Steven C. Buitron - Succeeding at Law School: A Quick and Easy Guide

ISBN: 9781628470444

INTRODUCTION

Before I actually get into the introduction to this short book please note that the sub-title says that the guide is quick and easy not law school. That said however law school doesnt have to be the nightmare some students make it out to be. Read and apply what follows and youll be fine and do well in law school and most importantly youll make yourself proud.

Although I fully realize that actually getting into law school is quite an ordeal in itself, but now that youve made it this far its very important that you develop a few important habits and skills in order to ensure that you do well. After all you are investing a huge amount of money and time in this venture so you should do everything you can to make sure your investment pays off. You need to learn and apply these essential habits and skills now, before you start classes, you wont have time to learn them as you go because, before you know it, your 1L first semester exams will come around and failure or even doing just average is not an option. This book will help you, read it, learn it and apply its principles and not only will you become a successful law student but youll also save yourself a ton of future career related heartache and misery.

Youve probably heard this before, but its worth reading again law school is not like undergraduate school. Attending classes is not optional and neither is studying or preparing for class. You cant just sit in the back of the class trying to be anonymous and slide by under the radar all semester. You must appreciate that everyone in law school was one of the smart kids in college and, due to law school grading rules; you will be in competition with every one of them for good grades. In other words your professors will likely have only a certain number of As that they can dole out in each class and so you are in direct competition with your fellow students for those coveted grades.

Remember back in undergrad school how there developed, fairly early on, a very clear hierarchy among the students in terms of their academic ability or, probably more accurately, their demonstrated academic ability? A very few kids, semester in and semester out, always received the best marks, there was a large group in the middle somewhere, and then there were those whose grades were always at the bottom. Well and it is worth repeating here all of those smart kids are exactly the ones who are with you now in law school. All those kids at the bottom and the middle in terms of grades either dropped out graduated or are working on graduate degrees in criminal justice or psychology. After the first law school exam grades are posted youll be shocked at how often youll hear cries, literal cries, from some of your fellow classmates of things like, but Ive never gotten a C before...!

Most law schools today have strict grading guidelines for their professors gone are the days when professors could hand out As and Bs at their own discretion. Law schools today expect professors to turn in grades that reflect a near perfect bell curve with very few As. Although I understand that in recent years some law schools have been inflating GPAs in order to make their graduates more attractive to potential employers. That said employers are also aware of this trend making it more vital than ever for you to be in at least the top 10% of your class in order to be competitive in the job market. I have no doubt that you have the mental chops to graduate in the top 10% of your law schools graduating class or you wouldnt have been accepted in the first place you just need to know and apply what Im about to teach you.

And again remember that virtually all of your classmates had excellent undergraduate credentials, just like you, in order to be accepted into law school so you cant rely on there being a good number of slackers and people that just dont care in order to help move you toward the top of the bell curve. There will no doubt be some attrition in your class, a few will quit and a few will flunk out, but usually not many. Make no mistake virtually every one of your law school classmates is smart, dedicated and determined to succeed. You simply cannot afford to wander into law school, wide-eyed and ignorant, and expect to muddle your way through classes and exams just because that worked in undergrad school.

Finally, also unlike undergrad school, there tends to be much less of a collegial atmosphere in class and around campus law students are much more focused and driven. The savvy ones understand right from the beginning that they must do well the very first semester in order to become and remain a top flight student near the top of the class. Because, even if youre lucky enough to attend a first tier law school, employers still only tend to be interested in the top 5 to 10 percent of the graduating class. After that the pickings for good jobs become very slim and you might end up making 30K at a non-profit or even worse working at a job in another field. Once you go down that road recovering and obtaining a job with a firm, if thats what youre looking for, becomes very difficult.

Even in light of all the above, if you develop and maintain good habits right from the beginning, you can do well and live up to your full potential as a student and prospective lawyer. Its not easy, but if you were looking for easy you would have gone to medical school, right?

CHAPTER 1

THE LAW STUDENT MINDSET

As you will soon discover the workload in law school is huge. Typically you can expect 50 to 75 pages of assigned reading a night and since, most schools still use the Socratic method of teaching, you must be prepared. Of course in addition to after class reading assignments there will be in-class time where you will be required to take careful notes as you discuss the previously assigned material. All in all you can expect to be involved, between actual time in class and study, in class-related work 50 to 60 hours per week.

Obviously where you fall within that estimate will depend a lot on your individual ability and study habits, but you will quickly learn that to do things right to be prepared and to keep up you will have to devote a significant amount of time to your studies. You will quickly notice that there will be some fellow students who always seem to be out in the quad throwing Frisbees during the day and out drinking at night. A very few of these will simply be brilliant individuals and will still do well, but the vast majority are merely laboring under the delusion that they can cram for classes and exams and just slide by under the radar. Unfortunately for them they will also slide by under the radar from potential employers when, if they do at all, they graduate near the bottom of the class.

This is where developing and maintaining the proper mindset for law school comes in. What you need to do is treat law school like a job. In other words you must just come to terms with the fact that you will need to spend between 50 to 60 hours a week, on average, in class and study. The best way to psychologically come to terms with the reality of your time commitment requirements in law school is to treat it like a job a full time job. If you have had a job before you know that when thinking about your work week you automatically factored in the time you would be spending at work and you made your plans accordingly. So essentially the time that you had to devote to work 40 hours or whatever was a given. Your time at work was not a suggested 40 plus hours or 40 hours if you could find the time in your schedule, but was an actual 40 hours that you had to do in order to get paid and maintain your employment.