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August 25, 2008
When are they teaching me about the courts?
They aren't. They expect you to learn. Here are some good resources:
If you are unsure about the court system, read Succeeding in Law School, pp. 6-22 or check out www.abanet.org and click on Public Resources, About the Law, and read the piece on How Courts Work, including Steps in a Trial. You do not need to memorize this information; as you work through cases, this material will become familiar to you and you will learn what information you do need to memorize.
Posted by rburkett at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)
Reading Legal Citations
If you have trouble understanding what a citation means, Reading Legal Citations should help you. It provides a map of reading citations and a graphical breakdown for each part.
Posted by rburkett at 08:00 AM | Comments (0)
Study aids you can find in the library
Look at the study aids in the library before you buy one. Please note the following are available at the reference desk:
Examples & Explanations
Administrative Law
Agency & Partnership
Bankruptcy & debtor/creditor
Civil Procedure
Constitutional Law
Constitutional Law--individual rights
Contracts
Corporate Taxation
Corporations
Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Environmental Law
Evidence
Federal Income Tax
Payment Systems
Property
Real Estate Transactions
Sales & Leases
Secured Transactions
Securities Regulations
The Law of Torts
Will, Trusts, and Estates
Questions & Answers
Administrative Law
Business Associations
Civil Procedure
Constitutional Law
Contracts
Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Environmental Law
Evidence
Family Law
Federal Income Tax
First Amendment
Payment Systems
Property
Remedies
Secured Transactions
Torts
Trademark & Unfair Competition
Will, Trusts, and Estates
Crunchtime
Contracts
Quick Review
Civil Procedure
Settlement Reference Manual
Emanuel
Civil Procedure for law school & bar examinations
Contracts
Lexis-Nexis for law students
Strategies & Tactics for the first year law student
Gilbert
Gilbert Law Summaries. Pocket size law dictionary
Roadmaps
Basic Income Tax
Civil Procedure
Constitutional Law
Contracts
Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Evidence
Professional Responsibility
Torts
Exam Pro
Evidence
Property
Posted by rburkett at 08:00 AM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2008
A Brief Description of Citators for Those Without a Legal Background
If you are looking for a good explanation of precedent, court structure and jurisdiction, and citation A Brief Description of Citators for Those Without a Legal Background may be just what you have been looking for.
Posted by rburkett at 08:00 AM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2008
Making Mentoring Work
If you have a mentor or are considering a mentor/mentee relationship you should read Making Mentoring Work.
Posted by rburkett at 08:00 AM | Comments (0)
August 04, 2008
TIPS FOR READING CASES
This article will help you learn how to adequately read cases and prepare for class (and possibly save time trying to figure it all out).
1. Before you read any case, be sure you know what a case is and how it is written. Read Succeeding in Law School, pp. 41-64 or "How to Read a Case - A Guide for New Law Students" posted on TWEN at the course entitled Academic Success Structured Study Groups; then click on Course Materials.
If you are unsure about the court system, read Succeeding in Law School, pp. 6-22 or check out www.abanet.org and click on Public Resources, About the Law, and read the piece on How Courts Work, including Steps in a Trial. You do not need to memorize this information; as you work through cases, this material will become familiar to you and you will learn what information you do need to memorize.
2. Before you read any case, try to figure out why it is being assigned.
Look at the table of contents of the casebook and the syllabus for any tips regarding what you are to learn from the case.
E.g, your property professors indicate that the first cases assigned have something to do with acquiring property by discovery.
Read the introductory material in the casebook and skim the notes after the case to see if they offer some additional insight into the purpose of reading the case.
Note the date of the case. If very old, it may be providing some sense of the development of the law. This law may or may not be current.
3. Read the case once, all the way through, quickly just to get an idea of what happened. Don't try to understand it at this point.
4. Look up all the words you don't know in a legal dictionary.
5. Re-read the case, word for word, focusing first on the facts of what the parties did that led to the law suit and then the procedure of what happened in court prior to the appeal you are reading about.
6. Now look for the issue of the case, the ruling, reasoning and holding. (See "How to Read a Case - A Guide for New Law Students" in item 1 above and "A Format for Briefing Cases," the handout assigned in Lawyering Skills.)
7. If you think you understand the case, begin to brief it, using the tips learned in Lawyering Skills class for briefing.
8. If you do not think you understand the case, read it once more and then brief it.
9. If you are unsure of how to brief, bring a brief to me during office hours and I will help you figure out what you are doing well and what you need to work on. Soon, you will realize that you want to customize your briefs to your professor, but for now, these tips are universally helpful.
