Boost your Chances of A's in Law School

Today, I heard from a USC student who just received his first semester grades. We are not yet sure of his ranking but his GPA calculates to about a 3.9. When we first met I remember him being surprised to hear about my approach on reading cases but he agreed with the rationale. Unlike some of his peers, his learning style did not watch well with the traditional law school approach.

Adapting my methods he began outlining and taking practice exams at a rapid pace. Throughout the semester, he often reported how his peers were so consumed by the case law that they did not know how to use the rules of law. At the same time, his peers were doggedly committed to the approach the law school directed them to take.

Most students are afraid of my approach because they fear that without being case centered they will not be prepared for class discussions or questions from their professors. At the close of the semester I overheard a group of students remarking on how well my client answered questions in class. They had no idea he worked with me. They mentioned that they should study with him next semester. Little did they know, the reason he answered their professors’ questions so well had nothing to do with how well he read cases but everything to do with how well he understood the rules of law.

While our approach meant that he did not have a study group to work with, it also meant that while his peers were reading and briefing cases he was taking practice exams and polishing his outline. In the end, this is what set his performance apart from his peers.

Cases are at the center of all 1L classes. They are also at the center of most of your competition’s strategy to perform well. Their singular focus on case reading and briefing is also their greatest weakness. Exploiting this weakness is a key facet of why my students perform so well in their first year.

Working with my clients, I approach everything from the perspective of the exam because it is the single most determining factor of a 1L’s final grade. Understanding the relationship between cases and exams is the first step to performing better than your competition. This is the case because 90% of what the average 1L spends their study time doing is reading and briefing cases. Once a student understands the relationship between cases and exams they can make an informed decision about how they will approach reading and briefing cases.

Law school professors use cases to teach students the rules of law. Commonly, for every one rule of law there are several cases that in some way or another examine or shine light on various aspects of the one rule of law. The case centered approach professors use is a law school ritual unlikely to change. Like most traditions it is more romantic than it is efficient.

Let me explain why the case centered approach is less efficient by using a simple metaphor. Imagine telling someone several very long stories. Each story has a central theme. Let’s say the theme is love and that the several long stories are love stories exploring different aspects of the central love theme. These several love stories are akin to the several long cases you will be assigned to read for each law school class throughout the semester.

If you put the moral of each story together you would have a working definition of love. Similarly, if you summarize each law school case you will have the working definition for the theme of those cases. In law school this working definition is called the rule of law. We call it this because the essential ingredients (the moral of each story) from the several related cases can be strung together to create one rule (the working definition).

Let’s imagine that after reading the several love stories the definition of love was that it is (1) caring (2) infinite and (3) indiscriminate. This would be the love rule. Now that you know the rule, someone could tell you a new love story about a couple and at the end of the story ask you whether the couple is in love? A law school exam does just that. An essay or multiple choice question describes a set of facts (a story) and asks you to analyze the facts applying the rule of law (legal analysis).

Using the love rule, you could apply each of the three components of the rule to analyze the answer to the question of whether the couple is in love. Your analysis would examine whether the couples expressions toward one another were caring, infinite and indiscriminate. The more arguments you made for and against each of these elements the more points you would be awarded.

The trouble with the process law school professors use to teach the law is that it emphasizes cases (i.e. the love stories) more than the actual structure that is used to write exams (issue spotting, rule statements and rule application or analysis). This unnecessarily prolongs the learning process and hurts students who learn better when information is presents more straightforward and to the point.

For clarity, let’s briefly recap the process. When you take an exam the first step is to spot a legal problem or issue (i.e. whether the couple is in love). The only way to spot a legal issue is to know the rules of law (i.e. the love rule). In law school you do not have a clear picture of the rules of law until the end of the semester. Because my clients are introduced to the rules of law earlier than their peers they build this exam skill throughout the semester.

After spotting the issue, the next step is to state the rule of law that will be used to answer the problem or issue (i.e. love is (1) caring (2) infinite (3) indiscriminate). Again, we call this a rule statement. As you can imagine, there are many rule statements for each class. The earlier you learn and memorize these rule, the better you will perform on the exam.

The most important and final step is to analyze the rule. On an exam, this is where the bulk of the point are earned. You would make competing arguments for how the couple’s love was caring on one hand and uncaring on the other hand (argument and counter-argument). You would analyze each of the three elements this way.

It is only in the analysis phase of writing the exam that you would mention one of the cases (the love stories). You would use a fact from the case to draw an analogy or contrast between the exam fact pattern and similar or dissimilar facts in the case. Finally, you would make a conclusion as to which argument in the analysis wins or whether the couple was in love.

It’s odd that one of the last things you do on an exam is the primary focus of most 1L classes. If there is a more efficient way to learn the law wouldn’t you want to know more about it?

The above point aside, there are five more reasons why my clients learn the rules of law before reading the cases. First, the rules take only a fraction of the time to read and understand. Reading and briefing cases for one day of one class can take upwards of 5 hours. At the end of those hours you still may not leave with a coherent rule of law. Since performance in law school has a lot to do with time management my clients opt to break with convention.

Second, it takes far less time to find something when you know what you are looking for. When a professor assigns cases 1Ls tend to have no idea how to distinguish the information in the case that is essential from the information that is incidental or less relevant. Insecure, the average 1L spends a lot of time trying to understand information about cases that are irrelevant.

For several months most 1Ls are in a room full of content with no idea what they are looking for. My clients don’t have this problem because they understand the rule of law before they read cases. As a result, they read cases with more confidence and speed because they know what is relevant and what is not.

Third, at the end of the semester all 1Ls will have finally realized that they need to know the rules of law. The average 1L looses many hours of sleep attempting to memorize the rules of law for an exam that is only days away. Because there are so many complicated rules there is not enough time to really master them under such time restraints. My clients have far more time to memorize the rules because they started with the rules on day one, and sometimes earlier. As a result, instead of trying to memorize an outline in the days before the exam we are taking a few more practice exams.

Fourth, learning the rules first gives my clients the advantage of seeing the big picture. At a certain point in the semester the average 1L becomes overwhelmed with cases and begins to wonder how to make sense of cases in context of each other.

Since we started with the rules, we see how the cases relate with one another while our peers see the cases as individual worlds to themselves. On the exam it is important to have a complete understanding of the big picture so that you can make connections. The more connections you can make the more issues you will spot and the more arguments you can make. Top grades go to the student with the most issues and the better analysis or arguments.

Am I advocating not reading cases? No, not necessarily. I am advocating reading cases more intelligently and efficiently. I am advising you to read cases having a clear idea of why the case is important and already knowing where it fits into the larger picture. You do this by first learning the rules of law.

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Franklin is a law school success consultant focusing on the 1L year and summer employment. To learn more about Franklin click here.

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