Best 2 Steps to Take Before Starting Law School

If you’re starting law school soon then you’ve probably received both solicited and unsolicited advice about how to be successful. The most common advice is to enjoy the summer before law school because very little can prepare you for the grueling experience of law school. While I understand why this advice is given, I don’t think that it is the best advice.

After a decade of helping first year law school students achieve grades allowing them to successfully compete for greater scholarships, better law school transfers, prestigious clerkships or big law careers there are two practical steps I advise anyone starting law school soon.

Aside from reading every law school student spends most of their time typing. The faster you can type without mistakes the better grades you are likely to earn. The reason for this is because law school exams are very time restrictive. Very often students who are able to type more characters earn more points. This makes sense because most of the points earned on a law school essay exam are the result of writing analysis. Typing faster means that you can fit more analysis into your essay exam within the allotted time. In my experience, in the days before an exam once a student knows the law and the arguments to make to an exam question the practical ability to type words at a faster speed makes a difference in the points earned on the page. So while a pre-law student does not yet know law developing better typing skills will have a direct impact on exam performance and final grades.

I have always taken the controversial stance that pre-law students should spend the spring and summer before law school learning the black letter law. Black letter law is law school jargon for the basic rules for the first year courses you will take. The reason this stance is controversial is because most people believe that taking this step will cause burn out and that it is not effective because each law school professor has their own unique twist on the law.

Let me first address the concern of burn out. Will your first year of law school be exhausting? Yes. But, in my experience I have seen too many good students contact me mid-semester because they are completely overwhelmed. Many of these students could have averted their plight had they began law school with a material advantage. Learning the black letter law in advance would have made the first half of the semester so much more palatable because class would have felt more like a review. Instead for most 1L’s the firs semester of law school is tantamount to trying to drink water from a fire hose. Thus, in my estimation the risk of burn out doesn’t outweigh the benefit of beginning an already difficult experience more prepared.

Now to the issue of law professors having too unique of a curriculum for students to realize a benefit from learning the law early. It is true that each professor is unique. When working with students during the 1L semester I meticulously capitalize on what makes my client’s professor unique so that we can better strategize our exam approach. However, just because we don’t know how exactly our kindergarten teacher with approach the class doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to learn the alphabet before the first day. One of the reasons my clients tend to perform better than their peers is because we start knowing the basics before the semester begins.

The top problems students face in the first year of law school is keeping up with all the reading and completing outlines. The purpose of law school reading or what is referred to as reading case law is to learn how to apply the black letter law to factual scenarios. My clients have an easier time because they start off already familiar with the black letter law. Completing outlines is not such a struggle when student’s apply this approach either. One of the staples of an outline is black letter law. Since my clients begin the semester understanding the black letter law they can begin outlining the course far ahead of their peers.

Develop your typing skills and learn the black letter law in advance is the best advice I can give a soon to be 1L. If you’d like to learn black letter law before you start law school the best place to start would be a series called Examples and Explanations or Bar Bri’s 1L lectures. My best performing clients have all taken advantage of these resources.

Franklin is a 1L success coach that has successfully helped students earn top grades in law school. To learn more about Franklin click here.

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