Title.

1. http://www.amazon.com/Academic-Legal-Writing-Articles-University/dp/158778792X
2. Learn the editing marks that you'll need to know
3. Familiarize yourself intimately with the Bluebook (take it on a date, ask it questions, find out who it is on the inside)
4. Rest up
5. Ball so hard
6. ?
7. Law Review

As someone who is just finishing up, this is a pretty credited response.

Add that you may want to familiarize yourself with examples of the various types of student works that come in a law review (note, comment, case comment, etc..) Also, you can look to see if any other schools competition packets are internet accessible, just to get a feeling.

Just spent $30 on the ebook. Gonna spend all day tomorrow reading it.

Better be worth it.

I like the ebook for the search function, but many schools prohibit it per honor code. Also, once you fuck with the bluebook for a while you start to learn where all the shit is-not so w/BB OL.

Rule 1: Prepare thy anus

Be careful about this. If your competition is a closed competition and "everything you need is in the packet," then accessing this book may be prohibited behavior. Chances are, they aren't going to find out if you did use it, but I would ask before assuming.

#1 thing I would recommend is to give yourself time to proofread. Set a writing schedule for yourself.

1) Learn to read
3) Work on the packet a lot
4) ??????
5) Profit

it's not rocket science

As long as #4 is "drink heavily," then I'm ready to succeed.

#2 is also drink heavily, right?

Agree with all of this (except for the profit part, I feel like everyone loses by having to do the write-on).

I read the tips on write-on books and they were useless. What they don't tell you is that the write-on is a metric shit ton of reading so be prepared to spend several days just reading.

Does anyone have any tips for the actual writing and subciting?

Make sure you read the instructions very carefully and only answer what's asked. My competition had a poorly worded question and anybody who answered it the wrong way basically got autodinged no matter how good the bluebooking was.

And it should go without saying but make sure your cites are perfect. Double and triple check those. Some people focus solely on the substance of their argument and think they can get away with sloppy bluebooking. But remember, the people grading these just spent a year becoming disgustingly intimately familiar with the bluebook and they will catch those little mistakes.

Set a schedule and stick to it. It's easy to get into a summer slump, but you have to treat this as another exam. If you have a week, spend the first day or two reading everything, focusing on the main case. Then outline your argument, write, and make sure you save at least a day for bluebooking and substantive editing.

Make sure you know exactly what your competition is going to require before you start prepping. I megafailed by reading and tabbing Bluebook cover-to-cover, only to find out that my school's write-on had its own detailed set of citation rules in the packet.

But seriously, read the instructions, then read them again, then read them again. The person who drafted the packet for mine buried lots of little weird rules in the instructions.

What exactly are you tabbing? Is that helpful?

Doing it now, and agree with read the package multiple times. Also, If you don't really know what each rule entails, then tabbing is helpful. The more familiar with BB's rules you are, the less helpful tabbing is, I think.

But what rules are you tabbing though? Just the general/important ones?

tagging

There's an index in the Bluebook, as well as quick reference charts in the front and back cover. Tabs are a waste of time.

I just tabbed the major rules (cases, statutes, periodicals, etc.). FWIW, I'm on LR and it's a timesaver when you're doing edits, index or no. Bluebook online is even better.

It's def not rocket science. I wouldn't waste time reading the Volokh book or anything. Take a look at notes your LR has published recently to see how they want an article (and thus, your write-on sub) to look.

Get to know the bluebook. I don't know what I can say about this without violating my LR's rules on the off chance a 1L at my school stumbled on this. I guess, generally, keep in mind that LR citations typically have a lot more going on in them than citations in documents for courts, and the separation on the write-on is going to come in being able to deftly handle all the extra shit.

Is it really that bad?? Is it going to be hell doing this and interning at the same time?

Nope. I started my 1L job right after finals and didn't even think about write-on for the first four or five days of the 10-day write on. Still had plenty of time to finish it without pulling all-nighters, freaking out, etc.

So my school does not really use the Bluebook for the write-on. They use Chicago. So make sure you look into what resources your school uses before wasting time tabbing shit you don't need to.

Is it normal to not have a prompt/question? My packet just says to create an argument from the sources, then gives us hundreds of pages of sources that are ROUGHLY centered around a topic. Yech.