What they Don't Want You to Know!

Why is it that one company, selling the exact same product to the exact same market, can do so well in comparison to its competitors? The answer isn’t just luck; it’s usually because of a few well kept trade secrets. A generous supplier here, a dedicated customer there and you’ve got a company that will do well in the market. Well law school is, in effect, exactly the same. The more ins you have in this business, the better you do in the market. The only disadvantage is that one usually doesn’t have any of these trade secrets to start off. One thing that you won’t find in business, however, is a seasoned competitor willing to divulge his or her trade secrets in order to help you out. Fortunately for you, this is not a business, and I’m not one of your competitors!

Here are a few of my “trade secrets” to help you through your first year. A word to the wise though: DO NOT use these as a way to cut corners! We all know those individuals who rely on the easy way a bit too much in life, and we all know what happens to them in the end, don’t we?

Outlines are an incredibly valuable resource in law school. Creating your own is key to doing well (mainly because the process of condensing information helps you see the forest for the trees), but many students find it useful to have an additional outline to compare to their own. Finding FREE outlines is possible, but there are also websites that charge a small fee for downloading their professional or student-made outlines. If you want to find free outlines, just spend a little bit of time on Google with different word combinations. For example: ((your professor’s last name) + (class title) + “outline”) or ((title & edition of your book) + “outline”). You might come up with a few outlines, but I, like many others, resorted to buying mine.

www.outlinedepot.com is a decent site that actually features outlines created by fellow students (and a few from yours truly!), and you can actually find outlines tailored to your specific class! Hint: when you look for outlines on this site, it gives you only about 1 page to look at to decide if you want it or not. When all else fails, look at the size of the document file. There’s a good chance that the larger it is, the more in depth it is. Also, try to find outlines created by students that had the author of your book as a professor. I believe 4 outlines run about $30 total, but if you get a group of your closest friends together, you can split the cost and everyone’s happy!

Everyone talks about “briefing”. For those of you who don’t know, briefing is basically condensing a case into its most simple form: facts, procedural history, issue, rule of law, court’s reasoning, and decision. Online briefs are available, but pay attention to the sites you get them from. Some of the BEST sites are: www.lawnix.com (torts and constitutional law are covered very thoroughly), www.macabelegal.com (which is keyed to the civil procedure book that all 1Ls use at Quinnipiac), www.masteringcontracts.com (great for general concepts, but fairly light on briefs). One other site that is useful (to a certain extent) is www.books.google.com. If you search correctly, you might be able to find one of the “keyed to” books that has in-depth case briefs. Just search for the author of your textbook + the edition number and you might find something.The ones to BEWARE OF: 4lawschool.com (just an awful site, don’t trust a word), www.wikipedia.com (you’ll get a lot about the case, but it’s not organized in a way you’ll understand), www.audiocasefiles.com (very little information provided, and it's often wrong). When all else fails, we do have access to the best legal websites on the planet… www.westlaw.com and www.lexisnexis.com. These sites have “brief it” features that will give you the important holdings according to key number (for west) and shepards (for lexis). These are excellent if you want to know the bare-bones, black letter law… but it won’t do well to explain the case for you.

Nutshells, Hornbooks, and Examples & Explanations books are your friends! I know that it might be difficult to think that you might have to read more than what you’re assigned, but believe me, you’ll be glad that you did! Some of your professors will require you to get additional materials and then never assign any reading out of those books, but the trick is, you have to use these materials at will. If these additional materials are not assigned, you can and should buy them for the courses you think will be troublesome for you (you can normally gauge this about half-way through the semester), and even for those that aren't troublesome! When you do seek out Hornbooks and Nutshells, make sure you get one that is “keyed” to your book. This just means that the books will both be arranged the same way (for the most part).

One last study aid that will be particularly useful to all you computer-based learners out there is www.cali.org.  There are a number of web-based lessons that use a series of multiple-choice questions to test your knowledge of a variety of subjects.  While it's not extremely useful as it won't give you feedback on essays, it is useful to help you spot issues and learn why your reasoning is right/wrong with each question.  You have to request QU's login password from the designated faculty member (the CALI website lists who that is), but it's free and can be a great study tool.

One tip that might not be so obvious… SACRIFICE SOME OF YOUR PERSONAL LIFE! You have to understand that this is a very difficult process, and you can’t be messing around every weekend and blowing off your reading! Skipping the reading means you’ll fall behind in class, which means you’ll fall behind on outlining, which means you’ll be playing catch-up around finals!

Try to form SMALL study groups (no more than 3 people in a group). A word of caution though: make sure your friends are of the same ability level as you are. It’s ok if one person is really good in one subject and you or someone else isn’t… it’s good to have someone to explain things to you. By that same token, it’s ok if you’re better at one subject as well. Just make sure that they’re not talking way above your head and you’re not talking way above theirs… no one will benefit because someone’s always playing catch-up. The reason the group needs to be small is so you don’t get easily distracted and start talking about unrelated things (which is pretty easy even with a group of 3).