Before 1L, I read the “LEEWS” primer and “Law School: Getting In, Getting Good, Getting the Gold” by Thane Messinger. Some of the advice in the books seemed crazy at the time, but I followed them both and ended up in the top 10% of the class after first year. Also, I think I spent a lot less time studying than most. Here is a basic summary:

1. Before classes begin, buy a commercial outline for each class (I recommend Emanuel). You will use these as sort of a textbook for the class.

2. When preparing for class, first read the syllabus and see what subject matter the professor will be going over that day. Quickly skim through the assigned pages in your casebook and jot down some of the main headings. Locate this subject matter in your commercial outline and read it thoroughly.

3. Use the commercial outline to prepare an outline for the material you will be going over in the next class. Outlines should be started the first week of class and much of your study time should be spent working on and refining it.

4. After preparing your outline, quickly read/scan the assigned cases. Do not worry much about the facts but see why the case was put in the book and make sure that relevant piece of law is in your outline. If your professor uses the Socratic Method and you are worried about getting called on, summarize each case in 2-4 sentences in your notes. However, if you do the work above, you should be able to handle anything the professor throws at you.

5. During class, do NOT take any notes. Especially do not write down other students comments or tangents the professor might go off on in answering other students questions. Your time in class should be spent listening to the professor and perfecting your outline.

6. After your have gone over a full unit in class (such as negligence), get your hands on every old exam/hypos you can find and practice writing essays using the LEEWS method. (I also recommend the Explanation and Examples Series and CALI Lessons)

7. At the end of the semester, while other students are stressing out over making their outlines, you will have a refined 20-30 page outline filled with everything you need for the exam. During the two weeks before finals, make an “attack outline” where you narrow your 20-30 page outline down to 2-3 pages of main points of law. Whether the exam is closed or open book, memorize the attack outline completely to either trigger your memory if the exam is closed book or to know where to look if the exam is open book.

Just as 0L prep, I think study methods are highly individualized. Not only are study methods individualized, you will have to customize for each professor.

For instance, my Contracts professor wanted to know finite details about facts of the case. He purposefully does that so people will not rely on the commercial outlines. 2-3 sentences in my notes about a case would not be sufficient for that class.

Again, how you study will be individual to you. What worked for me, or Anna, or heck even Thane, may not work for you. I read Law School Confidential and used some of the methods it recommends. It took some time and trial and error, but I had to figure out the best thing for me and how I learn. Not to brag, but I did really well my first year. I'm on Law Review next year, which is strictly grade on at my school. But again, what worked for me would not work for everyone. Find how you learn and go with it. Forget what everyone tells you to do. Trust your instincts.

Anna & All -
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How do we know? Because the correlation between effort (e.g., studying, outlining, color-coding, whatever) and result (i.e., grades) is so low. My reading of your response confirms this (in my mind) rather than disputes it. The only students who have a decent grasp when walking out of an exam of how well they did are the students who have learned how to think like a lawyer (before the exam). This might seem like a throwaway (if not an insult), but I can tell you from reading essay after essay that most law students do *not* know how, and they certainly do not know how well enough to write a cogent, concise evaluation of a fresh set of facts.
...

With aloha,

Thane.

Anna & All -
The danger, and where I do disagree, is in the idea that "law school really isn't that different." It is. It really is.

In law school, all that changes. Among the reasons I'm increasingly so firm in these convictions is a basic, indisputable fact: for the first time in most students' lives, the competition in law school is real, and for the first time, it's a "fair fight." Thus, for the first time, the ways in which we learn DO matter.

Thane, would if be possible to post an example, or point to a good one, of what thinking like a lawyer means in the context of an exam. Perhaps a short exam hypo and what you think is an "A" response?

I went to "Entering Students Day" this week and had a great time. While not the oldest guy in the 1L class I am up there! I had a chance to talk to many 2Ls and one thing surprised me -- they said there was at least one prof who actually kicks students out of class if he feels they are not prepared. You are only allowed a certain number of absences and you get an administrative "F." It seems the school's philosophy is to "encourage" preparation of case material. How would the LEEWS approach work in this circumstance?

Orientation is in August. I am very excited about getting underway.

