About me

I just completed my first year at a school ranked in the 30-40 range. First
semester I received 3 CALI/Book Awards (out of 4 substantive classes)
and was ranked first in the class. Second semester I received 3 additional
CALI/Book Awards, and was ranked first in the class both for the
semester and for the year. I am in the process of applying as a transfer to
HYCNP, and am working at a market-paying summer associate position
following my 1L year.

I am in no way as informed or plugged in as the many super-contributors

on this site (I didnt use TLS during the school year and will likely stop
using it again once my transfer cycle is complete), but found other
members posts about their 1L experiences to be tremendously helpful as
I navigated my own first year. I hope future users will find this post to be
as useful going forward as I found Arrows guide (among others), which I
leaned on at different times for both guidance and motivation.

0L/Choosing a law school

When choosing a law school I decided to take money at a lower ranked

school over the 3 lower T-14 options I had, and began the year with an
eye towards transferring into the T6. I agree wholeheartedly with the
advice that you should never attend a law school that you couldnt
imagine yourself graduating from, and chose my current school based on
its location, the scholarship they offered me, and the long-term
prospects/reputation of the school. I would be happy graduating from my
current school, and as I indicated in my chance me thread, I am still
undecided about making the jump if I dont get into Harvard or Yale.

Having said that, I disagree that it hurts to begin the year with transferring
in mind. First let me acknowledge that the prospect of crushing debt and
unemployment is a great motivator to do well, especially ITE. However
in my experience there is a big difference between aiming for the top
10%, and aiming for #1 (thereby giving you more than a snowballs
chance of transferring to HYS). I am good friends with the students
ranked #5 and #12 in my class, and they agree that the greatest difference
between our results was the single-mindedness with which I approached
my studies (a single-mindedness I chalk up to having a specific and
tangible goal from day one.). While I was numerically more qualified
than most students in my class (my 177 LSAT was likely the highest in
my class), and was at an advantage because of it, I think having a much
clearer goal than get good grades so I can find a job helped push me
over the top. Looking back at 1L I am confident that I would have
finished in the top 10% without killing myself (see my schedule below),
but who knows if I would have finished #1 without a ridiculous amount
of work. The desire to transfer justified the amount of work I put in, and
although I wont have a problem graduating from my current school,
dreams of the T6 really drove me.

A second reason that having an eye on transferring can be a positive is

that it can motivate you to develop strong relationships with your
professors early-on. For myself, I went out of my way to speak with
professors after class, invite them out to lunch, and send them interesting
legal news articles related to their area of expertise. Does this make me a
huge gunner? No doubt. Did the majority of classmates think I was a
douche for constantly making lunch plans with our professors? Probably.
In spite of this I had many professors who (after trying to talk me out of
transferring) were excited to write me recommendations when the time
came around. I ended up getting 3 very strong letters, and could have
gotten 2 or 3 more without hesitation were it not for the fact that I didnt
want to take out a billboard announcing my plans to transfer. I wasnt
sycophantic in my relationships with my professors, and Im a pretty
social person to begin with, but Im not sure I would have made as much
of an effort if I didnt know I might need a transfer recommendation.
The side benefit of course is that if I end up staying at my current school
Im in great position to have these same professors pick up the phone to
help me secure a clerkship. They know me well, have seen my work ethic
and resulting grades, and if I stay will no doubt feel a sense of pride that I
chose to continue my studies with them as opposed to jumping to a higher
ranked school. (As an aside, Im almost a decade out of undergrad,
married, and had a successful pre-law school career. Its possible that my
willingness to come off as an uber-gunner, and to devote so much time to
getting to know my professors personally, is related to my disconnect
from the undergraduate experience.).

0L prep

This is one of the more controversial subjects on TLS, with many

(probably most) insisting that it is at best a waste of time, and at worst a
recipe for burnout and confusion. While I respect these opinions, and
believe them to be valid for many people, I prepped and found it to be
useful. During my 0L summer I read whatever 0L prep guides I could
find on TLS, read Getting to Maybe, Planet Law School, Law School
Confidential, did LEEWS, read Delaneys Legal Reasoning, the Nutshell
guide to law school, and E&Es for almost all of my classes (instead of
E&E I did Delaney for Crim and Chemerinsky for Con Law). It was a lot
of reading, and although I plan on reading 2 or 3 E&Es this summer, I
dont think its necessary to replicate between 1L and 2L year.

