We’re not talking about a huge amount of work. It’s less time than you’ll spend on the LSAT, by far.
An example of a first-level heading for, say, Contracts is
Formation. Once you have the first-level headings, you should being the process of delving into the second-level headings, which begin to flesh out the subject. So, under Formation you might have
Offer, Acceptance, Consideration, and
Legality. The third-level headings under Offer will run through a number of tests, such as (1)
Commitment (2)
communicated to an (3)
Identified Offeree with (4)
definite terms. Each of those terms will be fourth-level headings, so, for example, a
commitment is an
objective test in which the question is
whether a reasonable person hearing words under similar circumstances would believe the sender intended a contract. Notice what is happening. In just a few minutes you’re laying the groundwork for an understanding of black letter Contract Law. As you move forward in the course, you will add detail to explain each of those phrases and terms. Moreover, when you define the term
objective test, for example, you will be defining a term that applies across legal disciplines. You will, to put it bluntly, be learning a foundational definition for
dozens of exams.
Yeah. Preparation is important. And what you are learning in class will make far more sense because it will fit within a framework you have already built, and have re-chewed a few times. Before your very first class, you already know, for example, there’s a basic question in Contract Law of how a contract is formed. So, if your professor delves immediately into a discussion of, say,
Texaco v. Pennzoil, you won’t be lost wondering what on Earth an oral contract has to do with a billion-dollar dispute. Instead, you’ll be saying (silently!) to yourself, “Of course! How could they have been so
dumb?” Indeed. A billion-dollar dispute (and a billion-dollar bankruptcy) because a roomful of bigwigs forgot a
first-year law school lesson in what makes a contract.
That is the level of comprehension you should aim for, and your outlines--which you should start
before law school--are a key to getting there.
Also, isn’t this more
fun? Isn’t it better to know what the professor is talking about, and to be able to appreciate it…rather than slinking from class to class in a fog? If you neglect your outlines for even a few days, a fog it will be.
Note from a Top 2 [Yale Law School] reviewer: “And a fog it was. Boy do I wish I had done this.”
Note #2: there is not a single right way to build your outline. You might, for example, have
Consideration as a first-level heading, or another second-level heading
Termination Before Acceptance?, or some such. That doesn’t matter. It’s on a computer. You can switch it around if you don’t like it. And your professor will appreciate the sophisticated structural question you’ll ask if you do need to ask.
How to get started? Follow the primers and commercial outlines. Note #3: Your job is not to simply copy it. Commercial texts will have
lots of detail that won’t make sense (such as cases and tertiary rules). Skip that, for now. You need, instead, to build the
framework, into which you will later add the wiring, walls, outlets, paint, and so on. This isn’t so much “getting a head start” as it is getting ready to start off right. Once law school starts, you’ll have very little time to backtrack. And, by definition, backtracking is a poor use of time.
I will recommend, again, that you read
Planet Law School. In fact, I feel so strongly about it that this is one of two sources I will recommend you use multiple times. For your preliminary work, focus on chapter 16 (especially pp. 432-42; 452-56; and 458-468). Follow the advice there and read, or ignore, whichever parts of the book don’t apply (yet). This advice--to go to another book for advice--might be viewed as a bit odd (and, no, I’m not the author of
Planet Law School), but that misses the point. This is part of a broader lesson of efficiency: take advantage of the best of what is already out there. The materials recommended in
Planet Law School are the materials you should have--and read; it would be pointless to simply restate them and the points he makes, less well, here. (Not to mention unethical.) The broader point is that
Planet Law School is correct: preparation
is important. It need not and should not be extreme, but it should be substantial, and concerted.
One other source you might look at, and this one I did have a hand in, are the
Great Law Books pages at
www.fineprintpress.com. These include a number of references that you might find interesting or useful as to prepare for the LSAT, application process, or law school itself. In most cases, I suggest you borrow these books from the library--there’s no point to waste money better spent on future pizzas, yes?
Okay then. Ready for law school?
Copyright: Thane Messinger,
Law School: Getting In, Getting Good, Getting the Gold. All rights reserved.
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