Regards,
Howard

As for the "decent grasp when walking out of an exam of how well they did" - I don't really buy this either, because how well you do on an exam is dependent on what everyone else does. If everyone adopted the "perfect" study system, someone would still have to be at the bottom of the curve. So a decent grasp of how well they *knew the material on the exam* is NOT the same as having a decent grasp of how well they *did.*

Which I think gets to my last point (which I think I've raised before) - I think we're kind of talking at cross-purposes because getting good grades in law school and learning how to be a good lawyer aren't the same thing. Maybe they should be, but until they are, and until getting good grades *isn't* necessary (though not sufficient) for having the most opportunities opened up to you actually to get jobs that will teach you how to be a good lawyer, my focus is going to be on the grades.

Well I'm a OL and I've just been lurking on this particular thread for that very reason. I wanted to glean what I could from other view points, but Thane has inspired me to chime in by mentioning a point on which I very much agree with him. American education has gone very, very wrong. Please don't anyone thing I'm arguing with any individual here-- I'm cantankerous in general it's not targeted. I am, however, skeptical of the notion that guides or methodologies are usesless because everyone is different.

I have spent all of my adult life trapped in some higher education context or another. For me this next three years, I hope, will take me away from the wretched mess once and for all. Although I'm sure my partner's career will continue to slop over into my consciousness now and again. I am reminded, more often than is healthy, of poor Addie Bundren in As I Lay Dying teaching in a country school house and yearning to flee her students and run down a hill to the spring, "where I could be quiet and hate them." When it comes to today's undergraduate students, I declare in quiet seclusion the same sentiment. I hate them.

Now before you panic, and contact the authorities, let me explain. I don't hate them as individuals. Most often I like them as individuals. But as a group they have a set of expectations that are repugnant, they are so steeped in postmodern relativism, that cannot conceive of objective criteria as fair.

I once had a student protest the fact that I had graded her paper based on the same standards I had applied to her classmates papers. This, she explained, was unfair because she had missed so much class and she didn't know the same things they knew. How was I supposed to evaluate her paper? Well, see it was really her opinion about a certain poem, and you can't grade an opinion, so why not just give her an A. That would be the fair thing to do, as it would account for her special circumstances as a person with a poor attendance record, and a uniquely ungradeable world view. It did not matter that she had confused Ann Bradstreet with Anne Hutchinson, read what was obviously a Wikipedia biography of Hutchinson and used that woman's life experience as a lens through which to interpret Bradstreet's poem. To hold her accountable for a factual historical error was to grade her on her opinion.

Sooo. . . what's this got to do with studying? Well I guess it's just that I hereby resolve to use the expression "for me" less often. I don't know if there's one best way to study, but I do believe that EVERYONE could have written a better paper than the above described student by coming to class.

I don't yet know what method I'll use, but I am determined to find it by evaluating the logic and efficiency of different methos-- and I guess that includes taking into account my own history as a learner, but I refuse to believe I am "special" in that obnoxious way that so many of today's undergrads do.

Now I'm starting to think my previous post seems too arrogant, though I do believe what I was saying. I wanted to add that I do totally appreciate Anna's point that anything that seems to present itslef as a "one-size-fits-all" sort of guide to doing well, is probably not going to actually work for everyone. I guess I just don't think it's because we're all different as much as it is because formulaic approaches can never anticipate every need or situation. Anyway, I didn't mean to come off quite so sourly as I probably did.

But Thane, it seems that the reason you give for following your system over all others is that the other systems don't teach people to be lawyers. Whereas I'm arguing that other methods can earn students good grades, because I've seen it.

The format of exams is designed purely to be able to rank students, not to help anyone learn anything or effectively measure learning.

What law school exams (and law school generally) don't do is provide a gauge of practical, meaningful knowledge of an area of the law.

But being a lawyer is different. Those issue spotting exercises come up all of the time. Applying and weighing moderately congruent facts to the law is a common practice. Does it all have to be done in 3 hours? No. But time is money.

Are there great lawyers who were never able to put together a good law school exam? Almost definitely. But we're not talking about outliers; we're talking about "standardized" measures, which by definition won't address outliers. That's just the way things go sometimes.

But Thane, it seems that the reason you give for following your system over all others is that the other systems don't teach people to be lawyers. Whereas I'm arguing that other methods can earn students good grades, because I've seen it. If grades actually are a measure of being able to be a good lawyer, then why don't other methods that help students get good grades also teach students to be lawyers? And if students are getting good grades because of the curve, then how can grades actually be that symptom you describe them as? One of the things I've seen law profs talk about on a number of occasions is not that there's a gulf between A students and everyone else, but that it's difficult to create the distinctions that the curve requires, because exams are frequently so similar.