I eschewed popular opinion regarding 0L prep for a number of reasons.

First, I continued running my business while attending law school, and
was working full-time the summer before matriculating. Acclimating
myself to juggling a heavy reading load and work was a difficult task, and
during the first several weeks of prep I was very flustered trying to multi-
task with so many time intensive activities. By the time school came
around however, I was used to balancing work, reading, and my everyday
life, which I think helped me during the first semester. Better to be
overwhelmed during the summer than when it actually counts.

Second, as someone who graduated college in the early 2000s (and had
been out of academic life ever since), my brain wasnt used to retaining
as much information as law school required of it. Like finding the work-
school-life balance, I think that prepping hard allowed me to work
through the retention kinks early-on, as opposed to being confused at
school.

Think of it like distance running- if you havent run in several years,

youre not going to throw on a pair of New Balances and run the Boston
Marathon. At best youll make it a few miles, soil yourself, and end up
with monster blisters on your feet (and possibly your knees if you try to
crawl the rest of the way). People (even your parents) will laugh at you,
and the guy at Foot Locker wont take the sneakers back because theyre
stained with the indelible tears of defeat.

Law school is the same sort of thing- if you havent gotten yourself ready
for first year, youll be gasping for breath by the time November comes
around. Even if youre not gasping for breath, its very possible that
someone like me is running against you, and that his 0L prep has gotten
him into ridiculous shape. To put this into the perspective of grades, the
difference first semester (when 0L prep was likely most useful) between
me and the person ranked #2 in the class was over twice as wide as the
difference between #2 and #15. While I ended up with the highest grades
both semesters, the lead that Id opened up after the fall was
insurmountable- everyone else was playing for second. (Another
parenthetical caveat- I spent almost a decade prior to law school working
70-80 hours a week. I wasnt going to burn out because of 0L summer, a
common criticism with prepping. I will be the first to acknowledge that
its very possible that putting in a years worth of intensive 0L prep and
1L studying will make your face melt off and leave nothing but an
exploded body for your parents to weep over. Take my experience and
advice with a grain of salt.)

Finally, while its foolish to believe youll retain very much substance
from your prep, having a vague recollection of topics can be helpful when
you get to them in your law school classes. One of the difficulties with
learning the law (and I admit this is an annoyingly over-used metaphor) is
learning to see both the trees for the forest, and the forest for the trees. I
found that having a strong roadmap of the subjects going in allowed me
to see how different subjects (say Con Law and Property) overlapped, and
how topics within these individual subjects related to each other. While
its possible that I would have ended up with a similar macro-
understanding even without prepping, by the time other students had
made these connections I was already on to the next topic, with a built-in
lead.

Can you complete 1L without prepping, and still compete for top grades?
Of course you can- most people do. But for me, 0L prep made sense and
seemed to make my year much easier.

1L

This section is probably a bit more interesting to people than my

channeling Charlie Sheen, so lets get right to it- step-by-step. The first
thing to do (lets call this number zero so as not to disrupt my numbering
scheme) when you begin the semester, is to find out (whether via
syllabus, e-mail to the prof, or speaking to upperclassmen) whether the
exam is going to be open or closed-book. The study methods I employed
were different depending on which exam type Id be facing, and the
learning curve will be lower if you figure out early which youll be tasked
with. Ill discuss my thoughts on the differences between open and closed
below, but here are some initial observations.

First, I liked to do my reading assignments directly following that day of

classes. Not a groundbreaking bit of insight, but because some people like
to do all their reading over the weekend, or read right before class, I think
its worth mentioning. For example, if my Monday/Wednesday/Friday
schedule looked like: Contracts @ 9, Civ Pro @ 11, Torts @ 2, I would
attend class on Monday and then go home and do Wednesdays reading
for Contracts, Civ Pro, and Torts that afternoon. I would read these
assignments to completion, regardless of what time I ended up finishing.
Once again, this doesnt sound like much of an insight, but my system
relied on making a schedule and sticking to it- regardless of whether or
not I felt like slogging through another 30 pages of Property on a Friday
evening. I tried to treat reading like a job, not putting down the books
until I was done with all of the assignments whether it was a Monday
night, or in advance of a long weekend.