10. You will probably read 2000 cases this year and more in the next two years, and even more in your practice. Be assured that with this much practice and with tips like these, very quickly reading cases will become easier.
Tips taken from Reading Like a Lawyer, by Ruth Ann McKinney, available on reserve.
Posted by at 04:24 PM | Comments (0)
The Process to Law School Success
The Process to Law School Success provides a variety of useful information from case briefing to exam preparation and everything in between.
© 2003 Rogelio Lasso*
INTRODUCTION
Success in law school means different things to different people. To some, success is defined by how much they learn, regardless of grades. To others, success is defined entirely by grades, regardless of how much they learn. To some, it is defined by whether they survived the experience. To others yet, success is defined by some combination of the above. I define success in law school as a combination of how much you learn and how well your grades reflect that learning.
First, let me clear up a misconception. Although there is a relationship between intellectual brilliance and success in law school, it is a limited correlation. Bluntly put, law is not intellectually very hard. Astrophysics, or quantum mechanics are intellectually very hard areas of study. But you can be a very competent attorney even if you are or average intelligence. There is a more predictable correlation between law school success (or success as a lawyer) and following a defined process. In other words, for most of us, success in law school is less dependent on innate intelligence than on following a prescribed course of action. Rather than thickness of gray matter, the main ingredient of law school success is preparation. Preparation in law school involves two principles: hard work and development of some tried-and-true skills.
There is no short cut to success in law school or in the practice of law: they both require hard work. Some students fail to understand this principle of success. Every year, I meet students who took short cuts as undergraduates but nevertheless received good grades. Some boast that they got top grades despite waiting to prepare for exams until literally hours prior to the test. They arrive at law school believing they can replicate this approach. Every year I suggest early in the semester that students not use short cuts in law school and every year some students choose to ignore this advise. Unfortunately, they don't find out they were wrong until they receive their first semester grades.
In addition to hard work, successful students must learn to work well. Many students brief every case, go to every class, take copious notes, read hornbooks and commercial outlines, and yet do poorly in law school. These students worked hard, but not necessarily well. Thus, success in law school depends on two factors: (1) how hard you work; and (2) how well you work.* This article provides you with the tools you need to work well. Only you can determine how hard you are willing to work.
I. HOW SUCCESS IN PRACTICE IS RELATED TO SUCCESS IN LAW SCHOOL
Clients hire lawyers to resolve issues. Whatever a client's issue may be, the essence of what lawyers do is resolve problems. To accomplish this task, lawyers must call upon a combination of skills, including oral and written communication, factual investigation, research, analysis and reasoning, counseling, and negotiation. Additionally, lawyers must be skilled in litigation and alternative dispute-resolution procedures. Successful lawyers apply these skills in a well organized, thoughtful, and ethical manner. I believe that the primary mission of the law school is to prepare students to enter the legal profession. Law schools should train students to learn and develops the skills, perspectives, and personal attributes that will make them successful lawyers. This means that the skills needed to succeed in law school should relate to the skills needed to succeed in practice.
Students in courses like torts, contracts, civil procedure, and business associations should not only learn the underlying substantive law but also skills such as problem solving, analysis, and reasoning. (These skills are sometimes referred to as "critical analysis" skills.) Students in these courses should also learn oral and written communication skills as well as organization, and ethical and professional demeanor. In addition to substantive courses, law schools offer a broad array skill developing courses (like research and writing, pre-trial & trial practice, oral advocacy, clinic, client counseling, and practice management), and courses aimed at developing a student's perspective and personal attributes, like jurisprudence, and legal ethics.
A. The Skills Needed to Succeed in Law School
Because I teach tort and procedure courses, the focus of this article is on the skills needed to succeed in those courses. However, I believe the same skills are needed to succeed in all substantive course. To succeed in a substantive law school course, students need to master the following four skills:
1. Thorough understanding of legal rules and their underlying principles and policies.
a. This requires more than simply learning what the rules say. It requires understanding what the rules mean, how and why they were developed.
(1) for example, it is not enough to know that to recover for a battery, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant intended to cause a harmful or offensive contact. Students must understand "intent" in the law of battery means more than merely the subjective desire to achieve an outcome.
2. Ability to separate legally relevant facts from irrelevant facts and red herrings.
a. Not all the facts a client gives her lawyer are relevant to her ability to recover damages. Sometimes the facts the client considers to be the most important are not legally relevant. Sometimes the most heart-wrenching facts have nothing to do with the client's claim- they are red herrings. Good lawyers focus only on the legally relevant facts when trying to make their client's case.
b. Likewise, successful law students must focus only on the facts that are relevant to the specific element being analyzed and not allow themselves to be distracted by irrelevant facts or heart-wrenching but legally insignificant facts.
