First, I’ve read all the threads on whether to do 0L prep, heard all the arguments, and decided my method.

My question is this. What are the most to least important courses for 0L prep? In the case that I want to read some supplements but may not have time to do each course, in what order would you recommend? I suppose the paramount criterion is which courses will 0L prep help the most/least during 1L.

And consider Legal Writing, in addition to the core 6 classes. More LEEWS and exam practice than memos and motions.

Much obliged,

Most important 1L prep: Advanced beach lying, competitive drinking, stress management.

Fun fact: the community consensus (hereinafter: "the truth") that substantive 0L prep is an atrocious fucking idea that will not help but will get you laughed at isn't going to suddenly start telling you which 1L courses require the most prep before you start. I wonder fucking why?

Were you born yesterday? You're not going to get a leg up. We're freaky genius high strung law students who spend our time talking about being freaky genius high strung law students online. You won't find a better or more self reflective resource. We're really good at what we do and we've spent a lot of time figuring out how to do it.

DON'T DO 0L SUBSTANTIVE PREP.

And if you ignore that advice, we will laugh at and scorn you. Online when you ask for help with 0L advice, in person when you show up at orientation talking about the hornbooks you read.

No 0L substantive prep. It won't help, could hurt.

On the other hand, it wouldn't hurt to brush up on your US history, specifically the post-Articles of Confederation-to-Civil War-to-Reconstruction span of time. I think it's helpful for some classes (Con Law, especially) to have a mental timeline of major political events in US history.

It's okay to be excited. We all were before law school. However, trying to beat the rush and learn BLL is totally and completely useless.

Fellow 0L'er here.

Look, we're all excited. I have been reading "Thinking Like a Lawyer" by Shauer. Its entertaining its easy and just gives an overview of legal reasoning. I've read the first few chapters of Getting to Maybe. I've also read the first two chapters of the Civ Pro E & E.

I am reading these because i am super excited about school next year, however I do not at all expect to learn anything substantive. Shauer told me what a holding was, how precedents are created, which precedents inform and which bind, and a few other very simple legal reasoning concepts. Its stuff that just about anyone who enjoys watching Law & Order would find interesting. I think for day one of LS it might, best case scenario, help me simply understand the words coming out of my prof's mouth.

As for the other two...just for fun and just when I get rather amped up thinking about next year. Also, I had no idea what Civ Pro was so I decided to figure it out. It is pretty much what it sounds like.

Do whatever you gotta do to hold yourself over. If you get too excited save the momentum for August/September.

Yeah, I'm just planning on reading for pleasure over the summer. I might read some pop non-fiction that has something to do with the law, but I figure I'll hate reading cases and making outlines within the first month of law school, why front load it?

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Another voice against this - you might as well prep for a top MBA program with Rich Dad Poor Dad seminars.

OP, if you know enough to "decide [your] method," why do you need us to rank the 0L prep? To put it another way, why, in one breath, do you think you know more than us and, in another, you know you do not know as much as us? If you can answer that question coherently, I will rank the prep.

didn't know so many people were so sensitive to the issue of other people doing some 0L prep. I'm almost afraid to reply and keep this thread alive for risk of my own safety and ya'lls blood pressure. ;P

I don't think i know more than ya'll, hence my reaching out for advice. I just prefer some methods that ya'll disagree with. i respect that ya'll disagree with 0L prep, and i'm sure you have good reasons. altho i think of some of ya'll like to see how witty you can be, hoping others will +1 you, then read your replies over and over while you jerk off to how cool/genius you are. Others i'm sure just want to pass on your learned experience. I have noted both, and appreciate the latter.

i know that most people on this forum discourage 0L prep. But those who encourage it, i.e. the NYU students article, make sense to me. That's why I prefaced my question with the observation that I understand the opposing arguments. And somehow I have this feeling that this will end up being another thread about why not to 0L prep (I can direct ya'll to other threads about whether to 0L prep if you can't find them ).

Ok...i didn't read PLS and buy into it like a time-share pitch. I'm not trying to memorize black letter rules or explore all the nuances in hornbooks. Nor do I plan on showing off my 0L prep when classes start (as some of you have so astutely inferenced from my original post. ;P). I just want to leisurely read some very intro book to each course, just so I can see what its about. Like, generally what is strict liability; not what is joinder rule 7aII-c and how does it compare to rule 12biii. And another piece of advice that makes sense to me from this site, is that being good at legal writing and analyzing hypo's is great for tests/grades, and most people don't know what/how legal writing/analysis is when they start classes. So I'm gonna do some basic how-to-legal writing stuff and maybe practice it a little. i know profs will tell me what to learn and how to learn it, so i'm not going to memorize the wrong version of the elements of some rule. i'm just talking big picture here.

i think the material is pretty interesting, most of it at least. and i'm an avid reader - i'm at all times reading a non fiction and fiction book concurrently. I'm just putting down the 'germs, guns and steel' books for intro to criminal law. I'm not killing myself here or burning myself out. Which is why I asked which subjects would be most important, since i doubt i'll have time to do a book for each course.

