Law School Dares, Dreams and Demons

by PASS Professor Sara J. Berman-Barrett

Welcome to law school. You are at the very beginning, there is a huge learning curve and a lot to process, and it WILL all come together in time. But it will take time. Do you believe me? I dare you to move forward, facing the demons head on, and succeeding full-throttle — graduating and passing the Bar Exam first time around.


Help! There's just too much to learn.

Start off slow. To begin with, focus on the assigned reading (and yes, briefing or writing summaries of the relevant portions of the cases from the casebooks). It will be hard enough for you to make time to attend all your classes and get the reading done. Don't be too hard on yourself if you feel like you don't understand it all. You won't for quite some time. You must get some significant chunks of substantive knowledge under your belt before you can begin thinking about flashcards and outlining—things your upper class colleagues may be constantly harping on. The former, flashcards, you'll do later on before exams to help memorize succinct rules of law and their component parts or elements. The latter, outlines, hopefully you'll write yourself to help you "pull it all together" i.e. see how the disparate rules fit together.

Bottom line, slow and steady wins the race!!! So, keep up the pace but do not necessarily accelerate until you're close to exam time. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You must save your energy for a lot of long study days ahead, and you can always crank up the energy when you need to.


How do I find Time to Study that Much?

Look at your life in weekly time frames. Pick time blocks that you can carve out and consecrate to studies. Consider allocating at least three hours outside of class for every hour you spend in class.

Hopefully, you can "post" your study schedule, so any significant people in your life can know when you are "off" and when you are "on." (And, do yourself a favor and say Good-bye to those people who are not supportive of your efforts.).

Once you dedicate the time blocks, let.s consider how to allocate your time for an effective study strategy. The reading. How to fit it all in? There's so much. Yes, there is, and if you don't need corrective lenses when you begin law school you very well may be its end. But the key is in prioritizing. You must be prepared for class (especially if you have a "Paper Chase" type professor who likes to call on and humiliate people), but you must also do the reading to understand both the big picture and the fine details.

Solution? Read casebooks and hornbooks. Am I really telling you that adding more reading will help get through what's already a massive amount? Yes! Believe it or not, those hornbooks may seem huge and daunting but often times they're clearer and easier to grasp than casebooks. Get a good hornbook (treatise) for every subject you're taking. Read the sections on those cases you are assigned to brief before you brief them and you'll find yourself much more able to zoom right in and see what's important in the cases. You will see the proverbial forest for the trees!

After classes, or at least some time before exams, incorporate into your studying further time for outlining, flashcards and other review. And, get a hold of some practice tests and do them under timed conditions. Note: If your school does not provide practice exams, consider enrolling in an outside Academic Support Program such as the one PASS offers.

Divvy up your time between "active learning" (like reading and doing practice tests) and more passive learning (such as listening to audio or video taped materials). Do the most active work during your most alert hours of the day and save the less active work for hours when you are already a bit tired.


What do they really want me to be learning?

In the big picture, there are two essentials: learning the substantive law and developing legal (reasoning and writing) skills. The law (for example of crimes, torts and contracts) you learn from a combination of class lecture and discussion, and reading cases and hornbooks. You may find that classes confuse you more than help you to understand the law. If so, turn to hornbooks for detailed summaries of all the law to master in a given subject. These are excellent places to start with learning the substantive law.

Reading cases is an analytical skill that you must develop, and law professors use the case-method as a base or springboard for learning the substantive law. Learning to read and brief cases is in and of itself a skill you must master, and lest you think it's unnecessary please understand that case briefing will also help you learn the skills you need for law testing (both multiple choice and essay writing.).

If you don't understand the cases, again, as we talked about above, try reading the section in your hornbook that discusses that case or line of cases before reading the case itself. Also read with an eye toward, "What is the main point I can draw from this case?" rather than mastering every detail of every paragraph. You can always go back and re-read but you want to make sure you're keeping up.

Also watch out for the devil every law student faces—that sleepy haze that takes over about three quarters of the way down the page where you find yourself poring over the same sentence twelve times without ever understanding it. (Been there!) Try reading aloud to help you stay "into" something when you are zoning out, or try the colored pencil technique. (Use one color for issues, another for holdings, another for key facts, another for dicta, etc.). The key is to stay alert, so experiment and see what works for you.


Grades: I thought I was a good student

Please do not be surprised (and do not worry), and do not spend one minute being down on yourself if you find your first grades are not your highest. Your previous studies (before law school) may have involved your always or frequently getting the "A" or best grade, but please consider that especially in your first year of law school, getting C's is excellent! The ultimate object is to PASS. (Remember, the Bar Exam is a pass/fail test!)

Try revising your *goal* and think of it as passing rather than getting an A. And, if you do practice tests, you will be able to use them as diagnostics to give you the early opportunity to learn what you need to improve on before the bigger exams. (Finals, and if you have them, midterms.) And again, if your school does not provide practice exams for you to write, sign up now for a good Academic Support Program.

Remember, it's easy to call anything a disaster. But the key to succeeding is re-framing every effort as a learning opportunity. If you see why you got the score you got and how to improve, you will succeed.


I really want to be a lawyer, but I'm not sure I'm cut out for it any more. Everyone else knows more than I do.

Let me reassure you that your thoughts are very normal, and very much in line with what everyone who is honest with him or herself thinks about from time to time in this process.

This is the big time. You're in law school. You're preparing to be responsible for peoples' lives and livelihoods. It's not supposed to be easy. You are in your first year. It WILL all come together in time but it will take time. Most important, keep moving forward. After a while you will see that some of the people you thought were so smart were faking it, or blustering, and you will have just as much knowledge if not way more. As in any other field, there are great smart lawyers and many who are not either of those. Your humility though, will steer you on a course to always strive to improve, to ask questions when you don't know the answers, and to be the best you can be.

Know that you answered the most important question, though. Do you want to be here? A resounding YES! And, you are miles ahead, by acknowledging so clearly and powerfully how much you want to be a lawyer and how long you have wanted that. And, rest assured, law school IS a great choice. It's a phenomenal education, and you will be able to use your law degree and training to do whatever you want to do, within a traditional legal career track or in something entirely different. All it can bring you is opportunity and potential Cand credibility. Do not underestimate how differently people will look at you when you have completed this course of study. It's empowering in a most amazing way.


So, there you have it. And, again, Welcome to law school! Believe it when we say, it will all come together. Slow and steady wins the race. Keep at it. Each day do your best and you'll get there. Dream the dreams and face the demons head on. I dare you!