Strategies and Tactics for the First Year Law Student gives you a detailed, step-by-step program for thriving in the first year of law school. Note-taking—Sharpening your note-taking skills to maximize your study time and improve your grades Your law professor--Understanding what they want you to do Effective studying—Study smarter, not harder Memory aids—How to memorize the law Law School Stress—Effective techniques for handling the pressure Taking exams—The steps to writing exceptional exam answers New to the Second Edition: Guidance to help provide students with a positive outlook Tips for balancing life and school When to seek academic accommodations Staying motivated Updated to reflect where students are likely to start in the semester Overview of new technologies
Strategies and Tactics for the First Year Law Student gives you a detailed, step-by-step program for surviving the first year of law school. Note-taking--Sharpening your note-taking skills will maximize your study time and improve your grades Your law professor's personality--Understanding it can be to your advantage Study traps--What are they and how to avoid them Memory aids--How classic memory systems work and when you should (and shouldn't) use them The pressures of law school--Effective techniques for handling the pressure from classmates, professors, and reading assignments Taking exams--Nine steps to writing exceptional exam answers The Internet--Useful search engines and websites
Strategies and Tactics for the First Year Law Student gives you a detailed, step-by-step program for surviving the first year of law school. The pressures of law school - Effective techniques for handling the stress created by classmates, professors
Strategies and Tactics for the First Year Law Student gives you a detailed, step-by-step program for thriving in the first year of law school. Note-taking—Sharpening your note-taking skills to maximize your study time and improve your grades Your law professor--Understanding what they want you to do Effective studying—Study smarter, not harder Memory aids—How to memorize the law Law School Stress—Effective techniques for handling the pressure Taking exams—The steps to writing exceptional exam answers New to the Second Edition: Guidance to help provide students with a positive outlook Tips for balancing life and school When to seek academic accommodations Staying motivated Updated to reflect where students are likely to start in the semester Overview of new technologies
Based on the latest research, this entertaining, practical guide offers law students a formula for success in school, on the bar exam, and as a practicing attorney. Mastering the law, either as a law student or in practice, becomes much easier if one has a working knowledge of the brain's basic habits. Before you can learn to think like a lawyer, you have to have some idea about how the brain thinks. The first part of this book translates the technical research, explaining learning strategies that work for the brain in law school specifically, and calling out other tactics that are useless (though often popular lures for the misinformed). This book is unique in explaining the science behind the advice and will save you from pursuing tempting shortcuts that will take you in the wrong direction. The second part explores the brain's decision-making processes and cognitive biases. These biases affect the ability to persuade, a necessary skill of the successful lawyer. The book talks about the art and science of framing, the seductive lure of the confirmation and egocentric biases, and the egocentricity of the availability bias. This book uses easily recognizable examples from both law and life to illustrate the potential of these biases to draw humans to mistaken judgments. Understanding these biases is critical to becoming a successful attorney and gaining proficiency in fashioning arguments that appeal to the sometimes quirky processing of the human brain. This book is part of the Context and Practice Series, edited by Michael Hunter Schwartz, Professor of Law and Dean of the McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. Your Brain and Law School was a finalist in the Best Published Self-Help and Psychology category of the 2015 San Diego Book Awards
In the Law School Survival Manual, Nancy Rapoport and Jeff Van Niel serve as the friendly voice of experience whose wit and wisdom will guide you through law school from the application process to orientation, and from your first year to graduation - including summer jobs, clerkships, and the bar exam. This concise handbook focuses on all aspects of law school that are mystifying or tricky or both. The Law School Survival Manual: From LSAT to Bar Exam offers complete coverage, Before law school What you'll need before you apply Picking the right law school for you Orientation Your checklist for law school First year Collegiality and etiquette Friendships, romance, and networking The psychology of law professors Reading cases and statutes Outlining and studying Preparing for essay and multiple-choice exams Choosing upper-level courses Managing your time and scheduling your life Exploring joint-degree program opportunities Finding and applying for a summer job Landing a judicial clerkship Studying for the bar exam and the MPRE With reassuring humor and unique perspectives, Nancy Rapoport and Jeff Van Niel show you how to cope with stress, manage your time, study efficiently, nurture new friendships, write a paper, prepare for exams, and make sound decisions - in law school and beyond.
