1L Success Guide: Learning the Law, Acing Your Exams, and Getting to the Top of Your Class

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Introduction

Let’s face it: For most people, law school is not a whole lot of fun.

If you don’t believe me, let’s look at the evidence: lengthy and confusing reading assignments, professors with the pedagogical acumen of boulders, annoying classmates, and worst of all, law school exams.

Law. School. Exams.

Just writing those words makes me shiver at the memory of them, especially the first-year exams.

Why must law school feel like Special Forces hazing? By the end of the first semester, you are totally beaten down mentally and physically, and then they throw the exams at you.

And, by the way, who is hiding the keys to the kingdom? Why does it feel like there is a secretive law school society that refuses to impart to you the method for actually succeeding?

I have one thing to say about all that: It is stupid nonsense.

That is why I wrote this book. It is what I wish I could have read before I started law school.

Inside these pages I will show you how to prepare for and succeed during your first semester of law school, which culminates with those terrifying exams. It actually is not that difficult once you know what to do. I promise.

Although the information in this book is targeted to students in their first semester of law school, this information will be useful to anyone needing some extra figuring out the law school beast. If you had a tough time your first semester and are looking for guidance to help you improve, you will find it in this book.

But first, why should you listen to me?

I remember how scared and disoriented I felt when I took my first set of law school final exams.

Even though I was a good student as an undergraduate and in graduate school (and was even a university teaching assistant), I had no idea what to expect when law school exam time came around and was completely in the dark about how to study for a form of examination I had never experienced.

My first semester of law school consisted of hours and hours studying, outlining, reviewing, practicing, and memorizing in the hope that I was doing something right. During that semester, I essentially ignored my wife and young child and gained twenty pounds from stress eating and lack of sleep. I went from the relaxed dude with a cool wife and new son, to the stressed out jerk who is always thinking about what needs to get done instead of enjoying life.

It sucked.

Then, after I took those first exams, after those two weeks of hell on earth, I was so shaken that I thought I had failed each and every exam. I could not respond to any of the questions with a solid answer, so I just tried to analyze every issue I saw (or thought I saw). My answers seemed ambiguous and unfinished.

I knew I was screwed.

Once I had completed all my first semester exams, I told my wife as I guzzled a beer how much I hated law school and how I was thinking about dropping out, returning to my prior career, and looking for a teaching position.

Here’s the rub.

When I got my grades for first semester exams, I saw that, contrary to what I believed, I had actually done very well on the tests. In fact, I was ranked first in my class!

I was super happy, but completely dumbfounded because what I thought had been poor exams turned out to be the best in the entire school. I honestly could not believe it