Next, I think its necessary during the first week or two of class to go
through the tedious process of properly briefing a case (i.e. writing out
the appellate history, taking down all the facts, etc. - there are probably a
thousand threads explaining how to do this so I wont waste time
explaining it here). This isnt because you really get much from it (at least
not much that will matter to you come finals), but rather because
professors like to screw with people during the first few weeks by forcing
them to recite back minutiae. Come exam time it isnt likely to matter to
your Torts professor that the case you studied was remanded because of
an erroneous jury instruction, or that the plaintiff was a widow and the
judge likely felt bad for her- all (s)hes going to care about is the rule of
law and the basic facts of the case (which make it possible for you to
analogize the case law to a new fact situation). While the details may
therefore seem useless because class participation doesnt count for
anything (unless the professor specifically says otherwise), I think
making a strong effort during the first weeks of class will give you a good
reputation with the professor, which as noted above will help if/when you
need to get a letter of recommendation. Getting top grades in a class will
secure you a decent letter of rec, but getting top grades and developing a
strong personal relationship will score you an excellent one. Professors
want to help students who are engaged in their class and who are willing
to play by the rules that they establish early-on. Once again, Im someone
who prefers to err on the side of caution. I have no idea if my personal
relationships will be worth a damn when it comes time to weigh my
transfer application against everyone elses, but I dont think theyll will
hurt.

During the hours between classes, I would work on my outlines for each
class which didnt meet that day, so that I was getting a little bit of each
class every day. This meant that I didnt get to hang out in the student
lounge and small-talk, but in my opinion this was a sacrifice worth
making. My schedule both semesters happened to work out so that some
days I finished around lunchtime. On these days I would start my
schedule in the same manner- read my assignments for the next classes,
and outline the classes which hadnt met that day (once again working
until all of the work that needed to be accomplished was finished). If this
was accomplished before 7pm (as it often was on these short days), I
would spend an extra few hours tweaking outlines or memorizing
flashcards (see below). Once again, I never deviated by giving myself a
shorter work-day; while I might end up going 7am-9pm, I never shut it
down at 4pm just because Id breezed through a couple of assignments-
there was always more work to be done.

Because I outlined and completed my assignments every day, my

weekends were completely free to work with supplements. Because I had
already read the E&Es (though I did thumb through them again during the
semester as needed), most of my supplement work involved either an
array of supplements or close reading of a single supplement if the author
of the casebook had written one (i.e. we used the Dressler casebook for
Crim, so I used his understanding criminal law book as the exclusive
supplement for that class. For Civ Pro, our book had no partner
supplement, so I gathered up as many resources as I could find,
eventually using the students guide to the FRCP, Richard Freers book,
glannon, and acing civil procedure.).

What I endeavored to do was read the supplement in advance of the

weeks reading and lecture, so that I could outline the broad strokes over
the weekend, fill it in with specific cases as I read them, and then update
it during class (this updating involved both cutting out superfluous
information that the prof didnt end up covering, and supplementing
information which Id failed to outline. The latter situation almost never
occurred- I took maybe 5 pages of in-class notes per class, per semester,
because I had already covered everything in my outline before class. This
was helpful both because I wasnt scrambling to write down everything
that the prof said, and because during class discussions I knew exactly
where we were headed and could absorb whatever new knowledge the
professor was throwing out there without trying to get my bearings at the
same time. Some students recommended using an old student-made
outline keyed to the class for just this reason, but I found that my
absorption was much better when I started from scratch.).

I also listened to the sum and substance and law school legends audio
tapes for all of my classes (usually during my daily run), and watched the
bar bri videos towards the end of the semester (Im not a bar bri rep or
anything, but if you sign up for their program, your login allows you
access to their commercial outlines, and a pretty awesome set of lectures
by people like Richard Freer (Civ Pro) and Chemerinsky (Con Law)).
These were helpful for big picture stuff, but its honestly hard to say
whether I could have done without them or not.