3. Ability to spot and describe the issues raised by the relevant facts - and the problem being analyzed.
a. Good lawyers quickly zero in on the issues raised by their clients' facts and the applicable law.
b. Successful law students are able to spot and describe only the issues that are raised by the relevant facts, the applicable law, and question the professor is asking, in class or in the final exam.
4. Ability to apply the pertinent legal rules to the relevant facts in an organized and thorough manner.
a. This means interweaving the relevant facts of the problem into the elements of the applicable rule in a systematic way that follows some logical order.
(1) successful lawyers not only (1) use the law and facts to argue on behalf of the client's position but also (2) understand what arguments can be made against the client's position using the same or other relevant facts.
(2) Successful law students learn to argue strongly not only on behalf of one party but also on behalf of the other.
B. How Are These Skills Different than Undergraduate School
"I hear, and I forget; I see, and I remember; I do, and I understand."*
Undergraduate students become proficient at developing a very important skill: acquiring knowledge. Most undergraduate assessment tools measure the ability to acquire, memorize, and regurgitate information.
To succeed in law school, however, students need to acquire information and to develop the ability to apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate that information. In other words, "law students should not just know; they should be able to do what they know."**
The successful law student utilizes the learned skills not only to acquire but also to use knowledge "to think, judge, decide, discover, interact, and create."
II. THE PROCESS TO LAW SCHOOL SUCCESS: FROM CASE BRIEF TO FINAL EXAM
Preparing for success in law school should begin the first week of the first semester of law school. Following is a list of steps in the process toward law school success. I have synthesized these steps from my own experience and from interviews with dozens of students who have been successful in my classes and in law school during the past several years.
A. Read and Brief Assigned Cases
Learning to read and brief cases is a time-consuming and tedious task but it is an essential step toward success in law school. As overwhelming a task as it seems, reading and briefing cases (at least during your first year in law school) is fundamental to developing the skills essential for success in law school and in practice.
For a detailed tutorial on reading and briefing cases, read Reading & Briefing Law School Cases or watch the videostreamed lecture entitled Reading & Briefing Law School Cases
A. Prepare for Class
Reading and briefing the cases prior to discussing them in class is essential. However, to fully prepare for class you should also answer the questions, hypotheticals, and problems in the class handouts and in the casebook's notes.
B. Attend and Participate in Law School Classes
Attending classes is important for several reasons. Understanding a subject matter requires much more than learning its "black-letter law." To develop critical skills in any given area of law requires an understanding of the social, political, and historical underpinnings of the law. In addition, the interaction of the various perspectives, experiences, and approaches of your classmates and professors will help you to fully understand the legal rules and principles of any area of law. Your life experiences have given you a unique perspective on the legal issues discussed in class. Participate in class so that your unique perspective can be heard. You participation enriches the class experience of all of us. Your participation also insures that the gunners won't hog all the air time. Finally, you paid dearly for these classes and you should stick around to see if you are getting what you paid for.
C. Participate in a Study Group
They may not be for everyone and finding a study group that works for you may require some trial and error. However, most students benefit from participating in a study group. The exchange of ideas in the intimate environment of a small group of peers is helpful to understanding complex legal concepts. People learn in different ways and at different rates. You may be the one to explain a concept to your group one week and another member may be the one to explain a concept to the group the next week. Explaining concepts out loud helps solidify your own understanding of issues. Moreover, you will often work closely with other lawyers during your legal career even if you practice law by yourself. Law school study groups help develop the collaborative skills needed to succeed in practice.
D. Course Outlining: Prepare an Outline of the Class
The most common mistake law students make in final exams and lawyers make in legal briefs is presenting arguments that are disorganized. For most people, making logical, well reasoned arguments is not instinctive. Spotting the issue, recognizing the applicable law, and drawing the correct conclusion is not nearly enough. You also need to explain why you chose to apply that particular law and how the law applies to the facts of your case. An outline is the tool that provides the structure needed to arrange an extraordinary number of complex and interrelated concepts into a comprehensive document. The class outline is the most important document you will prepare in law school. Even if you buy, borrow, or steal outlines prepared by others, you should always prepare your own. Only then will you fully understand the concepts and their interrelation with each other.
