Out of all the law students on TLS you found two that believe prepping is useful. How many semesters in was the first poster? Regardless, I bet she has a different opinion today. As for Arrow, that one dude was such a genius, does not mean you are. If you are like us mortals, you won't be able to truly comprehend the material until your professor introduces it. Even if you are superhuman, you won't know which portions of the material are important to your professor.

Since OP thinks bringing in anecdotal evidence of people who have been successful in spite of OL prep... Don't do it. Brought to you by another top 5% student.

ps - disco's sentiment is very well taken. Well written and obviously thought out. You want to do something that will help your career? The only thing that I think could help your career as a 0L is to take a writing class or read a Brian Garner book. Even that is bordering on ridiculous when read out of context.

Haha...truth.

This thread could make for an interesting visualization on how many top students on here say 0L prep is worthless. We could all just say "I" or something and there'd be like 20 students in a row with no pro 0L prep advocates.

Another top 5% student weighing in. Here's what I did:
I went to Paris for a month and drank gallons of red wine, toured museums.
I worked at a coffee shop.
I read about 40 novels. (Novels are my X-box. Be sure you get your fill of pleasurable activity.)
Right before classes started, I went to see my family for a week. We went to the beach, ate tons of food and drank more gallons of wine. When I started classes, I was fat and detoxing.

Nothing substantive. Unless you count reading Dostoevsky and William Godwin.

Aye.

Eye and, preempting Corsair, arrrg.

Spent my summer getting tan and fat at the beach, only working 30 hours a week, and catching up on good movies that passed me by in undergrad.

Thought prepping was useless. I read GTM and didn't even find that particularly helpful.

Got good grades.

Aye.

If it goes any further OP, I also spent the first month+ of my first semester doing nothing more than the minimum.

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MPVB 1L here. honestly everybody is right - chill out the summer before so you can come into law school totally refreshed and ready to rock it. if you read ahead you wont comprehend the material in any meaningful way. i went backpacking around southeast asia for 10 weeks and it was the best thing i ever did in my life. my 1st semester grades turned out very good.

as everyone else has said, the best way to prepare is to relax and dont think about law school to the extent that that's even possible. and i know it's not, but try. you will have 3 years of law school to think about law school

honestly if you really wanna prepare, by far the best way to do it is to talk to the law students and lawyers (especially recent law school grads) that you know. ask them about what to expect, and how to excel. they've been through it, and they'll be more than happy to help you out, give you some perspective, and tell you what they've learned. everyone has a different system and you'll get different advice but it's helpful to hear from a lot of people.

but as far as learning the law before you get to school...trust me, you're not meaningfully equipped to handle it until you have the benefit of being in the classroom. that's simply a function of the fact that the law is a dense canon and the first few weeks of law school intruction will really teach you how to evaluate case and rules and put them together coherently in your head. i now look back and realize that during those first few weeks the professors were pretty much holding our hands walking us through everything, even though it sure didnt seem like it at the time.

Aye.

Also, this is what I did as well during the first month and a half or so, though I think I went through the LEEWS CD's and browsed GTM a little. I was not reading E&E's and outlining and crap like that until much later in the semester.

Read "A Civil Action" if you want to get excited about the law. And no, the movie won't do.

How is learning some basic tort law hurtful? What is wrong with learning the basics of negligence, assault, and res ipsa loquitur from an E&E?

Right now I'm a second semester senior who does zero school work. I read an E&E for a half an hour to an hour per night and get about a chapter per day done.

O.k., b/c of this compelling post, I take everything back that I've said in this thread.

Imagine this scenario:

Master saxophonists tell you that buying and tooting around with a sax before you take any lessons is detrimental at worst, and a waste of time at best. You then go out and buy a saxophone and start tooting around. What's wrong with that, right?

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It seems it would only hurt me if I didn't go to class or listen to the professor. Though I guess it is possible that I would forget that he taught it differently.

Well, I'm reading Getting to Maybe and a few Delaney books (from the Complete 0L guide to 1L topic), then I'll head off to Thailand for a month. Best of both worlds.

You're basically adding a new element to your studying: Having to remember where you learned what. This isn't a good thing, you're going to have enough to worry about as it is.

I do this with supplements all the time. It's not that hard to parse when you're making your outline, and if it's not on your outline it shouldn't be affecting your analysis on the exam.

I think the bigger danger is the false sense of confidence you gain from thinking you know something when you really don't.

Your argument doesn't wash. First off, none of you are the legal equivalent of "master saxophonists" - at best, you could be considered students at some institute of saxophone instruction. The individual who decides to do 0L prep reading hasn't bought a sax to incompetently and arrogantly toot it about. He or she has done the equivalent of buying the "Saxophone for Dummies" book and is attempting to become familiar with the peculiarities of saxophone tooting before he or she begins their program of face-to-face, intensive instruction in the field.

Is there a danger of "mis-prepping" (misunderstanding the actual consequences of legal rules and how said consequences are formed by the context in which those rules are applied, developing a sense of a rule that doesn't mesh with your professors, etc.)? Definitely. That's why I think it's wise to prep with a sense of perspective, if you're going to prep at all. Know that you're going to have to reconcile the concepts of the law that you have in your head with the way your professor instructs the class, with what his or her favorite policy considerations are, etc. But I don't think that becoming familiar with the basics of legal concepts and elements of black letter law would be truly detrimental to someone's success. And, seriously, if you worry that spending three months doing relatively non-intensive legal reading is going to "burn you out", I would posit that you're going to have serious trouble in law school.

Also, what's this bullshit about it being bad to "get a leg up"? I'm sorry, but I'm not going to law school for anyone but myself. It is my goal to be as successful as I can be and I will do everything feasible to reach that goal. If you have a problem with that.....well, fuck you, buddy.

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By "peril" he means that we'll come beat you up or point at you and laugh. You'll never know when it's coming.