Another important thing Id recommend is a real mindblower- make sure

you go to class and actually pay attention. My friends pointed out that I
probably could have gotten away with not going to class, since I didnt
really take notes and was doing the work regardless of whether I might
get called on, but I disagree. I think there is something very useful about
going to class, forcing your brain to engage the material, making sure that
you can follow exactly where the prof is going and why, and of course
verifying that whatever you took from the supplements lines up with what
the prof is teaching. I will admit that attending every class (at my school
they dont give you a gold star on your transcript for perfect attendance,
but maybe at yours they will) served to distance me further from the
majority of my classmates. So many people either skip class entirely, or
sit in class and daydream, g-chat, or play videogames. This makes
absolutely no sense to me- youre paying big money for tuition, and
basically mortgaging your future for a law degree. Even if youre on a
full-ride, youre setting aside three years of earning potential to go to
school. Youre likely hoping that after graduation you will get a big law
job that will force you to sit at a desk and pay attention for between fifty
and eighty hours a week. If you cant summon the determination to get
yourself out of bed, into the classroom, and to pay attention for fifteen
hours of class a week, what makes you think that things will be any
different once you graduate and get a job? Maybe youll figure out how
to turn it on once you get there, but it seems like modern big-law attrition
rates dont really favor people who cant stay awake at their desks.

Ending that rant, lets run a quick breakdown regarding the difference
between open and closed book exams; for closed book exams I didnt
make an outline, while for open book I made detailed outlines- crazy
right? For closed book exams, instead of an outline, I made lots and lots
of flash cards. The first flash card in a series would have the case name,
and all of its facts (for some classes we were required to know who wrote
the opinion, what year it was, and so-forth, so the cards would obviously
include this info as well), its rule and its holding. This information would
be supplemented by whatever useful additional info I pulled from the
supplements (how the case might have advanced the law, etc.).
Subsequent flashcards would have whatever ancillary material might be
attached to the case (restatement provisions, specific rule formulations
taken from the case, etc.), so that I basically had an outline which was in
flashcard form. I would make these flashcards each day as I read,
memorizing them during the outlining time I set aside for that class.
Because I stayed regimented, the overall burden was relatively low
compared to what it could have been (con law, for example, was a beast
of a class, with over 120 cases. If I had tried to memorize this much
during finals I would have been overwhelmed, whereas learning 10 or so
a week wasnt that big a deal.).
Once again, like my other tips, I acknowledge this might have been a bit
extreme. For at least 3 of my exams I didnt end up having my raw score
curved at all (which seems sort of unfair since I never got a 100 on an
exam), meaning that I would likely have received the same score even if
Id been slightly less intense in my preparations. In contracts for
example I ended up with a raw score of 192/200 (which netted me a 96),
while the guy who finished behind me had a raw score of 175/200 (which
resulted in a 95 after the curve). My math isnt great but it seems like in
this case I didnt get curved at all, while he got almost 10 points on the
back-end. I guess most schools arent willing to fail people, meaning that
someone in my position can wind up screwing themselves out of the
benefit of a curve by far outpacing everyone else.

For open book exams, I spent a lot more time really organizing things,
researching the more obscure areas of the law, and pre-drafting answers.
In Civ Pro for example, guess what? Theres going to be a question on
subject matter jurisdiction, theres going to be one on personal
jurisdiction, and theres going to be an Erie question. Therell be joinder,
res judicata, amendment to pleadings- you get the point. The facts are
going to be different in your exam hypos, but you can draft model
answers for yourself which will save you time on the actual exam. Even if
youre not allowed to bring canned answers in with you, writing them out
in advance will help make their reproduction automatic once the actual
exam rolls around. Our exam software had a word count, and across 8
substantive exams I produced an average of 2,700 words an hour. On a 3-
hour exam this translated to 8,100+ word essays, which wouldnt have
been possible if I didnt both know the law cold and have articulately
drafted statements of it ready. Having the ability to spot the issue, kick it
to autopilot in terms of what the law is, and follow this up by the actual
heavy lifting of applying law to fact-pattern will give you more time to
either search your outline or draft a well composed response when the
oddball question does happen to pop up.