If you think all subjects (including legal writing), are a wash (either because they don't help at all or if they all help the same) then by all means say so. I partially asked because the people who advocate 0L prep don't say if some courses are better than others. But I have seen some people who oppose 0L prep say things like "... would be as productive as con law 0L prep" - so it registered that maybe for some reason I don't understand, some courses are more conductive to an introductory acquaintance than others are.

ok... much more than I wanted to have to explain, but maybe now I can get an answer.

TLDR.

Look, if you want to 'prep', stay away from the substantive stuff. First, its entirely possible that your professor won't even cover whatever it is you read. Second, your professor will most assuredly have his/her own quirks to teaching the material. This is what will get you points, not what a hornbook said. Third, you may not learn it properly, and as others have said, you will have to undo it.

You say you aren't burning yourself out, but you do run the risk if you try to do any real prep work. I'd stay away from even the intro books for the first and second reasons I listed above. More importantly though, its just a wash (to use your term) to try and gain an understanding of the law before you start actually learning the law. You need to know it, both at a macro and micro level, in order for it to make any real sense. For example, you mention learning about strict liability. However, it is one thing to know the concept, but to really make sense of it, you need to place it in its proper context. That would be (someone with better knowledge than I please correct me) among the various ways of holding a party accountable for their actions, and even that needs to be placed in its context, and so on. It does no good to have all these concepts and doctrines floating in your head without them being grounded in something. And based on your statements, you will try to ground them, which will put you in the position of having to un"learn" them.

Now, if you still want to read something law related before you start school, I would recommend 'The Problems of Jurisprudence'. It is by Judge Posner. Get familiar with the name, you will hear it spoken by many, sometimes with scorn, often with reverence. This book is gold for getting a quick run down of jurisprudence, and is applicable across all classes. Maybe read up on the backgrounds of both former influential and current SCOTUS Justices, as you will be reading many SCOTUS cases. Learning a bit about legal history could help too, particularly if you already have an understanding of American and world history to place it in its proper context. Learning about utilitarianism as a school of philosophy (not in any great depth, but do know the major theories of Mill and Bentham) may also help you. Beyond getting a basic familiarity with jurisprudence (which is not specifically taught in the 1L year, although I would argue it should be a required course), as well as a broad picture of the people and forces that have shaped the law, there is no real benefit conferred by prepping.

That being said, you would be even better served by just hanging out with your friends. You'll have plenty of time for actual, structured learning in August.

Good luck.

Ok... This is tls, described by abovethelaw as "a message board for gunners planning to apply to law school." If you don't agree with ATL's sentiment of us as future gunners, you can at least acknowledge that TLS is full of people who want to excel in law school. I'm sure there's a pretty large majority of 1L gunners or people significantly beating the median.

When people from TLS tell you that substantive 0L prep is useless, then take it to heart, it's really useless. I, for one, will be my spending my summer chilling overseas and learning how to play softball.

If you must:

Read some writing books (GTM, LEEWS). All the knowledge in the world isn't going to help you if you can't write a coherent exam. Be warned, though, you need to write to each professor's style. Take what you read as possible tools, not "the truth."

Stay away from ConLaw -- it is an absolutely massive field with no clear BLL. You will be wasting your time and confusing yourself diving in without knowing what your professor intends to cover.

Likewise, don't attempt CivPro ahead of time. You will want to get your professor's take on this class and unless you are one of a small minority of law students, CivPro will drive you insane.

The *only* advantage that doing any prep ahead of time will give you is the ability to read a little quicker. So, with that in mind, choose one of either torts, crim, contracts (or maybe property) and pick up an Examples and Explanations. Look over it and see how they explain the doctrine -- get used to the fact that you'll be exposed to cases for many purposes (evolution of the doctrine, minority rules, aberrations) and not just to tell you "what the law is."

Other than that, you might want to go on to the SCOTUS site and pick a couple of cases -- read the briefs and opinions. See how they are written. Get your head around the language and citations. Then go back and grab Marbury or something to see what the 18th century cases are like. Don't read them to get holdings (many famous cases are used for multiple propositions), but rather to see what the reading density is going to be.

But really, go sit on a beach, drink beer, and read trash.

This thread went exactly the way I figured it would. Maybe some of us are sadistic and want to read through the E&E's for pleasure? Why not just humor us gunners an answer instead of repeating something the OP has heard a thousand times. If it turns out to be a waste of time and even hurtful to our 1L then that's our mistake to be made and we've gotten fair warning, so why not play along and maybe try and answer what the OP was asking.

The problem with TLS is that a lot of anxious, excited, competitive 0Ls want to get an edge before getting to law school. That is completely understandable. They want to hear that prep can help, they want to hear how to do it, they want to spend time, effort, and money on it. So when they ask, and 9 successful law students say 'massive waste' and 1 successful law student gives his or her blessing, they just take that info and run with it. TLS law students forum turns into a flock of eager 0Ls looking for a 1L yes-man.

It frustrates us, as I'm sure every older generation has felt frustrated when younger generations ignored their advice. But I guess sometimes you have to learn by doing instead of being told.