For a detailed tutorial on outlining, read: How to outline a Law School Course or watch the videostreamed lecture entitled: How to outline a Law School Course
E. Take Practice Exams
Law School exams and the bar exam are more about a particular process than about substantive knowledge. Each law school professor has her or his own conception of the required process. Practice exams (often the professor's old exams) give you a valuable insight into the process as perceived by that professor. Practice exams allow you to get a feel for what you can expect on the final exam. If the exam has a sample answer or a top student answer, you can also get a feel for what that professor requires. You only take one exam in most law school classes. Waiting until then to find out what the professor expects often results in an unpleasant surprise.
F. Write a Good Final Exam
Although success in law school does not depend only on how well you do on any one exam, how well you do in law school will depend on how well you do on your exams.
For a detailed tutorial on test taking, read How to Write a Good Law School Exam or watch the videostreamed lecture entitled: How to Write a Good Law School Exam
The above guidelines are not the only views on how to succeed in law school.
For another viewpoint visit Professor Leslie Bender's "Basic Manual for Law School Success" at http://www.law.syr.edu/faculty/bender/torts/generalinformation/basicsuccessmanual.asp
III. HOW TO AVOID LAW SCHOOL-RELATED STRESS
A. Can't Be Done but You Can Learn to Work Through It.
To a great extent, stress is part of the law school experience, particularly during the first year. Students are presented with new (and sometimes obscure) fields of study, each with its own unique language. Additionally, law school is so labor intensive that it leaves little time for other important pursuits, like family, relationships, hobbies, etc. And, to top it all, how well you do in classes is often based on well you do in a single, several-hours-long, closed-book examination.
Although it is hard to completely avoid stress, being well prepared for class and for your final exams will reduce some of it. Following the above guidelines is a first step. A sense of humor is also helpful.
For more on how to avoid law school stress, read The Secrets to Relieving Law School Stress or watch the videostreamed lecture entitled The Secrets to Relieving Law School Stress
* You are welcome to copy or otherwise use any of my intellectual property. All I ask is that you give me authoring credit.
*Old Chinese proverb. See Gregory S. Munro, Outcome Assessment for Law Schools 70 (2000) (hereinafter Munro).
**Munro, at 12.
Posted by at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)
Basic Etiquette
This article appeared in the Chronicle for Higher Education, Jan. 12, 2007 and discusses a program at Drake Law School.
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By KATHERINE MANGAN
A young lawyer named Christy loves Jose Cuervo and hot guys and tends to dump work on her uptight colleague, Dillon, who finds it really annoying when she goes crying to their boss to gain sympathy. He is eager to share details about an impending company buyout that he learned about during lunch with some corporate bigwigs.
They had not imagined that their boss might be reading such juicy tidbits on their Facebook pages, one of which shows Christy posing seductively in a low-slung miniskirt, holding a beer. Dillon's, while less shocking at first glance, reveals confidential client information and broadcasts a pending deal the company would prefer to keep under wraps.
The characters are fictional, but their habit of divulging information - to employers, colleagues, and clients - sounds all too familiar to the two Drake University law professors who created them. Lisa A. Penland, an associate professor of law, and Melissa H. Weresh, a professor of law and assistant director of legal writing, are on a mission to teach law students how to be more professional in an age of bare-all online communication.
"Our students have been raised in a culture in which they communicate very informally and put things out about themselves that we never would have dreamed of sharing with other people," says Ms. Penland.
Besides being overly informal, today's students sometimes show a lack of respect for authority, the professors say.
Both professors have received e-mail messages from students challenging their assignments or explaining why they are too busy to meet in person. (One student said he had an international business to run during his spare time.) Some of the messages are light on capital letters and punctuation marks.
"There's an assumption that you can be informal regardless of who your audience is," says Ms. Penland. Being professional "is not just merely being polite," she adds. "It affects your credibility in the legal and business world."
Last fall the two professors presented a workshop to 160 first-year Drake law students, titled "Professionalism and the Google Generation: What Life on the Internet Left Behind." This month the duo will present their work at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools, in Washington, and they hope to take their show on the road to other colleges.
Public vs. Private
One of the pair's goals is to help students realize that many communications they consider private are actually out there for the world to see.
That became painfully clear last year when Celeste F. Bremer, a local federal judge who was cruising the Internet with her daughter, stumbled upon a Facebook page set up by Drake law students.
The rant-filled "I Hate Legal Writing" group page included comments that the two Drake professors, both of whom teach that subject, found threatening. Judge Bremer, of the U.S. District Court in Des Moines, also came across another group that called itself the "Drake Law Drunks." Judge Bremer, who had recently taught a course at Drake and had close ties to the law school, contacted the administration.
"In my e-mail to the deans, I said, 'No one's a bigger supporter of the First Amendment than the court, but students need to act professionally. They're not in high school anymore,'" she said.