The final thing, before I get into my finals prep, is to suggest that you eat
well and work out during 1L year. First of all, love it or hate it, people
who look better are going to do better at OCI. Im not telling you to
complete P-90X first semester, to shell out money for that rhinoplasty
youve always wanted, or to drop 30lbs. Rather Im suggesting you put
enough into your physical well-being that you dont end up catching a
glance of yourself five minutes before your first interview and wondering
who the hells staring back at you from the mirror. If youre looking
good, youre going to be more confident, youre going to fill out your suit
better, and subconsciously the interviewer is going to find you more
appealing.
Also, keeping yourself in shape keeps you sharper mentally, keeps you
healthy (i.e. minimizes the chance that youre going to catch a nasty
illness right around finals), and will make you feel happier in general.
Working out is a great stress-reliever and as a 1L youre going to need
stress relief. The same goes for eating right. Im not saying you need to
be cooking up gourmet stuff everyday, but by the same token a daily
pizza delivery aint ideal either. Eat an occasional salad, go to the gym for
a run a few times a week, and youre going to end up being mentally and
physically sharper come exam time.

To cap it off, heres how my non-finals schedule basically shook out for a
given day (I basically stuck with a 7am to 7pm schedule every day,
Monday-Friday).

7am wake up, high-protein breakfast

8am head to school
9am class 1
10am outline class 4 (or memorize flashcards if closed book)
11am class 2
12pm work on LRW crap
1pm class 3
2pm read for class 1
3:30pm read for class 2 (or memorize flashcards if closed book)
5pm read for class 3
7pm gym
8:00pm dinner
11pm sleep

Heres what a general Saturday-Sunday looked like-

8am wake up, make breakfast

9am class 1 (or 3) supplement/flashcard work
12pm lunch
1pm class 2 (or 4) supplement/flashcard work
3pm gym
4:30pm class LRW work
7pm dinner/drinks
11pm sleep

So those are the broad strokes of it- I basically put in ~70 hours or so of
weekly study time for the semester (including time in class), which I
think was a pretty reasonable number. Not quite as crazy as things could
have gone, but enough to stay pretty busy, get a good grasp on the
material, leave room for hitting the gym, and going to sleep early. Most of
all never skipping a day helped make my life tolerable for finals.

Final Exams

In my case, I had done such consistent work at the beginning of the

semester that finals werent that huge a deal. Some of my friends were
crying about pulling all-nighters, exhausting themselves with 3 hours of
sleep a night, and basically running on fumes by the time exams were
over- not me. I had my outlines done (or flashcards memorized), which
allowed me to focus my time on actually taking practice exams and
getting my fingers into shape for all the typing I was about to do. Step
number 1 is to get every old exam that your professors have available. I
would recommend doing this ASAP, and looking through the exam well
in advance of finals (though I wouldnt recommend actually taking an
exam until youve finished with your outlines) to get an idea for what the
profs style of testing is. This should help you with outlining and/or
memorization, and with paying attention in class (are there certain topics
that the prof always seems to weight heavily in his/her exams?) Some
profs wont release old exams until the end of the semester (for the same
reason that I dont recommend taking practice exams until youve learned
all the material- people see they dont know whats on the old exam, they
get overwhelmed, and their confidence is shot.), but other than badgering
upperclassmen for copies of their old exams Im not sure what you can do
to work around this.

Next, locate other exams well in advance of the exam period. You can
never have too many exams to practice with, so grab fifteen or twenty if
you can find them (in other words, find and print out more exams than
you could possibly go through during the exam period). http://www.top-
law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=122453 provides a list
of exams from the T100 schools, and even though most of them are
password protected there are a few which you can access. I found that
most of my profs only offered one or two old exams, which was
insufficient for my requirements. What I sought to do was find other
exams which seemed comparable in what they were testing on (fact
patterns, writing style, actual substantive content), and then to take these
exams as well. While I could have accessed other exams at my own
school, theyre kept in hard copy which would have required a lot more
time than scrolling through exams online which could be done whenever
a free bit of time presented itself. Collect exams well in advance of your
reading week, so that youre not wasting time searching for old tests
when you should be taking practice exams.
Third, a word on multiple choice. I had several classes which utilized
multiple choice (a few which counted for 50% of the exam grade), and of
course professors dont put their old multiple choice questions online. I
assume this is because they dont like to re-write new questions each
year, but maybe theres a less lazy reason than this that I just cant think
of. In any case, for classes where multiple choice was going to be tested, I
bought The Glannon Guide, the Questions & Answers book,
Siegels, and Emanuels, (I THINK these are all the multiple choice
books out there, though if anyone knows of others please let me know). I
did every question in these books, and unsurprisingly I performed very
well on multiple choice sections come exam time. I never bothered with
going through the process of timing myself while doing multiple-choice
questions, and would usually just answer the question in my head and
then verify it was correct (as opposed to filling out a scantron and then
checking all of my answers), though this may not work for everyone.