At the very least, any OTHER 0Ls out there lurking: You have absolute nothing to fear from those doing 0L prep, nor the people who lock themselves in the library until midnight every night once school starts. You have nothing to fear from the people whose hornbooks spill from their arms when they sit down for the first classes, you have nothing to fear from the person whose casebook is tabbed and full read by four weeks into the semester. You have nothing to fear from the guy whose outlines are updated every week.

Why? Because no one crazy study strategy is necessary. You've got to know the law and write a mean exam, and you can get there with much less effort and panic than you'll see those around you doing. Not only that, but that panic and over-eager approach will often result in epic burnout: people who put in three times the effort and get middling grades anyway. Because ONLY one thing matters, and it often gets neglected, because learning and practicing exam skills is more abstract, unguided, and difficult than just reading a dozen hornbooks and outling until your fingers ache.

Law school is scary, uncertain, and competitive. There ARE things you can do to get an advantage. They tend to be subtle, they tend to not require herculean effort.

You need to approach law school intelligently. And it's so, so hard to do it because the guidance your given is minimal and the tension is enormous. Everyone watches everyone else. Everyone is nervous, everyone wonders if they're ready - if they are learning - if they will be ready to test their best on finals. Even after finals, few law students truly understand why they got the grades they did. It's scary! And things like 0L prep make it worse for everyone.

When you read 4 E&Es before law school, you aren't helping your grade, but you are rattling your saber. If it doesn't come up, congrats: You're starting 1L with a secret. It won't do anything good for your psychology. And if it comes up, others are going to be scared, worry that they're falling behind. It's an arms race that just burns people out, because 0Ls and young 1Ls don't know how to pick their battles with learning (and learning to apply) the law. It's a socially damaging practice, it's an academically damaging practice, and it gives TLS a bad reputation because as an institution we should be encouraging intelligent, proper approach to law school not the balls-to-the-wall hyper competitive under-effective overly stressful approach.

Make your own choices... but realize that to a lot of us who've recently survived the gauntlet, these 0L questions aren't just mildly obnoxious, their threats to the well being of a generation of law students as well as TLS and its reputation. That's a little overly dramatic, I'll grant you, but maybe hearing it will help the 0Ls understand our visceral response.

The one thing I wish I had studied a little before starting is economics, which I knew nothing about and which law school doesn't actually teach although it's often bundled up in contracts and property concepts.

But the best 0L prep is sun, sex, and 1080p.

As we've said, nothing can "prep" you for law school. Just get yourself ready for the slog that is 1L. This is my ranking. You cannot pre-learn the law. You cannot read supplements and just get a feeling for the language--whatever the fuck that means. You cannot even understand the terms without understanding the context. For instance, you talked about joinder but to understand what joinder is you have to understand what subject matter jurisdiction is. To understand what subject matter jurisdiction is, you have to know what Joinder is. Only your law prof can guide you through the paradox. Spend the summer at the beach and commit battery against your liver.

Edit: You thought you knew more than us because you thought you could define a method that would force us to tell you what classes it is more import to prep for. You had to think that you were superior to us in some way.

We're not trying to get others to +1 our posts. Sure we like the occasional +1 but honestly we've got porn for masturbation and no time to do it anyway. We only respond to posts like yours so that law school doesn't become an even more douchey place. The post about saber rattling is absolutely credited.

Be honest with yourself; you're prepping to get some form of advantage. You want something that other students don't have. That you call familiarity with the language or substantive knowledge of the law matters not. You're still trying to get a leg up.

Yeah but no matter how many times we echo the statement, it never seems to sink in.

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You want advice? Choose your words carefully. How is reading E&Es for pleasure "sadistic"? This may sound nit-picky, but that's part of being a lawyer: avoiding "getting hanged for a comma." You want to earn the respect of your professors? Speak and write proper English.

Everyone I know in the top 5% of my class (including myself) did not do any 1L prep beyond reading GTM.

Everyone on here who tells you not to do it is top 5-10% of their class. Listen. Stop gunning.

The question was what subjects are most or least important to study for 0L prep. The only answer to that is "none". The consensus is that 0L substantive prep doesn't work at all, so how are we supposed to be able to rank them? OP may as well flip a coin. It would be as accurate as any answer you got, which is the whole point. Nobody has an answer to that question that will satisfy you.

This is like showing up on a medical forum and asking whether you should try frog warts or wolf urine to cure your herpes first. Nobody cares which you do first because they're equally stupid choices.

If you want to go do substantive 0L prep, then go do it, but don't expect us to magically generate answers on how it'll help most when we all agree that it doesn't.

I could not agree with this entire post more. Nothing sucks more than giving an answer in class from some 0L prep you've done and having your professor tell you you're dead wrong. It happened several times in each one of my 1L classes last semester. Those people are thoroughly ridiculed. And rarely wrote good exams.

For the tldr crowd: don't do 0L prep. It's a waste of your time.

(This message brought to you by a top 5% student.)

my advice is to play that xbox til you red ring that sunovabitch