University officials began an investigation that included background checks of a few students. "That made some of the students upset because they felt we had been snooping around on their Facebook," Ms. Penland says. "They genuinely didn't understand the public nature of what they were doing. ... Rather than simply saying 'You guys are stupid - I can't believe you put this out there,' we wanted to do something constructive."
She and Ms. Weresh developed a workshop in which students break into small groups to analyze questionable exchanges and comments in blogs, Web pages, and e-mail messages. For entertainment value, the professors created exaggerated examples of boorish behavior, as well as more-subtle examples of disrespectful e-mail message and online chats. The goal is to force students to draw the line between appropriate and inappropriate conversation.
The professors started by looking for Facebook pages whose authors identified themselves as law students. "One student posted pictures of herself in a string bikini, and another picture showed her drinking with a caption like 'Just before I puked at Law Ball,'" Ms. Weresh says.
Working with the university's technology experts, they created Facebook pages for their fictional characters, Lawgirl and Lawboy. On the pages, the two young associates rant about obnoxious partners at their firm piling work on them and brag about how schmoozing and sucking up will one day help them become partners. The professors "howled" as they created the pages, Ms. Weresh says.
Monitoring Tone
The professors say that they are not trying to tell students to avoid MySpace or Facebook, but that students should restrict access to their pages and be careful about what they post.
Students can also hurt their images by sending out e-mail messages that do not show respect for the recipients, Ms. Weresh says. She and Ms. Penland have collected examples of such missives, including some that challenge professors' grading policies or teaching methods.
"This generation is more demanding and tends to feel more entitled to collaboration than we feel is appropriate," says Ms. Weresh, adding that students' messages often reflect this "lack of respect for a hierarchy of authority."
The students could be in for a tough adjustment when they land their first jobs, she says. "Even if you end up with a bunch of laid-back Millennials running a law firm, there's still going to be a hierarchy when you walk into a courtroom."
Trisha A. Fillbach, director of career development at Drake University Law School, says her office also warns students about the Facebook factor. Employers have told her that they regularly Google potential hires and learn more than they need to know about candidates who record their lives on blogs. Some employers go a step further, checking out MySpace and Facebook pages.
"Most of the students I encounter are very mature and understand that perception is everything," Ms. Fillbach says. But her office is telling students that "if anything is out there, it's time to clean it up."
She recently logged on to MySpace and typed "Drake Law School" to see what would pop up. A student who had applied to Drake, among other law schools, shared her impressions in a page "that was full of the F-word," Ms. Fillbach says. "She wasn't saying anything negative about the schools," but her language probably wouldn't help her chances of getting in to any of them.
A quick check on MySpace yielded an eye-popping array of entries from current and recent law students. One recent graduate of an East Coast law school starts his expletive-laden entry with "Sweet! I failed the Texas Bar." He then goes on to detail how miserable law school was, how pointless the bar exam is, and how he will probably fail it again. "Perhaps I should have just sat their [sic] and forced myself to write more regurgitated [expletive] instead of walking out of each of the five sections an hour early," he muses.
Jay Grimes, a 34-year-old first-year law student at Drake, says that he doesn't have a Facebook account, but that the workshop did make him more aware of the dangers of sending out hasty e-mail messages.
"Once you click the send button, whatever you have written goes out and is beyond your control," he says. "If you are not comfortable with shouting your comments from a street corner, you probably shouldn't convey them via electronic print."
Posted by at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)
Getting Organized!
Get Organized!
Manage YOUR Time
Schedule your days (and nights), weeks, and semester
See the train wreak BEFORE it happens
Plan for the unexpected…build buffers into your time
Organize YOUR materials
Use a binder, folder, or whatever to keep each class organized
Understand YOUR Readings
Review to topic BEFORE each reading
E.g. consult the book’s table of contents
Consider color-coding your highlighting
Write YOUR OWN notes and outlines
Review your notes weekly and incorporate into an outline
Use Active Reading
Know the general topic of each reading before you start reading (consult the syllabus or TOC)
The assignment has a purpose… really!
Find the law, think about the policies behind the law
Consider color coding* your highlighting
General material & Facts = Yellow
Procedural Posture and holdings = Red
THIS court’s reasoning = Green
Prior Cases/Reasoning = Blue
Dissent = Orange
*Adapted from John Miller’s book Law School Confidential
Beginning Book TOC/Syllabus Outline Contracts II (Spring 06)
Capacity to contract
Mental Capacity
Duress and Undue Influence
Misrepresentation and Nondisclosure (see note on 551)
Unconscionability
If you know the context, the materials are easier to understand
Posted by at 08:00 AM | Comments (0)