A good hint that I saw in someone elses guide was to front-load studying
so that youre working hard on your last exam from day 1. Like the
semester itself, final exams are a marathon, and by the end most people
are dragging ass and dont feel like studying (or their brains are just too
burned out to be effective). By scheduling study time for your last final at
the beginning of your reading week (assuming you have one), youre
getting a huge leg up on the competition. First semester, the only
substantive class I didnt CALI/Book was my first exam. My grades
increased on each subsequent exam, which I doubt was true for most
people. Im sure this was partially the result of my getting over opening-
day nerves, but Im sure it also had to do with my performing at a
consistently high level from first exam to last, while other people tapered
off as the days went on. Remember- law school exams are graded on a set
curve. The worse other people do the better your grades will be (and the
worse youll need to do to get top grades. See also my whining about not
benefitting from the curve in several of my classes.)

With regards to actual exam-taking advice, there isnt much that I can
offer that hasnt already been written a thousand times. Law school
requires you to read cases, remember the facts of these cases, understand
the law or rule from the cases, and then apply this law to a hypothetical
situation. Boiling the process down into these simple terms should make
clear what writing a good exam requires- spotting the issue (i.e. the fact
pattern in the hypo that relates to a rule of law that youve studied) and
then applying the law to it. By knowing the general facts of every case
youve read, you can spot an issue, explain how it is similar to a previous
case, explain how it is different from a previous case, and then make a
recommendation about how the court will/should rule.

With those tips in mind, I basically ran the same general schedule as I did
during the semester (i.e. law stuff from 7am to 7pm, 7 days a week),
allocating an even number of hours between each class (when taking into
account the entire exam period). I broke my schedule up so that
(especially towards the beginning of the reading period) I bounced
between subjects, and between essay and multiple choice questions, so I
wouldnt get bored. Also, on exam days I would usually stop studying at
around 3pm to relax, watch a movie, and catch my breath (I probably
wouldnt have felt comfortable doing this if I hadnt worked so hard over
the semester). A basic schedule during reading week and early in the
exam schedule (by the time the 3rd and 4th exams run around there arent
many subject left to split your time between) would look like this:

7am wake up/breakfast

8am Torts multiple choice/essay
9am Contracts essay/multiple choice
10am Civ pro multiple choice/essay
11am Crim essay/multiple choice
12pm lunch
1pm multiple choice (for whatever my first scheduled exam was)
2pm essay (for whatever my second scheduled exam was)
3pm Gym
4pm multiple choice (for whatever my second scheduled exam was)
5pm flashcard work
6pm essay (for whatever my first scheduled exam was)
7pm dinner/drinks
11pm bed

Exam day schedule

6am wake up/breakfast

7am get to school
8am exam
12pm lunch
1pm gym
2pm essay/multiple choice for following exam
3pm- relax until bed.

Wrap-up

So thats basically how I spent my 1L year. In a nutshell, I recommend

prepping pretty hard during the summer before, and treating school like a
12-hour a day job, 7-days a week. Befriend your profs early, so that you
will have people that know you well when/if you earn the grades to
attempt a transfer (or if youre not interested in transferring, so that youll
have people willing and able to get you that dream clerkship. Likewise, if
you strike out landing a summer associate position youll be in good
shape to at least get an RA position for the summer.). During the semester
read supplements and outline the week prior to class, and for closed book
exams start memorizing from day 1. Get copies of your profs old exams
early in the semester, and scour around for other exams which test in a
similar fashion, so that you have a big bank of questions come finals
time. Get as many multiple choice questions as you can, because multiple
choice can be tricky, and be sure to do this well in advance of finals.