Professors Fischl and Paul explain law school exams in ways no one has before, all with an eye toward improving the reader’s performance. The book begins by describing the difference between educational cultures that praise students for “right answers,” and the law school culture that rewards nuanced analysis of ambiguous situations in which more than one approach may be correct. Enormous care is devoted to explaining precisely how and why legal analysis frequently produces such perplexing situations. But the authors don’t stop with mere description. Instead, Getting to Maybe teaches how to excel on law school exams by showing the reader how legal analysis can be brought to bear on examination problems. The book contains hints on studying and preparation that go well beyond conventional advice. The authors also illustrate how to argue both sides of a legal issue without appearing wishy-washy or indecisive. Above all, the book explains why exam questions may generate feelings of uncertainty or doubt about correct legal outcomes and how the student can turn these feelings to his or her advantage. In sum, although the authors believe that no exam guide can substitute for a firm grasp of substantive material, readers who devote the necessary time to learning the law will find this book an invaluable guide to translating learning into better exam performance. “This book should revolutionize the ordeal of studying for law school exams… Its clear, insightful, fun to read, and right on the money.” — Duncan Kennedy, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Harvard Law School “Finally a study aid that takes legal theory seriously… Students who master these lessons will surely write better exams. More importantly, they will also learn to be better lawyers.” — Steven L. Winter, Brooklyn Law School “If you can't spot a 'fork in the law' or a 'fork in the facts' in an exam hypothetical, get this book. If you don’t know how to play 'Czar of the Universe' on law school exams (or why), get this book. And if you do want to learn how to think like a lawyer—a good one—get this book. It's, quite simply, stone cold brilliant.” — Pierre Schlag, University of Colorado School of Law (Law Preview Book Review on The Princeton Review website) Attend a Getting to Maybe seminar! Click here for more information.
This extraordinary paperback provides a highly accessible and appealing orientation to the American legal system and presents basic concepts of civil litigation to first-year law students. Whose Monet? An Introduction to the American Legal System focuses on a lengthy dispute over the ownership of a painting as a vehicle for introducing students to the basic law school tasks of reading analytically, understanding legal materials, and working with the common law. The author and his colleagues have used these materials successfully in their classrooms for many years, ensuring their teachability and effectiveness: Whose Monet? can be used as primary course material in orientation courses or seminars, as well as collateral reading for in-semester Legal Process or Civil Procedure courses The organization is logical and straightforward and the accessible writing style--lucid, descriptive, and conversational--is ideal for incoming students The major events in a lawsuit are considered, and the text sheds light on how the law is applied in a civil dispute, introducing common law and statutory law and the various courts and their interrelationship (trial/appellate, state/federal) The author draws on judicial opinions, litigation papers, transcripts, and selections from commentators and various jurisprudential sources, thereby exposing the first-year student to as broad a spectrum of materials as possible Telling the story of a real lawsuit (DeWeerth v. Baldinger)--from client intake through trial and various appeals--draws students into the legal process by means of an engaging narrative and makes for a truly enjoying teaching experience for professors The lawyer's role is examined in both its functional and moral dimensions: What do lawyers do? What does society legitimately expect lawyers to do? This book is suitable for both classroom and stand-alone assigned reading
There are two kinds of knowledge law school teaches: legal rules on the one hand, and tools for thinking about legal problems on the other. Although the tools are far more interesting and useful than the rules, they tend to be neglected in favor of other aspects of the curriculum. In The Legal Analyst, Ward Farnsworth brings together in one place all of the most powerful of those tools for thinking about law. From classic ideas in game theory such as the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” and the “Stag Hunt” to psychological principles such as hindsight bias and framing effects, from ideas in jurisprudence such as the slippery slope to more than two dozen other such principles, Farnsworth’s guide leads readers through the fascinating world of legal thought. Each chapter introduces a single tool and shows how it can be used to solve different types of problems. The explanations are written in clear, lively language and illustrated with a wide range of examples. The Legal Analyst is an indispensable user’s manual for law students, experienced practitioners seeking a one-stop guide to legal principles, or anyone else with an interest in the law.