Also, I don't think the content of exams is arbitrary. I think the format is artificial: sitting in a room with 50 other people at 8 in the morning for 3 hours without being able to consult other people or anything other than what you bring into the room while you engage in a typing speed test because the easiest way for the professor to create a test that allows them to distinguish between answers is simply to put too much information into the exam for most people to be able to address it all in three hours. How does that remotely resemble the way lawyers are asked to work? Plus, pedagogically speaking, giving one exam at the end of the semester is a terrible method for helping students learn. The format of exams is designed purely to be able to rank students, not to help anyone learn anything or effectively measure learning.

(I do actually agree that there are a few sizes that fit most. It's not that there are *infinite* ways for people to study successfully - just that there are a number of techniques most likely to be useful to a large number of people, and there can be quite a lot of mixing-and-matching of those to create effective study regimes.)

It’s doubtful, however, that any other conventional exam would be better.

So, I write this in full support of proper team work. Yet again we’re presented with a problem: how do we ensure that each individual is really contributing to that team, is not riding on another’s coattails, and will be able to replicate that contribution elsewhere?

In education, this is the thesis (now assumption, based in precious little empirical evidence), that different learning styles create measureable and insurmountable obstacles to common learning. In short, each precious student (except the vast middle and top) must be accorded the utmost respect for their individual prefer...needs.

This is what I read when I see "there's no right way to study!" Sure there is. There may be several right ways, but there are, equally, better ways, and there are worse ways.

But Thane, it seems at least to me that this debate arises every time the subject comes up because you are the one arguing that there is a right way to study - the one you advocate in your book - whereas the rest of us are saying there are several right ways. Just because we can all identify "worse" ways to study (and I'd love to know which of the approaches people have identified as actually using themselves count as "worse" ways) doesn't mean we're saying ALL methods are good. We're simply saying there are several right ways.

Which is why I wouldn't advocate a change to other conventional exams. (3 hours, 8 hours, whatever.) I'd add a series of graded assignments over the course of the semester, that require students to actually apply the material in the class (don't you think it would be helpful for students in Civ Pro to have to draft a complaint?)

There are ways to do this - undergraduate programs in some disciplines and MBA programs make extensive use of group work and manage to assess the work just fine - often doing things like having students write evaluations of each other and describe the work that each member of the team has done. Just because law profs haven't done it doesn't mean it can't be done. And, realistically, one thing people who work in groups will have to learn is how to deal with the slackers.

I really don't think this is true. There are about four major learning styles (not infinite ones), and the idea isn't that a student who tends to learn in a certain way needs to be coddled and accommodated. The idea is that if a student tends to be a visual learner, for instance, the student can apply this knowledge to their own learning in their study (maybe by drawing flowcharts rather than traditional outlining, instead of struggling with written outlines that are harder for them). Also, the idea is that it improves teaching for *everyone* to think about presenting material in a variety of ways, where appropriate and possible.

(It's another thing entirely if you're talking about actual documented learning disabilities, which is a whole other ball of wax.)

But Thane, it seems at least to me that this debate arises every time the subject comes up because you are the one arguing that there is a right way to study - the one you advocate in your book - whereas the rest of us are saying there are several right ways. Just because we can all identify "worse" ways to study (and I'd love to know which of the approaches people have identified as actually using themselves count as "worse" ways) doesn't mean we're saying ALL methods are good. We're simply saying there are several right ways.

Anna,

I think the difficulty in this debate is that Thane is looking back over many years as a practitioner and professor, while you and others are still in the process of learning to be lawyers. The perspectives are different -- you are literally seeing different views of the same object.

I am just beginning the journey as well, and have zero experience in how law school study methods actually work. The debate is fascinating and frustrating. Folks in my position are saying "give us the holy grail, the secret that will make it all make sense." Obviously, there is no holy grail. But there is, for each individual, one way that is going to work better than others. The trick is to find it and find it soon enough so as not to not waste time and effort.

I made a decision to try Thane's methodology because it makes sense to me. If in actual experience I find it does not provide what I need, then I'll adjust based on my analysis of the situation.

In his book, GGG, Thane says that the law student has two responsibilities:
1. Learn the law, meaning "black letter law."
2. Learn how to use the law.

Given these parameters the goals are clear, if not easy.

Regards,
Howard